God's Warriors

In August 2007, CNN presented a three-part documentary "God's Warriors," which featured extremist elements in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Israel Lobby immediately complained since apparently in their view Jewish extremists are not extreme. Indeed, the Israel Lobby sees nothing wrong with fanatic Jewish "settlers" building colonies in occupied Palestinian land even though this is against international law, UN resolutions, and the Geneva Convention.

UN Security Council Resolution 242 (November 22, 1967) reads "Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" and calls for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." (See Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" p. 217-218) Amazingly, the Israel Lobby claims that this UN resolution only calls for withdrawal from some, not all, of the occupied Palestinian territory! The Lobby's interpretation is ridiculous and clearly goes against the spirit of not only the UN resolution but of the UN Charter as well. The resolution does not read "Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war sometimes or to some extent"! It obviously means that such acquisition is never admissible.

Furthermore, the Fourth Geneva Convention "forbids an occupying power from transferring any parts of its civilian population into territories seized by military force."(See Carter p. 193) Therefore, Israel should return to the 1967 borders and evacuate the apartheid settlements, all of which are illegal under international law.

The religious zealots exposed in this excellent documentary claim that the Bible justifies their illegal and violent acts. Such people must be denounced no matter what religion they practice. In the media we hear loud calls for Muslims to speak out against Muslim radicals, but where are the calls for Jews to speak out against Jewish radicals? Incidentally, the next time I saw this series on TV, only the two parts on Christian and Muslim extremists were shown.

Gaza: An Israeli Prison Camp

A 1949 film "Act of Violence," shown recently on TV, revolves around an attempted escape of hungry desperate inmates from a Nazi prison camp. Currently on TV, we are witnessing a mass escape from Gaza, the Israeli prison camp, whose 1.5 million inmates are also hungry and desperate. Tens of thousands of incarcerated Gazans broke out into Egypt on Wednesday, January 23, through the previously blockaded crossing at Rafah. This included one elderly woman who exclaimed, "My heart is happy now! We Gazans are not living. We're buried alive." (BBC News 1/24/08) A senior Hamas official, Mahmoud Zahar, said, "We warned the Egyptians yesterday that people are hungry and dying." (The New York Times 1/24/08) The day before, Tuesday, January 23, four hundred Gazan women had protested at the Rafah crossing but had been met with clubs, tear gas, and bullets.

Due to the Israeli blockade of food supplies, medicines and fuel, Gazans have been living in cold, dark houses. Many medicines, such as antacids, are unavailable. A Gaza Health Ministry official, Dr. Moaiya Hassanain, said, "We have the choice to either cut electricity on babies in the maternity ward or heart surgery patients or stop operating rooms." The British group Oxfam called Israel's cutoff "unlawful."(The Boston Globe 1/21/08) As reported in The New York Times, 1/25/08, "The United Nations Human Rights Council demanded Thursday [1/24] that Israel lift its blockade of Gaza and condemned its 'grave' human rights violations."

According to Israelis, their collective punishment of 1.5 million people is in revenge for rockets fired from Gaza. Over the past six years, twelve people in Israel have been killed by Gazan rockets which are fired in retaliation for the 3534 Palestinian civilians, including 804 children, who have been killed by the Israelis since 2000. In the last week alone, the Israelis killed at least 10 Palestinian civilians. (The Boston Sunday Globe 1/20/08)

On CNN World News, 1/24/08, as the imprisoned Gazans were shown breaking out en masse, CNN correspondent Aneesh Raman explained, "It's not just about supplies. It's also about families for the first time in years being reunited." The sudden appearance of one Gazan man greatly surprised his cousin in Egypt, since they had not been in touch for three years. The cousin proclaimed, "We never know if they're alive there [in Gaza]. But when I saw my cousin I can't describe how happy I was!" The Gazan told CNN, "In Israel they have hospitals for dogs. In Gaza we don't even have working hospitals for humans. All we want is to be treated as good as the animals are treated in Israel. That is how bad it is in Gaza. We have nothing there."

Israel's Cash Cow

America, Israel's cash cow, has mad cow disease and is not long for this world. We provide Israel not only with billions in annual foreign aid; weapons, such as cluster bombs to kill Lebanese civilians and attack helicopters to kill Palestinian civilians; but also with enormous sums of private donations which fund illegal Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land.

CNN's 2007 documentary "God's Warriors" highlights a prestigious plush Manhattan fund-raiser which finances Israel's apartheid lawless colonization of the Palestinian West Bank, well described in Zertal and Eldar's book Lords of the Land. Because of their brutalization of the Palestinians and refusal to accept the fair and just Arab League Peace Plan, Israel is hated around the world. As a consequence of this, we must wage endless wars on Israel's behalf and set up military bases in Muslim lands where they are not wanted. Iraq became our enemy because Saddam Hussein provided financial aid to Palestinians whose homes were destroyed by Israeli/US missiles and bulldozers. Likewise, Iran is our enemy because of Iran's support of groups opposed to Israel's illegal occupations.

