New Catholic Times


This article was sent to Debbie Ducro, an American-Jewish journalist
with the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. She published it, and was
fired the 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 was a 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 held
 against the survivors of Hitler's holocaust. These fragments of
 humanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personal 
survival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a
 co-religionist of the victims of the European Holocaust does not
 grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of humanity.


"Never again" as a motto, rings hollow when it means "never again to
 us alone." My generation was raised being led to believe that the
 biblical land was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverished Palestinians living with their camels and eking out a living in the sand. The arrival of the Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit to these 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 a 
land filled with people who called it home. There were thriving
towns and villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews,
Christians and Muslims.


 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 atrocity
 perpetuated by the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive
to the suffering of others. These people knew what it felt like to 
be ordered out of your home at gun point and forced to march into
 the night to unknown destinations or face execution on the spot. The
people who displaced the Palestinians knew first hand what it means
 to watch your home in flames, to surrender everything dear to your
 heart at a moment's notice. Bulldozers leveled hundreds of
 villages, along with the remains of the village inhabitants, the old 
and the young. This was nothing 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 the
 holocaust in Europe there is a leveled parking lot. Under this 
parking lot 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 not leaving graciously. This particular burial
marker reads: "Public Parking".



I've talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian who
 hasn't lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor a 
Palestinian who cannot name a relative or friend languishing under
 inhumane conditions in an Israeli prison. Time and time again,
Israel is cited for human rights violations to no avail. On a recent
trip to Israel, I visited the refugee camps inhabited by a people
 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. Their 
grandchildren may never have been home, but they can tell you where
 their great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well
 stood.

The press has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian 
terrorist. But the victims who rose up against human indignity in 
the Warsaw Ghetto are called heroes. Those who lost their lives are 
called martyrs. The Palestinian who tosses a rock in desperation is 
a terrorist.

Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricate
 sprinkler systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers in 
their new condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and 
barbed wire in the midst of a Palestinian community where there was
 not adequate 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 for
 homes, land, slave labour and back wages in Europe. Am I a traitor of a 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 Gurion said, "Let us
 not ignore the truth among ourselves...politically, we are the 
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 its
 people. Its cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated
 and replaced by tidy Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the
 first thing eradicated by the occupiers. The history of the
 indigenous people has been all but eradicated as though they never 
existed. And all this has been hailed by the world as a miraculous 
act of God. We must recognize that Israel's existence is not even a
 question of legality so much as it is an illegal fait- accompli realized through the use of force while supported by the Western powers.

The UN missions directed at Israel in attempting to correct its violations  have thus far been futile.

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



Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows that this was no war; that this was not God's restitution of the holy
 land to it's rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was and 
continues to be perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn't
 come up with the arms and money to defend themselves against the 
western powers bent upon their demise as a people.

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