On the Flotilla Ship, the German Foreign Ministry, British Counsel, Helen Thomas and Normalization

The end of May and the beginning of June 2010 witnessed hot events regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Definitely those events were not deliberately planned to take place at the 43rd anniversary of the 5 June occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip, although they are related to it.

In this context it might be useful to make a comparison between the people who stood behind those events, especially non-Arabs, i.e. Germans, Americans and British.

History did not start in 1967!

Before making the comparison it is important to point out the fact that the 1967- war did not mark the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict, for the conflict dates back to the last decades of the 19^th century when Western Capitalist regimes facilitated the immigration of the White Jewish settlers (Ashkenazi) to settle and occupy Palestine then under the Ottoman Rule and British mandate between 1917-1948. The immigration process reached its peak by the expulsion of nearly a 780 thousand Palestinians from three quarters of their homeland in 1948.

Since the defeat of the ruling Arab regimes in 1967, which resulted in the occupation of the remaining part of the Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza Strip), Arab rulers and leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leaders have been subjugated to the imperialist and Israel (Zionist Ashkenazi Regimes - ZAR), which insist that Palestinian should give up their Right of Return (RoR) to their homeland, a right that is historic, national, human in addition to the fact that it was granted by UN Resolution No. 194 of December 1948 following the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians between 1947-1948 and the exodus of the those who managed to escape the massacre.

This deliberate deformation and compromise is the main reason why many supporters of the Palestinian cause fail to understand the roots and real cause of the conflict, a complex matter that requires some explanation. Part of this explanation is to disclose the truth and to show how Arab comprador capitalist classes easily and bluntly betrayed their nation and how many intellectuals were bribed by the rulers and normalize with the three enemies of the Arab nation: the rulers themselves, the ZAR and imperialism. (See below).

The Honest Helen Thomas Vs. the Hypocrite German Minister

Following a meeting, in the last days of June 2010, between the Palestinian Self-Rule ministers and their German counterparts, Jedo Festervilly, in Berlin, the latter wrote an article in a local Palestinian newspaper, al-Quds, stated that: “Germany is committed to its moral responsibility concerning the security of Israel and its right to exist”.

The German minister lacked the diplomatic politeness, intelligence and courage to ask Israeli rulers where “Israeli” borders end before committing himself and his government to guarantee “the Israeli” security. Israel has never declared where its borders start and where they end. Perhaps it starts from Bavaria in Germany!

From our point of view as Palestinians, “Israel” is considered a state of settlers, and thus doesn’t have a right to extend its authority over our country, historic Palestine. So the settlers have no borders here as long as Palestine belongs to its people. The minister must differentiate between a future co-existence in a liberated Palestine and what he pretends is “the Israeli formal state security”, i.e. to give inhabitants security doesn’t mean that the land of others belongs to them.

If the German minister were really genuinely apologestic for the Nazi massacre against German Jews, he must say that Bavaria is open, at any time, for German Jews who were expelled from their German motherland to return. In terms of borders and peoples’ right of return to their homeland, Bavaria should be considered part of “the Israeli” borders.

The colonial mentality of the minister blinded him from seeing that he, like his previous British colonial foreign minister Balfour who “donated” our Homeland to the Jewish settlers in 1917. That immoral “donation”, which is entitled Balfour Declaration, was never made because the West was sympathetic with the Jews who belong to many nations and have the same religion but do not form a nation, or because they feel sorry because of the Nazi massacre, but it is rather because the center of the capitalist countries including Britain and Germany needed a watch dog and aggressive base in the Arab Homeland to play the role, to do the job of fragmenting the Arab Homeland and Arab nation, blocking development in our region and guarantee the flow of wealth to the center. Capitalists never pray for God, but for an endless accumulation of profit from and our region that contains endless resources. The result of creating the ZAR was launching a continuous and prolonged massacre against our people and region to “solve” an intensive one against the Jews who comprehend and internalize the lesson and did the “job” very “well”.

The minister never dared to ask “Israel” to stop or to apologize for the extended massacre against our people and the Region. What Germany did is the opposite: donating to “Israel” a lot of military/terrorist assistance, i.e. the motor of Merkaba tank (Daimler Benz) and nuclear submarines on the one hand and sending warships to block the so-called weapons flow to Gaza. What a humanitarian regime and what a liberal minister who shakes hands with the fascist Zionist foreign minister Lieberman who states openly that he wants to evict the rest of Palestinians from their Homeland!

“Israeli” Borders are that of the Globe

This address is not a product of “Eastern” imagination as many whites might pretend. First because “Israel” never defined its borders, and secondly because the crime/massacre against the peaceful Turkish ship in the middle of the Mediterranean which carried human assistance, food and medicine to the people of Gaza. If the “Israeli” borders reach Cyprus, where do they actually end?

Nobody hears any western politicians including the German foreign minister condemning or even blaming Israel for the massacre which took place on 31 May 2010 against Flotilla Ship. I would like to remind the German minister that a few German ladies and gentlemen where on the deck of the same Turkish ship including Dr. Matthias Jochheim (IPPNW), Prof. Norman Paech (Beirat IPPNW), Adel El Sakka (Palestinian Society Germany), the two ladies of the party "Die Linke" members of the German. In this case is the German minister going to take them to the court for smuggling milk to Gaza’s children?

