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Titolo: [MO] ebrei da cui prendere esempio

Not In His Name:
Palestinian Jew Speaks Out Against 'Apartheid State'
by Kevin Spurgaitis
İ 2004 Catholic New Times
http://www3.telus.net/catholicnewtimes/index.html
Sunday, October 24, 2004 -- Dressed in a formal shirt
and suspenders -- his front pocket brimming with
scribbled cues -- Dr. Uri Davis looks very much an
academic. He sports a silver goatee and thinning hair,
speaking with sparse, sardonic jibes.
The Jewish scholar stands poised before a roused group
of undergraduates, behind a podium draped in a
Palestinian banner. Organized by the National Council
on Canada-Arab Relations and Solidarity for Palestinian
Human Rights, his keynote address at Torontoıs York
University is no sober oration, though. His is a
heartfelt plea.
"The flag of the State of Israel does not represent for
me any signifier of pride or contentment. The flag of
my country, the flag of Palestine, is the flag I'm
happy to speak behind," he says with scorn.
"I identify my country as the country of Palestine. I
identify the state in which I'm a citizen as the state
of a Israel, a member state of the United Nations
organization. It has a flag I personally would not
wish to speak in front of. This flag is raised over
detention and torture centers, police stations and
prisons, where political detainees are incinerated."
Davis is a Jewish citizen of Israel, but staunchly
identifies himself as a "Palestinian Jew". Born in an
undivided Jerusalem in 1943, and raised by his British
and Czechoslovakian parents, he is an unlikely booster
of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
For 30 years, the anthropologist and philosopher
excavated Israel's democracy, trying to expose what he
calls the "pervasive system of legal and social
discrimination" against the Palestinian people.
Davis is the founding member and chairperson of the
Movement against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine
(MAIAP), and an observer-member with the Palestinian
National Council. He is involved with the advocacy
groups, MIFTAH (the Palestinian Initiative for the
Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy) and Al-Beit
(the Association for the Defense of Human Rights in
Israel). An expert on Middle Eastern affairs and
Islamic history, he continues as a fellow at the
University of Durham and the University of Exeter in
the U.K.
The human rights defender has written and edited 15
books and numerous articles on politics, legal systems
and human rights in Israel and Palestine. In his first
book, 'Israel, An Apartheid State', originally
published in 1987, he claimed Israeli legislation
guarantees the rights of only a "subset of its
citizenry". He followed its success with his
autobiography, 'Crossing the Border', and his most
recent release, 'Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for
the Struggle Within'.
Davis resides in the Arab city of Sakhnin in northern
Israel, although as a Jew, he may live anywhere in the
state -- a right denied to his Arab neighbors.
Formerly a resident of the South-Western UK near
Plymouth, he arrived in Sakhnin as director of external
relations with the Arab Institute for Vocational
Completion. But after his service there, he saw no
reason to change his address.
In his article, 'Just an Ordinary Sakhnin Day',
published in 2001, he writes: "After I get up in my
flat, brush my teeth, shave, comb my balding scalp,
dress and go out to the veranda to greet my neighbors,
I see my city of Sakhnin surrounded by a circle of
rather lovely leafy rural suburban communal residential
localities -- mostly perched on the mountain tops.
This is what I see from my veranda when I get up in the
morning."
His adopted home is not a collegiate town, nor a trendy
tourist locale. It's sort of an industrial park, yet
with no industrial plants of which to speak. However,
as the only Jew, he does not face life imprisonment for
membership in an illegal organization. He does not
have tanks outside his window threatening his children.
He says he has yet to be denied access to hospital
treatment, or delayed "indefinitely" at a military
checkpoint -- the reported indignities endured by
Palestinians. Here, Davis' choice of residence
reflects his commitment to a future in which all Jews
and Palestinians enjoy equal rights.
Standing up as a Jew:
His consciousness comes from the Holocaust. His Jewish
mother's family was killed in World War II following
the Nazi-invasion of Czechoslovakia. "Her values
underpinned my moral development and are universally
relevant for all concerned including myself," he
remarked in an article in the Irish Times.
In that article, he also accused Israel of exploiting
the extermination of Jews in Europe, describing it as
"a direct assault" on his ancestors. He says: "The
publishing of any criticism of Israel to be anti-
Semitic has been an instrument of intimidating critical
debate on Israel for decades. It's therefore essential
to base or anchor our narrative in fundamental
separation between Zionism and Judaism. It's the most
difficult obstacle that faces us."
Political Zionism, he says, is a "wholly negative
proposition."
"Zionist is not my identity. I operate on the basis of
a clear distinction between Zionism and Judaism. I
have nothing against the Jewish collective, tribal
identity or theological identity. But Zionism is
separate. It's a political program, and has nothing to
do with professional identity.
"I don't have a problem with Jewish identity; I have
problem with the claim that it is justified -- in the
name of the national liberation of the Jewish people --
to perpetuate crimes against humanity and war crimes,"
he says solemnly.
Apartheid State:
According to Davis, more than 950,000 indigenous
Palestinians owned 94 percent of the region prior to
1948. Following the establishment of the State of
Israel, 530 of their villages and localities were
decimated, he says. More than 800,000 Palestinians
