June 4 is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China. Concerning this event, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the time Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and former Ambassador to the United Nations and an American businessman with the Boston Consulting Group, was reported by the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot in November, 1989, to have said the following:
“Israel should have taken advantage of the suppression of the demonstrations in China, while the world’s attention was focused on these events, and should have carried out mass deportations of Arabs from the territories. Unfortunately, this plan I proposed did not gain support, yet I still suggest to put it into action.”
Netanyahu was speaking to students of Bar-Ilan University of the failure of the Zionist government to exploit internationally favourable situations, to carry out “large-scale” expulsions at a time when “the damage [to Israel’s public relations] would have been relatively small…”
He added, “I still believe that there are opportunities to expel many people.”
Netanyahu later denied making the genocidal remarks but the Jerusalem Post presented a tape recording of his speech. He was also quoted in the Israeli journal Hotam (24 November) advocating “mass expulsions” of Palestinians (A spectacular terrorist attack that “killed hundreds.”). *
Netanyahu’s ideal “two-state solution,” which he spelt out in his own book A Place Among the Nations, will allow Israel all of historical Mandate Palestine, and will “give” the Palestinians “a substantially larger state” . . . called Jordan! This was openly stated 31 years ago.
On May 29, 1996 Benjamin Netanyahu, now leader of the Likkud, was “unexpectedly” elected as the ninth and current Prime Minister of Israel in the wake of a wave of so-called “suicide bombings” by the margin of 29,000 votes. His campaign organizer was Arthur Finkelstein, a prominent American political consultant for the Republican Party. The money was supplied from the USA, which he had visited every weekend to fund raise.
Netanyahu’s campaign slogan “Peace with Security” was “an unmistakable euphemism for retaining occupied Arab land…” The result of his policies was unmistakable. According to Graham Usher, Netanyahu’s policies and actions lead directly to “the worst violence between Israel and the Palestinians in nearly 30 years of occupation” – at least until the second intifada began in 2000. As prime minister, Netanyahu has presided over multiple Gazan massacres including the recent onslaught against Gaza that killed some 250 Palestinians, including 66 children and 39 women, portrayed as an act of “self-defence.” Netanyahu has also been accused of assassinating Hamas officials who tried to negotiate long-term truces with Israel.
Failure of the different efforts to “transfer” all the Palestinians owing to the Palestinian Resistance does not mean that such efforts have been abandoned with the current removal of Netanyahu from the reigns of state power.
Far from the U.S. or Canada holding Israel to account for its violations of international law, scores of UN resolutions, including the resolutions that established the state of Israel and its conditional admission to the UN, and the crimes committed by the state of Israel which amount to a programme of genocide against the Palestinian people, they are its biggest enablers.
It is the Palestinian people who have every right, as the massive worldwide protests are making clear, to resist such heinous crimes and the occupation itself. It is a right that they are exercising, not only for themselves and future generations, but for all humanity.
Note
*Nur Masalha, A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians 1949 – 96. London: Faber and Faber Ltd., p. 190, citing The Jerusalem Post, 19 November, 1989; Michael Palumbo, Imperial Israel: The History of the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd., 1990, pp. 302 – 303
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