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Open Letter to Palestinian Intellectuals

Open Letter to Palestinian Intellectuals


Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst

June 08, 2008*
(*earlier versions submitted to Palestinian websites referenced below)

© Project HumanbeingsfirstTM. Permission granted to use freely as per copyright notice.

To: Palestinian Remembrance Authors, Architects, Documenters, Scholars and Intellectuals

From: Project Humanbeingsfirst.org

Date: June 08, 2008.

You have some very good websites. Thank you for the stellar documentation work. It is certainly useful, and in a just and moral world, these narratives and documentations of the Nakba would make good evidence in a fair court room. Among these stellar websites which appear to carry authentic accounts include: palestineremembered.com, plands.org, al-awda.org, badil.org, alnakba.org, and many more narratives which can be found on this links page. The most significant and substantive work done in documentation of the Nakba, in the humble view of Project Humanbeingsfirst, is by Dr. Salman Abu Sitta of Palestine Land Society. His new book “The Return Journey, The way to return Home” – A Guide to the Depopulated And Present Palestine Towns And Villages and Holy Sites – is a masterpiece of factual compilation that would be hard to challenge in any fair and moral court of law on any planet.

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Except on Earth! In this world, and on this planet, where only power dictates and not its victims seeking redressal and justice, it is going to take a bit more than just documentation and narratives to get one's homes and lands back. As those given to even a modicum of reflection and empiricism well understand, among humanoids, power is only known to respect power – as “Hegemony is as old as mankind” – and justice in this system on such a vast national scale is only that which is administered by the victors to the vanquished.

Indeed, to begin with, it is gonna take a much deeper understanding of how sophisticatedly the Palestinian Nakba has been fueled, the intellectual capital that drives it, and why merely documenting stories and narratives is great for your antagonists, who, while you tell heart wrenching narratives, go on constructing political and structural faits accomplis that are subsequently irreversible. Without concomitant coddling of power-structures and playing with astute devilish efficacy on the 'Grand Chessboard', the ever spreading Der Judenstaadt is a fait accompli that has now made a Palestinian homeland less and less viable, except as “reservations”. Overtime, while these might be sugar-coated to look less like self-governing reservations, and more like segregated 'Black' minority neighborhoods that become part of Israel proper, a Jewish state in all of Palestine is now irreversible by virtue of practicality.

To make the point clear – who does not know how the Native American Indians' lands were settled in the previous New World, or how California was taken from Mexico? All the documentation in the world – and yet, faits accomplis are a powerful reality that may not be overcome or reversed without power and its incantations on one's side! With the passage of time, even power cannot reverse an existent reality on the ground without bloodshed – imagine a Mexican peasant today knocking on one's million dollar door in Sunnyvale California wanting his great grand-father's orchards back!

Time is on the side of the Zionists – give a hundred more years, or perhaps only twenty, even the Palestinian vacant lands documented by Salman Abu Sitta will have Zionist homes, farms, and state-parks with every Jew in the world planting his tree there! Try giving a California or Colorado state-park back to an American Indian were he to come calling with all the documentation in the world!

As the Palestinians continue to narrate and document, continue to assert slogans like: “Our DATE is 60 years LATE, we shall return.”, the Land of Canaan is becoming Eretz Yisrael. Obviously Palestinians know this well in their own spilled blood and tears and need not be informed by a non-Palestinian, even a friend.

And yet – how do the Palestinians react? Precisely – they only react! Not anticipate, not preempt, not strategize, and not comprehend, but react. That, and lament! And react and lament precisely as expected by their antagonists. Thus they face systematic elimination from their own homelands with each new Katsuya rocket one baby-step at a time!

Perhaps it's time to do things differently?

