I received a letter from Professor Mazen Qumsiyeh, a prominent Palestinian activist, which included the following paragraph: In one day in Palestine (in 24 hours to 8 AM Oct 26): Medics obstructed and injured as Israeli troops wound and beat people defending the Al-Aqsa Mosque; Israeli soldiers abduct two 15-year aids; Zionist fanatics attacked olive harvesters and set fire to olive trees; Israeli F-16s terrorized Rafah; Night peace disruption and/or home invasions in refugee camp and 5 towns and villages; 3 attacks - 19 raids - 11 beaten - 16 injured-21 taken prisoner - 17 detained - 80 restrictions of movement. In fact, no murders took place on the day that Brother Mazen chose to write about. Nonetheless, we will not forget a thousand Palestinian minors who have been killed by the occupation soldiers since the 29th of September, 2000, along with thousands of women, elderly and children. While the letter's writer chose the subject of “the nicest and meanest people” for his e-mail, and to compare between the peace advocates and the adversaries of peace, I paused at a sentence that tells the story of an old woman attempting to sell olives after harvesting it from a few olive trees that she owns. It “is a blessed olive tree, neither Eastern nor Western”, and we read “and gardens of grapes and olives and pomegranates...” and also “and palm trees and plants of different tastes and olives and pomegranates”. Similarly also, we read “and he grows for you plans, and olives and palm trees and grapes...” and “[I swear] by the figs, and the olives, and by Mount Sinai...” I want to propose to the Arab countries, in particular Egypt, to issue a collection of stamps commemorating the Israeli uprooting of Palestinian trees, especially olive trees, out of courtesy and for the occasion of the ruling party's conference. In fact, I have a selection of photographs including one of a Palestinian carrying an uprooted tree and escaping with it from the Israeli soldiers; the collection may even include a picture of a Rabbi embracing a Palestinian tree to prevent the soldiers from cutting it. The reason behind my proposal is what I read about the Ann Frank Centre in the United States: Ann is the famous Jewish girl who hid from the Nazi soldiers in Amsterdam, and who wrote her very touching diaries. The centre declared that it wants to move saplings from a chestnut tree that Anne used to see from her hiding place, to be planted in 11 different American locations, including schools and other locations in order to combat prejudice and intolerance. This proposal is nice, and would have been even nicer if the centre decided to plant some Palestinian trees targeted by the fascist occupation army, which has turned the Jews from being the victims to being the killers. I speak only for myself here because there was a Holocaust that took place and that killed six million Jews; we paid the price for a crime that the Christian West has committed, when the latter sent the European Jews, in order for them not to remind the West of its crime by staying there, to Palestine. I have thus written time and again about the fascistic neo-Nazis in the Israeli government and its army and settlers, as I have written on the other hand, about the peace-seeking Jews who defend the Palestinians and try to protect them from Israeli terrorism. Ann Frank is an example of the brutality of Nazism, just as the government of Netanyahu, the occupation army, and the settlers are an example of Israeli barbarism. I thus refuse to remove Ann Frank from my memory because it was the survivors of Nazism and their descendants who committed the same crimes they suffered of, against the Palestinians. I was moved when I first read the story of Ann Frank, and will never include her as a target of my fury against Israel. Going back to the title of Mazen Qumsiyeh's letter's title before this column's space runs out, he chose among the nice people a [female] peace activist in her twenties who speaks many languages, and compared her to a settler who attacks Palestinians during the olive harvest. Personally, I choose as an example of the nicest people Ms. Sarah Leah Whitson of the Human Rights Watch (HRW), who fully reflects the image of how a “Peace advocate” should be. As an example of mean people, I choose Robert Bernstein, who headed the same organization between 1978 and 1999. I was recently surprised by what he wrote in an article published in the Herald Tribune, which Brother Kamel al-Azar, a Tunisian businessman and a friend, sent to me along with his commentary. In the article, Bernstein claims that with its one sided constant criticism of Israel, the HRW loses sight of its core values. In reality, it is him who loses sight of his core values and principles when he defends a fascist state, since defending it practically means collusion, aiding and abetting in this case. He therefore is no different than all those Likudniks around the world when they say that the Human Rights Council has condemned Israel more than the rest of the countries in the world combined. Of course, the council has indeed condemned it because of all Nazis, only Israel has remained as a neo-Nazi state, and because after South Africa, only Israel remains as apartheid when it discriminates and segregates on the basis of race. It is pure Likudnik arrogance then, when a secret or declared Likudnik claims that the entire world is wrong, and that the fascistic criminal state alone is right.
