http://www.houstonreview.com/articles/polichinello/DC20010819.html
Palestinians Are Not Mexicans
And Israel Is Not America.
By Derek Copold (polichinello@hotmail.com)
The Houston Review
August 19, 2001
Simplistic analogies are a lousy way to do foreign policy. It seems a
truism to say this, but columnists who should know better still keep
doing it. One of the most egregious examples is an attempt to turn
Palestinians into Mexicans. It works like this: a columnist defending
Israel rhetorically asks something like, "What if Mexico or the
Mexicans did A, B, or C? We'd do D, right?"
For example, on June 4 Russell Smith, AKA "Mugger", wrote of the
Palestinians (http://www.nypress.com/14/23/news&columns/mugger.cfm) in
general, and Arafat in particular, "Put it this way: if Mexican
militants were lobbing shells across the border and sent suicide
bombers to discos in Los Angeles, the U.S. would immediately act."
Picking up on Smith's example, Jonah Goldberg fabricated a similar
scenario in his August 17 syndicated column,
(http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/jonah.html "A Mexican suicide
bomber walked into a pizza restaurant in a Santa Fe, N.M., mall this
morning, killing at least 15 people, mostly children. Up to a hundred
others were wounded; Militia in Tijuana, Mexico, fired rocket grenades
into downtown San Diego, killing 20, wounding 50 and, once again,
snarling morning traffic." The implication being that as a result we'd
smack the Mexicans into next week.
There's a whiff of the desperate emanating from Goldberg's link
between the two situations: "[America] took land from Mexicans --
America's claim to Texas and the Southwest is certainly far less
morally compelling than Israel's is to its land."
Only if one overlooks a few important facts. For one thing, the
Mexicans have long recognized the current borders in a number of
treaties, giving our ownership of the southwest international
standing. In fact, almost fifty years after the Mexican War, our
southern neighbors sold us more land with the Gadsen Purchase; they
even tried to get us to take Baja California off their hands as well.
That cannot be said of the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem. No one,
not even Israel's ally, the US, recognizes their right to retain the
land lying outside of their 1967 borders. The comparison fails at the
personal level also. The Mexicans who were trapped on our side of the
border after the 1845-48 war were made American citizens, whereas the
Palestinians in the territories remain stateless.
Goldberg ignores these realities, preferring instead to use history
like silly putty, something that can be molded to suit his taste:
"When the European Jews not already living in Palestine arrived there
after World War II, the area was largely empty. What is today called
Jordan was the historic home of many `Palestinians.' And, after all,
even the most militant Muslim must concede that the Bible places the
land as the historic home of the Jews."
The first assertion is either willfully deceptive or embarrassingly
ignorant, and the second one is irrelevant. In 1945, Palestine was
full of people, mostly Arabs, who lived in established cities and
tended numerous orchards. My wife's family is an example. They came
from Ramallah and had relatives scattered throughout the area. Was it
as crowded as it is now? No, but it was no more "largely empty" than,
say, California is today. As to the biblical claim, so what? It didn't
do the Serbs a lot of good when they argued that Kosovo was not only
within their recognized borders but was also their historic homeland.
If we don't respect that, why should we honor a 1900-year-old claim,
even if it is in the Good Book. Now, if Goldberg wants to argue that
what's done is done and that Israel, pre-1967 borders, is a reality
and that the suicide bombings are barbaric and obscene, fine; I agree.
But his dismissal of the Palestinians' right to make a claim as a
people, as his bracketing of the word "Palestinians" with quote marks
indicates he wants to do, is indefensible.
But going back to the main point: what if the Mexicans were launching
suicide attacks against Americans? Yes, we'd respond, but wouldn't we
also find out why these deranged Mexicans started killing civilians
along with themselves? To do this, we need to extend the comparison:
let's say the US seized Mexico and began importing settlers. And then,
to house these settlers, let's say the US expropriated the land from
the Mexicans, destroying crops, dispossessing families from homes
they've lived in for centuries, and herding them into miserable camps.
Then let's say that the American settlers began terrorizing the
Mexicans who hadn't yet lost their homes, as is happening in the West
Bank and Gaza. (Click http://www.mediamonitors.net/chrissmith1.html
for details.) Finally, let's say that, using these settlements as
"facts on the ground" to justify Mexico's continued occupation, the US
then began appropriating Mexico's natural resources, just as "[a]t
present, Israel uses about 80% of the water of the Territories,
leaving just 20% to their Palestinian inhabitants." (Click
http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h052601.html for source)
The Mexicans might first try peaceful protests, but it wouldn't be
easy if we treated them like the Israelis do Palestinian dissidents.
It's often overlooked, but crucial to note, that the current fighting
wasn't so much ignited by Ariel Sharon's storming the Temple Mount
with 1,000 troops as it was by Israeli soldiers shooting several
Palestinians dead when they protested his visit the next day. Things
have not improved. As the Independent's Robert Fisk noted of Israeli
brutality at a recent demonstration: "It was, as one of the foreign
protesters muttered, enough to turn a Palestinian into a
suicide-bomber."
Under these conditions, how could we not expect the Mexicans to
retaliate? Indeed, when the US moved into the southwest uninvited,
the Mexicans did just that, and so did the Indians, whom Goldberg also
trots in speciously. Yes, both groups lost, and they got a raw deal in
the end, but for now their conditions cannot compare to that of the
Palestinians. Neither the Mexicans nor the Indians are in a stateless
limbo, chafing under the arbitrary dictates of trigger-happy soldiers
and hiding from the frenzied fury of fanatical settlers. They vote,
buy property and get jobs, even those who shouldn't be here at all,
and thus the Mexicans don't behave like the Palestinians. They don't
have to.
Therefore, the question "What if the Mexicans acted like the
Palestinians?" has no meaning; it's baseless. We'd be better off
asking ourselves more pertinent questions, like "Why do apparently
intelligent people feel they must go to such lengths to concoct these
ridiculous scenarios in the first place?"
