1 % of historic Palestine (or 6% of the West Bank-Gaza territory) is back--and it is not even free and I am supposed to celebrate? And why the Palestinians will not give up: Not only due to my fierce opposition to Zionism, but I do not enjoy Israeli occupations, and do not seem to enjoy their withdrawals either, as rare as they are. I have been really outraged watching the US (and its appendages in the Saudi Arab media) coverage of the withdrawal of the settlers. Did the withdrawal of French colonial settlers from Algeria cause such “anguish”—I hate that word as it is often almost exclusively associated by Michael Lerner and other liberal Americans with Israeli soldiers, and their heroic killing adventures and occupations. Who is the victim in this story? Would you know it from the coverage? Would you know that these (the Israeli colonial settlers that is) are people who deserve only scorn, condemnation, and contempt. They remind me of those Germans who moved into properties taken from Jewish victims under Nazi rule. How could the media be blind to the dimensions of the colonial settler movement? These are people who willingly and forcefully stole the land, water, airspace, and fruits of the Palestinian nation, and act all smug and arrogant about their theft and conquest project. And I am supposed to feel sorry for them? And each one of them is getting $500,000 from the state of Israel, and additional amounts from funds donated by American Zionists. How many of you would barter a house you own which is worth no more than $50,000 for a half million dollar? That is what is going on. But, no. The US media never misses an opportunity to shed tears for Israeli "victims," even when they are conquerors and occupiers. This is the reality of US ignorant but unjust endorsement of Zionism, and its consequences. But Zionism is in crisis. Make no mistake about it. Having said that, I do not want to react to the withdrawal the way the silly Arab (and Palestinian Authority) media are reacting. It is neither a victory for Israel, nor for the Palestinians, strictly speaking. We have suffered enough fake and imagined victories in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and I really am not looking forward to yet another version of that. Yasir `Arafat, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, made a career out of bombastic rhetoric and hollow propaganda; and today, Hamas seems to emulate that style. That will only confuse the issue and delude the masses. They, the latter group, deserve much better, but I do not believe that Hamas is capable of seriousness in rhetoric or in discourse. And the Palestinian Authority puppet president, a former Holocaust denier-turned-lover-of Zionist rulers, Mahmud `Abbas, wants to turn this partial withdrawal into a victory in order to deceive the Palestinian population, in order to propel the Israeli praetorian guards, known as the Palestinian police, to disarm Palestinian groups, to help in the protection of the Israeli expansionist aims. This is not a victory in that sense, and the land has not been liberated, but it certainly is a mark of defeat, especially by the state that is built on the racist expansionist ideology of Zionism. Zionism is in crisis. If the 20th century was the heyday of Zionism, the 21st century will witness its ultimate demise, and I will not shed a tear, and—if around—will do my best to celebrate, although I never was good at celebration. (I don’t know how people can do that. I cannot don the funny hats, and throw plates, and scream in celebration. I am not sure that I am good at handling festive moments. Some people are good at it; hell, some people are great at it, even when events don’t even call for celebrations. Look at George W. Bush: that man has been celebrating his imagined victories in Iraq, for over 2 years now. What do you call that? I am sure that there is a clinical name that escapes me here.) By the demise of Zionism I mean the inability of the racist state of Israeli that is based on military conquest and brute force to survive down the throat of the native population. The one miscalculation of Zionism was the silly assumption that the largely peasant non-European population (the Palestinians) is not capable of producing a modern nationalist movement; a nationalist movement that does not give up. At the risk of sounding emotional and sentimental, the Palestinian people have shown a resolve that is quite unusual. No matter how much it is fought from all sides (Zionist and Arab), no matter how dire the economic straits are, this people will not give up, and will never surrender no matter how much force Israel uses against it. The Palestinian people were assumed by the early Zionists (read Ahad Ha’am for example) to be nothing but dirt that can be simply swept by force under the carpet, to use that cliché. Shlomo Avineri commented in his book on Zionism about the case of Vladimir Jobotinsky: he expressed his surprise at Jobitinsky for not appreciating the nationalist potential of the Palestinian people. But that comment also applies to labor Zionism too, from the early founders to Shimon Peres: the man who, I will never forget, launched his electoral campaign in 1996 by ordering the shelling a bomb shelter in Qana near Tyre: there are AbuKhalils among the victims. He wanted to show his toughness, you understand. It is not personal, though. But I am always amazed at his casual invocation of the word “terrorist” whenever he speaks about the Palestinians. Yet, this man is received by people on the left in this country as a