Uzi Arad: "We want to relieve ourselves of the burden of the Palestinian populations - not territories." -- Moon of Alabama Blog Post

Tweet

Link to original: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2009/03/uzi-arad-we-want-to-relieve-ourselves-of-the-burden-of-the-palestinian-populations-not-territories-.html

March 19, 2009

Yesterday Israel arrested ten Palestinian political leaders in the West Bank:

Among those detained were four Hamas lawmakers, a university professor and a former Hamas deputy prime minister.

They are taking hostage to press Hamas for the release of a prisoner of war, Gilad Shalit, Hamas is holding in Gaza. The weekend negotiations about Shalit's release failed. While Israel agreed to release some of the several thousand of Palestinians it holds without any judicial process in exchange for the release of Shalit, it insisted on deporting those into some foreign country. Hamas could of course not agree with that.

So now Israel increases the pressure by taking more non-militant civilians hostages and a further blockade of the 1.5 million people in Gaza.

Worse is to come. The incoming Netanjahu/Avigor Lieberman government is at the extreme right of the political spectrum. Netanjahu selected as national security adviser Uzi Arad, a former(?) Israeli spy who is currently not allowed to enter the United States for spying against it. Recently Netanjahu snubbed Hillary Clinton when he insisted on Arad's presence in a meeting with her.

Next to being a spy Arad is also a fascist. I am exaggerating? No. Via War in Context a video of an interview a settler friendly TV station did with him.

Uzi Arad on the two-state solution:

I don’t think that one has to go that far because at the end of the day, I don’t think the majority of Israelis want to see themselves responsible for the Palestinians. We do not want to control the Palestinian population. It’s unnecessary. What we do want is to care for our borders, for the Jewish settlements and for areas which are unpopulated and to have our security interests served well. But also to take under our responsibility these populations which, believe me, are not the most productive on earth, would become a burden. We want to relieve ourselves of the burden of the Palestinian populations - not territories. It is territory we want to preserve, but populations we want to rid ourselves of.

The full interview is below the fold. The above quote is at 8:30, but the rest like his perverse understanding of 'democracy' is certainly also of interest.

There was a time when some my ancestors wanted to rid themselves of the "burden" of a certain population they vilified based on race and religion. We know how that ended. Never again? Not if Uzi Arad gets his way.