Always be kinder than necessary,
for everyone you meet is fighting
some kind of battle.
—attributed to T.H. Thompson and John Watson
Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.—Native American proverb
There is also another type of "framing" at work, as Israel and its propagandists insist that there is no credible "partner for peace" on the Palestinian side. But even if this may have been true in the past, it is no longer true, as Ehud Barak explained during his interview with Edmund Sanders ...
Sanders: In your assessment, are Palestinians ready to reach an agreement?
Barak: It’s more complicated for them than in the past. But I think [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas seems be at least sincere. I can’t read his gut. [Prime Minister Salam] Fayyad is sincere. They are doing a good job in this bottom-up building of embryonic state institutions. There is more freedom, more normalcy, more security, and a much lower level of terror than in any previous years. [What the Palestinians have been able to accomplish recently under a heavy-handed Israeli military occupation is quite an achievement: something Barak recognizes but which many racist, intolerant Jews and Americans refuse to see, because to them all Palestinians are "terrorists." In reality, most Palestinians practice non-violence or engage in symbolic acts like rock-throwing, while Israel asserts its dominance using F-15's, F-16's, unmanned drones, Cobras, Apaches, Black Hawks, Pythons, Hellfire missiles, white phosphorous bombs, tanks, militarized bulldozers, etc. To better visualize the reality, think of the movies "District 9" and "Avatar."]
Sanders: Can Israel work with a PA [Palestinian Authority, a limited local government subservient to the Israeli military] that includes Hamas?
Barak: People here say, "Oh, that’s a catastrophe." I say that doesn’t make sense. We cannot say on the one hand that Abbas is not a real partner because any negotiations would be, at most, an agreement that you put on the shelf because he doesn’t control half his people, and then on the other side, when he tries to resume control [of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip], to say, "Now they are lost." It’s not lost. But we should say loud and clear, if and when they form a technocratic government [that] we expect the government, Fatah and mainly Hamas, to be ready to explicitly accept … recognition of Israel, acceptance of all previous agreements, and denouncing terror. [But even here there is "framing" of terrorism because large-scale Israeli government/military terrorism is routinely excused or ignored, while individual acts of Palestinian terrorism are invariably castigated by the Israeli and American media. While Ehud Barak is more open-minded than Netanyahu, he is not so open-minded that he will admit publicly that the Israeli government has abused and killed far more innocent women and children than Hamas. So he too is "framing" the argument, to a somewhat lesser degree, because he wants peace.]
Sanders: Are we closer or farther away from resolving the conflict today than when you negotiated at Camp David in 2000?
Barak: We’re closer. We found that [Yasser] Arafat was not focusing on solving 1967 and the occupation, but on 1947 and the very establishment of Israel. Some people on the right wing believe that’s the case right now. I don’t buy it. The other side has changed. Abu Mazen [Abbas] and Fayyad say loud and clear [that] if there is an agreement that meets their minimum demands, they are ready to sign an end of conflict and claims. That’s exactly what Arafat rejected. They are willing to consider more moderate ideas than Arafat. I think this leadership is more ripe. We won’t know until we try. You cannot just produce self-fulfilling prophecies, or say "We are not acting because we don’t think it will work."
I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.
—Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan once called the U.S.S.R. the "evil empire," and he meant it. But when the chance for a negotiated peace emerged, Reagan was willing to make concessions for peace, which were matched by the U.S.S.R., and before long the Berlin Wall fell without shots being fired. With so much at stake, how can Israel afford not to listen to Ehud Barak, Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, Einstein, Gandhi, Jimmy Carter, Mandela, and Tutu? If Israel negotiates a just peace, Palestinian organizations that practice terror will soon lose their ability to raise funds and enlist recruits, just as the Black Panthers did after the U.S. finally granted black Americans equal rights and justice. If Israel fails to negotiate a just peace, we can expect more events like 9-11 and more unwinnable wars that may well bankrupt the United States.
If you are a Christian, a pertinent question becomes: "Why do so many Christians act as if God is an intolerant bigot who favors Jews and Christians over Muslims?" How can a loving, compassionate, wise, just God be a racist? According to Jesus and the apostles, particularly Peter and Paul, all human beings are the children of God and no race is favored over any other race. But many Jews and evangelical Christians have "resurrected" the patently unjust idea that Jews are somehow favored by luck of birth. Is God a racist who favors Jewish babies over Palestinian babies? If God favors Jewish babies over Palestinian babies, does he also favor Jewish babies over American babies, since like Palestinians most Americans are Gentiles? Can any Christian imagine Jesus "giving" the homes of Palestinian babies to robber barons, so that the babies and their families become homeless and destitute? If we say that God "gave" land to one race at the expense of another, aren't we saying that God is horrendously unjust, since many innocent women and children will die of exposure, disease, stress, despair and starvation if their land and homes are stolen from them? And yet millions of Americans who would oppose racism anywhere else in the world insist on supporting Israel despite its terrible racial injustices. Thus the Christian religion is a major factor in the suffering and deaths of multitudes of innocents.
Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter ...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.
—Michael R. Burch
"Bibi" Netanyahu said "Israel wants peace, I want peace." But Israel's military is camped out in Occupied Palestine, where Israeli soldiers guard Jewish robber barons (euphemistically called "settlers") as they steal land from Palestinians on a daily basis. If I told my neighbors that I wanted "peace" while using armed men to steal their land, wouldn't they be fools to believe me? Where I live in Tennessee, we have a saying: "The proof is in the pudding." Racists often profess to believe in God and justice, but their actions belie their words. Native Americans once suffered very similar fates (consider the maps) as the U.S. military forced them onto arid, ever-shrinking reservations while white "Christian" robber barons stole all the best land. Palestinians know full well what happened to Native Americans and other indigenous victims of colonialism. They know Netanyahu is speaking with a forked tongue, just as Andrew Jackson did when he made my Cherokee ancestors walk the Trail of Tears. The question today is whether the U.S. and the rest of the world will call Bibi's Bluff. There seems to be little doubt that Israel will continue to acquire "free" land in Occupied Palestine, at the end of a gun barrel, until the world forces Israel to give up its land-grabbing and ethnic cleansing.
