What proof has been obtained here? Proof that if you oppress a people for 35 years, and humiliate its leaders, and harass its population, and do not give them a glimmer of hope, the members of this people will try to assert themselves in any way possible? And would any of us behave differeently than the Palestinians have in such a situation? And did we behave any differently when for years we were under occupation and tyranny? Avshalom Feinberg and yosef Lishansky set out for Cairo to bring money from there to the Nili underground so that the Jewish community in Palestine could assert itself against the Turks. The fighters of the Haganah, the Lehi and the Etzel underground movements collected and hid as many weapons as they could, and their splendid sliks (arms caches) are to this day a symbol of the fight for survival and the longing for liberty, as were the daring weapons acquisition missions during the British Mandate (which were defined by the British as acts of terror). When "we" did these things, they were not terrorist in nature. They were legitimate actions of a people fighting for its life and liberty. When the Paelstinians do them, they become "proof" of everything we have been so keen to prove for years now.
I am certainly not advocating any use of violence. I was just really intrigued by this quote (which I found in a book called Israel / Palestine: How to End the War of 1948; by Tanya Reinhart, an Israeli linguistics scholar; copyright 2002, Seven Stories Press [ISBN: 1-58322-538-2]).
It was striking to me to read a paragraph like that that really cuts to the quick of an its-okay-for-us-but-not-for-them mentality.
Again, let me be clear, I do not advocate violence. I just found the quote reflective of how one-sided things can be.
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