Shamai Leibowitz and David Nir

22 February 2004

The Houston Chronicle

As Israeli citizens watching our country being charged with war crimes at The Hague, we must ask a disturbing question: Have our people learned the lessons of history?

As early as 1929, Albert Einstein wrote: "Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing in the 2,000 years of suffering, and deserve all that will come to us."

The birth of Israel followed closely the ashy traces of Hitler's war against humanity and against the Jews most of all. Did the new nation of Israel learn anything from this horrific Holocaust? Has Israel developed enough caution and awareness to resist abusing its overwhelming force against the weak and disadvantaged?

The creation of the Israeli state in 1948 was accomplished by a mass destruction of the Palestinian community. Four hundred and fifty Palestinian villages were demolished. Eighty-five percent of Palestinians were ousted from their ancestral homeland.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Arab states started the1948 war, Israel should have atoned for its grave sins toward the Palestinians. Unfortunately, instead of acting in the manner spelled out in Jewish prayers, saying "I have committed a sin -- what can I do to reconcile with you?", the Israeli state did the opposite. In 1967, it deprived the Palestinians of the remaining 22 percent of Palestine by occupying the West Bank and Gaza, and then instituted a colonial regime which has been in force ever since.

For decades, Israel has promised the international community that it is going to return those occupied lands to the Palestinians. Today, it is obvious that Israel was pulling the wool over everyone's eyes. Israel has continued the path of oppression and discrimination, building Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian lands and subjugating Palestinians to a regime of brute force and terror. Israel has built Jewish settlements on more than 50 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, leaving Palestinians less than 11 percent of historic Palestine in the form of small enclaves and bantustans.

When one observes the Jewish-only highways in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the blocked and ravaged Palestinian villages and towns, the faces of humiliated men, women and children whose basic dignity has been trampled on, one cannot but wonder how this could have been perpetrated by Jews.

Adding insult to injury, Israel is building a "separation barrier" in the West Bank, which has raised a furor and brought Israel to the defendant's bench in The Hague. The Israeli government is not telling the world what this wall is and will be doing to Palestinians: It will turn Palestinian lands to concentration camps, with checkpoints and roadblocks everywhere, civil rights totally abolished, economic resources shattered, lives managed forcibly at gunpoint.

When one stands in front of the gigantic 24-foot concrete wall that is now erected in the midst of Palestinian Jerusalem, dissecting families, businesses and essential services, interrupting the whole fabric of life, one cannot but conclude that the sole purpose of the wall is to humiliate and strangle. Will it not promote resistance and terror rather than security and peace?

The present Israeli government, though spreading false rhetoric about peaceful aspirations and antiterror measures, is actually doing the utmost to inflict destruction, humiliation and poverty, which are the true infrastructures of terror. It is the role of every fair-minded citizen who abhors terror to take actions that will bring Israel to its senses. Putting Israel on trial in The Hague is one such action; however, it is not enough.

We ask millions of Americans to apply pressure on the U.S. government to halt Israel from building this wall and from continuing its path to self-destruction. As Jews contemplating our history, we realize that the only path to safety is through mutual recognition, not domination. As the prophet Zechariah wrote:

"These are the things you shall do: Speak truth to one another, render in your gates judgments that are just and make for peace." (Zechariah 8:16). We desperately need the loving help of the citizens of the free world. It is time for those who truly support Israel to bring down this wall.

Leibowitz is an Israeli human rights lawyer. Nir is an Israeli physicist who is a member of Ta'ayush, an Arab-Jewish group that works to end racism and segregation.