This massacre encouraged some to speak up bluntly that Palestine is for Palestinians. Helen Thomas is one of those. She knows the truth that Jewish settlers came from Germany, Poland and the United States of America and they must fight for their RoR to these countries. One of the meanings of her speech is that Judaism is a religion and not a nationalism. Therefore, the Jews have occupied Palestine by brut force. Despite the fact that Helen Thomas failed to mention that center of capitalist order was and still is arming the very same Jewish settlers. While the Metropolitan of each white settler colonization (USA. Canada, Australia, New Zealand … etc), is one white capitalist colonial country, the Metropolitan of “Israel” is the world capitalist order.

Moreover, the Jewish settlers are not from the three countries mentioned by Mrs. Thomas, USA, Germany and Poland, they are from at least one hundred nations including the Arab nation. The ZAR is a little “United Nations” compacted in Palestine. The result of creating this “Israel” was the eviction of our people to be scattered all over the world, i.e. to be the “new Jews”. The main difference between us and them is that they were, and most of them still are, citizens in their original homelands while we became refugees. They never demand their RoR because they left their countries deliberately to occupy our country, while we insist on our RoR.

The reason why Helen Thomas lost her temper was because she knows that we offer them the chance/choice to live together in our Homeland in a socialist state as part of the Arab socialist Homeland, while they want to evict the rest of us aiming at making Palestine a “pure” Jewish state and maintaining “Israel” as an aggressive base for western capitalism in its era of globalization. [1] This reminds me of the term Ilan Pappe used to describe the events which took place in historic Palestine between 1947-1948 against the Palestinian people, Ethnic Cleansing. Pappe’s definition was inadequate because ethnic cleansing takes place against a nation mainly once and for a certain period of time, but in case of Palestinian ethnic cleansing it has been carried out till the present time. What they did and still do against us is different. They have never been satisfied with the 1948 occupation and they have been committing ethnic cleansing since then: on a daily basis Jerusalem, confiscating land in the WB, and making Gaza the largest jail in history. What they did and still do is a total destruction of our geography, social fabric, class structure, demography, economy and even they culture which they did not hesitate to steal.

All Colonizers are the same!

From the Palestinian point of view, Britain bears the utmost guilty in creating and supporting the ZAR. Britain did not change. When it was great and even today it is still the capitalist country that is thirsty for accumulation of wealth and profit, and the white criminal culture that is based on capitalist interests. The main industry of capital is war. For this reason Britain was the first capitalized country which launched wars around the world and the last one when it supported the criminal acts of USA against Iraq as both of them declared war on that country.

The current British Regime never blamed the ZAR for the Flotilla crime. As a solution for its massacre against the Turkish/international human solidarity ship, it rudely offered a colonial racist suggestion: the British “initiative” was to cancel the investigation of the Flotilla massacre in an exchange for reducing the siege on Gaza, as if that siege is legal and as if Gazans were the ones who committed the crime, a sin in exchange for another!

The British Counsel and Normalization

Britain has been launching wars against our people in a systematic manner. It is a shame that Britain neither apologized for the creation of the “Israel”- ZAR in Palestine, nor any Palestinian political or even cultural body demanded a British apology.

British politics had never spared time to attack our people as if we are the German Nazi who bombarded London during the imperialist White “World” War II! Britain never blamed “Israel” for 2008-2009 massacres in Gaza which left 1400 victims, women, infants and elderly and destroyed thousands of homes. Britain actually participated in the suggested siege on Gaza borders to stop arms smuggling to show that “Israel” is an innocent peaceful victim, while the truth is, the siege was and still is to stop food and medicine to Gaza! Who knows how many British-made weapons were used in the ZAR aggression against Gaza?

But when a handmade so-called “rocket” falls (18 March 2010) on a vacant area in historic Palestine which was occupied by the Jews in 1948, the British foreign ministry was the first to condemn that act. No Palestinian or Arab ruler or intellectual protested against this British manipulation and hypocrisy. This is the result of normalization with enemies which harm Arab dignity and threatens the future of our Arab Homeland.

One of the British bases for normalization activities in our country is the British Cultural Counsel called the British council. This Counsel was burnt it in second Intifada (2000) as it was hated and rejected by Palestinian masses. Following that, Great Britain opted to rent a place in the middle of a large building which consisted of many other local and foreign offices.

This same Counsel is trying to prove that it is a cultural place only. One of its activities is a play called “One Little Step” (al-Quds , 13 March 2010) in cooperation with the Palestinian Self-Rule Ministry of Culture. The British Counsel held panel discussions and workshops attended by local intellectuals to analyze the play. Unfortunately, none of those asked in advance why should they participate? Did not ask the British why their foreign ministry didn’t condemn the massacre in Gaza? Why the British did not apologize for the creation of “Israel”-ZAR?

This would have had the meaning of anti-normalization activity and the struggle against the current and historic enemies of our people and nation. Anti-normalization shouldn’t be limited to fight the ZAR, it must act against any regime that helps the creation and aggression of that regime, occupy any Arab land, build military bases in an part of the Arab Homeland, exploit any Arab wealth even when the rulers of this or that Arab country facilitate the exploitation of its people’s resources. Those Arab regimes are in fact the internal enemies of the nation, and that is why they are the third string of the triangle against our nation: the ZAR, the imperialist powers, and the Arab comprador ruling classes.