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men gang aft agley [go oft awry].—Robert Burns [written after the great Scottish poet accidentally destroyed a field mouse's nest]
Netanyahu also said that Palestinian leaders would have to choose between a reconciliation with Hamas, which Israel calls a terrorist organization, or peace with Israel. But the terrorism of Israel's ethnic cleansing and apartheid completely dwarfs and overshadows acts of individual terrorism by Palestinians. Why should the world consider terrorism only on one side of the conflict? According to the American Declaration of Independence, it is the right and duty of people who have been denied equal rights, justice and representative government to forcefully resist their overlords and oppressors. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington lived in mansions and had freedom to travel as they pleased, but they claimed the right to kill Englishmen as long as they were denied equal rights, justice and representative government. Palestinians do not live in mansions or have freedom to travel because Israel's government has herded millions of them into gigantic walled corrals as if they were animals rather than human beings. If Jefferson and Washington had the right to forcefully resist the British monarchy, why should Palestinians be condemned for resisting something almost infinitely worse?
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp; the man’s the gowd [gold] for a’ [all] that!—Robert Burns
When Abba Eban spoke of the "Auschwitz lines" of Israel, he was stressing the need for the world to understand that Jews would never risk another Auschwitz. That is completely understandable. But at the same time it is also completely understandable that more than a billion Muslims do not want their Palestinian brothers and sisters to live through a modern-day Auschwitz. And yet this is what is happening today. If we could peer inside those remaining green spots on the fourth map above, and into Palestinian refugee camps in nearby nations like Jordan and Lebanon, we would see millions of completely innocent women and children who have been denied freedom, equal rights and justice, just as the Jews of Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto were denied freedom, equal rights and justice by German Nazis. Whenever people are denied freedom, equal rights and justice, they become the defenseless prey of ruthless men. This leads to unconscionable suffering for the victims. We know this from history. Fair laws and courts are the basis of human civilization. When a nation's laws and courts are racist and thus patently unfair, racial violence invariably results. When Native Americans were left unprotected by racist laws and courts, the result was the Trail of Tears and a series of massacres on both sides of the conflict. When black Americans were left unprotected by racist laws and courts, they were enslaved and the result was the Civil War, which left over 600,000 Americans dead and millions more wounded, maimed, limbless and displaced. When Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and other people were left unprotected by the racist laws and courts of Germany, the result was the Holocaust, with millions of people dead. Very similar things also happened to Australian aborigines, black South Africans, and many other disenfranchised people over the course of human history. Should only Jews be protected from racial injustices, or should all human beings be protected from racial injustices?
Israeli "framing" insists that racism practiced against Jews is evil, but that racism practiced by Jews should be excused or ignored. Since the Palestinians are Semites, Israel has ironically become the most anti-Semitic nation on earth!
If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.
—Catherine the Great
And while it has become fashionable for high-ranking Israelis to quote Abba Eban about the "Auschwitz lines," they ought to consider other things he said:
"Israel’s birth is intrinsically and intimately linked with the idea of sharing territory and sovereignty [with Palestinians]."
"Men and nations behave wisely once all other alternatives have been exhausted."
"Time and again these governments have rejected proposals today ... and longed for them tomorrow."
Abba Eban hoped the time would come when Israel would be offered what the saner founders of Israel had always wanted: secure borders with peace on all sides and recognition by the Arab world. Now this offer is on the table, but will Israel be wise enough to accept it, when insisting on the "right" to steal Palestinian land and practice ethnic cleansing is estranging Israel from every other nation on earth? Even if the U.S. continues to side with Israel, will that be enough, now that the U.S. is claiming to only be an "advisor"? I believe Daniel Levy is correct: Barack Obama is telling Israel that the U.S. cannot save Israel if it continues down the dark path of racism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
Eban changed his first name to Abba, which means "father," because he considered himself to be the father of modern-day Israel due to his ability to persuade other nations to recognize Israel, primarily through the U.N. The state we now call Israel was created through a U.N. resolution in 1947 (the second map above) and achieved international legitimacy through the U.N., and yet Israel has never abided by the rulings of the U.N. that established fixed borders for the modern state of Israel. Why does Israel continue to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from land outside the internationally-recognized borders of Israel, stealing their land via armed robbery in clear violation of international law? Why does the U.S. preach equal rights, individual justice and self-determination to the rest of the world, only to veto one U.N. resolution after another that could have helped the Palestinians achieve freedom, equal rights, justice and democracy? Why does Israel choose to accept the rulings of the U.N. that are in its favor, while ignoring U.N. rulings that would allow Palestinians to have the state established by the same resolution that established Israel?
The answer is that both Israel and the U.S. have political systems that allow special interests to trump the desire of the majority of the citizens, who vastly prefer peace to violence and war. The average Israeli Jew and the average American have nothing to gain if robber barons acquire additional parcels of land in the West Bank. But special interests within Israel and the U.S. have "framed" the discussion so successfully that most Americans have no idea what is really happening. If you asked the average American if anywhere in the world robber barons should be able to demolish a poor family's house and steal their land, he would reply, "Of course not!" But if you asked him why there is so much violence in Israel/Palestine, he would probably mutter something about Palestinians being "terrorists" who "hate our values" and "want to take over the world."
How can Americans who blindly support Israel's racial injustices be so gullible? Is it a matter of ignorance, religion and wishful thinking? The philosopher George Santayana said that if we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. The maps above mirror what happened to Native Americans when American laws and courts failed to defend their rights. As their land was taken from them by force, coercion and outright robbery, there was one massacre after another. But Native Americans had only primitive weapons: bows, arrows, tomahawks, single-shot rifles, etc. What would have happened if they had possessed hugely destructive modern weapons? What would have happened if they had been surrounded by more than a billion sympathetic friends, who did not agree that the should be caused to suffer and die as if they had no human rights whatsoever?
If we want peace, these are questions we need to consider. Today oppressed people have access to a variety of lethal weapons. On 9-11 a handful of men turned the world upside down by turning commandeered planes into missiles. Contrary to popular American opinion, they didn't attack because they "hate our values" or "want to take over the world." They attacked because they were willing to sacrifice their lives to end the injustices of Israel and the U.S. in the Middle East. Understanding this, wouldn't it be much better for Israeli Jews, Palestinians, Americans and the world if Israel stopped stealing land from Palestinians, when the consequences so far have been 9-11 and two horrific wars, and the future consequence might be World War III?
