Comment by
Khalid Amayreh in
Occupied E. Jerusalem
Est-ce Sarkozy est Sioniste extraordinair?
Is French President Nicolas Sarkozy an
extraordinary Zionist.? Well, his behavior so far indicates that he is.
Last week, Mr. Sarkozy was quoted as saying that he wouldn’t shake
hands with anyone that didn’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
The gravity of his statement is very real, since accepting Israel as
an exclusively Jewish state amounts to condoning and embracing
racism in its most fundamentalist forms. It is very much like
insisting that France should belong exclusively to the Catholics
and that the non-Catholic citizens of France would have to come
to terms with their inferior status as lesser citizens who eventually
would have to choose between embracing Catholicism or expulsion.
Moreover, Sarkozy recently suggested that France wouldn’t
attend an anti-racism conference scheduled to take place in
South Africa this year if Israeli apartheid came under attack.
Well, Mr. Sarkozy, how do you think the people of the world
should relate to Israeli apartheid? Should they sing the Tikva
in unison and glorify all the ethnic cleansing Israel has been
effecting against the indigenous Palestinians ever since its
misbegotten birth nearly sixty years ago?
Maybe you would claim there is no apartheid in Israel. But
such a pornographic claim would only be an expression of either
clarion ignorance or clarion lack of rectitude since apartheid in
Israel-Palestine is an uncontroversial truism.
Besides, don’t you watch TV? Don’t you read the French and
Israeli press? Don’t French diplomats in Israel convey to you
the real image? And how about the dozens of Israeli intellectuals,
people of conscience and morality like the former Speaker of the
Israeli Knesset, Avraham Burg, who have described Israeli
apartheid and criminality in graphic details?
Mr. Sarkozy: If you are ignorant of these conspicuous facts, it’s
really a calamity. And if you are aware of them but still insisting
on giving Israel the benefit of the doubt, it’s even a greater calamity.
This is sad, Mr. President. Very sad, indeed.
And you are planning to attend the celebrations
marking Israel’s 60th anniversary.
Well, that is even more lamentable, because celebrating Israel’s
foundation anniversary, especially while the Palestinian plight
is deepening with the passage of each and every day, amounts
to celebrating the triumph of racism,
ethnic cleansing and genocide.
It is very much like celebrating the advent to power in Germany
of the Third Reich. Yes, Mr. President, the similarities are striking.
In Nazi Germany they had an evil mantra called “the master race,”
and here in Israel they have an equally diabolical mantra called
the “chosen people.”
In Nazi Germany, they had the Ubermensch concept, and here
in Israel they have the “goyem” whose rights and
lives are expendable.
In Nazi Germany they had the idea of “lebensraum,” and Israel
they argue that “Jews have got to live somewhere,” a euphemism
for stealing Palestinian land and expelling these helpless and
powerless people from their ancestral homeland, all for the
purpose of fulfilling Jewish nationalism, a nationalism that has
more in common with Hitler’s Mein Kampf than with the
Torah of Moses.
Mr. Sarkozy: By choosing to embrace Zionism and identify
your administration with Israel’s Nazi like policies and
practices, you are effectively betraying the principles
of the French Republic.
Are you still truly committed to liberty, equality and fraternity?
If you are, then it is clear that you are betraying these principles.
In Israel, there is no liberty for five million Palestinians who
are treated as children of a lesser God, whose children are
murdered because they are non-Jews, whose homes are
demolished because they are non-Jews and whose land is
taken away from them because they are non-Jews.
In Israel there is no liberty for the Palestinians. Instead
there are huge walls, detention camps, checkpoints, roadblocks,
bypass roads, and mass incarceration and a justice system
that is worse than a house of whoredom.
In Israel there is no equality because the state itself belongs
to one segment of its citizens, namely the Jews, and if you
are not Jewish, you’ve got to rely on the good will and
magnanimity of the master race.
And fraternity! Well, fraternity and Zionism can’t and
shouldn’t be used in the same sentence. They are contradictory
concepts because fraternity is integrationalist and universalist
while Zionism is segregationalist and particularist. In short,
fraternity and Zionism are a contradiction in terms.
Mr. Sarkozy, I have decided to write this article because there
is a real contradiction between the principles of the French
republic, which we all love and respect, and
your political behavior.
No one, not even the Palestinians, is demanding that France
sever ties with Israel, although morally-guided politicians
and statesmen shouldn’t hesitate to call the spade a spade
even if doing so is politically incorrect.
However, you are challenged to reconcile France’s principles
of freedom and justice with your government’s unlimited
support of Israel despite the fact that Israel is making the
prospect of peace in the Middle East as remote as possible and
as unrealistic as possible by continuing to expand Jewish-only
settlements in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem and by
narrowing Palestinian horizons and slaughtering entire
Palestinian families, all under the false rubric of fighting terror.
so openly, for you have been projecting yourself as an
honest man. But if these acts are wrong and
detrimental to the cause of peace, then, please,
don’t remain silent and, more importantly,
don’t give Israeli leaders the impression that
you support them right or wrong.
0 Have Your Say!:
Post a Comment