Let's compare Palestinians to the U.S.

BY AREF ASSAF

In response to Max Kleinman's column last week, the specious moral equivalency argument that Israel is justified in its military actions against the Palestinians, especially Hamas, is a striking example of moral bankruptcy and baseless analogies. The United Nations' Goldstone Report was commissioned to investigate the extent and consequences of targeting civilians when Israel invaded the Gaza Strip in late 2007.

Critics of the report conveniently ignored several salient facts, not only regarding the report itself, but about the supposed moral and practical analogy between the U.S. and Israel on one side, and Taliban/al-Qaida and Hamas on the other. It should first be noted that Israel refused to assist with the fact-finding mission of the U.N.-mandated commission. The supposed tilt in the report was a reflection not only of the undeniably high and asymmetrical Palestinian deaths and devastation, but also of Israel's deliberate attempt at sabotaging the commission's mandate. Israel did not cooperate with the investigators, nor did it provide any data covering Israeli casualties.

Even if we distrust the findings of the U.N. report, one needs only review several reports by Israeli-based civil and media organizations that categorically exposed the deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians, schools and places of worship. Even Israeli soldiers confessed to the clear orders by their superiors to shoot at unarmed civilians.

Pro-Israel supporters have long levied the "self-hating-Jew" to effectively silence Jews who, by defending what is morally right, have often found themselves castigated and outcast by other Jewish organizations. Conveniently, charges of anti-Semitism would have awaited any gentile who dared to disagree with Israel.

Crucial to the credibility of the equivocation is the absence of moral justification:
Al-Qaida/Taliban attacked our country, on our soil on 9/11. The U.S. was not in Afghanistan as an occupying force. The majority of the world countries such as the U.N., endorsed our attacks on the suspected Taliban bases and the subsequent invasion of the entire country. We are in Afghanistan for a specific and time-limited purpose.

The U.S. has no aspiration of colonizing Afghanistan. American soldiers are dying in Afghanistan in order to secure the nation's political freedom from the tyranny of the Taliban. In doing so, our land and our people here will also be saved.

Conversely, attacks by Palestinian militant groups, such as Hamas, are in retaliation of Israel's military occupation of Arab lands it had conquered in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel not only lacks the moral foundation, but also the legal right to so oppressively maintain a systematically brutal and inhumane military regime over 5 million Palestinians.

Israel, unlike the U.S., is reaping the fruits of its brutal practices against a totally
subjugated civilian population, some of whom have organized and carried out equally heinous acts against Israeli targets. Before we lend Israel the moral upper hand in its confrontations with the Palestinians, let us be mindful that Israel is the aggressor. Israel is the occupier and the party that has killed and maimed more than a million Palestinians, expelled millions more into exile, destroyed close to 500 Arab villages, and desecrated an untold number of religious sites.

Coattailing on America's tragic 9/11, Israel, thus, demeans the memory of those whose lost their lives. Attacks on Israel have to be judged as part of its occupation and treatment of Palestinians. Kleinman appropriately sought our empathy towards Israel by using the in-my- shoe parable, but it is the Palestinians who should be compared to the United States. Israel, just like al-Qaida/Taliban, is the aggressor, the oppressor, and the rogue regime.

Aref Assaf is president of the American Arab Forum and a resident of Denville.