President Obama has now openly supported the idea of returning to the 1967 borders as the path to a lasting peace. Nevertheless, he made it clear that the role of the U.S. in the present conflict is that of an advisor. The U.S.-Israeli relationship has become complicated, if not schizophrenic. In February of 2011, the U.S. vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank expansion. As has often been the case, there were 14 votes in favor of requiring Israel to act like a civilized nation and only one – that of the U.S. – to the contrary. This happened shortly after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had called the settlements "illegitimate" in an interview with ABC. If the settlements are illegitimate, why did the U.S. veto the resolution?
How can the U.S. claim to be the leader of the free world if it continues to fund and support ethnic cleansing?
Conn Hallinan, a contributing editor for Foreign Policy in Focus, suggests that the U.S. cannot afford to play a neutral role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying, "The USA gives Israel about $3 billion a year in aid, which goes to military stuff, and a lot of this money flees to [i.e., ends up going to] Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. If this subject comes up in September, the General Assembly of the U.N. will overwhelmingly endorse the existence of the Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders." [In other words, the entire world now recognizes the injustice of what has happened to the Palestinians, and if the U.S. does not want to relinquish its leading role in world affairs, it cannot stand in the way of freedom, equal rights and justice for Palestinians. This is all the more true because of the Arab Spring.] Hallinan continues, "That is not a subject that can be vetoed in the Security Council, because it is a matter for the General Assembly [where the U.S. does not have a veto]. That will isolate the USA and Israel – and essentially they will stand alone in the world. I think neither one of them wants that. So there is a possibility you can begin to leverage some of these in the direction of negotiations, but I do not have too much faith in Netanyahu as a Prime Minister."
I'm afraid Hallinan may be right about Netanyahu. (I sometimes call him Netan-YAHOO.) Bill Clinton has been quoted as saying that Netanyahu does not recognize the humanity of the Palestinians. This has also been true for many other high-ranking Israelis. For instance, Golda Meir was quoted twice as saying that land could not be returned to Palestinians because they did not "exist." She obviously didn't see the Palestinian race and culture as being equal, or even distantly equal, to the Jewish race and culture. It's as if Israel is being run by the Grand Wizards of the KKK. This of course complicates things, but please keep in mind that a similar mentality existed in the leadership of the Deep South only a few decades ago. When the Deep South was forced to abandon its Jim Crow laws and kangaroo courts, things soon took a turn for the better.
I believe President Obama has sent Netanyahu and Israel a clear signal that the U.S. will no longer oppose the will of the rest of the world. There is an offer on the table: Israel must accept the 1967 borders with land swaps, in return for Arab recognition of the state of Israel with security and viability for both sides. This is not what Israel wants, because to date Israel has been able to have its cake while gobbling up the Palestinian pie. But if the world holds firm and the U.S. sides with the rest of the world, it is possible that Israel will finally accept the fact that every nation must have fixed borders and not exceed them.
Phyllis Bennis, Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, points out that this is not the first time that a U.S. president has talked about the 1967 borders, as Israeli officials tried to make it seem after President Obama’s speech: "One year after the famous letter exchange between Bush and [Ariel] Sharon there was another letter, another statement from President Bush where he used the term ‘the 1949 Armistice Line’. That line is the 1967 border." She then added, "President Obama went further than that and said the Palestinian state will be the homeland of all the Palestinian people, implying that the right of return ... to homes inside what is now Israel will not apply. Any Palestinians returning, Palestinian refugees, will have to go to the new Palestinian state, which was not, of course, [originally] their home."
This is an important compromise. If Palestinian refugees were allowed to return to the state of Israel, they would outnumber Israeli Jews and Israel could no longer be a Jewish state and a democracy. But if the Palestinian refugees return to the new state of Palestine, Israel can remain both a Jewish state and a democracy, albeit one with rather shaky moral foundations.
An Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations, quoted Mr. Netanyahu as telling his aides: "I went in with certain concerns. I came out encouraged." What was he encouraged about? Perhaps about the issue of the right of return of Palestinians to Israel. "Everybody knows it's not going to happen," Mr. Netanyahu said. "And I think it's time to tell the Palestinians forthrightly, it's not going to happen."
At the beginning of this article, I mentioned the 1967 lines being the path to a just, lasting peace. But of course there is nothing just about stealing someone's land, house and property, then dumping him on a much poorer nation with far less land. So let me rephrase what I said: the 1967 lines represent the path to a lasting peace. The peace will only be just if Israel acts justly, which seems unlikely.
"Our ultimate goal has to be a secure Israel state, a Jewish state, living side by side in peace and security with a contiguous, functioning and effective Palestinian state," President Obama said. "Obviously there are some differences between us in the precise formulations and language, and that's going to happen between friends."
To "acquire" land from other people without paying for it is robbery. To acquire land from other people by using weapons and force is armed robbery. To steal land from large numbers of people of different races is ethnic cleansing. To steal land from farm families, thus depriving them of the ability to feed themselves, resulting in the deaths of completely innocent mothers and their children is murder, matricide and infanticide. To cause the deaths of large numbers of innocent people because they are of the "wrong" race or creed is genocide. To collectively punish women and children of the "wrong" race and creed by herding them into walled ghettos and concentration camps, where they are doomed to suffer and die without ever drawing a free breath, is a Holocaust. When these things were done to Jews by Germans during World War II, all the free world was horrified. American soldiers helped liberate the walled ghettos and concentration camps of the Nazis, weeping to see the suffering of the human beings they emancipated. Why then do so many Americans now observe what is happening to the Palestinians in stony silence, without tears? Are Palestinian mothers and their children somehow less important, less human, than Jewish mothers and children? Or have most Americans never been told the truth? If so, why not?
