DIALOG.......................
THE ENDURABLE OCCUPATIONS*
By Si Frumkin
In July 2002, a poll was taken by the Zogby organization on Mexican attitudes towards the United States. The poll found that 58% of the Mexican population believe that the U.S. Southwestern states--Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, as well as Nevada and California--belong to Mexico and have been unlawfully taken and occupied by the United States.
Now to the other side of the globe. On August 13, the New York Times carried a long story about Kaliningrad. It is a Russian city that prior to 1945 was part of Germany and known as Koenigsberg. In 1945 it was annexed to Russia and renamed. The Germans living in that area were expelled to Germany, Russian settlers were brought in, German historical buildings that had survived British air raids were dynamited and just like that, Kaliningrad was part of Mother Russia! At the time, it bordered on Soviet Lithuania and communist Poland so that Kaliningrad was contiguous with the USSR, but since the fall of communism and the Independence of Lithuania it is a splinter of land on the Baltic Sea, separated from Russia by independent Lithuania, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine.
Thousands of miles east of Kaliningrad are the Kuril Islands, stretching like a broken necklace between Siberia and Japan. They were Japanese before 1945 when the Soviet Union annexed them. From time to time Japan politely hints that the islands should be returned but Russia doesn't pay much attention and they will probably stay Russian for a long time to come.
Here is my question. When was the last time you have heard of a Mexican suicide bomber blowing up a supermarket or a hotel in California? And are the Mexican schools teaching that Americans are monkeys and pigs, that they must be--and will be--destroyed by the righteous wrath of the Mexican people and that a true Mexican patriot must be willing to die fighting for the liberation of Houston or Santa Fe? You haven't? Why not?
And what about the Europeans whose hearts are bleeding for the occupation and displacement of the unfortunate Palestinians? Are there demonstrations in Berlin for the liberation of occupied Kaliningrad, its restoration as historic 1000-year old German Koenigsberg, and the expulsion of illegal Russian settlers? Are the parliamentarians in Belgium, France and Germany--surely, Germany most of all--criticizing the arrogance and the unilateral foreign policy of Russia and its
imperialism? And there were no incidents of German terrorists, descendants of displaced Koenigsbergers, killing Russians at random and then being celebrated as heroes throughout Germany. Why not?
And I am still looking for reports about the Japanese boycott of Russian companies and of companies that are doing business with Russia. Japan has not imposed economic sanctions on Russia, has not filed complaints with the U.N. Security Council, and has not attempted to occupy the islands by military force. Oh, there were Japanese terrorists--their Red Brigade gunmen shot up an airport about 20 years ago killing quite a few people--but strangely enough it wasn't the Moscow airport they attacked, it was the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv.
It is strange that the only people that are using terror--and are getting good press and widespread international understanding and sympathy for their cause--are people whose case is so much weaker than those of the American Southwest, Kaliningrad or the Kurils. Mexico, Germany or Japan owned and ruled the territories that were taken away. There has never been a Palestinian state or a territory ruled by the people who call themselves Palestinians. The borders of the West Bank
and Gaza that are presented as borders of the future Palestinian state are not historic borders at all--they are the cease fire lines established in 1948 after Israeli forces contained the invading Transjordanian Arab Legion. Numerically, the number of Arabs that left Israel in 1948 is insignificant when compared to the number of
refugees who left their countries in the wake of World War II and who have since accommodated themselves elsewhere. In fact, the number of displaced Arabs is roughly equal to the number of Jews who were expelled from Moslem countries at the same time and who have been absorbed by Israel.
Isn't this peculiar? Yes it is. Is there an explanation why the Palestinians are so unlike Mexicans, Germans, Japanese and all the rest? Of course. There are many explanations (mine is the absence of democracy in the Arab world) but more importantly there are few practical solutions, and until they are tried we will have to keep crying "unfair, unfair" to an indifferent audience.
* From the Los Angeles Jewish News (September 2002), p. 24.