Osama bin Laden has many times explained that it is precisely because of this foreign policy that we have become hated worldwide. Our country is going bankrupt because some of our powerful citizens are loyal to another country which is morally bankrupt. The US dollar is plummeting, and we are deeply in debt to foreign countries which are buying up our companies and assets. We are heading into a recession or depression. The leading political candidates are too beholden to the Israel Lobby to suggest meaningful change. It is tragic to live at a time when the world's greatest democracy is dying.

The Lobby's Psychotic Thought Processes

A hallmark of sanity is the realization that peace, justice, truth, and diplomacy are superior to wars, injustice, lies, and oppression. Yet the Israel Lobby prefers to ignore the fact that Israel's unjust, illegal, and murderous occupation of Palestine must end for the good of Israel, Palestine, the US, and the world. Serious diplomacy is required, but there are many who oppose peace talks.

For instance, Jeff Jacoby, writing in yesterday's The Boston Globe ("Death of the Bush Doctrine"), objects to the Annapolis policy of final status peace negotiations which are currently ongoing. Jacoby wishes to return to the failed Road Map policy requiring that diplomacy wait for the peace which will never come. In this he is joined by Israeli legislator Avigdor Lieberman, who has withdrawn from Israeli Prime Minister Olmert's government because Lieberman also opposes the resumption of peace talks. Instead of believing in justice and diplomacy, Lieberman favors exchanges of populations, i.e. ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Israel, as reported in today's The New York Times. (This Lieberman is not to be confused with our own Senator Joe Lieberman, affectionately known as the Senator from Tel Aviv for his sponsorship of two infamous war-mongering resolutions: the 2002 Lieberman-Warner resolution authorizing war with Iraq and the 2006 Lieberman-Kyl resolution declaring part of Iran's military a terrorist group.)

The US Israel Lobby has traditionally set impossible pre-conditions for peace talks, especially a cessation of all violence. Yet, from time immemorial patriots have resisted occupation. This is well dramatized in the 1969 French film "Army of Shadows" in which French resistance fighters refuse to give in to their Nazi occupiers. Such is the insane status quo preferred by the Israel Lobby.

Bush's trip to the Middle East

President Bush appears to have two nefarious goals in his current Middle East trip, both of which are thankfully being thwarted. First, he is hoping to persuade Arab states to accept Israeli terms for Israeli/Palestinian peace, terms which are quite the opposite of the fair and just Arab League Peace Plan. The Israelis do not care to return to the 1967 borders, which would include the sharing of Jerusalem, and they do not care to allow even one Palestinian refugee to return home. The Arab League Peace Plan offers peace and recognition of Israel, including full normalization of diplomatic and trade relations, in exchange for an end to the occupation, i.e. a return to the 1967 borders, and justice for the Palestinian refugees. Israel and the Bush neocons only like the first part: they want full recognition of Israel with restoration of diplomatic ties right now without any justice for the Palestinians. The Arab states rightfully say no. Bush's second main goal is the creation of a war-mongering anti-Iranian alliance of neighboring Arab states, and the Arab states are correctly saying no to that too. As pointed out in a letter to the editor in today's The New York Times by Professor William O. Beeman, "The Truth About Iran," the Arab states have deep longstanding ethnic, cultural, and economic ties to their neighbor Iran and thus have a aversion to hostility. The Arab states favor diplomacy and reject the wars preferred by the Bush neocons and Israel. Clearly the Middle East is waking up to the Israel Lobby's goal of perpetual Muslim vs. Muslim wars, which succeed in fracturing Muslim societies while benefiting Israel and the military industrial complex. With that in mind, the fact that Arab states are buying up our economy, which is being bankrupted by the Iraq war, may not be a bad thing.

Missing the Point

Today's New York Times lead editorial, "Still Waiting to Seize the Moment," as usual misses the point. Our nation was attacked on 9/11 because of our foreign policy towards Muslims, especially our support of Israel's occupation of Palestine. President Bush's first peace initiative, the "Road Map," an incrementalist approach with negotiations only occurring at at the end, has been a failure. Having no precise definition of the borders of a proposed Palestinian state, there has been no incentive for those fighting the occupation to cease and desist, especially as Jewish settlements in the occupied territory keep increasing. President Bush now recognizes this and has called for immediate negotiations on the core issues: borders, refugees, and Jerusalem, without waiting for Road Map preconditional goals, such as disarming militants and ending settlement expansion, to be achieved. Ever since Israeli Prime Minister Sharon provoked the second intifada by means of his Temple Mount performance, Israel has refused negotiations on core issues. Tragically, Arafat kept pleading for a continuation of the Taba peace talks which came so close to an agreement. Now Bush declares that the occupation must end and that Palestinians have waited long enough for a state, which must be viable, contiguous, and not of the Swiss cheese variety offered to Arafat. Today's editorial argues that "Israelis and Palestinians won't be willing to think about making compromises until they see tangible improvements in their lives." This is the old failed Road Map mentality. The point is that only when a fair and just peace settlement, which ends the occupation, is agreed upon and voted upon by all parties, including those in Gaza, only then will violence end. At this point there will indeed be very tangible improvements in everyone's lives, including ours.