If you want to understand why Israel experiences so much racial violence today, just study Israel's laws and courts independently for a few minutes, using Google. A nation's laws and major court rulings (or lack of them) are matters of public record. The simple, easily verifiable truth is that Israel has Jim Crow laws and kangaroo courts similar to those of South Africa and the Deep South prior to civil rights reforms. For instance, a Jewish woman can marry whomever she pleases and live with her husband and children without government interference. Every child born to a Jewish mother is automatically qualified for full Israeli citizenship rights. But if a Palestinian women marries someone Israel's government disapproves of, she can be separated from her spouse and children. This is very similar to the white supremacist governments of southern states which allowed slaveowners to break up black families for the economic benefit of their "masters." As in the Deep South, Palestinians cannot buy most of the land of Israel, which has been reserved for Jewish people and institutions. Even on the ever-dwindling land of Occupied Palestine, outside the borders of Israel, Palestinians are prohibited from driving on "Jewish only" roads or living in "Jewish only" settlements. This is like the United States invading Mexico, seizing all the best land, then creating "Hispanic-free" roads and settlements. How would Americans feel if China invaded the United States, stationed Chinese troops on our land, then created "Chinese only" roads and settlements that were off-limits to our children? Obviously, we would be at war with China. Why then is it "wrong" for Palestinians to resist what is happening to their children on a daily basis? Are only Americans and Jews allowed to use force to resist terrible injustices?
And it important to understand that no Palestinian baby, whether born in Israel, Gaza, Occupied Palestine or a refugee camp in another nation, has the same rights as a Jewish baby. A baby born to a Jewish mother anywhere in the world always has the right to "return" to Israel and become a full citizen, even if her family left the Middle East thousands of years ago. But a baby born to a Palestinian mother outside the borders of Israel whose family owned clear deed to land in Palestine as recently as 1948 or 1967 cannot return to her native, ancestral land. Even if she was able to return to Israel proper, she would be subject to terribly racist, unjust laws that could prevent her from marrying the man of her choice and living with him and their children without draconian Israeli government interference. Only a racist could fail to be disgusted by the idea that one baby can be born with superior rights to another baby. Why don't Palestinian babies have exactly the same rights as Jewish babies?
Of course the main Israeli defense of this system of government-sanctioned racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide is that "terrorism" is the "real problem." But this is like me slapping my wife around on a daily basis, then complaining if the men in her family retaliate in order to defend her. Yes, terrorism is a terrible thing, but there is such a thing as self-defense and a man protecting his family, so we have to ask ourselves why acts of terrorism occur so frequently in Israel/Palestine today. We once had serious problems with acts of terrorism by militant black groups in the U.S. But what happened to the Black Panthers once the U.S. finally established much fairer laws and courts? Obviously, the Black Panthers lost their main reason for existence and their ability to raise funds and recruit foot soldiers. There was no reason for Black Panthers to die or go to jail once black Americans had achieved equal rights and the protections of fair laws and courts. Terrorism is not the disease, but a terrible symptom of the disease of government-sanctioned racial injustice.
This terrible disease, government-sanctioned racism, was the root cause of the Trail of Tears, American slavery, the Civil War, a century of racial unrest in the U.S. after the Civil War, the terrorist acts of the Black Panthers, the Nazi Holocaust, South African apartheid, and a whole Pandora's box of evils. It is also the root cause of 9-11, because the governments of Israel and the U.S. ignored the human rights of Palestinians for 53 years prior to 9-11. President Obama understands that peace with the Muslim world depends on Israel and the U.S. curing this terrible disease. But the American public does not want to hear the truth. American Christians prefer to read Bible verses that say God "gave" the land of Palestine to the ancient Hebrews, while ignoring the many verses that clearly say Moses, Joshua, Caleb and King David actually took the land via ethnic cleansing and genocide, the "slaying of everything that breathes." The Bible clearly says that Moses ordered the slaughter of defenseless mothers and male babies, with only the virgin girls being kept alive, obviously as sex slaves (Numbers 31). The Bible also clearly says that Joshua and Caleb slaughtered women, children and livestock. It also clearly says that David killed every woman when he "smote" the land and that he ordered the slaughter of the lame and blind when Jerusalem was taken from the Jebusites. Was God telling these men to slaughter women, children and the handicapped, or did they just assume that God was on their side when they got away with murder? Ancient people often claimed the gods were with them when they were victorious in battle, but who can believe that a loving, compassionate, wise, just God ordered the slaughter and enslavement of innocents? Sex slavery was so accepted at the time of Moses that he even allowed fathers to sell their own daughters as sex slaves, with the option to buy them back if they didn't "please" their new masters (Exodus 21). How can anyone possibly "believe" that such things were the edicts of a wise, just God?
And yet many American Christians persist in "believing" the Bible is "infallible" when a number of its passages are worse than anything in Hitler's Mein Kampf. So the Christian religion also lies at the root of 9-11. American Christians no longer "believe" in slavery, even though the Bible clearly condones it. Jesus, Paul and the apostles never called slavery an abomination or called for the practice to be abolished. As Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, pointed out in his defense of slavery, from beginning to end the Bible endorses slavery. But if American Christians no longer believe in slavery, why do they cling to the verses in the Bible that make God a bigot who prefers Jews to Palestinians and endorses ethnic cleansing and genocide?
But of course religion is a big, highly profitable business, and once a religion has taken a firm stand it chances losing converts and money if it changes course. So many Christian churches persist in teaching things that make absolutely no sense, and thus bring the world and the children sitting in their pews closer and closer to another world war. Meanwhile rich, powerful Jews with tremendous political influence in the U.S. will not allow American politicians to speak the truth without suffering the consequences. American politicians who support Israel are rewarded with Jewish votes and campaign contributions. Those who suggest Israel should stop practicing racism and apartheid are attacked ferociously, as has been the case with former president Jimmy Carter. So the American public is shielded from the truth that could free it from Middle Eastern wars by its two main "protectors": government and religion. Influential Jews cynically use Christian beliefs to further the aims of Israel, but in reality they are endangering Israel and Jews around the world, because they risk another epidemic of anti-Semitism if there is a plague in Gaza (where the living conditions of 2.5 million trapped Palestinians are far from conducive to good health). What will happen if the Muslim world sees large numbers of Palestinians suffering and dying while they remain the wards of a Jewish state that cares nothing about them? Obviously there will be more events like 9-11 and probably more wars. There may also be a violent backlash against Jews around the world, as other people increasingly see Jewish racism as the cause of global terrorism. Unless Israel changes its racist policies and practices or the U.S. "divorces" Israel, Americans are likely to suffer from the same backlash.
I was a staunch supporter of Israel for the first 46 years of my life ... until I saw the maps above and decided to do some independent research. Because I am an editor and publisher of Holocaust poetry, and because I grew up in an evangelical Christian family, I had always heard the Israeli side of the story. But I have Cherokee ancestors who walked the Trail of Tears, so I understand what can happen when people of one race with massive military superiority choose to ethnically cleanse the people of another race, in order to take their land and natural resources. If we compare the maps above to what happened to Native Americans, the parallel is obvious and striking.
Ironically, it was my friends among the Jewish Holocaust survivors, poets and translators published by The HyperTexts who first told me there was something very, very wrong with racial policies and practices of Israel. They didn't tell me intentionally. They told me by becoming defensive, evasive and hostile when I asked simple, basic questions about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. One Jewish Holocaust survivor insisted, "The Palestinians are not suffering!" A Jewish poet I considered a brother gave my email address to a professional propagandist. It struck me as very strange and very wrong that my fellow poet and brother-in-arms would "sic" a pit bull on me. So I began to research the "facts on the ground" and I found to my horror that most of what I had been told to believe about Israel and the Palestinians was either patently false or a gross distortion of the truth. To put it bluntly, much of what my Jewish friends and I had been opposing together, the Holocaust, was happening, and continues to happen, to the Palestinians at the hands of the government of Israel.
I am an editor and publisher of Holocaust poetry because I oppose racism and injustice, and so I must oppose both the Shoah ("Catastrophe") of the Jews and the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of the Palestinians. How can I oppose what the Nazis did to the Jews, and not oppose what Israel is doing to the Palestinians?
Before anyone cries "Foul!" and points out that millions of Jews died during the Shoah, as if we are engaged in some sort of macabre numbers game in which the side with the most fatalities "wins," please allow me make a few important points. Albert Einstein used "thought experiments" or logical "parables" to debunk the erroneous thinking of his day. So I will use similar "parables" to examine the logic of the pro-Israel propagandists who now deluge me emails on a daily basis. The propagandists have yet to answer any of my questions satisfactorily. Why? Because the basic issue is human rights and justice, and Israel has denied the Palestinians basic human rights and justice for over sixty years. There is no excuse for the inexcusable: therefore, pro-Israel propaganda "poofs" as soon as it is brought into the light and examined closely. Think about it. If someone denied your family human rights and justice, their "arguments" (i.e., excuses for the inexcusable) would also ring hollow. To understand the horror of what has happened to the Palestinians at the hands of Israel, just conduct a thought experiment of your own. Suppose your cousin three times removed committed a crime. Should everyone in your immediate family—including your mother, father, sisters, brothers, spouse, children and grandparents—be herded into walled corrals like animals and punished collectively? Should you be denied individual justice because someone distantly related to you may have committed a crime, and then with considerable provocation? This is the situation and plight of the Palestinians. The next time someone tries to "explain" how and why such things are "necessary," you must understand the goal of pro-Israel propagandists: they have to convince us that punishing innocent people collectively is somehow "reasonable." But of course it isn't. Either they are off their rockers, or we are, for believing them. It only took me a few hours of research and thinking, to understand that what I had been told to believe all my life was untrue, because there is no excuse for what Israel has done, and continues to do, to the Palestinians.
None.
Before I proceed, please allow me to say that I mourn the death of every human being who died within the walled ghettoes and death camps of the Nazis, while realizing how very insignificant my feelings are, in comparison to their suffering. For soldiers to die prematurely in battle is a terrible thing, but at least they were free and had a fighting chance. But for a child to be herded into a walled enclosure like a lamb to the slaughter, is a horror beyond belief or imagining. So in my opinion what happened to the Jews and other victims of the Nazi Holocaust is the greatest of all possible crimes. Now, for the same reason, I cringe when I see what Israel is doing to innocent Palestinian children. As Jimmy Carter said during his recent trip to Gaza, Palestinians are being treated more like animals than human beings. Crayons and coloring books have been banned from Gaza as "security risks." What sort of heartless, brutal regime denies crayons and coloring books to children who have lived through hell on earth? Americans know Nazis did such things to Jewish children, but how many Americans know that Israeli Jews now do such things to Palestinian children? Like many Americans, I once saw only the tip of the iceberg, but the more I have learned about Israel's racist, brutish injustices, the more I hate and despise what I see, and the angrier I get. I feel betrayed by the government of Israel. I feel betrayed by my own government because it has supported and funded this new Holocaust. I feel betrayed by my Jewish friends who elicited my sympathy for the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust, even as Israel inflicted a very similar Holocaust on the Palestinians. I do not regret my sympathy for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, but I do regret the demand of my Jewish friends that I sympathize only with Jews. Perhaps they can't understand how I feel, because in their minds there is an essential difference between a Jewish child and a Palestinian child, but to me there is no difference.
None.
Like many people around the world, I consider all racism a crime against peace and humanity, and I understand that government-sanctioned racism invariably leads to violence, and often to war. To me, a baby is a baby. Only racists slap labels on babies and insist that a baby of one race must be preferred to a baby of another race. And yet this is the basic premise of Israel, which declares itself to be Jewish state, rather than a state of all its citizens. It is past time for Americans to face the truth, and confront the horror of this new Holocaust. It is past time for Americans to demand that Israel stop stealing land and water from an increasingly destitute people: most of them women, children and the elderly, not "terrorists." It is past time for Americans to see the Palestinians as a people fighting to regain their freedom and preserve their honor, dignity and culture. And it is past time for Americans to understand that the possibility of a devastating plague or epidemic now looms over Gaza. If large numbers of innocent Gazans die as a result of Israeli and U.S. injustices, we risk more events like 9-11, which may in turn lead to World War III, the use of nuclear weapons, and the bankruptcy of our own children for all foreseeable generations, if they survive.
I don't know what weapons will be used in World War III, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
—Albert Einstein
I am not an anti-Semite. Most Jews are Semites, but so are most Palestinians. Therefore, it cannot be anti-Semitic to stand for the rights of Jews and Palestinians, equally. I am for all Jewish people of good conscience, and for all Palestinian people of good conscience. The people I strongly oppose are those who subvert justice so that innocents are deprived of their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Obviously, children cannot pursue happiness inside giant corrals with walls twice as high as the Berlin Wall, but this is what Israel has created. Now it is up to all people of good conscience, including Jews, to ask ourselves "How and why has this happened to innocent children?" and "What can we do?" If you will stick with me till the end, I will propose a "simple plan for peace in the Middle East." Simple does not mean easy, but simple means something we can easily understand, and agree to, and begin doing today, together. If at any time you begin to lose interest in my arguments, or run out of time, please skip to the bottom of this page and at least consider my plan. Even if you disagree with my reasoning and conclusions, you may appreciate a plan that can help establish peace through justice for Jews and Palestinians: now, today.
And please allow me to say that I do understand and sympathize with the dream of Zionism, although I am strongly opposed to its current implementation. I understand and sympathize with the dream of Zionism because as the years have passed, my family has scattered, and now I have a dream of finding a good-sized piece of land with room for several houses so that we can all live close to one another. There is nothing wrong with my dream, as long as I buy the land legally, reimburse the previous owners fairly (in their opinion as well as mine), and obey any prevailing zoning laws. But if I take the law into my own hands, my implementation of my dream may become a nightmare for my neighbors. Suppose the land I want is farmland and I find a way to steal it from a farmer and his family. Suppose that without his land the farmer can no longer provide for his family, and his family begins to starve and die. Am I not guilty of murder? My argument is not with the dream of Zionism, but with its current implementation. In 1948, the year of the Nakba, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, most of them farmers and their families, had their land stolen from them illegally, in violation of the basic precepts of justice, law and civilization. For them the implementation of Zionism became a nightmare of racism and injustice. Now, for over sixty years, these families and their descendents, who now number collectively in the millions, have suffered terribly, although there is land enough for both Jews and Palestinians (since most of the land stolen from the Palestinians in 1948 lies fallow to this day, inside the borders of Israel, because the majority of Israeli Jews prefer to live in urban areas). Now, as a result of this completely unnecessary and irrational continuing dispossession of the Palestinians, both the region and the world have become more and more destabilized. So the current implementation of Zionism remains a nightmare of violence and injustice, which now threatens the world with the possibility of World War III and a nuclear holocaust. This jeopardizes the wellbeing of American children, including American Jewish children, and all the children of the world.
Please keep these points in mind as we study the issues at hand together: I oppose racism and racial injustice; I am not an anti-Semite but a publisher of Holocaust poetry; and I do understand and sympathize with the dream of Zionism, although I strongly oppose its current implementation. I believe most pro-Israel propaganda is pure hogwash, and I will explain why, using verifiable facts, logic and reason. So please allow me to conduct my thought experiments, my "Parables of Zion," and then I will tell you my "simple plan for peace in the Middle East" . . .
A Brief History of the Conflict
The maps above clearly illustrate the main reason for the ongoing conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Before 1948 the Palestinians owned virtually all the land of present-day Israel/Palestine [map 1]. The U.N. did not "give" any of this land to the Jews. It is obvious that the U.N. has no right to "give" my land to you, or yours to me. The U.N. essentially drew "voting lines in the sand" in an attempt to create two independent states [map 2] in the region. The white area was not land "given" to Israeli Jews, but an area carefully "drawn" (notice the odd shape) to give the Jews a slight majority of the voting population. If the lines had been drawn any other way, there could not have been a democratic Jewish state because the Palestinians would have had the majority of the population in both the white and green areas. Clearly, the creation of a democratic Jewish state was dicey at best, and required borders to be drawn demographically based on race, rather than more naturally.
In the green areas, the Palestinians had an overwhelming majority of the population. But the white areas, if implemented, would have split their land into discontiguous sections, in order to allow the Jews a slight majority wherever possible. As a result, Palestinians living in places like Gaza and Jaffa would not have been able to visit family members just a few miles away without crossing into what was likely to become a separate nation and perhaps hostile territory. For these and other eminently valid reasons, the vast majority of Palestinians were opposed to this artificial partitioning of their ancestral land, and their opposition is entirely understandable, especially in light of what actually happened to them. Palestinians did not oppose the partitioning of their land because they were anti-Semites (most Palestinians are Semites themselves). Instead, they opposed the partitioning of Palestine for the same reason the vast majority of Americans would oppose the creation of a Chinese colony smack-dab in the middle of our land. How could we visit our relatives, schools, parks and churches? Should foreigners be able to take control of our land, without our consent, just because the U.N. "said so"? Of course Americans would oppose any such action on the part of the U.N., and this is what the Palestinians quite reasonably did.
Then in 1948, the year of the Nakba, the worst fears of the Palestinians came true, when great swaths of their land were stolen and around 700,000 to 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and ended up in refugee camps, in clear violation of international law and the U.N. mandate which had created the white and green areas in the second map. The property rights of all the citizens of the new democratic state of Israel should have been protected, according to the U.N. mandate, international law, justice, and human decency. But the leaders of the nascent state of Israel wanted a clear Jewish majority, so they came up with "Plan Dalet" (which has since been declassified and can now be read online, if you care to Google it). According to Jewish historian Ilan Pappé, the purpose of Plan Dalet was to ethnically cleanse the land of Palestinians. As the southern proverb goes, "the proof is in the pudding" and, as the last two maps above clearly illustrate, this ethnic cleansing has continued to this day, leaving the Palestinians with less and less of their ancestral land.
Such things do not happen by accident. Today millions of Palestinians live in refugee camps. Here's a "thought experiment" for you: how many farmers voluntarily give up their farmland and agree to live in refugee camps where they will be unable to provide for their families?
None.
Now, to facilitate the ongoing theft of Palestinian land and to prevent Palestinians from coming into contact with the Jewish settlers who continue to illegally and blatantly steal their land, Israel has created hundreds of miles of "security fences" which can be up to twice as high as the Berlin Wall. These walls are not designed for "security" but are clearly dividing, conquering, killing walls being used to slowly throttle the will to resist from the Palestinian people. Palestinian women in labor are dying in the shadows of these killing walls, along with their unborn babies, because the walls and Israeli military checkpoints now separate them from nearby hospitals. The Israeli media and Jewish humanitarian organizations freely admit that such things happen, and indeed routinely document them. These walls are clearly not "defensive" because they are built primarily on Palestinian territory. A wall I build on my own land may be a defensive wall, but a wall I build on your land is clearly an offensive wall, designed to claim your land as mine, without my paying for it. This is, in a nutshell, the problem, and the maps above and the gigantic walls now snaking through Palestinian territory are the only evidence needed to confirm the problem and verify that what is happening is not an "accident," but a carefully orchestrated process which requires billions of dollars (much of it provided by American taxpayers) and the full complicity of the the Israeli government, which has established hundreds of military checkpoints, roadblocks and other obstacles inside Occupied Palestine, not Israel, to keep Palestinians away from "Jewish only" roads and settlements on their own land.
This is like China building "Chinese only" roads inside the United States and stationing soldiers at checkpoints with orders to prevent Americans from "bothering" Chinese squatters. No nation on earth would stand for its citizens being treated so unjustly by abusive invading foreigners.
How can such things happen to Palestinians? Because for over sixty years now they have been denied freedom, equal rights and justice by the government of Israel, which has the fourth most powerful military on the planet, thanks to billions of dollars in financial aid and advanced weapons systems donated by the United States. In effect, our government has been funding and supporting a Holocaust of the Palestinian people, while pro-Israel propagandists persuade Americans to betray our ideal of equal rights for all human beings. In effect, Americans are paying through the nose so that Israeli Jews can steal land and water from innocents. How, pray tell, do the propagandists persuade us to support Israel? As we shall see, with smoke and mirrors . . .
Pro-Israel propagandists seem to regard the suffering of the Palestinians and the continual theft of their land as being of minor consequence, because large numbers of Jews died during the Shoah. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: How many innocent women and children should the world have allowed the Nazis to strip of their freedom, human rights and dignity, so that their land and property could be stolen for the "greater good" of the German people?
Answer: None.
Reflection: If I asked my Jewish friends how many Jewish girls should have been trusted to the "tender mercies" of the Nazis, they would all cry out instantly and correctly, "None!" Well then, that's exactly how many innocent Palestinian girls should be trusted to the "tender mercies" of Israel, as long as Israel continues to treat them so unjustly. Should I wait until millions of innocent Palestinians lie in mass graves, before I question the motivations, policies and actions of the government of Israel? No, I should not. The number that really matters is the number of living innocents who can yet be saved. The critical time is not the day they die, when it is already far too late, but the first day they are denied individual justice, which make it possible for them to be robbed of the staples of life: land, homes, medical care, education, and the ability to provide for themselves.
Conclusion: Anyone who focuses single-mindedly on the death counts of past atrocities has a blind spot large enough to blot out the sun. We need to concentrate on the number of living individuals we can save today, using the lessons of the past to avoid repeating the errors of the past. Yes, we should mourn and honor the dead, but we cannot do so at the expense of the living. A very real horror of the Shoah is that the world failed to save so many innocent Jews while they could have been saved, if only Hitler and his goons had been brought to justice when they first began to subvert the rights of people of the "wrong" race, the "wrong" creed, the "wrong" political affiliation, etc. A Holocaust does not begin with mass graves. It ends with mass graves. A Holocaust begins when individuals are denied justice because they are (take your pick) red, black, yellow, homosexual, "slow," Jewish, Palestinian, etc. Movie buffs should watch "Judgment at Nuremberg" to see how critical the denial of individual justice was to the burgeoning horror of the Holocaust. How could innocent people have had their land, farms, houses, businesses and property stolen, unless they were denied individual justice by German courts? Yes, multitudes of innocents died in the Holocaust: Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Russians, homosexuals, the handicapped, and other people deemed "inferior" by the Nazis. But if "only" a single Jewish girl had suffered and died unjustly, that would have still constituted a terrible injustice: an individual Holocaust. Today, millions of Palestinians suffer in Gaza, the West Bank and refugee camps around the Middle East, because of Israel's denial of equal rights and justice to individual Palestinians. A primary lesson of the Holocaust is that justice must be individual, not collective. There is no such thing as "collective justice," only collective punishment. If a father commits a crime, we cannot build a wall around his wife and children and deprive them of their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But this is what the Nazis did to the Jews, and this is what Israel has done, and continues to do, to the Palestinians (although in both cases the most common "crime" by far was merely to be born to the wrong race). Pro-Israel propaganda which uses the death toll of the Shoah to make the Nakba seem less onerous is nonsensical because the real problem is the denial of rights and justice to living individuals. A propagandist will ask you to ignore the happiness and wellbeing of a living child, by diverting your attention to someone who died and is beyond suffering. We must not be fooled, and must ask ourselves if living children are suffering unjustly and whether we can do anything to help them. The answer to both questions is emphatically "Yes!" So please don't let a propagandist persuade you that the living don't matter today, because more people died in a past atrocity. We can only honor and mourn the dead, but we can save the living. And it is obviously better to save children than to let them die, then mourn their passing when it's too late. In short, please do not listen to the madness and irrationality of pro-Israel propagandists. Instead, listen to your heart and brain. It is far better to help living children than to mourn them when they're dead!
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily seems to consider it anti-Semitic to question or criticize Israel. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: Is it somehow an act of racism to question or criticize black gangbangers, white members of the KKK, or the American government?
Answer: No, of course not.
Reflection: If I stereotype a group of people unfairly, because of their race, creed, sex, sexual preference, etc., I may well be accused of prejudice. But if I hold all competent human beings to the same standards, equally, I cannot be accused of prejudice. If I were to criticize Israel for having racist laws and courts, while defending or ignoring racist laws and courts in the United States, I could fairly be accused of prejudice, but like all people of good conscience, I oppose racism everywhere I see it.
