In the Friday edition of a Moslem news-and-views website, iviews.com, Israeli leftist radical Uri Avnery compared the complaints of Israel about Palestinian terror to the hypocritical cries of the ?robbed Cossacks? ? those Russian horsemen who carried out pogroms and accused the victims of theft. ?[T]he Zionist penetration drove the Palestinians from their lands and turned most of them into refugees. In this historic struggle, the Palestinians lost: lands, villages, great parts of the country. This process is still going on daily,? writes Avnery, ??with increasing brutality for 34 years already.?
In particular, Avnery encourages his Moslem readers, the settlers are the modern-day Cossacks on ??stolen land and ?amusing themselves in swimming pools filled with stolen water??so they ??cannot complain about the rude awakening.? In any event, Avnery writes, the settlers ??do not send their children back to Israel, because the danger to the children is a trump card in their game. Their great hope is that the present confrontation will escalate to such monstrous proportions that it will be possible to complete in 2001 or 2002 the work that was begun in 1948 and continued in 1967. The Palestinians will be removed from the country, their villages eradicated and in their stead settlements will cover all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.?
However, Avnery continues, settlers in thought exist throughout the Israeli political and military organizations. ?Many generals and colonels are settlers in their minds, if not with their bodies. With the advent of Sharon, a symbiosis of the government, the senior officers and the settlers has come into being, and all of them stand and shout: ?Help!! They are killing us!? And with the same breath: ?Attack!!!??
In particular, Avnery encourages his Moslem readers, the settlers are the modern-day Cossacks on ??stolen land and ?amusing themselves in swimming pools filled with stolen water??so they ??cannot complain about the rude awakening.? In any event, Avnery writes, the settlers ??do not send their children back to Israel, because the danger to the children is a trump card in their game. Their great hope is that the present confrontation will escalate to such monstrous proportions that it will be possible to complete in 2001 or 2002 the work that was begun in 1948 and continued in 1967. The Palestinians will be removed from the country, their villages eradicated and in their stead settlements will cover all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.?
However, Avnery continues, settlers in thought exist throughout the Israeli political and military organizations. ?Many generals and colonels are settlers in their minds, if not with their bodies. With the advent of Sharon, a symbiosis of the government, the senior officers and the settlers has come into being, and all of them stand and shout: ?Help!! They are killing us!? And with the same breath: ?Attack!!!??