Annapolis

The Annapolis meeting last Tuesday had its strengths and weaknesses. Its major strength was the restarting of peace negotiations, which hopefully will pick up right where talks in Taba, Egypt left off in January 2001, when the disastrous elections of Bush and Sharon put an end to them. At that point, negotiations were very close to a peace agreement, and Arafat begged for their continuation, but to no avail. Since then, the incrementalism of the "road map" plan has, of course, been fatally flawed. (See previous blog "The Road Map" 1/13/06.)

Before there can be any incentive to end anti-occupation resistance and violence, there must be an agreed upon final solution. Thus, the new Annapolis plan fortunately has final status talks running parallel with the so-called confidence-building measures of the road map, such as cessation of settlement expansion and violence. The second strength of the Annapolis plan is the insertion of American monitors to investigate and report on the progress or lack thereof of the confidence-building measures. Third, the inclusion of so many countries at Annapolis was a strength, but the exclusion of Iran and Hamas was a weakness.

Considering the fact that the US had encouraged Palestinian democratic elections, it was wrong to fail to recognize their fairly elected government, especially after Saudi Arabia had helped form a unity Fatah/Hamas government. It is even worse for the US to arm Fatah so as to foment civil war among Palestinians. Of course we know that fomenting Muslim vs Muslim wars is longstanding Zionist policy. (See previous blog "Muslim vs Muslim Wars" 6/4/07.)

Indeed, the major weakness of Annapolis was the fact that the Israel Lobby falsely publicized it as a gathering of the enemies of Iran and even falsely implied that current fear of Iran is the only reason Arab states are now interested in Israeli-Palestinian peace. This ignores the fact that the Arab League Peace Plan has been on the table since 2002 when it was endorsed by all Arab leaders, including Arafat and Saddam Hussein. Certainly the Fear-Of-Iran card will be used, hopefully unsuccessfully, in an attempt to bully the Arab states into downsizing their plan, whittling down the size of the Palestinian state to suit the greedy Israelis. Most important, it is chilling to think that the Annapolis meeting represented an attempt to build another "coalition of the willing," this time for an invasion of Iran.

Why the Zionist Neocons Hate the U.N.

After World War II, it was recognized that in order to prevent future wars of aggression, there was a need for an international organization, one more powerful than the League of Nations which the US had refused to join. Unfortunately, one of the United Nations' first creations, the state of Israel, turned into a Frankenstein monster occupying its neighbors. As shown on the map on page xiii in Jimmy Carter's "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid," the 1947 UN Partition Plan divided Palestine into two roughly equal parts, but since then Israel has occupied the whole area.

The Israel Lobby-dominated media gave much publicity to Saddam Hussein's non-compliance with UN resolutions but America knows little about Israel's non-compliance. Yet, it was pointed out in "The Iraq Study Group Report," that Israeli-Palestinian peace is key to solving our problems in the Middle East and that peace should be based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). The texts of these resolutions can be found in Carter's book: Appendix 1 (p.217) and Appendix 2 (p.219). Resolution 242 states that "Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war..," Israel should withdraw from occupied territories. Resolution 338 reaffirms this. Israel, of course, refuses to comply and instead builds illegal Jewish settlements on occupied Arab land.

There would be many more UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, but between 1972 and 2006 the US has vetoed 42 such resolutions. (See Mearsheimer and Walt "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" p. 40.) There have, however, been numerable UN General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel which have passed overwhelmingly, opposed mainly by the US and Israel. For instance, as noted in Norman Finkelstein's book "Beyond Chutzpah" (p.6) , a 1989 UN General Assembly resolution calling for a two-state solution and Israel's withdrawal to the 67 borders passed 151-3, opposed only by the US, Israel, and Dominica. Similarly in 2004, a General Assembly resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 passed 160-6 with only the US, Israel, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Uganda opposing. Thus, the UN highlights the fact that the world opposes Israel's never-ending occupations. This is why the Zionist neocons hate the UN and work to destroy it.

