1000 x 90

LETTERS / Palestinians Can Accept Life in the World’s Largest Open-Air Prison or Fight. What Would You Do?

Dear Editor,

What if Native Americans were to re-claim rights to North Carolina, as arranged by other countries, and dump you into ghettos like has been done in Israel? You might ask since the Nazi government committed crimes against Jews, why weren’t Jews given part of Germany after WWII instead of Palestine?

Before 1948, Jews hadn’t controlled Palestine for nearly 2,000 years and Muslims had for almost 1,200 years. In 1916, to fund its war against Germany, Britain made the Balfour agreement/Declaration, promising Jews a “homeland” in Palestine. The British also promised the same land to Muslims, who lived there.

In 1948 Israel didn’t just occupy a “homeland” but declared itself a “state” provoking a war. Israel took more land than the UN offered. Jews entering Palestine before 1948 legitimately purchased seven percent of Israeli territory; the majority of Israel was taken by force during the 1948 war and since.

Few “consumers” know genuine Zionist/Israeli history or the Israeli/Palestinian situation to speak knowledgably about it. “Consumers” use labels; “chosen ones” and “promised land” in a weird belief system provided by our corporate “news”.

Palestinians have been stripped of civil liberties, robbed of their land and homes, limited in their movements, limited in trading and business, trapped in open air prisons. Palestinians in Gaza live in conditions like the Nazis imposed on Jews in their ghettos. Palestinians often lack clean water and food. Their homes are arbitrarily destroyed. They don’t have reliable access to medical care. There’s massive unemployment. They’re dehumanized in racist rants by their occupiers as sub-human criminals, and terrorists; Israel’s version of apartheid denies freedom, with separate, very unequal facilities/laws in countless aspects of daily life. America ignores this truth.

Palestinians can accept life in the world’s largest open-air prison or fight. What would you do? Resistance is legitimate for occupied peoples. No matter what the Israelis do to the Palestinians, the Israelis insist that their actions are justified, and no matter how the Palestinians react, the Israelis insist those actions are never justified. By objective standards the Israeli attitude is insane. America supports this many ways.

Bargaining for peace in Israel/Palestine is impossible because the Empire pretends to be impartial while simultaneously vetoing anything Israel dislikes in the UN. In several countries, including Canada, criticism of Israel is legally punishable as anti-Semitism. American states are making laws denying funding to any group that boycotts Israel because of its actions. Israel repeatedly demonstrates it wants peace only on its terms. “Peace” talks have been a repetitious farce, enabling continuous Israeli theft of Arab land without offering anything to the Palestinians.

American officials or politicians considered insufficiently pro-Israel have short careers. America’s Mideast policy is determined by the Israel lobby. Israel gets $3-5 billion American aid annually. Israel’s American puppets, neocons, engineered the Iraq war destroying Israel’s most capable Arab enemy.

Secretary of State Kerry had to apologize for suggesting Israel would become an apartheid state if a practical Palestinian state isn’t created. Israel is an apartheid state with laws formalizing non-Jews as lesser citizens. It’s too late for an equitable peace with Palestinians. Israel killed prospects for a viable Palestinian state with their expanding settlements. America’s political establishment is too cowardly and confined by AIPAC to put any pressure on Israel.

Israel is attacking people that have no army, navy, air force, no tanks, and no heavy artillery: Israel pretends that this indiscriminate slaughter is a war but only those self-deluded supporters of Israel are fooled. Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw ghetto.

Israel is assaulting the Gaza strip killing hundreds. Many are women and children. Israel’s justification for this slaughter: the murder of three Israelis which Israel blames on Hamas. Israel hasn’t produced any evidence connecting any Palestinian to the murders. Even if Hamas killed those teenagers, what kind of psychopath uses this to attack an entire populace? Year after year the Israelis take more Palestinian land, bulldoze more homes, build new settlements and systematically expel or jail the inhabitants.

Israel is more threatened by the peaceful, growing boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) against Israeli companies and institutions, than by the sporadic violence in its neighborhood. Israelis see the danger BDS presents to their illegal occupation. Netanyahu recently called advocates of BDS “classical anti-Semites in modern garb”. It’s not ‘anti Semitic’ to oppose those who plunder your home and murder your family; its resistance.

This peaceful BDS movement is the most effective threat to Israeli aggression. Palestinians have no chance of removing Israel by force and because Israel is a democracy of sorts, for Jews, the best way to pressure Israel for concessions to grant them a remnant state is through the BDS movement. Many Israeli politicians including Netanyahu have said they will never allow a Palestinian state.

Israeli leaders beat the “anti-Semite” drum whenever encountering opposition. What American calls someone “anti-Muslim” who favors stopping the aid sent to Pakistan? Suggest slowing our “gifts” to Israel and you’re called “anti-Semitic”, a powerful smear reinforced by Jewish history while Hitler’s slaughter of millions of “deviants” or twenty million Russians, is forgotten.

When the Presbyterians joined the BDS efforts, Israel’s response was: “The resolution of the Presbyterian Church is shameful. It removes its ability to be a constructive partner to promote peace in the Middle East”. This is one way Israel bullies attempts for responsible action. In the world outside of religion and corrupt politics anyone who speaks in such a disrespectful manner is rejected.

Historically Jews said we must always stand on the side of the oppressed when no one else will, and now, their state, Israel, is the oppressor. Israel tells its citizens that the Palestinians are enemies who “only understand force”, Genocide. How will the Zionists remove millions of Palestinians? The prestitutes are committed to ‘balance’ so criticism is met with a Zionist ranting about the unfair disapproval which Israel faces. Zionists steal a country, lock up the dispossessed in open-air prisons, slaughters them and then cries out as if they, themselves are the victims.

Craig Dudley