NOTE: This is the first version of this piece as it was originally posted on Hintergrund and in English on Moon of Alabama on January 21, 2009.
Rolf Verleger asked me to post a revised version which I did here in the 22nd.
End NOTE
—
In comments here Parviz pointed to this piece written in German and Sabine
kindly translated it to English. It is by Rolf Verleger, a German
psychology professor and Jewish activist. The original was published on
January 5 in the German magazine Hintergrund.
—
Gaza: The bad, bad neighbor
By Rolf Verleger, January 5 2009
What would you do – such wrote on Dec. 31 the Israeli historian Prof.
Fania Oz-Salzberger in the FAZ – if your neighbor would continuously
threw stones and Molotov cocktails at your apartment. Would you not at
some stage grab a rifle and try to put an end to this? And if your
neighbor would crowed himself with his kids, so that you could not hit
him, would you not get a rifle with telescopic sight?
Just as this presumed neighbor, Hamas is acting in Gaza, when they shot
at Israeli cities with rockets. Therefore the current Israeli war
against Gaza is a just war.
I am very thankful to Mrs. Oz-Salzberger for this example with
the neighbor. A lot can be visually explained with it. For simplicities
sake, let’s call you and your family, so terrorized by your bad
neighbor, the house owners and let’s have a look at the curious
circumstances in your housing block. The apartment of you neighbor is
Gaza.
1. Three years ago you took the neighbors keys away.
Without your agreement as landlord the neighbors family can not
leave there apartment, neither to go to work, nor to study, nor to
travel, nor to shop. Without your agreement, the neighbor will not
receive their mail, no food, no electricity, no gas or visits: The
apartment is locked, and you as the landlord have the keys, and the
bad, bad neighbor is locked in. And this since 2006, almost three
years.
That’s when the bad, bad neighbor got furious.
The mistake of the bad, bad neighbor and his friends in the other apartment block: These people voted for the wrong party.
Although you having been so kind to the neighbor, as to move
freely, four years ago – 2005, out of his balcony with sea views, which
you took over earlier on. Of course without paying him a look or word,
and the balconies furniture got trashed when you left. Where would life
come to, if we would be speaking with our neighbors?
That’s when the bad, bad neighbor got furious.
2. Two years ago you send a gang of rowdies to your neighbor
You and your north american friends from the house owner society
send a hit gang ro squat in the apartment of the neighbor, the
Mohamed-Dahlan-Gang. They were supposed to take the apartment away from
the bad, bad neighbor. Unfortunately the neighbor defended himself
against this coup, and that got you really angry. Thereafter you tried
to tell everyone, that the bad, bad neighbor has forcefully taken over
power in his apartment, that he was not legitimized to do so. You
yourself have been surprised by how many journalists have spread this
lie. From Silke Mertins of the TAZ it was kind of expected, but that
even Torsten Schmitz of the Sueddeutsche would write this nonsense was
surprising.
That’s when the bad, bad Neighbor got furious.
3. You have not charged the running costs of the apartment correctly.
For years have the taxes and fees owned to the department of apartment autonomy not been paid in time and completely.
4. You have already killed many people from the neighbors apartment.
That was in the year 2006. Those were hundreds of dead. This was
also a reason for the war in Lebanon, as the Hezbollah wanted to
revenge the deeds of Israel.
5. You took away the bad, bad neighbors car.
The bad, bad Neighbor once had an airport – build with money
from the EU. You have destroyed that airport: Bad Neighbors don’t need
an airport.
6. You took away the neighbors work.
At times the neighbor went fishing. You don’t allow that
anymore. The neighbor used to have factories. You bombed them in 2006.
He used to have agriculture. You have ruined that, by not allowing
export. The bad neighbors, who only want to shoot, are not supposed to
go fishing, to work in factories or to work the soil.
The bad, bad neighbor is supposed to shoot at you, so that you can shoot back. And this is what the neighbor did.
7. The courts rule in the favor of the bad neighbor.
Many experts of neighborhood law, like Amnesty International,
experts of the UN, winner of the Nobel Peace Prices have stated clearly
that your doing as house owner against your neighbors throughout the
years is breaking the law . Luckily that these people don’t have a
police to enforce law and order. “How many divisions has the pope?”
joked Stalin.