man of peace. Hell, this is a country where Sharon is a "man of peace". Real (as opposed to imaginary) Zionism can best be understood when you remember that Sharon and Peres have been close friends since before the establishment of the state. It is not personal though. It is all about policies and wars; policies and wars that they undertook and quite enjoyed. But Zionism is at a standstill: it came to face two huge stumbling boulders: the demographic reality of the population of the holy land (and the poverty of the Palestinian population—given its correlation with high fertility rates—was an asset for them, only in this regard, and the persistent resolve and unrelenting struggle of the Palestinian people. Zionism can not go on, and the project, as evidenced by what was not admitted in words in Sharon’s speech to his nation, has failed, and the failure will over time undermine the foundations of the state. Israel also failed in a major way by making sure to alienate its Arab surrounding: not that the populations around could have been won over, but the Chutzpah of Zionism was in conquering Palestine by force, and then going to war against Jordan, Egypt, and Syria, and then bombing on different occasions all of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and Tunisia, not to mention the Israeli assassinations worldwide, and the downing of a Libyan airliner in 1973, and the regular bombings of the refugee camps by air, land, and sea--how heroic was that for Zionism. I am somebody who always believed in a one secular state encompassing Jews, and Palestinians, without a religious label for the state, and without the one-group-supremacy that is embedded in the Jewish state of Israel--yes, I also oppose the creation of any Muslim state, or Buddhist states, but wound not object to the creation of a Potato state, with its own potato flag. I worry that eventually the outcome of the struggle will be bloody and certainly not pretty, and not in favor of Israel, and it is because Israelis only dealt with Arabs through blood—Arab blood, and iron. Israel determined the terms of the conflict since its inception, and its contours, and in that sense Palestinian political violence, even when it takes forms that I do not like—like suicide bombings—is a direct outcome of Zionist violence, which since the advent of Zionism has been massive, random, indiscriminate, and merciless. Worse, it is an arrogant violence that gives itself a self-righteous mode, and considers the violence of the other side “terrorist”, always “terrorist.” To be sure, Israel has Bush and Clinton on its side; that is helpful and useful, but up to a point. Israel has managed to alienate more than Arab public opinion: it has become a frustrating example for Muslim public opinion due to its contemptuous and racist treatment of Arabs/Muslims, and due to its vapid propaganda. Israel has left Gaza--a mere 1% of historic Palestine, and will leave more lands, over time. The state cannot subjugate the angry Palestinian population forever, and its massive WMDs eventually will be dismantled, just as its counterparts (in racist exclusiveness that is) in apartheid South Africa did. Perhaps there was a chance for Israel to reach a different albeit painful—for the Arabs—accommodation that only `Arafat at one point could have imposed. An accommodation that I personally reject and dismiss as unjust, along the lines of the minimum acceptable demands presented by `Arafat at Camp David—oh, please spare me Thomas Friedman's fulmination and continuously changing versions about what really happened at Camp David. `Arafat did not accept the deal that was not officially made to him, because he simply could not. And now the silly clique at Bush’s White House and in Israel think that the duet of `Abbas and Dahlan can achieve for them what `Arafat could not? Good luck in that. We shall see how long those two last in power, or even out of power. And then you watch the media coverage and wonder: will they ever get it in the US press? Will they ever cover a story of foreign affairs intelligently and independently, and away from clichés and from cute little phrases that they reproduce from Zakaria and Friedman. Hell. I prefer Henry Kissinger: at least he had an interesting mind, and wrote intelligently. Bring him back, I say. Which reminds me: I read that a Russian astronaut broke a record of time spent in outer space. I bet you that Thomas Friedman can beat that record. I strongly nominate him, and he can take Zakaria with him, and I hear that the ego of latter is worse than the former. What do you think? And then you read this in New York Times' editorial about the Gaza matter: "It cannot be easy to be escorted out of one's home by soldiers." Not if the land is not your own, and the water is stolen, as are the olive trees. And not if the house is built by the hands of the native population who own it. But I will tell the New York Times what is not easy: to be kicked out--NOT "ESCORTED"--of your house, while Israeli soldiers are shooting at your family members. That is how the Palestinians were NOT ESCORTED out of their homes by Zionist soldiers in 1948, and after. Sometimes, I get a strong urge to subject all those who write on the Middle East to an examination in Middle East history and geography. That would be fun to do. Fun for me, anyway. And those people who are being dragged out, I meant "escorted out" to be more accurate, of Gaza's illegal settlements are not even (illegal) residents of those homes, but "infiltrators" from Israel and probably from Juilliard too.