The following Op-Ed by Sand appeared on March 11, 2010 on the YNET (Yediot Ahronot - Hebrew) web newspaper (his article then had about 180 “talkbacks,” almost all of them viciously attacking Sand):

"When a Palestinian attempts to kill Israelis, whether they are civilians, armed settlers or soldiers, he is immediately declared a terrorist. Hamdi Quran and Majdi Rimawi, for instance, who were sent by The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to assassinate Israel’s Tourism Minister, Rachavam Ze’evi, were not given the death penalty."

Isracampus Translation:

Original (in Hebrew): http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3860956,00.html

Fighters for the Freedom of Palestine

Shlomo Zand
11.3.10

Many people did not like MK Ahmad Tibi’s comparison of Jewish Revisionist-Zionists to terrorists, giving rise to the question of the struggle for national freedom.

Karl Deutsch, an important researcher of nationalism, once wrote that a nation is a group of people united by a common error of origin and a collective hostility towards its neighbors. He might have added that a nation is also a collective that always has martyrs who are considered by their neighbors to be terrorists.

Knesset members Ahmad Tibi and Talab al-Sana were banished from the Knesset Assembly after disrupting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech commemorating the 12 Jews hanged on the gallows by the British mandate before the establishment of the State of Israel. Tibi, whose knowledge of history matches Bibi’s, was thrown out from the assembly for his remark: "They [the Jewish revisionists] shot at an Arab bus and killed a minister. Is killing a minister permitted? Are they heroes or terrorists?"

The MK was referring to Shlomo Ben Yosef, Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet- Zuri who were executed by the British and Egyptians. In April 1938 Ben Yosef participated in an attack on a civilian bus that was driving Arabs to Safed. He was declared a terrorist by the British and sentenced to death, despite the fact that he was unsuccessful in killing even one of the passengers. In 1944, the Lechi (Stern Gang) organization sent Hakim and Bet-Zuri to Cairo, where they killed Lord Moyne who was serving at the time as the British minister of state in the Middle East. They were both captured and sentenced to death in an Egyptian military court.

When a Palestinian attempts to kill Israelis, whether they are civilians, armed settlers or soldiers, he is immediately declared a terrorist. Hamdi Quran and Majdi Rimawi, for instance, who were sent by The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to assassinate Israel’s Tourism Minister, Rachavam Ze’evi, were not given the death penalty.

Israel does not give the death penalty, Israel assassinates. But the two people mentioned were legally sentenced as terrorists (and each received 2 life terms plus 100 years and 80 years). Shlomo Ben–Yosef attacked the Arab bus in response to the killing of Jews riding in a taxi through the same area. Quran and Rimawi assassinated Ze’evi because a few months prior to this, Israel had killed Abu Ali Mustafa, the political leader of the PFLP, in a “targeted killing” that took place in his office in Ramallah.

There is hardly a national-colonial conflict in modern times that was not accompanied by an armed struggle. At times the struggle was brief and relatively marginal to the national policies. At times it was long and continuous. In many cases it deteriorated into acts of terrorism that targeted and caused great harm to unarmed civilians. When the conflict of military power was very imbalanced and accompanied by massive settlement activity, terror increased and dictated the nature of the conflict. So it was in Kenya or Algiers in the 50’s and so it is in Israel-Palestine - the longest most drawn out conflict in modern times.

Many will not like this comparison and will be upset by it: but why is Shlomo Ben-Yosef a national freedom fighter, while Abu Ali Mustafa is nothing but a nationalist terrorist. As Netanyahu promised America, should a Palestinian State be founded tomorrow we will stroll down the streets of Hebron and Ramallah bearing the name of Mustafa. Palestinian school children will learn about him in school and in their heritage sites.

The question being begged is this: why is it not possible to learn about the struggle of others for national freedom even before the creation of the Palestinian state and thus to perhaps avoid bloodshed.

Prof. Shlomo Zand, General History Dept, Tel Aviv University