Monday 18 June 2012

Occupation: Israeli General’s family speaks

Israel’s victory in the so-called ‘Six Day War in June 1967, made Israel Occupation Force (IOF) chief of logistic, Gen. Matti Peled a hero. Six year after, in an article in Israeli daily Maariv, Gen. Peled admitted that Egyptian army did not pose any threat Israel’s security – but Levi Eshkol government and IOF high command decided to use the opportunity to occupy more Arab lands and fulfil Zionists’ dream of Eretz (Greater) Israel.

Gen. Matti Peled’s daughter, Professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan (Hebrew University) and his son Miko Peled, a former IOF soldier and author of book, The General’s Son - have recently spoken about Israel, its culture of racism and Israel’s war of aggression in June 1967.
Los Angeles Times, published Miko Peled’s Op-Ed, entitled Six days in Israel, 45 years ago, on June 6, 2012. Professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan delivered a speech at Gan Meir, Tel Aviv, on June 9, 2012.
For the first time in Israel’s history, we have an opportunity to solve the Palestinian problem once and for all. Now we are face to face with the Palestinians, without other Arab countries dividing us. Now we have a chance to offer the Palestinians a state of their own. If we keep these lands, popular resistance to the occupation is sure to arise, and Israel’s army will be used to quell that resistance, with disastrous and demoralizing results,” Gen. Peled told Levi Eshkol cabinet after Israeli war of aggression ended on June 10, 1967.

Now once again Israel is faced with two options: Continue to exist as a Jewish state while controlling the Palestinians through military force and racist laws, or undertake a deep transformation into a real democracy where Israelis and Palestinians live as equals in a shared state, their shared homeland. For Israelis and Palestinians alike, the latter path promises a bright future,” wrote Miko Peled.

The State of Israel, which was officially declared as an apartheid state, is distinguished by what has always been the most typical and successful method of racism: the classification of human beings. The Hebrew language that keeps getting uglier under the auspices of the army of Occupation and the bureaucracy of Occupation, is full of classifications: there are people who are a cancer in the heart of the nation and there are people who are a security danger, and there are people who are a plague or a demographic nightmare and there are people who are a health risk, all of them classified and categorized in such a way that even the most ignorant and boorish of Israelן¿½s ministers manage to learn this categorization by heart,” said Nurit Peled-Elhanan in her speech.

We are living in a ghetto that has no city and no homeland, the language of which is not the local language, a ghetto that has no place to open onto except the bypass roads that pass by everything that is alive. The time has come when we must join our neighbours all over the Middle East, to sing the praises of the true rebellion, to declare the opening of the borders and the breaking of the barriers, to break down the doors of the prisons, to return the olives and the vineyards to their owners, to return the Children of Palestine to their borders and their land and to try to recover what was lost and trampled under the hobnailed boots of the fat bullies,” she added.
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
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