Occupation corrupts nations
No one should know this better than England
Published in The National, January 23rd, 2024.
I recently viewed a clip of the late Israeli General Matti Peled, speaking at a 1992 conference in San Francisco. A member of the IDF’s general staff during the 1967 Six Day War, Peled’s words are prescient and provide context for what is happening in Gaza.
He said, “Anyone who says ‘occupation corrupts’ was absolutely right and we [Israeli Jews] have been occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip for the past 25 years; this is corrupting us.”
American aid, he said, “is one of the most damaging ‘gifts’ that we get from the US… I always felt aid to Israel is a plague. I think we should pay for our arms out of our own money.”
US aid in 1992 was $1.8 billion a year and is now $3.8 billion (not including the $14.5 billion in November), and was, Peled believed, not only far beyond Israel’s needs but was hurting Israeli society. Israel used the money not just for arms but to establish more settlements in the Occupied Territories, a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Today there are over 700,000 Israelis in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in settlements the UN Security Council has declared illegal.
Peled understood that the Palestinians, deprived of their land and dignity, would resent and resist the Israeli occupation. He said, “What else did you expect? This [oppression of the Palestinians] doesn’t help the Jews. Jews cannot expect to live comfortable and pleasant lives [in the midst of so much Palestinian suffering].”
He believed the only chance for peace was to hand over negotiations to the United Nations, because without UN involvement, there was no solution to the conflict. But the US opposed this. And here we are, in a more dangerous world than would exist had the US heeded Peled’s warning.
Peled Is correct, occupation of the territory of others has to be constantly enforced. As a young man I served as a British soldier in Aden now part of the Yemen and I soon understood that the British Army needed to divide us from the people whose country we were occupying so we were told that the locals were "wogs" they were not people like us, they were different. If they and their children were hungry, well that was normal for wogs, it was not a matter that should concern us. When we gave them food from our supplies we were instructed not to continue doing this because the wogs were using the tin cans to make dum dum bullets to fire back at us. So we were to watch the children starve and do nothing to help. If that is not a process which corrupts young people's minds, then I do not know what would be. Fortunately for me, and for others with me, it had the opposite effect and made us question the military system we were involved in.