That’s when the bad, bad Neighbor got furious.
8. You have been chasing the friends of the neighbors out of their apartments for years.
Unfortunately the bad neighbor still has mobile phones and
landlines. That’s how he gets to know daily, how friends and relatives
of the bad neighbor, who live in the apartment block West Bank get
chased out of their houses. A very important tool for this is the large
wall, that you have build in the middle of the apartment block. Because
you have build this wall, which is to serve your security, not around
your house, but straight through the apartments of these friends. What
do need these friends two living rooms for. One suffices enough, and in
the other you can have your friends living. And that those within their
smaller apartment must pass a security check, before going from the
living room to the bathroom, that’s nothing: The whole live is a
waiting room! And who peacefully demonstrates against these measures
will get in Germany the Ossietzky Price, but will be shot at with
teargas at home, and if out of luck be shot in legal self-defense. Of
course the friends of the bad neighbor went to complain against the
wall in front of a court of law, the German foreign minister of the
time, a loud man named Fischer, called this “not helpful”, they of
course were given right by the law, but again there is no police there,
who would enforce their right.
That’s when the bad, bad neighbor got furious.
9. You took away ownership of the houses from your neighbor 60 years ago.
Long, long time ago, the grandfather of the neighbor was the
owner of the whole house. At that time your grandparents came into the
house, desperate, hunted, it was a good shelter from the storm. Soon
you build a house in the yard, after all the yard belonged to no one.
Of course, the others could now not go from one house to the other
anymore, oh well, they are only Arabs. From time to time some
humanitarian do gooders passed by, they were named Achad ha’AM, Martin
Buber, Hannah Arendt, plus a couple of others, who said, it would be
good to live in peace with the house owners, but by Marx’s will, these
Arabs are to primitive for the creation of socialism, with these
country folks one can not be friend. And later when Marx was out of
fashion, it was Gods will, these Arabs have the wrong religion, what do
they want in the holy house. There plenty of other houses around, they
should go there.
And then, since 1947, your parents took most of the apartments and the
whole house of the parents of the bad, bad neighbor, as they fled, in
panic from the armed terror of your parents. And now, the descendants
of the neighbors of these people live in the one apartment, in the most
populated stretch of the world, in Gaza. Yes, why is now so densely
populated?
That’s when the bad, bad neighbor got furious.
And so said the German chancellor and Mrs. Prof. Oz-Salzberger: The fault for the war falls on the bad, bad neighbor.
10. Last words
As the first Jewish Zionist, around 1890, came to today’s
Israel, they were fleeing the discrimination in the land of the Tsar,
from burnings and killings in the search of a free, self controlled
life, which was not possible in their old country. This was not a
conflict of good versus evil, but a fight about a piece of land, that
was home to Palestinian Arabs, and that seemed to be the only possible
home to the migrants.
The Jewish side has won that war, for the price of constant
war. But a peace plan is since long ago on the table. The two state
solution based on the frontier of 1967, with a solution on the problems
of the Palestinian refugees, with solutions in regards to Jerusalem.
This was proposed by the States of the Arab League in 2002 and again
confirmed just a short time ago. Israel will not agree to this plan, as
Israel can not decide if they do not rather want to keep the illegally
gained land in the West Bank and even expand on it. As long as Israel
does not say yes we would rather have peace, we will stop the
occupation regime, there will be no peace.
The position of Germany in this conflict is split. But can the
fact, that we European Jews, victims of Germany’s injustice, give the
Jewish state now the rights to commit injustice against others. Do
German politicians really believe, it is reparation of the killing of
my Jewish relatives, that Israel can, without stops and binds, do what
it pleases?
On the contrary, it would do Israel good, if it were taken out of its
fantasized position of the eternal victim, if it were let away and as
any other state be embedded into the international system of rules and
regulations. That means, that the wrongful occupation of the West Bank,
and the long lasting and illegal occupation of Gaza must be sanctioned
and boycotted. The EU should measure Israel’s advances on state rights
and human rights as they measure Serbia and Turkey. The legal
evaluation of the case Olmert should as the case Milosevic take place
in Den Haag.