Posted on 02/26/2004 10:15:43 AM PST by swarthyguy
"Today, in The Hague, you will sit in judgment.
Today, I will bury my husband, my heart has been cut in two.
I am not a politician.
I am appealing to you as someone who has lost her husband, a woman whose heart has been silenced - and a woman whose tragedy the separation fence could have prevented. I was married to Yehuda for 21 years.
He was the love of my youth, since I was 15.
Yehuda's sister is the wife of Israel's Economic Attache in The Hague and works in the Embassy there.
For months, she, her husband and the Embassy staff have been trying to open the world's eyes.
For months, they have been fighting for the rights of the State of Israel.
As for me, what could I have asked for? Only for my small right, my husband's right, the right to see our children grow and prosper, go to school and serve in the army.
I will no longer receive this right.
But today, you can see to it that other Israeli families will merit this basic thing - to raise a happy family, to get up in the morning without bereavement, without gravestones, and without cemeteries. Today, as you begin your deliberations with open eyes, think, just for a moment, about the ordinary people behind this bloody conflict. Think for a moment about the golden heart of my husband, Yehuda, and about our young son, Avner.
Maybe you can explain to him - he's only ten years old - why in God's Name he doesn't have a father any more?
People will enter your hall today, who will speak, who will accuse. Mourners will enter my home and I will be unable to understand and I will certainly not be consoled.
This evening, you will go home, kiss your spouses, hug your children - and I will be alone.
True, the politics are far from me, but now as the pain is far too close to me, I think that I have acquired, with integrity and with tears, the right to appeal to you and say: If there had been a fence all along the length of the state, then maybe I, just like you, could kiss my husband this evening. Do not judge my country; do not restrain it from preventing additional people from becoming victims. Today, I am burying my husband; don't you bury justice. - Fanny Haim"
---- An open letter to the judges of the International Court of Justice from the wife of a Jerusalem sandwich-seller, who was among the innocent civilians killed in the explosion in a Jerusalem bus earlier this week by a suicide bomber, believed to be from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, close to Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). This was published in the Israeli daily "Yediot".
2. Since February 23, 2004, the International Court of Justice has been hearing a reference from the UN General Assembly questioning the legality of Israel's action in trying to protect its innocent civilians---men, women and children---from the suicide bombers infiltrating from the occupied territories now under the control of the PLO by constructing a protective barrier or fence around the areas under the control of the PLO.
3. The laws of all civilised countries of the world grant their citizens what is called the right of self or private defence--the right to protect and preserve their life from any attack by an assailant. The motive of the assailant for attacking is immaterial. The Indian law, which accords a similar right to all of us, even lays down that one can exercise the right of private defence not only to protect and preserve one's own life, but also the lives of others if they are perceived to be in danger.
4. The Indian law even lays down that this right of private defence even extends to causing the death of the assailant if the victim of the assault perceives that there is no other way of protecting his or her life or the life of a third person. The only category of persons to whom this right does not apply is criminals who kill a policeman trying to nab them. The criminal cannot say he apprehended a threat to his life and hence killed the policeman.
5. Under international law, what applies to individuals under domestic laws applies to States too, but not to non-State actors. A state has the right and the obligation to protect the lives and property of its citizens. A state, which does not and cannot do it, withers away.
6. No people have suffered more at the hands of suicide terrorists than those of Israel and no State has a greater right to take all protective measures than the State of Israel. Nearly 900 innocent civilians--men, women and children-- have been killed by suicide bombers in Israel since the beginning of this century. More than in any other country of the world. More than even in India.
7. They were not victims of what is called collateral damage. They were victims of directly-targeted attacks by the organisations sending the suicide bombers across one after the other. Men, women and children travelling by bus, eating in restaurants, taking a stroll in the streets or doing other daily chores of life. They were killed not because they were members of the security forces or intelligence agencies, but because they were Israelis, they were Jewish people. They were the easiest to kill.
8. We in India are rightly shocked and outraged every time innocent civilians fall fatal victims to terrorist strikes through the use of explosives and other means. The people of the US and the rest of the world were rightly shocked and outraged when Al Qaeda terrorists killed over 3500 innocent civilians on September 11, 2001.
9. Why the rest of the world is not equally shocked and outraged when dozens of innocent Israelis are killed every other week, if not every other day, by suicide bombers? Because they are Jews? Is a jewish life less precious than that of a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist or other religions?
10. We in India rightly accuse the USA of practicing double standards in its counter-terrorism policies. It does not condemn terrorist strikes against Indian nationals with the same anger, outrage and vehemence as it does terrorist strikes against its nationals. It reserves to itself the right to do whatever is necessary to protect the lives and properties of its citizens, but does not concede the same right to us in India.
11. Aren't we in India guilty of similar double standards when it comes to terrorist strikes against Israeli citizens and against Jewish people in other parts of the world? Most of the post-1967 modus operandi of terrorists--hijacking of aircraft and ships, hostage-taking, use of explosives to kill civilians, suicide bombers etc--- emanated from the PLO and other organisations associated with it. In an interview to the "New York Times" in the beginning of 1981, Gajender Singh, of the Dal Khalsa, called upon the Sikhs to emulate the example of the PLO. We were all wondering what he meant by that. We did not have to wait for long to find out what he meant. A series of hijackings, hostage-taking, killing of innocent civilians through explosive devices etc followed.
12. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) came into contact with the Palestinian terrorist organisations in the 1980s and became adept in the use of suicide terrorism in its efforts to intimidate the State and civil society. Sri Lanka has already paid a heavy price for it. We too in 1991 when the LTTE killed Rajiv Gandhi through a suicide bomber---a technique which it learnt from the Palestinian terrorist organisations and perfected.
13. And we hesitate to publicly recognise the role of the Palestinian terrorist organisations and those allied to it in creating newer and newer and deadlier and deadlier mutations of terrorism. When an organisation in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) or other parts of India deliberately, cold-bloodedly, without the least qualms of conscience kills dozens of innocent civilians through explosives and suicide bombers, we rightly condemn them as terrorist organisations and their acts as terrorism.
14. But when the PLO and those allied to it similarly cause the deaths of dozens of innocent Israelis through suicide bombers, we maintain a muted response and avoid calling them terrorist organizations and condemning their acts as brutal terrorism.
15. We are outraged when President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan projects the terrorists as freedom-fighters and describes their terrorism as acts of freedom struggle. How shocked and disgusted we were when he said in a TV interview from Agra in 2001 that deaths of innocent civilians were unfortunate, but could not be helped in a freedom struggle.
16. Is it not natural for the Israelis to feel a similar sense of shock and outrage when the international community, particularly the people of India, fail to condemn acts of brutal terrorism against them?
17. India has always supported the Palestinian cause and expressed its solidarity with the Palestinian people. I am myself not a great admirer of Israel's counter-terrorism methods, with their over-emphasis on the military approach and on an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth mindset.
18. But, neither our sympathy for the cause of an independent Palestine State nor our disapproval of some aspects of the counter-terrorism policy of the State of Israel should make us close our eyes and keep our mouth shut in the face of the serial killings of innocent Israeli citizens by the PLO and other organisations allied to it. Just because Yasser Arafat condemns them in public does not mean that he has had no hand in instigating and using them just as because Musharrasf condemns jihadi terrorists post-9/11 does not mean he has had no hand in creating and using them against us.
19. During the last 10 years, we have erected a barbed wire fencing along our borders with Pakistan in parts of Rajasthan, the whole of Punjab and now in the Jammu area. We rightly look upon it as a justified protective measure to save the lives and properties of our citizens from the terrorists infiltrated from Pakistan. We rightly reject Pakistani protests over the construction of the fence in the Jammu & Kashmir area.
20. How can we question Israel's right to construct a similar barrier or fence to protect its citizens? Of course, there is a qualitative difference between our fence and Israel's. Ours is in our territory and does not cause any economic hardships to the local people. Part of Israel's barrier is in areas claimed by the PLO as Palestinian territory and causes economic hardships to the Palestinian people.
21. The question to be asked is not whether Israel has the right to construct the protective barrier, which it definitely has, but whether it has taken all necessary action to mitigate the resulting economic hardships to the Palestinians of the area. It needs to be mentioned at the same time that there is no physical security measure which does not cause hardship or inconvenience to somebody or the other. If it does, it has to be understood in the larger cause of the struggle against terrorism.
22. There is an anomaly in our developing relations with Israel. The State-to-State relations did not start in 1992 when the two countries established full-fledged diplomatic relations. It started immediately after the birth of Israel when India, under Jawaharlal Nehru, was amongst the first countries of the world to recognise Israel and to allow it to establish a Consulate in Mumbai (Bombay) to cater to the needs of the Jewish community of South and West India wanting to emigrate to Israel.
23. The periodic track-II dialogue between the security experts of the two countries did not start in 1992. It started in 1968 at the instance of Indira Gandhi, the then Indian Prime Minister. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1992, the relations have developed in various fields---political, economic, military, security and intelligence co-operation etc.
24. There is a great fascination and admiration for Israel, its security forces, intelligence community, industries and technological capability in the present Indian political leadership and bureaucracy. A similar fascination and admiration is lacking in non-governmental circles, particularly in the academic and student communities and political parties to the left of the political spectrum. The Palestinians enjoy greater access to these circles and greater support from them. As a result, the growing State-to-State relations have not resulted in growing people-to-people contacts between India and Israel. There is hardly any interest in the Israeli people, their history, their culture, their agony at the hands of terrorists in large sections of the Indian elite. No university in India and no Indian think-tank studies in depth the State and people of Israel, the Jewish diaspora and the Hebrew culture.
25. As a result, when Israeli men, women and children die at the hands of suicide terrorists, there is very little stirring of conscience. We tend to see their deaths not through the same eyes with which we see the deaths of our own civilians at the hands of terrorists. We tend to see them instead through the eyes of the likes of Arafat and Musharraf --- as unfortunate, but unavoidable.
26. If such an attitude persists, the international community's fight against terrorism will remain ineffective.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. The writer had visited Israel from February 13 to 18, 2004, to attend a conference on India-Israel-US Strategic co-operation )
Not entirely true.
The Indian fence lies in Kashmir, which is no less disputed territory than the West Bank. To say that the Indian fence lies in "our territory" is disingenuous and dishonest.
I don't buy "the jihadi propaganda line" on anything.
Which is why I say that the Israeli claim to the West Bank is as legitimate as the Indian claim to Kashmir.
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