To catch a mere glimpse of the enormous intellectual and political capital that hands the Palestinians their Nakba even as we speak, and why Palestinians continue to lose despite having “HAQ” and “Claims” on their side as the world complicitly spectates “looking from the side” without lifting a whit of a finger to come to their fellow-brethren's assistance, please see: “Celebrating Israel's 60th Birthday in the 60th year of the Nakba

And to further glimpse how your own good and honest intellectuals and ruling elite have continually let the Palestinian peoples down because they are entirely outclassed by a far superior devilishly calculating foe who is easily able to co-opt them into selling themselves short, please see: “2008 Orwell Prize for the Palestinian Narrative of Nakba – Making a fool of Palestinian intellectualism”.

The solution? Perhaps the direction in which to find it is pointed to here: “Letter to Palestinian Think Tank on 'Palestinian options as the Nakba turns 60'”, and here: “Letter2 to Palestine Think Tank on 'Take 10 and give back 1 if the Palestinians behave, then repeat!'”. A conquest and an oppression originally begun in the intellectual–political space, will also only be concluded there. The Zionist masterminds apparently understand this far better than the Palestinians. And therefore, always appear to be better prepared across the board.

With every new “peace process”, and every stone and rocket launch, the Palestinians have lost more, using the method: take 10 during “revolutionary times” and give back 1 if the Palestinians behave, then repeat! Anyone can hopefully do that math to get the total sum!

This is also why the exponents of Israel entirely control the global discourse on Israel-Palestine throughout the world, even among the ruling elite in the Muslim nations, not to mention among the Palestinian ruling elite itself, none of which reflects either any deep comprehension of the manifest reality on the ground, or the aspirations of the Palestinian masses. These are the Masters of Discourse, and a far more formidable foe across the world's Jewry than the Palestinians seem to apprehend – as they continually losingly engage the foot soldiers among their antagonists and not the real power-wielders!

Israel Shamir notes in the English Introduction to his new book the following veritable truth which must by now be self-evident to all who are able to comprehend the power of the concept of “Der Judenstaadt” on the global Jewish psyche which carries upon its bent backs, the weight of three thousand years of history (Jewish History, Jewish Religion):

The new Jewish elite did not fully identify with Russia but carried out a separate policy. It had a fateful effect in 1991, when over 50 % of the Jews (as opposed to 13 % of the Russians) supported the pro-Western coup of President Yeltsin. In 1995, 81% of the Jews voted for pro-Western parties, and only 3% for the Communists (as opposed to 46% of Russians), according to the publication by the Jewish sociologist Dr. Ryvkina in her book, Jews in Post-Soviet Russia (1996).

In ever-expanding America, the Jews did not have to kill or remove the native elites; they became its important part, controlling discourse and wielding considerable financial clout. They still do not identify with the goyish America: they force the Congress and the Administration to send billions of dollars to their Israeli offshoot, they forced the US to break Iraq to pieces, and now they are trying to let America fight their war in Iran, though it brings disaster to America. They do discriminate against other Americans; otherwise 60% of the leading positions in the media would not become Jewish.

Jews of France do not identify with France, either. “Their identification with Israel is so strong, it overshadows their ties to the country they live in,” writes Daniel Ben Simon in Haaretz. This dual loyalty was made very clear to me by a Jewish doctor in Nice. “If the choice is between Israel and France, there's no question I feel closer to Israel," he said, without a moment's hesitation. He was born and bred in France; he went to medical school in France; his patients are French; he speaks French with his wife and children. But in the depths of his heart, he feels a greater affinity with the Jewish state.

In Palestine, the Jews have no compassion for the natives. They travel by segregated roads, study in segregated schools, while a Jew consumes ten times more water resources than a goy, and has an income seven times higher. Thus, the Jewish separateness remains a fact of life for many Jewish communities.

While the Palestinian intellectual and revolutionary need not adopt the discourse of European anti-Semitism – cousins as they are of their oppressors – they do need to comprehend the immense psychological and sociological power of that discourse, and the power of the world Jewry in sustaining the Jewish State because of it. The significance of this statement is made evident by the fact that this discourse prevailed upon not only the very Evangelical Christian American President George W. Bush, but also the Christian Prime Minister of Germany, Angela Merkel, the Christian Prime Minister of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, the Roman Catholic Christian Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, and the Christian Prime Minister of Britain, Gordon Brown, along with the Queen of England, representing the world's most powerful Christian coalition of Western Hegemons, to pay homage to Jewish Zionistan on May 15, 2008. None showed up, even in false courtesy, to offer their feeble condolences for the Nakba to what remains of the Palestinian Reservations!

