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June 30, 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels June 4, 2004 Deconstructing Mideast terrorism Zionists defending Ariel Sharon's Israel naturally find themselves in an uncomfortable logical position. Thus, as they hurry toward predictably fallacious, self-serving conclusions, they hop, skip, and jump right over, through, and around an extensive field of hard facts which contradict their views. Occasionally, however, a Sharon zealot finds himself tripped up by an especially stubborn fact, such as the one that lays Kenneth Wilson low in his letter of May 11. Mr. Wilson is hard put to explain away the awkward fact that in the current Intifada, more than three Palestinians have been killed for every Israeli, i.e., some 2,800 to around 900, a fact obviously suggesting that the country's security is under no serious threat from a Palestinian insurrection. How then is Israel, possessing one of the world's most powerful armies (courtesy of the American taxpayer), justified in continuing to occupy the remaining fragment of Palestine while bombing, strafing, and assassinating a people with no army - and for extra measure, bulldozing their homes and orchards? The power ratio here, after all, is as lopsided as that between David and Goliath. Well, they're "terrorists," you see - or so Sharon has dubbed them and so Mr. Wilson believes - believes so absolutely that in his short letter he uses "terrorists" or "terrorism" no less than seven times. Or, if they're not actually "terrorists," they're civilians "caught in the line of fire of a confrontation between Israeli armed forces and the terrorists." The occupiers, of course - the powerful who are doing most of the slaughtering and pillaging and land confiscation - are never "terrorists." "Terrorists" are always the powerless, those opposing the occupation and the theft of their country. Pinning the "terrorist" label on a people with their backs to the wall, people fighting tanks with stones, people forced to use their bodies as bombs, people defending as best they can their ancestral homes against the overwhelming might of American-supplied arms; well, by calling them "terrorists" it becomes perfectly OK, to Zionists such as Mr. Wilson, for Israel to continue its endless theft of Palestinian land while avoiding peace at all costs. An obvious parallel to Israel's brutal occupation and exploitation of Palestine is Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq - Operation Iraqi Freedom, they call it. The U.S. occupiers, now responsible for the deaths of many thousands of innocent civilians, will remain in Iraq indefinitely, we are now told - but at least until the oil runs out, or they're forced out. Our troops, of course, are never called the terrorists they in fact are. Instead, the impoverished Iraqis now fighting the American occupiers for their freedom are called the terrorists. Such painful Orwellian irony is not new, as most of us know. It has followed the American empire around the globe. Another stubborn fact - a fact intended in Mr. Wilson's letter to mitigate Israeli atrocities - is the ratio of total deaths in the Intifada to other international massacres. We should keep in mind, he suggests, that the fewer than 4,000 deaths in the recent Israeli-Palestinian struggle compares well with massive slaughters in Rwanda, Chechnya, Kashmir, Eritrea/Ethiopia, and elsewhere. And the Israeli army, he says, given its might, has shown remarkable restraint. Well, this is a blessing, no doubt. Where would the Palestinians be without such a civil and thoughtful army overseeing the destruction of their homeland - and assuring that the number of their deaths does not exceed any international norms? Who among them would ever have expected such tender mercies? Isaac Walker Ashland DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams