Dear Editor,
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.” Martin Luther King
Criticize Israel in any way, and you’re called an anti Semite intended to be equivalent to being a child molester. If I observe that the Mafia is Italian, am I ‘anti Italian’? If I say America committed a crime, am I ‘anti American’? Noticing that the Palestinians are suffering as much under Israel as the Jews did in European ghettos isn’t permitted. The victim of genocide is now the perpetrator but that observation is also strictly prohibited. Being a bully and a victim at the same time has become Israel’s trademark.
After years of never being accepted as first class citizens, anywhere, Jews had a right to find one spot where they could be. Why didn’t every new settler learn Arabic as Martin Buber recommended? Israelis should admit the injustice that they did invading the land where a million people already lived.
Orthodox Jews oppose Zionism and the Israeli state for religious reasons believing Jews won’t remain in Israel using violence against Palestinians and attacking other nations. Orthodox Jews oppose Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and land theft saying Israel’s militarism has transformed the Jewish spiritual character into a belligerent one.
Zionism’s core is a systemic privileging of Jews over non-Jews. It’s this very clear Israeli policy, like apartheid South African, which defines Israel as an apartheid state. Palestinian land is confiscated; housing is restricted and destroyed while thousands of homes are built for Jews, Palestinian freedom of travel is restricted, they’re jailed without trial, children are arrested in the middle of the night, and the list continues.
Discriminatory laws separate Palestinians from their history; the anti-Nakbah law prohibits remembering the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from 1947-1949. Segregation is practiced in much of Israel preventing Christian and Muslim Palestinians from living among the Jews.
The UN says “the crime of apartheid means inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group over any other race and systematically oppressing it”. Who can deny this reality in Israel today? Western leaders regularly call for an end to colonization and the destruction of Palestinian homes. Every week, new housing programs are advertised on Palestinian lands, homes are destroyed and Palestinians are killed.
Zionism makes three claims; Hebrews possessed ancient Palestine, nobody else lived there and modern descendants of European Khazars, who converted to Judaism, are the direct descendants of the Hebrews; based on these claims, modern European Jews have the right to take Palestine from the Palestinians. The first two claims aren’t true as proven by mountains of historical evidence. Even if you assume they’re valid, they don’t lead to the acceptance of the third proposition.
Zionist Israel plans escalated with the 1916 Balfour declaration, a promise made to Lord Rothschild to establish Israel in Palestine, for a loan enabling Britain to continue WW1. Zionists gangs invented modern terrorism in the thirties, massacring Palestinians, and were the first to blow up a building, the King David hotel in Jerusalem.
The parallels with what went on in Nazi Germany are obvious. Many pretended the oppression of the Jews wasn’t happening, except this time it’s an Israeli final solution for Palestinians.
Israelis are caging Palestinians in a system of open-air prisons in the name of “security”. The assumptions made in American propaganda supporting Israel’s aggression are never challenged in mainstream debate.
There’s a racist, colonial superiority common to former British colonies; America, Australia, Canada and Israel have a history of genocide committed against their indigenous People. All continue to treat those natives as third class citizens.
Israel says it’s defending their citizens but aren’t Palestinians defending themselves from genocide/invasion that’s dominating/destroying them? Israel controls their every move from cradle to the grave. Non-violent protest only works if your opponent has a conscience. Britain and their former colonies have none, expecting Palestinians to take whatever is served to them yet their self-defense is called extremist.
The Zionist Palestine project and Americas genocide/robbery of Indians through a combination of settler invasion, military assault, murder, and treaty deceptions are quite similar. “Settlers” steal land; natives defend themselves which is advertised as “savagery/terrorism” and is used to justify military attacks as acts of “self-defense”; treaty negotiations enlist some of the indigenous people into collaborating, to yield more land to the “settlers”, with the guarantee that the remaining land will be theirs “in perpetuity”. Perpetuity lasts for a limited time, if it’s interrupted at all.
Israel’s political leaders frequently say no settlers on the West Bank will be uprooted or settlements shut down while refusing preconditions from Palestinians in “negotiations”.
Israel’s supporters bleat that they’re held to a higher standard than other countries but Israel ignores all UN resolutions. The Israeli occupation/reduction of what remains of Palestine continues with “our government” protecting Israel at any cost.
Israel has made a religion of their holocaust, while creating another.
Genocide is the intentional destruction, all or part, of an identifiable group. Since the thirties Jews have been slaughtering Palestinians, including in the refugee camps of Sabra/Shatila/Jenin/Nablus. Operation Cast Lead killed 1,400 Palestinians including 300 children.
The repeated attacks against Palestinians are; expulsion, murder, brutal large scale attacks; an unbearable condition of life has been imposed on an entire population; homes destroyed, economy ruined, religious and cultural destruction, restricted freedom of movement, and controlled scarcity of food/water/medicine. It’s incredible that such atrocities continue for more than 6 decades with Americans enabling such inhumanity.
We’ve been indoctrinated to believe you shouldn’t question things, like Israel but “consumers” begin to see the truth. There’s an international boycott movement growing because of Israel’s final solution to their Palestinian problem. Nothing can be off limits when questioning injustice.
“The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” Huxley
Craig Dudley