What may that suggest to those given to reflection on power? Not just military power, but the power that fuels its many manifestations, including occupation? The prime-movers ain't the overt incantations! And Palestinian intellectuals to politicians to its ruling elite have continually failed to recognize it over the past sixty years – by virtue of there not being a single JINSA or AIPAC or AEI or CFR or RIIA or Rothschild or Rhodes or Time and Newsweek equivalent among the Palestinians (and among its other victims worldwide)!

Sixty years have passed in intense suffering, one day, one year, and one election in the United States and the European nations at a time. In none of those days, years, and elections, have Palestinians understood power, or its incantations. Khalid Amayreh, writing from Ramallah for the Palestinian Information Center, was finally forced to admit the reality of this power, but still only in its outer visible superficiality without penetrating the deep depths to which his observations actually hold:

In comparison to the madman in the White House, Europe may look less bellicose, less confrontational and less unreasonable in its overall approach to contentious international issues. However, when the issue is the Palestinian plight, the US and Europe look very much like tweedledee and tweedledum.

In recent months and years, European leaders from Germany’s Merkel, to France’s Sarkozy, to Britain’s Brown and Italy’s Berlusconi were shamelessly pandering to Israeli savagery to the extent of embracing relentless Israeli criminality against the Palestinian people , including the ongoing genocidal ethnic cleansing in the occupied Palestinian territories, particularly in the Gaza Strip.

True, the European tone of speech often sounds less odious especially when compared with the unmitigated saber-rattling coming from Washington. But, in the final analysis, the outcome in both cases is similar. In fact, the US and Europe collaborate and even collude to effect the same unethical goals often by playing the old game of Mutt and Jeff (good cop and bad cop), with their persecuted victims, whether in Palestine, Sudan or Iran.

Please accept the humblest condolences from Project Humanbeingsfirst to all Palestinians on their on-going Nakba – and if the Palestinians labor under the misperception that they can reverse their catastrophe (only) on moral, legal, or prior ownership-claims grounds with unimpeachable documentation and narratives displayed on elegantly constructed websites and in loudly rehearsed annual Nakba conferences, they are sadly mistaken. Only more ignoble “Peace” and other Orwellian Prizes and prestigious Chairs await the Palestinian intellectual and politician. Unless the real thinkers among them – your good selves – astutely rise to the challenge of shrewdly leading your beleaguered peoples, just as Theodor Herzl once did his peoples, by intimately apprehending power and its incantations, and harnessing it!

Zahir Ebrahim

Project Humanbeingsfirst.org

*************

The author, an ordinary researcher and writer on contemporary geopolitics, a minor justice activist, grew up in Pakistan, studied EECS at MIT, engineered for a while in high-tech Silicon Valley (patents here), and retired early to pursue other responsible interests. His maiden 2003 book was rejected by six publishers and can be read on the web at http://PrisonersoftheCave.org. He may be reached at http://Humanbeingsfirst.org.

Copyright Notice:

All material copyright (c) Project HumanbeingsfirstTM, with full permission to copy, repost, and reprint, in its entirety, unmodified and unedited, for any purpose, granted, provided the URL sentence and this copyright notice are also reproduced verbatim as part of this license, and not doing so may be subject to copyright license violation infringement claims pursuant to remedies noted at http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html. All quotations and excerpts are based on non-profit "fair use" in the greater public interest consistent with the understanding of laws noted at http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html. The rights of the author to express these views are based on inalienable rights noted at http://www.hrweb.org/legal/undocs.html, and to do so freely without suffering intimidation and duress is based on the new anti-terrorism laws which presumably supersede excellent theory noted at http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html. Full copyright notice and Exclusions at http://www.humanbeingsfirst.org#Copyright.

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