Debating Torture

Who would have ever thought that Americans would be debating the pro's and con's of torture. This shows how low we have already sunk as we morph into Israel. (See previous blog "Morphing into Israel" 1/25/06.) As Norman G. Finkelstein writes in his book "Beyond Chutzpah," "Human rights organizations have extensively documented Israel's systemic torture of Palestinian detainees." (p. 142) Here is another reason for the US to dissociate itself from Israel. (See previous blog "Time to Dissociate" 11/17/07.) The first reason is that our support of Israel's repugnant occupation has served to incite worldwide anti-American hatred. The second reason to dissociate is that like "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," America is thereby becoming a monster. The Israel Lobby is pushing us to wage a multi-generational World War 111 against so-called "Islamofascists" while ignoring the ultra-Zionist settlers, "Judeofascists," who brutalize the Palestinians on our dime and in our name. (See previous blog "What Americans Don't Know" 11/10/07.) As Ken Burns PBS documentary on World War 11 so well illustrates, war creates bestiality on both sides. Thus, in the process of going to war on behalf of Israel, we terrorize and kill civilians through air bombings, we suspend habeas corpus and torture prisoners, we allow private security firms to shoot civilians with impunity. All this serves to inspire more anti-US hatred, which is just what the Israel Lobby wants. These Israel-firsters are pleased that Israel is not alone in being the object of world hatred. These American traitors are disinterested in the fact that America is losing troops, treasure, and most important her soul merely to perpetuate the Israeli occupation.

Time to Dissociate

With the Israel/Palestine peace talks coming up in Annapolis, the Israelis as usual are dragging their feet, refusing to talk about substantive issues. Israel has no interest in peace. Meanwhile, the Israel Lobby is pushing for war with Iran just as they pushed for war with Iraq, to the benefit of Israel and to the detriment of the US. Frank Rich describes the propaganda to which the American public has been subjected ("The NY Times" 11/4/07) with the result that "A Zogby poll last month found that a majority of Americans (52 percent) now supports a pre-emptive strike on Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons." The Iranian president is perpetually misquoted and demonized.

The US says it has so-called evidence on Iran's nuclear programs ("The NY Times" 11/16/07) but keeps this secret, as was the case with our so-called evidence of Saddam's WMD. If we had shared our Iraq evidence with the UN inspectors, as they requested, it would have been shown to be false, and the Iraq invasion could have been prevented. Instead, the US Air Force recently commissioned a book, "Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War" byWilliam M. Arkin, which is a study of this war designed to advise about future US wars. Stephen Erlanger ("The NY Times" 10/14/07) writes that Arkin "said, 'We're looking into a future that involves pre-emption and wars against terrorism' -- wars like Israel's." Instead of fighting "wars like Israel's" we should dissociate ourselves from this peace-averse war-mongering country.

What Americans Don't Know

Americans are told that Muslims hate us because they hate our freedom and democracy, but this is not the case. They hate us because they believe we hate them. The truth is that their hatred is based not on ideology but on reality, the facts on the ground. Currently Gaza is a concentration camp, and the West Bank is even worse.

The book, "Lords of the Land," by two Israeli scholars, was reviewed in "The New York Times Book Review," October 14, 2007, by Adam LeBor. LeBor writes that the West Bank is "a lawless place, where the Jewish settler, rifle in one hand and prayer book in the other, is undisputed king. The settlers have their own roads, guarded by the Israeli army, water, electricity, supplies and ----occasional if well-publicized crackdowns aside---substantial impunity from the law. Much of the land on which their settlements stand, was, as Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar detail in this important book, simply stolen. The settlements are illegal, in contravention of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to occupied territories." LeBor notes that more than a third of the West Bank is "now off limits to Palestinians." The book also documents the minimal sentences handed down to settlers who kill Arabs. These sentences consist of a few months community service or a small amount of time in jail.

Meanwhile the settlers are protected by the Israeli army whose violent behaviour has been described in a recent study by Nufar Yishai-Karin, an Israeli psychologist, as reported by Conal Urquhart in "The Observer," October 21, 2007. Yishai-Karin interviewed soldiers who recounted incidents of brutality and murder. They described shooting innocent Palestinians and leaving them to die, brutally beating little children, breaking their bones for no reason. Urquhart writes that one soldier told of a woman throwing a clog at him, "I kicked her here[pointing to the crotch], I broke everything there. She can't have children. Next time she won't throw clogs at me. When one of them [a woman] spit at me, I gave her the rifle butt in the face. She doesn't have what to spit with anymore."

Of course, Americans know none of this. Jerome Slater's article "Muting the Alarm over the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" ("International Security" Vol. 32, no.2 (Fall 2007), pp84-120) documents the coverage in the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz" versus "The New York Times," and shows that the Israeli media is more balanced in its coverage than is the US media. Americans are kept in the dark.