- Wielding the Ax of Bitterness
- Dear viewer
- Extreme Racism in Orlando Sentinel
Dear viewer,
Thank-you for your email regarding 'When Peace
Died', shown on Saturday 18th November on BBC 2.
With regard to the use of the word "disputed land"
instead of "Occupied Territories"
We apologise if we caused any offence.
Technically the West Bank is correctly described as part of the
"occupied territories" as laid down in UN Resolution
242. What we were
trying to indicate at this point in the programme was that in the
historical
and religious sense this area was disputed as far as opinion on
the ground
is concerned - i.e.Palestinians and Israelis. This section of the
film then
went on to put those opposing views clearly as voiced by the
various
interviewees on both sides. We were trying to convey a sense, in
a more
documentary style programme, of the local feelings surrounding
the issue.
We are fully aware of the status of this area and indeed you will
see that elsewhere in the programme we refer to "the tyranny
of
occupation" when describing areas covered under UN
Resolution 242.
Once more we apologise for any offence caused in this matter.
Best Wishes
Jane Corbin, John Thynne and Frank Smith.
Correspondent.
BBC 2
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MarwanTarazi
> Sent: Monday, November 20, 2000 9:53 PM
> To: correspondent@bbc.co.uk
> Subject: "disputed Territory"
> Dear Sir,
> BBC keeps referring to the West Bank and Gaza as "disputed
territory".
> Under United Nations resolutions and the Geneva
Conventions, the West
> Bank and Gaza are OCCUPIED Territories. They are
OCCUPIED by Israel.
> There is no dispute about that. You can only consider them
disputed if
> BBC supports the illegal position of the occupier. In this
case, you
> have lost all of your reporting objectivity and adherance to
> international laws and justice.
> Marwan Tarazi
> Jerusalem
>
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you have received it in error, please delete it from your system,
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The contents of this message may contain personal views which are
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ADC Action Alert: Protest Extreme
Racism in Orlando Sentinel
Media@adc.org November 27,
2000 8:38:15 PM EST
An article published The Orlando Sentinel by Stan K.
Sujka,
president of the Holocaust Center in Maitland, Fl, contains
some
of the most vicious and hypocritical racist
attacks on
Palestinian children killed by Israeli soldiers yet published. It
depicts them as hate-crazed tools of their parents, who want them
to be killed by Israeli occupation troops in order to
damage
Israel's reputation. Worst of all, this intense
racism is
presented as an attack on racism and hatred in general and a plea
for tolerance. If anything, however, this venomous screed
tops
even Scott Shuger's notorious outburst in Slate for
anti-
Palestinian hatred run amok. While this outrageous example
of
blaming the victim is particularly low-down and shameless,
the
absurd argument that Palestinians are deliberately sending
their
children out to be killed is wide-spread and must be
thoroughly
debunked. Feel free to use the letter to the Sentinel from
ADC
Communications Director Hussein Ibish as a model and please
cc
all letters to adc@adc.org.
ACTION REQUESTED:
Please let the Sentinel know that we are not fooled by
Sujka's
double-speak, that even during this period of extreme
anti-
Palestinian hatred this is one of the most vicious articles
yet
published, and that the Sentinel should be ashamed to
have
published such bile.
Mail your comments to:
Letters to the Editor
The Orlando Sentinel
633 N. Orange Ave., Orlando, Fla. 32801-1349
Or fax: (407) 420-5286
Or email <insight@orlandosentinel.com>
The Sentinel says that:
"To be considered for publication, your letter should
be 150
words or fewer and must include your name, address and
daytime
and evening telephone numbers."
TEXT OF EXTREME RACIST ARTICLE IN THE SENTINEL:
No quick or easy cure for hate
By Stan K. Sujka
Special to the Sentinel
Published in The Orlando Sentinel on November 26, 2000
Hate is like a virus. In the most innocent way, like the "common"
cold, hate comes into the host and consumes the person. It
takes
over, much like acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
It kills!
Hate is as deadly as any physical virus.
The hate germ, fed to children by their mothers and
fathers,
encourages kids to throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at
Israeli
soldiers. These children are fed hate by the same adults
who
chauffeur them to the riot areas.
And when some inevitably die, the so-called parents feed
the
corpses of their children to the world's public, making
the
disease more widespread.
What else but hate would drive parents to put their own offspring
into the path of gunfire?
If uncontrolled, this virus of hate becomes ever more
powerful.
Like a cancer, it grows by feeding on itself.
Eventually, the hate virus becomes so powerful that people
don't
care about themselves. Hate consumes them.
Explosives are strapped on young kids so they can kill themselves
and as many people as they can.
And in their rabid rage of hate, as in the USS Cole explosion off
Yemen, the terrorists kill themselves while the spreaders of hate
watch in safety behind a shroud of cowardice.
The hate virus can become so powerful that it can consume
whole
nations, such as Germany during the Holocaust, Kosovo during
the
recent genocide and parts of Africa, with tribal
elimination
during the past few years.
Hate has taken over the lives of entire societies and has
driven
them to death or near extinction.
