Reply #30: What about this section of the wall surrounding Qalquillya?

[RJnAbbysNana]

An apology to Polly Mann, Women Against Military Madness and our readers

by Ed Felien
Publisher of Pulse of the Twin Cities

<snip>

Most analysts agree that the reason Sharon had to relocate the Jews that were living inside Gaza is that it became impossible to guarantee their safety. It is ironic that it was Sharon that encouraged the new settlements when he was Housing Minister and later when he was running for Prime Minister. At that time ultra Zionists believed it was possible to drive the Palestinians into the sea, and Sharon told settlers that they shouldn't build a wall because that would stop Israeli expansion. Now, the strategy has changed. They are building 25-foot concrete walls around Palestinian communities, and they need to get the Jews out before they lock the Palestinians in.

Is it true that “no Jews will be allowed to live in the future Palestinian state”? Sephardic Jews have lived in Palestine for more than 4,000 years, for the most part, peaceably. It was only with emigration of European Ashkenazi Zionist Jews that trouble began. Those Jews brought with them European notions of statehood and established a European-style nation in an Arab land. It was the Zionists that drove the Palestinians out of their homes in 1949 and 1967. It is the Jews that will not allow the Palestinians to live in Israel. Jews have always been welcome to live in Palestine, as long as they don’t claim that their land then belongs to Israel.

Fields claims Polly Mann talks about “alleged maltreatment of two Palestinian protestors.” This is a distortion of Polly Mann’s orginal statement: “On April 28, about 1,000 Palestinians and 200 Israelis participated in a demonstration against the wall. But before they could reach the wall, the demonstrators were savagely attacked by Israeli security forces. Two Palestinians demonstrators, Riad Mohamad Yassin and Alian Ibrahim Ahmad Abu Rachme, observed several people they assumed to be Arabs throwing stones at the Israeli troops. When the Palestinian demonstrators asked the rock-throwers to desist they discovered that the rock-throwers were Israeli soldiers disguised as Arabs. The Israeli security forces then arrested,-not the undercover soldiers, but Riad Mohamad Yassin and Alian Ibrahim Ahmad Abu Rachme, for ‘assaulting a service provider.’”

Mann's point is that the Israeli army was using agent provocateurs to provoke incidents that justified the Israeli army's use of violent counter-measures, a common tactic of bullies and repressive regimes.

Fields objects to Mann’s use of the term ‘apartheid wall’ (them’s fightin’ words) to describe the enclosure Israel has built around Palestinian communities. The wall around the city of Qalquillya, population 100,000, is 25-feet tall with a single gate opened at the whim of Israeli security forces. The only comparison that comes close to describing this wall would be the Warsaw Ghetto, and this is not a comparison unique to Arabs or American leftists. British Labour MP Ms. King, who is Jewish, said Gaza was “the same in nature” as the infamous Polish ghetto. “No government should be behaving like that—least of all a Jewish government.”

continued here..........

http://www.pulsetc.com/article.php?sid=2040