Making Scapegoats of the Palestinians

Lorraine Stone pulled out all the stops in her vitriolic condemnation of the Palestinian people’s continuing efforts to settle the matter of their permanent status in the land that they have occupied for centuries [Jews Won’t Be the World’s Scapegoats, May 17]. With visions of Holocausts dancing her head, she raises, in a rhetorical question, the notion that "Jewish blood is fair game" for those people who oppose current Israeli (United States) policies and actions in the territories of Palestine occupied by the Israelis; she links Arafat, who had nothing to do with Hitler, to a relative who collaborated with Hitler; she likens CNN’s (and other media) reports of the devastating effects of Israeli actions on the lives, families, homes, culture and property of the Palestinians in the occupied areas to the Nazi propaganda of Joseph Goebbels and, just in case the comparison isn’t lurid enough, she throws in a mention of the Nazi’s Lebensborn program and the Frankenstein-like "medical experiments" on twins performed by the Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz—with a mention of Bergen-Belsen and Sobibor also thrown in.

Of course, in a Voice article last year [The More Things Change; June 29, 2001], Ms. Stone was the advocate of the notion that Jews are genetically distinguished from the rest of humanity, mirroring the singular and fundamental premise of Joseph Goebbel’s propaganda machine and Dr. Josef Mengele’s "medical experiments"—and, in fact, mirroring the significant premise of the "final solution."

That aside, however, the broad brush smear of the Palestinians and their leadership with nearly every atrocity suffered by the Jewish people in the Nazi era leaves little doubt about the irrational level of Ms. Stone’s rhetoric—a matter which is compounded by the Lorraine Stone Special Domino Theory, which holds that the struggles of the Palestinians to establish an internationally recognized state status for Palestine equates with the destruction of Israel and would lead to Muslim incursions "south into Africa and west into Europe" in a manner similar to Hitler’s march from the Sudatenland into Poland and Russia.

In spite of Ms. Stone’s impassioned vitriol, what is significant in recent developments is the Saudi Arabian Peace Plan initiative, which offers full recognition and normalization of relations with Israel by the Arab nations in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from Palestinian lands occupied by the Israelis since the 1967 War. The initiative won the support of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and the Palestinian Authority, all of whom also support the establishment of a State of Palestine. The senior Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, called it the best Arab peace plan since the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference. Egypt and Jordan—the two Arab countries that have peace treaties with Israel—also support the plan. An editorial in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper commented, "The prime minister (Sharon) who promised to bring peace and security must undertake a sincere and serious examination of the significance of the Saudi initiative."

What is as equally significant as the initiative itself is that it served to reveal a dark underbelly of a significant, if not majority, element of the Israeli government’s relations with the Palestinians. While Palestinian statements regarding "driving the Jews into the sea" have been given major attention in the reports of these relations, relatively little attention has been given to the Israeli’s view regarding the existence of a State of Palestine. In this regard, after positive worldwide support for the Saudi peace initiative and for legitimizing a State of Palestine became apparent, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party Central Committee met to reject the creation of a Palestinian state. Only a handful of delegates to the Central Committee of the Likud Party voted against the resolution, which read: "No Palestinian State will be created west of the Jordan River."

While this meeting was widely reported as though it was an anomaly in Israeli’s relations with the Palestinians, it is instead the firm and unswerving commitment of the Likud Party as part of the Likud Party Platform that served to elect Sharon as prime minister. Specifically, the parts of the Likud Party Platform that the Central Committee’s vote served to reinforce are as follows:

• "The government will oppose the establishment of an independent Palestinian State."

• "Immigration will be increased, and settlement will be strengthened. The decision to freeze settlements will be rescinded."

• "The government will set a goal of having seven million Jews in Israel within the next decade."

In spite of the cloud of Ms. Stone’s rhetoric, her notion that the Palestinians, who have lived in Palestine for centuries, should be absorbed by the "21—count ‘em, 21!" Arab nations that surround it, is the equivalent of the "go back to Africa" shouts that greeted those African-Americans who opposed segregation, discrimination, and the racism founded in the notion of a supposedly genetically distinct section of humanity called "whites."