News:
Solidarity Rally Trafalgar Square
May 18th, 2002
The international will and the national whim.
By Afif Safieh
Friends,
At the same moment when French public opinion massively coalesced to
inflict a resounding defeat to the racist and xenophobic Jean-Marie Le
Pen, here in London , on the 6th of May, a rally was organised to express
support to the Sharon Government even though Sharon is by far a more
dangerous , a more racist, a more xenophobic politician who disposes of
one of the most powerful armies in the world and is in illegal occupation
of territories of three neighbouring countries: Palestine, Syria and
Lebanon. That demonstration was totally hijacked by an even more extreme,
a more unscrupulous Israeli politician: Bibi Natanyahu, the come-back kid,
who upstaged, dwarfed and eclipsed all the other speakers at this event.
While his fans described his
intervention as "churchillian", according to the Jewish Chronicle there
were "rumblings of criticism" over Bibi's speech. Maureen Lippman
commented that "perhaps Bibi went a little far for a peace rally". The
chief Rabbi, Dr. Sacks, later observed that "Bibi's remarks had been
inappropriate to the occasion", while Andrew Gilbert, the vice-chair of
the Reform Movement described Bibi's speech as" a low note rather than
keynote".
The day after, Norman Lebrecht, a frequent columnist in the Jewish
Chronicle, wrote in the Evening Standard: " Yesterday's solidarity rally
for Israel was, for me , a march too far…It succeeded only in exposing
weakness in numbers and a vacancy of ideas…This was a rally without a
definite object. Participants were asked to show support for Israel
without necessarily
endorsing the policies of the Sharon Government…Communal celebrities and
even some prominent rabbis were notably absent…No member of the Cabinet
was free to speak…and where last month's pro-P.L.O. march attracted
visible support from the liberal left, the pro-Israel rally drew groups of
evangelical Christians". End of quote.
But, friends, how Christian are those evangelical fundamentalist
Christians? Here in the U.K. and mainly there in the U.S.A.. As a
Palestinian Christian, born in the land where Jesus Christ and the
Christian message were born, I find, to say the least, their understanding
of God's will, extremely
disturbing.
Having started by being nauseatingly anti-Semitic, Christian
fundamentalists then converted to unconditional, unquestioning support to
Israel because, supposedly, Jews assembling in the Promised Land will
simply accelerate "the end of Time", doom's day and the return of the
Messiah. Their depiction of the Divinity is so alarming, so frightening,
so delirious that I have often
had to defend "the innocence of God". Being in regular contact with the
Vatican, with the World Council of Churches in Geneva, with Lambeth Palace
with the Anglican communion and the Patriarch of Jerusalem who, by the
way, all support the end of occupation and Palestinian Statehood, I simply
thought that Christ had never left us and did not need to have His return
to earth accelerated by such questionable means.
So, Friends, who are we, we who are assembled here today in Trafalgar
Square?
We are the coalition for Justice. The coalition for Peace. We are the
coalition of Muslims, Christians, Jews and non-believers who stand
for the UN charter and International Law. We firmly believe that there is
only one mankind and not different kinds of men and women. We obviously
believe that the Palestinian people are not, definitely not, children of a
lesser God. And
as recent opinion polls demonstrated, we are no more a marginal minority
but mainstream.
We stand against any racial discrimination, against all racist prejudices.
We are equally against anti-Semitism, against Arabophobia, against
Islamophobia. Just as we were horrified by the month long Israeli siege of
the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem during the re-invasion of the
occupied territories, we unambiguously condemn any attack on any
Synagogue. We unequivocally condemn any desecration of any Jewish cemetery
whoever are the perpetrators.
Anti-Semitism is morally repugnant and politically unacceptable. Its
victims are the Jews and its victims are also the Palestinians. It was the
Dreyfus Affair in Paris at the end of the 19th century that resulted in an
assimilated Austrian Jewish journalist, Theodore Herzl, starting the
Zionist
movement. And until the accession to power in Berlin of Adolf Hitler,
Zionism was a struggling minority tendency within the different Jewish
communities in Europe.
While the Jews and the Palestinians are the direct victims of
anti-Semitism, Zionism, Israel and General Sharon are its immediate
beneficiaries. And let us face it, today's anti-Semitism is the
oppression, the persecution of the Palestinian people by the Israeli
State. And the xenophobic tendencies manifesting themselves in Europe are
mainly aimed at the Arab and the Muslim
communities.
Friends,
The argument of anti-Semitism is constantly and machiavellically invoked
to silence legitimate criticism of Israeli misbehaviour. In a shameless
exercise of intellectual terrorism, journalist Melanie Philips tried to
explain that the mounting criticism was the result of the deeply rooted
historical hatred of Jews in Christianity itself reinvigorated, according
to her, by "Palestinian Christian revisionism", only to attract more than
500 letters to the Spectator signalling to her that intellectual
terrorism, that the pro-Israeli inquisition, will work no more. These
days, the pro-Israeli lobby in the U.S.A., accustomed to use one muscle
too many and to go one pressure too far is waging a campaign against
Europe itself including advocating a boycott of the Cannes Film Festival.
On that one, I align myself on my favourite New Yorker. Not Rudolph
Giuliani. I meant Woody Allen.
Friends,
The events of the last 6 weeks have proven that the Nakba catastrophe was
not a frozen moment in History that has happened sometime in 1948. It is,
also, still an ongoing process until today, from Deir Yassin to Janine.
Ariel Sharon and his army have behaved again in a manner that makes
Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun look like choir boys but we, the
Palestinian people, remain unbowed and undefeated. We have always believed
that the P.L.O. was at the same time an institution and an idea. Each time
the institution is under attack, the idea gets stronger. The idea is
simple: it is our sense of identity. It is our ceaseless quest for
independence and sovereignty. It is our unwavering determination to rid
ourselves of the chains of our captivity and bondage. This idea is
immortal because the 8-9 million Palestinians, in Palestine and all over
the world, are the powerful vehicles of this historical drive.
Friends,
Since we are at a walking and hearing distance from Downing Street, I wish
to say that it is not up to Barak, Bibi or Sharon to decide how much
occupied territory they are "generously" available to withdraw from. Peace
is not a compromise formula half way between the different poles of the
Israeli domestic debate, half way between Shamir and Sharon, half way
between Bibi and Barak, half way between Labour and Likud. In
international relations, in matters of war and peace, the international
will has primacy, should prevail on a national whim, a national mood. We
believe that a territory that was occupied in 1967 in less than 6 days can
also be evacuated in less than 6
days so that the Israelis can rest on the 7th and we can start the
fascinating journey of state building and economic reconstruction.
Friends,
Even in the gloomiest moments, I have always been confident that Palestine
will resurrect and as evangelical Christians know,here in the U.K. but
mainly there in the U.S.A. we in Jerusalem, we have had a previous
experience in Resurrection.
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