The closeness of the recent presidential election
and the
subsequent court fights and squabbles over counting votes
in
Florida threaten our own society. You can feel the
pulse of
hatred between Democrats and Republicans. People on both
sides
are stirring up animosities that will be difficult to heal.
We can fight this hate, just as we fight AIDS.
Unfortunately
there is not an easy cure.
The medication for hate is education and knowledge. We must
talk
to our children and teach them that hate is bad. To hate a person
because of his or her religion, race or origin is
intolerable.
Children must be told.
We must speak out against hate because, by being
silent, we
condone it. Then silence is the mask that gives hate its stealth.
We have witnessed how powerful this medicine of education is
in
our country. Within my own lifetime, we have moved from a
nation
of absolute segregation to a more tolerant and just society.
We must never stop fighting the hate virus. Ignore it and
hate
will spring back to its pattern of preying on the
innocents.
Until we get the disease under control, all we can do is pity the
children.
Stan K. Sujka, M.D., a urologist, is president of the
Holocaust
Center in Maitland.
TEXT OF ADC LETTER TO ORLANDO SENTINEL:
11/27/00
Letters to the Editor
Orlando Sentinel
To the Editor:
I thought I had seen it all, but "No quick or easy cure for
hate"
by Stan K. Sujka (November 26, 2000) beggars the imagination
for
hypocrisy and Orwellian double-speak. This article,
which
purports to be an attack on racism is in fact one of the
most
racist screeds published in any American paper for years.
Its
main purpose appears to be the rationalization of the shooting of
over 70 unarmed Palestinian children in the past 7
weeks by
Israeli occupation troops in the Occupies Territories.
Sujka claims that, driven by anti-Israeli hatred,
Palestinian
parents actually want their children to be killed by
Israeli
troops in order to make Israel look bad. "And
when some
inevitably die," he writes, "the so-called
parents feed the
corpses of their children to the world's public, making
the
disease more widespread." Note the deep compassion Sujka
shows
here for the dead children and their grieving
parents. By
presenting this insane argument, Sujka is repeating the
same
claims made by southern racists who turned the dogs and
water
cannons on the children of Birmingham during the civil
rights
movement. He is singing the same song as the white South Africans
who shot down black children at Sharpville and Soweto. He
is
exposing his own absolute inability to empathize
with the
Palestinians who have suffered under 33 years of brutal
Israeli
occupation and their need to live in freedom. Moreover,
his
overtly racist argument holds that Palestinian parents
simply
love their kids less than other people, and who become "the
so-
called parents" because their children were murdered by
occupying
soldiers.
Sujka's article is a pathetic attempt to cover up
for the
outrageous abuses of an army of foreign occupation
that is
shooting down children in the streets by the score, which
he
whitewashes with the shameless euphemism "some inevitably
die."
If any other army was wiping out children, no one would for
one
moment consider blaming, not the heavily armed
troops who
murdered them, but their bereaved parents. Sujka
does not
acknowledge that Palestinians living under Israeli occupation
in
East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza have no recognizable civil
or legal rights, have no citizenship, have no right to
travel
freely in their own land and who live in a giant Israeli
prison,
might be motivated by something other than hatred to
protest
their total lack of freedom. And if they do protest, Sujka blames
them for getting shot by a foreign army, even if
they are
children.
Could it be that Dr. Sujka, president of the Holocaust Center
in
Maitland, is such a fanatical supporter of Israel that he
truly
believes that even when Israeli troops shoot dozens of
children,
they have done no wrong? Or is it just that,
rather than
admitting that Israel is indiscriminately shooting
people,
including children, to brutally suppress a popular
uprising
against an occupation that should have ended years ago, he
is
cynically resorting to racist arguments blaming the
victims?
Either way, if hatred truly is a virus, then
Sujka has
demonstrated that he has one of the most advanced
cases on
record. The Sentinel should be ashamed to have published
such
bile.
Yours,
Hussein Ibish
Communications Director, ADC
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
4201 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20008, U.S.A.
Tel: (202) 244-2990
Fax: (202) 244-3196
E-mail: adc@adc.org
Web : http://www.adc.org
Wielding the Ax of Bitterness
Israelis chop down Palestinians' precious olive trees, insisting
it's retaliation for rocks being hurled at settlers.
Michael Browning, Larry Kaplow - Cox News Service
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution Nov 29, 2000
Hares, Israel --- The Palestinian villagers heard the power
saws
at midnight, racketing up the stony terraces to the hill-perched
village of Hares. It is where Joshua, the Hebrew conqueror
of
Canaan in the Old Testament, is buried in ancient Samaria, on the
modern West Bank, the "Timnath Heres" of Joshua 33:29.
When Ali Abed Daoud Jaber, 76, awoke the next morning, he
found
he was ruined. More than 400 olive trees were cut down by
the
Israeli army along the highway leading to three
Jewish
settlements. At least 110 were his. His entire olive orchard
lay
felled on the stone-strewn ground.
"Where is God?" the old man screamed, gesturing with
his cane as
villagers tried to calm him. "They cut down trees my
grandfather
tended! Trees hundreds of years old! I depend on my
trees
completely.. . . What will I eat now? What will I drink?"
