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Eyeless in Gaza,
at the Mill with Slaves

Paul Olson
UNL Professor Emeritus

Now: the evening of Martin Luther King Day, the eve of Barak Obama’s swearing in. Peace and justice forces all over America rejoice. We leave Iraq, turn from torture. Ceasefires appear on both sides in Gaza. Peace… maybe.

One wonders about Gaza. When Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza in response to ongoing rocket attacks and killed civilians as well has Hamas combatants, when the phosphorus bombs began to fall on schools and United Nations facilities, when the rockets from Hamas began to be fired in numbers, the Nebraskans for Peace executive committee issued a statement, the core of which reads as follows:

On humanitarian and political grounds, Nebraskans for Peace calls for our representatives in the Congress and Senate to work for:

• Re-establishment of a ceasefire with international intervention to assure that the promises made on both sides are kept;

• An end to the present U.S. special relationship with Israel that prevents U.S. diplomats and our representatives at the United Nations from acting even-handedly in efforts to restore and enforce the broken ceasefire and the international agreements negotiated since 1967, including allowing open borders and free sea and air travel into Gaza;

• A cessation of the export of American arms to Israel until such time as a peace has been established in the area and a two-nation solution developed between Israel and Palestine. The international community should also stop all flows of arms into Gaza and Israel;

• An end to Israeli blockades of Gaza and settlers’ illegal occupation of a large portion of the usable land in the West Bank;

• Negotiations to make Jerusalem an international city that is open to worship and pilgrimages from people of all faiths, including Palestinian Christians, who wish to go there to visit the holy places.

We argued that the invasion of Gaza weakens rather than strengthens Israel, its lack of proportionality in retaliation turning international opinion further against it. We mentioned that 24 people had been killed by rockets hitting Israel in the last eight years, making the rockets offensive to the Israeli people, and said we support a ‘two-state solution,’ guaranteeing that Israel would exist permenently. After issuing the statement, I received angry mail, threatening our funding, that argued NFP had endorsed terrorism. Nothing could have been further from the truth. We had called for stopping the killing, for even-handed negotiations (under United Nations control) between two sovereign peoples — not between clients either of the U.S. or Iran. Only the UN is positioned to create such negotiations. The practice of ‘terrorism’ though is not a one-sided thing. The terror tactics of the “Stern Gang” that helped to create Israel in the 1940s resembles the terrorism being used by Hamas to create Palestine. But NFP not endorsed either one.

Auden’s September 1, 1939 asserts aptly “Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return.” Never was this truer than of both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Great power evil created the crisis, and a great power — the UN — will have to end it.

The state of Israel did not spring from the Holocaust or even “Zionism,” but from centuries of Christian anti-Semitism — beginning with the Gospel of John (cf. Elaine Pagels), continuing through the Crusades, and taking a new rise in the 19th and 20th century pogroms and persecutions in Russia and Eastern Europe. Most of Western Europe collaborated with Nazi anti-Semitism, and U.S. presidential administrations remained indifferent until after World War II. Israel needed a state.

The destruction of the Palestinian people also began with the Crusades, continued with the stagnant, draconian 500-year rule of the Ottomans and ended — in the modern era — with broken British promises to the Palestinians in 1915-16 of liberation and a territory of their own.

This promise to the Palestinians overlapped the British “Balfour Declaration” promise to Jews in 1917 of a Jewish homeland that (though complicated) in principle told Jewish settlers that they could have Palestinian territory without consulting Palestinian sentiment: ‘Why don’t you help yourselves to some of their land?’

Then came Israel’s 1948 forced removal of Palestinians from their homes (a practice that continues to this day), the leaving of a little Gaza corridor to a million-and-a-half Palestinians (where they live without decent health care, employment or rights to move about), the Israeli settlers’ usurpation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and the constant harassment of Palestinian citizens seeking to go about their daily activities. Palestinians have been living in refugee camps since 1948, and not surprisingly, they lob rockets. They need a country.

During the Cold War, Israel was manipulated was used by the West in virtually every Mid-East conflict beginning with the 1956 Suez Crisis. Over this same period, the Palestinians have been manipulated by the West and the Soviet Union, the Arab powers (until the PLO’s 1995 recognition of Israel), and by Iran. Both sides have suffered unspeakably, as pawns of the great powers.

When we said that Israel’s invasion of Gaza would not in all likelihood strengthen Israel, we did not mean that it would not be militarily successful. We meant that war would be used as a tool to mobilize anti-Israeli Islamist forces within and outside of Gaza — in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Iran, leaving Israel (like John Milton’s ‘Samson’) “Eyeless in Gaza.” And our fears are already finding foundation. The Associated Press reported late last month: “Counselors and aid workers fear that Gaza’s children, who make up 56 percent of the 1.4 million people here, will grow up hating Israel and become easier prey for extremists… ‘We are losing the next generation,’ said John Ging, the top UN official in Gaza.” According to NPR, Hamas has gained ground among Palestinians since the Gaza invasion and has Fatah has lost.

It was not hatred of Israel that prompted our stand. It was concern for both sides and the world. The great powers that created the problem will have to work seriously with the UN at solving it, using the same mediator tools used to pacify the former Yugoslavia.

There is some hope. Peace people exist both in Israel and Palestine. The UNL NFP chapter last year hosted a Palestinian soldier and an Israeli one who had together come to reject violence.

Recently I received a letter from a female physician who reproached me for bias against Israel — for not adequately noting in our statement the 3000 Gaza-launched missiles that have targeted Israel:

For many years I have been a part of Physicians for Human Rights and the Israeli peace movement. My friends and I have been peace activists, refusing to serve or visit the occupied territories and advocating for communication and political resolutions, initiating Israeli-Palestinian discussion groups, and working with the soldier generation to understand differences and respect the pain on both sides. Having said that, I'm very disturbed by your message. The conflict is a very complex one with deep historic roots and violations of human rights on both sides… There are numerous aspects to the situation, and as the president of a respectable and responsible organization, you should portray them all to the best of your ability… Living in Nebraska for the past five years, working with the uninsured, the underserved, the homeless, and the illegal immigrants, and continuing my involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I see myself as a ‘Nebraskan for Peace’ person, but I cannot and will identify with such a biased message.

She is truly a “Nebraskan for Peace,” and our objectivity may have failed somewhere. But we do not believe that our message was fundamentally wrong. We did not tell the whole history because we had to act quickly in the face of a new war with global implications. Unlike my correspondent, the NFP State Board believes that conversations and individual good will alone are not enough. The power of the international community and of the tools of international justice must be employed. After I replied to the physician with words welcoming her efforts, I went into my living room and once again saw on the TV screen the tanks, the crying women and the dead children.