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Joachim Martillo
used to do business in Israel. Now he supports Divestment
In 1992-3, I was enthusiastic
that the ongoing negotiations between the Israeli government and
the Palestinian leadership would lead to peace. Because I was
raised in America, I had never even heard or read a challenge to
the Zionist narrative of the creation of the State of Israel.
Before my first visit to that country, I attended Israeli advocacy
sessions at my local synagogue and Jewish community center.
I truly believed that the creation of the State of Israel was the
final just conclusion of a long trail of tears that began with the
expulsion of Jews from Palestine in Roman times and continued
right through the Nazi Holocaust. If only Palestinians gave up
irrational anti-Semitism, they could make peace with Israel.
Shortly after the signing of the Oslo agreement, I became involved
in several European Union funded infrastructure improvement
projects in the Occupied Territories. The Israeli government used
the Oslo agreement as license to establish a system of
checkpoints. When I traveled from one Palestinian village to a
close neighbor and had to cross a checkpoint, I witnessed Israeli
soldiers beating on Palestinians for no reason at checkpoints. I
had to wonder if the Israeli government was serious about peace.
I was in Jerusalem when Muslim worshippers were massacred at Al-Ibrahimi
Mosque in Hebron, a Palestinian city in the West Bank. I realized
Prime Minister Rabin was lying about wanting peace when instead of
removing the fanatics settled near Hebron, he punished the Arabs
of Hebron with a curfew. After the massacre, the settlers resumed
spitting on Palestinians, throwing stones, breaking windows,
pushing down old people and numerous other petty and more serious
forms of abuse. Did the Israeli army in Hebron try to stop this
behavior? No, they helped. Several times I watched IDF soldiers
threaten rape and murder while they exposed themselves to 10-12
year old girls attending the local Islamic parochial schools.
Nothing that I was seeing and experiencing in Israel and the
Occupied Territories conformed to the depiction of Israel in our
media. As I began to understand written and spoken Hebrew, I
realized that Zionist culture was intensely racist. I attended the
bris (circumcision) of the son of an Israeli business associate.
After completing the operation, the Mohel (circumciser), made his
own blessing, "Barukh attah adonai, eloheinu, melekh haolam, asher
natan leam yisrael hayal hadash laharog ulehashmid et haaravim."
It means, "Blessed art thou Lord, our God, King of the Universe,
that has given to the people of Israel a new soldier to kill and
to destroy the Arabs."
Were these the people with whom America was so closely allied? How
could I have been so wrong about the State of Israel?
I researched the issue intensely. I learned that Zionists from
Europe colonized Palestine and stole it by means of force,
terrorism, aggression, murder and violence. Zionists claim they
are descended from Galileans and Judeans that lived in Palestine
during Biblical times. So what? Vienna was founded 2000 years ago
by Celts. Do the modern Irish have the right to expel the current
population of Vienna?
In 2001-2002, I ordered American-made Cisco computer equipment
(routers) for an EU-funded project to improve the Internet service
for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The Israeli
government held the devices up at customs, asserting they could be
used for terrorism. I complained to the American government to put
pressure on the Israeli government to release my equipment with no
luck. Then I changed my tactics. I shipped the Cisco routers back
to the US and specified inferior but more expensive Israeli
routers made by RAD, an Israeli military electronics firm heavily
subsidized by the Israeli government with US foreign aid dollars.
Suddenly all the problems in putting the routers in place
vanished. In one fell swoop, the Israeli government ripped off the
EU and the Palestinians while it helped RAD steal a business
contract from an American company. I take it as typical of the
rapacious nature of Israeli relations with the rest of the world.
In the end my efforts went for naught because by the end of 2002,
the Israeli army had destroyed practically all the Internet
communications equipment which I had installed for the Palestinian
infrastructure.
Now that I have worked in Israel and the Occupied Territories for
approximately ten years and have calculated the political damage
that the alliance with Zionism is inflicting on America as the
Zionist settlers abuse and oppress the native population, I feel
pragmatically and ethically compelled to stop doing business with
Israel for the sake of basic human decency.
More Diaries from Palestine
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