"He is become without a brain since he saw this,"
said Nasfat
Khufash, who belongs to a rural development committee in
the
vicinity. "He was sitting in the middle of the road, crying,
this
morning."
The twisted trunks of the massacred trees rose as
branchless
spikes from the loamy brown earth. One, about 8
inches in
diameter, revealed more than 70 growth rings when the sawdust was
brushed off its surface. Lopped olive branches lay in
heaps,
their feathery silver-green leaves rustling in the
breeze,
beneath a sky as blue as a gas flame.
The destroyed trees lent an air of Old Testament wrath to the 2-
month-old struggle between Israelis and Palestinians. So
far,
more than 280 have been killed, all but 35 of them Palestinians.
Even olive trees have become targets in the cycle of
provocation
and reprisal. Some 4,495 olive trees had been cut down as of Nov.
9, according to figures kept by the Palestinian
National
Authority's Ministry of Environmental Affairs.
Hares is in the West Bank, which was captured by Israel in
the
1967 Middle East war. Israel has established more than 150 Jewish
settlements in the occupied territory.
The village has been roadblocked by the Israeli army,
preventing
people from taking olives to market or to oil presses outside the
village, Khufash said. Losses from destroyed, rotted or
unpicked
crops in Palestinian areas amount to $ 120 million this
year,
according to the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and
Reconstruction.
Jewish settlers driving past the felled trees yelled insults
at
foreign reporters.
"What are you doing here, you rubbish?" one shouted.
"Take pictures! Take pictures!" called another,
sarcastically.
Interviewed later, the settlers complained angrily that
Hares
village children were throwing stones at their cars as
they
passed by, using the olive groves for cover. One settler showed a
deep dent on his van just above the windshield. Another
came
over, cursing, and tried to kick in the car window
of the
reporters' vehicle, just for talking to the
aggrieved
Palestinians.
But the villagers were angry, too. They said the army's
response
was a devastating blow, out of proportion to the situation
and
punishing adults for the actions of children.
They took reporters to a site 100 yards from the highway,
where
20 trees had been cut down, seemingly too far from the road
to
serve any security purpose.
An olive tree in these parts is like an interest-bearing
bank
account, yielding up to 35 pounds of fruit year after year. Olive
harvesting is a time- honored family ritual. The velvety-purple
fruit is knocked off branches with sticks, or plucked
from
ladders onto underlying tarpaulins by stroking each leafy
branch
gently.
One farmer, Abdullah Hamed Suleiman, 62, who lost 71 trees
to
Israeli chain saws Thursday, said the destroyed trees represented
$ 4,000 a year in income, from olive oil he sells to Jordan.
"For us Palestinians, an olive tree is exactly like
a son,"
Khufash said. " It is not a matter of money. You do not sell
your
son for money."
Distraught at their loss --- the villagers said more than
1,000
olive trees had been cut down in recent months --- the
settlers
invited reporters, over coffee and orange sodas, to hear
them
spin theories about the olive tree massacre and vent their
wrath
against the Israeli settlers who live in neat, barracks-like
apartments on hilltops throughout the region. Three
settlements,
Ariel, Revava and Burkan, are near Hares, and settlers must
pass
beneath the village on their way to and from work.
"The olive trees gave us food. Now they are only fit
for the
fire," said Nawaf Suf. "We believe they want to deprive
us of our
livelihood, drive us off the land and make common laborers of us,
so we have to go to the cities and work for Israelis."
When old Jaber escorted reporters to his ruined
grove, he
collapsed in a pile of lopped branches and moaned. At
precisely
this moment, Yona Shay, a 31- year-old Jewish settler who
sells
plumbing fixtures for a living, pulled over beside the road
and
began arguing with the Palestinians. The odds --- eight of
them,
just one of him --- didn't seem to faze him.
"There are a minimum of 100 stones being thrown every
day from
beside this highway. By now 200 cars have been hit with stones,"
Shay said. "Men, women and children have been injured by
these
stones. . . . I didn't cut down any trees myself, but I
would
have if I could have."
The old man clambered across the ditch and went chin-to-chin with
Shay.
"It is as if you cut my throat!" he shouted.
"If someone gives you a punch, do you turn the other cheek?"
Shay
answered calmly. "If we get hurt, we have damage, we have
to do
something back."
In the nearby settlement of Revava, a 38-year-old
computer
repairman named Yitzhak Hillel defended the army's destruction of
the olive trees.
"We spoke to the army many times about the stone-throwing,
and
they did nothing. My feeling is, every time I come back home from
work, I feel like a duck in a shooting gallery."
An hour before sunset, the rock-throwing resumed. The minarets of
Palestinian villages glimmered white at the summits of the
brown
hills, which rolled into a wide wasteland of rocks, tufted
here
and there with olive groves.
Two squads of Israeli soldiers took up positions
along the
highway and began firing sporadically as rocks landed on
the
road. Just past the stretch of lopped trees, a large white
stone
caromed defiantly off the asphalt a few yards in front of
the
reporters' car.
(c) The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
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