A la 57^ème Session Plénière sur la Question de la Palestine, vous avez brisé un tabou qui a longtemps agi pour affaiblir et embrouiller la réponse internationale aux conditions politiques et humanitaires, désastreuses et en voie de détérioration rapide, faites aux Palestiniens. 

Vous avez décrit les politiques d’Israël dans les Territoires Palestiniens Occupés comme semblables  aux politiques mises en place par feu le régime d’apartheid en Afrique du Sud. Vous avez exhorté les Nations Unies à utiliser sans crainte le terme « apartheid ». Et vous avez tiré une conclusion en vue d’une action :

        «  Aujourd’hui, peut-être devrions-nous, aux Nations-Unies,  envisager de suivre l’exemple d’une nouvelle génération de sociétés civiles, qui en appellent à une campagne non-violente  de boycott, désinvestissement et sanctions pour faire pression sur Israël, afin qu’il mette fin à ses violations. » 

Nous,  IJAN (International Jewish AntiZionist Network/Réseau International Juif Antisioniste)   souhaiterions vous dire que nous apprécions ces  paroles  opportunes  pour lesquelles nous vous exprimons notre gratitude. 

Le régime  en Israël partage beaucoup de similitudes avec l’époque de l’apartheid en Afrique du Sud. A certains égards, les comportements politiques d’Israël sont  plus néfastes et plus dangereux que ne l’était l’apartheid en Afrique du Sud. Ce fait a été admis par des journalistes, des intellectuels et d’éminents Sud-Africains, y compris le Président Mandela et l’Archevêque Desmond Tutu. La situation à Gaza est catastrophique et le temps n’est plus aux atermoiements. Votre discours sans détours nous redonne du courage.

Deuil et résistance de Varsovie à Gaza

Elle est assise à l'écart, la Ville populeuse! Elle est devenue comme une veuve...

Elle passe des nuits à pleurer et les larmes couvrent ses joues.

Pas un qui la console parmi tous ses amants.

(Lamentations ) 

La semaine dernière, après avoir assassiné 1400 personnes- dont 400 enfants- après avoir bombardé des hôpitaux et des mosquées, des écoles des universités et des secours humanitaires, et des dizaines de milliers de maisons, Israël a décrété un cessez-le-feu. Un honteux défilé de politiciens européens vint aussitôt à Jérusalem pour embrasser les meurtriers  de masse et promettre leur soutien au siège poursuivi de Gaza.

This article was sent to Debbie Ducro, an American-Jewish journalistwith the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. She published it, and was firedthe next day.

Quest for justice

By Judith Stone

I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to Palestine . It was the right thing to do.

I've heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I wasa small child. I've visited the memorials in Washington , DC and Jerusalem dedicated to Jewish lives lost and I've cried at the recognition to what level of atrocity mankind is capable of sinking.

Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be heldagainst the survivors of Hitler's holocaust. These fragments ofhumanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personalsurvival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a co-religionistof the victims of the European Holocaust does not grant dispensationfrom abiding by the rules of humanity.

"Never again" as a motto, rings hollow when it means "never again tous alone." My generation was raised being led to believe that thebiblical land was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverishedPalestinians living with their camels and eking out a living in thesand. The arrival of the Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit tothese desert dwellers. Golda Meir even assured us that there "is no Palestinian problem".

We know now this picture wasn't as it was painted. Palestine was aland filled with people who called it home. There were thriving townsand villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews, Christians andMuslims.

In fact, prior to the occupation, Jews represented a mere seven per cent of the population and owned three per cent of the land.

Taking the blinders off for a moment, I see a second atrocityperpetuated by the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive tothe suffering of others. These people knew what it felt like to beordered out of your home at gun point and forced to march into thenight to unknown destinations or face execution on the spot. The peoplewho displaced the Palestinians knew first hand what it means to watchyour home in flames, to surrender everything dear to your heart at amoment's notice. Bulldozers levelled hundreds of villages, along withthe remains of the village inhabitants, the old and the young. This wasnothing new to the world.

Poland is a vast graveyard of the Jews of Europe. Israel is the final resting place of the massacred Palestinian people.A short distance from the memorial to the Jewish children lost to theholocaust in Europe there is a levelled parking lot. Under this parkinglot is what's left of a once flourishing village and the bodies of men,women and children whose only crime was taking up needed space and notleaving graciously. This particular burial marker reads: "PublicParking".

I've talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian whohasn't lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor aPalestinian who cannot name a relative or friend languishing under inhumane conditionsin an Israeli prison. Time and time again, Israel is cited for humanrights violations to no avail. On a recent trip to Israel , I visitedthe refugee camps inhabited by apeople who have waited 52 years in these ‘temporary' camps to go home.Every Palestinian grandparent can tell you the name of their village,their street, and where the olive trees were planted. Theirgrandchildren may never have been home, but they can tell you wheretheir great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well stood.The press has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian terrorist. Butthe victims who rose up against human indignity in the Warsaw Ghettoare called heroes. Those who lost their lives are called martyrs. ThePalestinian who tosses a rock in desperation is a terrorist.

Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricatesprinkler systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers intheir new condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and barbedwire in the midst of a Palestinian community where there was notadequate water to drink and the surrounding fields were sandy and dry.University professor Moshe Zimmerman reported in the Jerusalem Post (30 April, 1995), "The [Jewish] children of Hebron are just like Hitler's youth."

We Jews are suing for restitution, lost wages, compensation forhomes, land, slave labour and back wages in Europe . Am I a traitor ofa Jew for supporting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their birthplace and compensation for what was taken that cannot be returned?

The Jewish dead cannot be brought back to life and neither can the Palestinian massacred be resurrected. David Ben Gurionsaid, "Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves... politically, we arethe aggressors and they defend themselves.. .The country is theirs,because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down,and in their view we want to take away from them their country...".

Palestine is a land that has been occupied and emptied of itspeople. Its cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated andreplaced by tidy Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the firstthing eradicated by the occupiers. The history of the indigenous peoplehas been all but eradicated as though they never existed. And all thishas been hailed by the world as a miraculous act of God. We mustrecognise that Israel 's existence is not even a question of legalityso much as it is an illegal fait accompli realised through the use offorce while supported by the Western powers. The UN missions directedat Israel in attempting to correct its violations of have thus far beenfutile.

In Hertzl's ‘The Jewish State' the father of Zionism said: "We mustinvestigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means ofevery modern expedient." I guess I agree with Ehud Barak( 3 June 1998) when he said, "If I were a Palestinian, I'd also join aterror group." I'd go a step further perhaps. Rather than throwinglittle stones in desperation, I'd hurtle a boulder.

Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows thatthis was no war; that this was not G-d's restitution of the holy landto it's rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was andcontinues to be perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn'tcome up with the arms and money to defend themselves against thewestern powers bent upon their demise as a people.

We cannot continue to say, "But what were we to do?" Zionism is notsynonymous with Judaism. I wholly support the rally of the right ofreturn of the Palestinian people.