The World is Sour
by Brian Wood
January 23, 2002
While nine international friends and I were waiting in a taxi watching Palestinians wade through 200 meters of mud, necessary because Israeli bulldozers tore up the road, several young boys approached the taxi. They were full of smiles and greetings for us. I asked one young boy, maybe 11 years old, “What do you think of this situation?”
He smirked and said, “The world is sour.”
Shortly after this young boy’s opine, the US Department of Justice ordered a search for 6000 “Middle Eastern or Arab” persons who are “no longer eligible to live in the US. . . . The intent,” says a Justice Department official, “is to deport anyone that may fit the description of a terrorist.” The hope is that these people will be pulled over for speeding or other vehicular offenses, arrested, and deported. Most of them are illegal for reasons of expired visas or other minor offenses.
So, the US Justice Department is looking for anyone who may fit the description of a terrorist and it just so happens that all of them are Middle Eastern or Arab. It seems, then, that all Middle Eastern or Arab persons who enter the US, like my friend from Palestine who will be traveling to the US on a Fullbright Scholarship, will become a terrorism suspect when they arrive in the country, apart from their legal status.
Nevermind that the overused term ‘terrorist’ has yet to be defined in any way, shape, or form by the governments that adopt the term. A professor in university once warned us to be wary of anyone using terms they had not defined; it is a sign of shoddy scholarship. The principle of defining terms crosses all fields, not the least of which is judicial.
In Israel’s dealing with the Palestinians, terms are much clearer: they want Palestinians out. The recent Hamas attack on an Israeli military outpost near the borders of Gaza and Israel, which killed 4 Israeli soldiers and the two Palestinian gunmen, was used as a convenient backdrop for Israel to raze the homes of 120 Palestinian families in the Rafah Refugee Camp in Gaza. The UN estimated that 520 people, including 300 children, were left homeless after the operation in which APCs (Armored Personnel Carrier) and bulldozers entered the camp, shouting over loudspeakers at the refugees to evacuate the homes with hands up. Israel journalist Amira Hass reported her findings on the Israel military operation: “The IDF acknowledged that there was no direct connection between the Hamas attack and the area chosen for demolition, and said the plan for destroying the houses had been drawn up several weeks ago but was temporarily shelved because of the relative quiet in the Gaza Strip over the past few weeks.”
The period of “relative quiet” the Israeli Occupation Forces refer to is the period between the last time Palestinians attacked Israelis, December 12, and the day of the Hamas attack near Gaza, January 9: 28 days. Major media sources and the White House labeled the period in similar terms, as well as a “lull” in violence and a period of “calm.” Greg Myre of the Associated Press titled his article on the Hamas attack “MidEast Calm Shattered After Attack.” BBC Corespondent Jeremy Cooke called the attack “a return to chaos.” In this same period of “calm,” “lull,” and “relative quiet” Israeli military or civilians killed at least 23 Palestinians in 20 separate raids on Palestinian villages or cities. Some of them were children who were shot dead by the Israeli military for throwing small stones at soldiers in the untouchable distance. The adjectives employed to describe the 28 days can only be descriptive if Israeli society is the basis for the reports. This tendency veils the issues and perpetuates the conflict.
Issues are veiled in other ways as well. Prime Minister Sharon’s first point of criteria for a return to negotiations remains “seven days of quiet.” He repeated this position after the Hamas attack and it was widely reported in the media. As of late, journalists have constructed their articles with Sharon’s need for “seven days of quiet” stated at the end while the remainder of the article described that it had been 28 days since any Palestinian attack had occurred on Israelis. In situations like this, the criteria of Sharon is shown to be empty and the media’s unwillingness to analyze their own statements are proven to be a major hindrance to any positive developments on the question of Palestine.