fled or were expelled from the territory -- the
Diaspora refugees. Today, the one million Palestinians
living within "Green Line" borders represent 20 percent
of Israel's citizens.
Some 250,000 are still internally displaced, denied the
right of return to their homes.
Last month was the fourth anniversary of the second
intifada, the uprising against Israeli forces that has
cost an estimated 3,000 Palestinian and nearly 1,000
Israeli lives. The carnage continues. A recent rocket
attack killing two Israeli children in a border town,
prompted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to expand
his army's offensive in the territory. More Israeli
raids and air strikes are expected before a unilateral
withdrawal of its troops and settlers from the occupied
Gaza Strip. Sharon told the Yediot Ahronot Daily, an
Israeli newspaper, that Israel would "continue its war
on terrorism, and will remain in the West Bank after
disengagement from Gaza.
"It is very possible that, after the evacuation, there
will be a long period when nothing else happens,"
Sharon said.
The internationally backed "Road Map" to peace, which
would see a Palestinian state by 2005, has been
abandoned, according to Israel's critics. The
worsening situation in the Middle East was addressed
during the UN's 59th Annual General Assembly in
September. Taking center stage was Israel's so-called
"security barrier" -- a 687 kilometer structure, now
largely completed, characterized by razor wire,
military patrol roads, sand paths and surveillance
cameras.
Although Israel claims the wall's construction is an
anti-terrorism measure, critics like Davis call it the
de facto annexation of Palestinian lands -- both
present and future. Its route snakes across the West
Bank, enclosing the illegal settlements and isolating
East Jerusalem.
If Palestinians wish to travel to school, work or
religious sites, they will need the Israeli military's
permission. Plans for the barrier are subject to
change. However, the state's restriction on movement,
coupled with its seizure of natural resources, have
already battered the Palestinian economy, according to
the press.
"This political Zionist state is essential an apartheid
state with some democratic declarations. Israel is an
apartheid state in the same sense that South Africa was
for many decades. It regulates racial choices and
structures through acts of parliament and law
enforcement," Davis alleges.
"You need to have a democratic constitution in order to
be able to have protection. In the apartheid states,
such constitutions do not exist -- not in former
Apartheid South Africa, and not in present-day Israel."
The acclaimed scholar admits Palestinians are
represented in Parliament. They have equal access to
courts of law. Nonetheless, 20 per cent of these
citizens remain ghettoized in 2.5 per cent of the
state. Davis has repeatedly seen Arab cemeteries
trespassed -- their sanctity violated along with the
razing of urban and rural homes. Land and sub-soil are
vital in Israel. About 93 per cent of the territory is
reserved for settlement, cultivation and development.
"Apartheid should be rejected -- not for double
standards and inconsistencies, but for the injury it
perpetrates against the indigenous peoples of
Palestine."
International laws broken:
According to Davis, this "classic apartheid
construction" contravenes the UN General Assembly
resolution 181, which recommends the partitioning of
Palestine into Jewish and Arab. Israel's claim to
Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel is
simply "null and void, illegal and preposterous."
The resolution, he asserts, does not license any party,
including Israel army, to "ethnically cleanse the
territories allocated by the UN General Assembly for
the Jewish state."
Davis is not alone; thousands of Israeli Jews furtively
subscribe to his views, he says. In the future,
however, he predicts it will become progressively more
difficult to label anti-Zionism activists as anti-
Jewish.
In his article, 'The Movement against Israeli Apartheid
in Palestine', Davis writes that political awareness
spread through the country's academic circles following
the Oslo Accord collapse. In 2000, he was a part of a
tenuous coalition of activists in Jerusalem and Haifa
launching a 'No Apartheid' campaign. However, their
work was curtailed during the intifada.
The phrase 'Civil Society' describes the kind of state
in which Davis would be happy to live. Nonetheless,
Davis is unsure of a non-violent Palestinian movement
in the face of Israel's military superiority. He's
been radicalized by his experience as a Palestinian
Jew. No longer an ideological pacifist or anti-
militarist, he offers only a single vision of justice
-- the removal of institutions of apartheid,
colonization, dispossession and occupation of
Palestinian Arabs. He wants a more "just social and
political order, one based on equality of individual
and collective, economic, social, cultural, civil,
political and national rights for all."
His duty, he says, is the same of all persons worldwide
-- to mobilize against war crimes perpetrated by
governments in their citizens' own names.
"Not in my name," Davis cries out, a closed hand
gesticulating his affront. "Not in my name as an
individual and citizen." He raises his voice as loud
as he is able to shout: "Not in my name as a Jew."

Jonathan del grande fratello...
è arrivato in finale fingendosi gheiz
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 è arrivato in finale fingendosi gheiz
E tu speri di diventare l'idolo delle masse di Usenet fingendoti idiota. 
Ma attento che prima o poi ti stanchi e ti farai scoprire.
Anselmo
Inviato da 
www.mynewsgate.net

 
azz, vuoi dire che qualcuno ti ha detto del mio premio nobel?


 azz, vuoi dire che qualcuno ti ha detto del mio premio nobel?
No, ho letto qualche pensiero non banale che per sbaglio ti deve essere 
sfuggito. La prossima volta sta più attento!
Anselmo  
Inviato da 
www.mynewsgate.net