The state of Israel, as the hypostatization of Zionism, is a primary source of suffering, oppression and injustice , and at this moment, is the most significant source of injustice and consequent turmoil in the northern hemisphere. This is true because Zionism and the human rights of the indigenous people of Palestine are incompatible and contradictory. It is also true because American uncritical support for the aggressive and expansionist policies of Israel is the primary source of anti-American hatred in the Arab world, and much of the rest of the world, and is the central cause of the resulting terrorism directed against American interests. American support for the continued subjugation by Israel of the Palestinian people was focal in motivating the attack of the Pentagon and World Trade Center in 2001.
Indeed, Osama bin Laden stated, in a message to the American people in October of 2004, “As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me punish the unjust the same way [and] to destroy the towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.”
Bush has told us that they attacked us because they “envy our freedom”. That is the shallow, self serving interpretation of a shallow mind.
Mr bin Laden was referring to the Israeli 1982 invasion of Lebanon which resulted in the deaths of 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians and also included the massacre of approximately 2000 Palestinians at the refugee camps of Sabre and Chitilla in southern Beirut for which Israel and much of the rest of the world held Ariel Sharon responsible, though he was only punished nominally.
The turmoil we are now witnessing in Iraq, in the wake of the US invasion and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein government, is Israeli centered as it is the manifestation of the American government’s program of eliminating Israel’s enemies and making the region safe for Israel. This policy is driven by the pro-Israeli neo-cons within the administration and has taken place in an atmosphere of inherited prejudice induced by the constant demonization of Israel’s enemies promulgated by Zionists supporters.
Since the formation of Israel 57 years ago, Israel has killed 50,000 Palestinians, according to estimates by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. Occupying no more than 6% of the land area of Palestine at the beginning of 1948, Israel captured 80% of it by the year’s end in a wave of ethnic cleansing that saw the expulsion of 800,000 of the indigenous Arab’s. Israel now exercises control the entirety of Palestine as it also controls the population living within the territory captured in the “67 War who are obliged to face daily humiliation and degradation as Israel confiscates their property and subjects them multiple checkpoints that prevent or severely restrict their travel and commerce. Forty seven percent of the residents of the occupied territories are now living on less than $2 per day owing to Israel’s destruction of businesses, transportation routes, and agricultural capacity.
Israel has destroyed 12,000 Palestinian homes and over one million olive and citrus trees since its capture of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem in 1967. With the recent killing of two Palestinian boys who were protesting the construction of the Apartheid wall in the village of Beit Loqya west of Ramallah in the West Bank, Israel, since October of 2000, has killed 3,847 Palestinians. That comes to 71.24 Palestinians killed by Israel per month over the five year period, or 2.38 killed per day, a fact you never hear about on CNN or on the rest of the American media. The fact is that Israel can kill Palestinians with total impunity, and does so.
The government of Israel looks the other way when fanatical Jewish settlers especially in the Hebron area, harass and abuse the Palestinian farmers and villagers. These settlers, many of whom regularly celebrate the anniversaries of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the massacre by Beruch Goldstein of 29 praying Moslem worshipers at the Hebron Mosque in 1994, regularly set fire to the villager’s crops and fields, and spread rat poison on their fields poisoning their sheep and goats. They put dead animals in the wells and water conduits used by the Palestinians to deprive them of clean of water. Carrying automatic weapons, they regularly assault and intimidate farmers to try to keep them from working their fields, They throw rocks through their windows of homes of villagers and terrorize the families. This is all consistent with the program of Sharon and his Lukud government. They are fulfilling the formulation enunciated earlier by Moshe Dyan –” “We have no solution for the Palestinians. They can live like dogs or they can leave.”
Israel is actively taking over Palestinian property in East Jerusalem, increasingly making it more difficult for Palestinians to travel into and out of Jerusalem, as it expands East Jerusalem’s boundaries to connect with the Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Adumim which it is also expanding. This will create a corridor for Israel across the West Bank to the Dead Sea and effectively cut the West Bank in half making a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. In fact because of 150 strategically placed Jewish settlements and a Jewish settlement population of 450,000 and 300 miles of for-Jews-only-highways which cut up the West Bank into disjoint subsections, A Palestinian state, in anything other than name only, is already an impossibility.
Zionism, which has existed since that 1880’s, consists of two central tenets. First, that a Jewish state is to be established which excludes other religions and ethnicities, specifically Christians and Moslems, at least to every extent possible. And Secondly, that the indigenous Arab and Christian population of Palestine must be deprived of its land, homes and property, as well as extirpated, in order to clear the way for a Jewish state. That process of ethnic cleansing is ongoing with the inexorable expansion of Israel into the West Bank and the takeover of East Jerusalem.
Zionism is a primary source of evil in today’s world as it runs counter to all international norm of human rights and principles of human decency. Though Israel may well expand and incorporate all or almost all of the West Bank, and I see nothing to stop it, certainly not the Bush administration, Israel’s day are numbered, for the world will not forever tolerate a racist and racially exclusionary state that is founded on terrorism and ethnic cleansing and the source of so much brutality and cruelty exacted on the indigenous Palestinian population.