[Marxism] Hamas letter in post

[Eric Johnson <ewjohnson72@xxxxxxxxx>]

What is interesting to me is how much of his argument is based on traditional 
national liberation ideology, we get such a skewed version of hamas from 
imperialist media:
   
  No Peace Without Hamas
By Mahmoud al-Zahar
Thursday, April 17, 2008; A23
Mahmoud al-Zahar, a surgeon, is a founder of Hamas. He is foreign minister in 
the government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, which was elected in January 
2006.

 

  GAZA -- President Jimmy Carter's sensible plan to visit the Hamas leadership 
this week brings honesty and pragmatism to the Middle East while underscoring 
the fact that American policy has reached its dead end. Secretary of State 
Condoleezza Rice acts as if a few alterations here and there would make the 
hideous straitjacket of apartheid fit better. While Rice persuades Israeli 
occupation forces to cut a few dozen meaningless roadblocks from among the more 
than 500 West Bank control points, these forces simultaneously choke off fuel 
supplies to Gaza; blockade its 1.5 million people; approve illegal housing 
projects on West Bank land; and attack Gaza City with F-16s, killing men, women 
and children. Sadly, this is "business as usual" for the Palestinians.
Last week's attack on the Nahal Oz fuel depot should not surprise critics in 
the West. Palestinians are fighting a total war waged on us by a nation that 
mobilizes against our people with every means at its disposal -- from its 
high-tech military to its economic stranglehold, from its falsified history to 
its judiciary that "legalizes" the infrastructure of apartheid. Resistance 
remains our only option. Sixty-five years ago, the courageous Jews of the 
Warsaw ghetto rose in defense of their people. We Gazans, living in the world's 
largest open-air prison, can do no less.
The U.S.-Israeli alliance has sought to negate the results of the January 2006 
elections, when the Palestinian people handed our party a mandate to rule. 
Hundreds of independent monitors, Carter among them, declared this the fairest 
election ever held in the Arab Middle East. Yet efforts to subvert our 
democratic experience include the American coup d'etat that created the new 
sectarian paradigm with Fatah and the continuing warfare against and enforced 
isolation of Gazans.
Now, finally, we have the welcome tonic of Carter saying what any independent, 
uncorrupted thinker should conclude: that no "peace plan," "road map" or 
"legacy" can succeed unless we are sitting at the negotiating table and without 
any preconditions.
Israel's escalation of violence since the staged Annapolis "peace conference" 
in November has been consistent with its policy of illegal, often deadly 
collective punishment -- in violation of international conventions. Israeli 
military strikes on Gaza have killed hundreds of Palestinians since then with 
unwavering White House approval; in 2007 alone the ratio of Palestinians to 
Israelis killed was 40 to 1, up from 4 to 1 during the period from 2000 to 2005.
Only three months ago I buried my son Hussam, who studied finance at college 
and wanted to be an accountant; he was killed by an Israeli airstrike. In 2003, 
I buried Khaled -- my first-born -- after an Israeli F-16 targeting me wounded 
my daughter and my wife and flattened the apartment building where we lived, 
injuring and killing many of our neighbors. Last year, my son-in-law was killed.
Hussam was only 21, but like most young men in Gaza he had grown up fast out of 
necessity. When I was his age, I wanted to be a surgeon; in the 1960s, we were 
already refugees, but there was no humiliating blockade then. But now, after 
decades of imprisonment, killing, statelessness and impoverishment, we ask: 
What peace can there be if there is no dignity first? And where does dignity 
come from if not from justice?
Our movement fights on because we cannot allow the foundational crime at the 
core of the Jewish state -- the violent expulsion from our lands and villages 
that made us refugees -- to slip out of world consciousness, forgotten or 
negotiated away. Judaism -- which gave so much to human culture in the 
contributions of its ancient lawgivers and modern proponents of tikkun olam -- 
has corrupted itself in the detour into Zionism, nationalism and apartheid.
A "peace process" with Palestinians cannot take even its first tiny step until 
Israel first withdraws to the borders of 1967; dismantles all settlements; 
removes all soldiers from Gaza and the West Bank; repudiates its illegal 
annexation of Jerusalem; releases all prisoners; and ends its blockade of our 
international borders, our coastline and our airspace permanently. This would 
provide the starting point for just negotiations and would lay the groundwork 
for the return of millions of refugees. Given what we have lost, it is the only 
basis by which we can start to be whole again.
I am eternally proud of my sons and miss them every day. I think of them as 
fathers everywhere, even in Israel, think of their sons -- as innocent boys, as 
curious students, as young men with limitless potential -- not as "gunmen" or 
"militants." But better that they were defenders of their people than parties 
to their ultimate dispossession; better that they were active in the 
Palestinian struggle for survival than passive witnesses to our subjugation.
History teaches us that everything is in flux. Our fight to redress the 
material crimes of 1948 is scarcely begun, and adversity has taught us 
patience. As for the Israeli state and its Spartan culture of permanent war, it 
is all too vulnerable to time, fatigue and demographics: In the end, it is 
always a question of our children and those who come after us.
Mahmoud al-Zahar, a surgeon, is a founder of Hamas. He is foreign minister in 
the government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, which was elected in January 
2006.


of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, which was elected in January 2006.
       
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