Conclusion: Adults with sound minds can and must be held accountable for their actions. People with impaired minds should not be in charge of governments or militaries. Therefore, it is not anti-Semitism, or any form of racial bias or prejudice, to question or criticize the motives, policies and actions of Israel, as long as we judge Israel by the same standards we use to judge other nations. But pro-Israel propagandists continually demand that we judge Israel by a double standard; they demand that we excuse the inexcusable when Israel practices racism against Palestinian schoolchildren, while demanding that we oppose racism whenever Jewish professors are slighted. Therefore it is the propagandists who are biased and practice racism. Why should we prefer the rights of Jewish professors to the rights of Palestinian kindergartners? It makes no sense.
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily informs me that Israel is a democracy like the United States. Is this true?
Thought experiment: Is the United States a white Christian state or the state of all its citizens?
Answer: The United States is, at long last, the state of all its citizens: black, brown, red, yellow, white, "mixed," Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic, atheist, male, female, heterosexual, homosexual ... hallelujah! While we have not yet given all our citizens completely equal rights, particularly non-heterosexuals, we have been moving more and more in the right direction. This is unfortunately not the case with Israel, which remains a racist, apartheidist state.
Reflection: The United Sates is not a white Christian state. Israel is, by definition, a Jewish state and therefore a nation defined, founded and based on racism.
Conclusion: The basis of the United States is equal rights and justice for all human beings. The basis of the state of Israel is superior rights for Jews, with all non-Jews being second-class citizens. A Jewish baby born in Palestine has almost infinitely superior rights to a Palestinian baby born on her own native ground. Israel is not a democracy, but an oligarchy of Jews in which a Jewish majority of the population is maintained artificially by a series of racist and therefore illegal "laws." If the United States were to change its laws and decree that all Jewish babies are born with vastly superior in rights to all non-Jewish babies, then we would share the same racist, nondemocratic "values" as the state of Israel. Fortunately this is not the case. If it was, here in the U.S. non-Jews would soon be at war with Jews. If American Jews tried to do to other Americans what Israeli Jews are doing to Palestinians, we would fight them tooth and nail to preserve the freedoms and rights of our children. Therefore it is hypocritical for Americans to condemn Palestinians. We simply have more military firepower; otherwise there is no difference between Americans and Palestinians.
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily calls the Palestinians "terrorists." Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: Was Sitting Bull a "terrorist"? Was John Brown a "terrorist"? Was Nelson Mandela a "terrorist"?
Answer: No! No! No!
Reflection: Sitting Bull was not a "terrorist" but a freedom fighter. John Brown was not a "terrorist" but a defender of the human rights of slaves. Nelson Mandela was not a "terrorist" but a proponent of equal rights for black South Africans and white South Africans alike. And yet Mandela was branded a "terrorist" by the government of the United States and to this day incongruously remains on our terrorist watch list.
Conclusion: Racists who treat people of other races unjustly will always call them "terrorists" or "insurrectionists" or other similar names, but it's stupid to believe what racists say about their victims. Yes, Sitting Bull resorted to violence, but only because his people were living on the margins of existence and faced extinction because of the lies and broken treaties of white supremacists like Andrew Jackson (an American president who hated Indians with a passion). Yes, John Brown resorted to violence, but only because terrible systematic violence had been perpetrated on black slaves by white slaveowners. Yes, Nelson Mandela resorted to violence, but only because white apartheidists had denied black South Africans equal rights and justice after more than fifty years of primarily nonviolent resistance by the African National Congress. Yes, Israel calls Palestinians who resist its racist laws "terrorists," but this is simply a convenient label which is largely meaningless because the leaders of Israel themselves committed and commanded acts of terrorism. Menachem Begin, a prime minister of Israel, carried out acts of terrorism against the British military, including the King David Hotel bombing of 1946, which left 91 people dead and 46 injured. Begin was also instrumental in the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948, which left more than 250 Palestinians dead. Ariel Sharon, another Israeli prime minister, was implicated in the deaths of 66 civilians at Qibya in 1953 and was later deemed culpable in the Sabra and Shatila massacres of 1982, which resulted in the deaths of up to 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. How did men like Begin and Sharon become prime ministers of Israel, which has a sizeable Palestinian population? This is like a Grand Wizard of the KKK becoming president of the United States, or William Calley, the officer found primarily responsible for the My Lai massacre, being appointed president of Vietnam. It makes no sense to call Palestinians "terrorists" as long as Israel commits acts of terrorism on a far larger, more systematic scale, and continues to elect virulently racist leaders like Begin and Sharon.
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily suggests that it is somehow "reasonable" for Israel to inter and punish Palestinians collectively, even though collective internment and punishment of Jews during the Shoah was obviously wrong. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: If gangbangers in an American city commit acts of violence, should we build a ghetto with walls twice as high as the Berlin Wall, put armed guards at the gates, station snipers in observation towers with orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape, then herd multitudes of innocent men, women and children inside, to mill about in collective misery, rather than finding and prosecuting the individuals who committed the crimes?
Answer: No, of course not!
Reflection: Unfortunately, this is what Israel has done to Gaza. The population of Gaza, an enclave of around 1.5 million individuals, consists predominantly of children, women and the elderly. Of the men who constitute the minority, only a few might be considered "terrorists." Hamas has only a few thousand members. How can over a million babies, toddlers, children, mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers be punished collectively for the actions of a few men who are hard to find and prosecute?
Conclusion: What Israel has done to the Gazans is unconscionable, because innocents cannot be punished collectively for the actions of a few hard-to-find criminals. The United States must now confront this all-too-obvious reality, because our government has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis in its relentless pursuit of "justice." Is it in any way "just" to destroy entire nations, in order to bring small numbers of hard-to-find "terrorists" to "justice"? And is it just possible that many of the people we call "terrorists" have legitimate grievances? It is past time for the governments of Israel and the United States to ask themselves why their policies and actions arouse such ire in Muslim nations. This issue will be discussed in more detail below.
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily seems to regard the suffering of innocent Jews during the Shoah differently than the suffering of innocent Palestinians during the Nakba. Nazis benefitted economically from the land and property they stole from Jews. Now Israel benefits economically from the land and property it stole from, and continues to steal from, Palestinians. Does it make sense for Americans to prefer the economic interests of Jewish adults to those of Palestinian children?
Thought experiment: Is the government of Israel justified to place its economic interests above the freedom and happiness of Palestinian children?
Answer: No, of course not!
Reflection: If one American child was imprisoned unfairly and deprived of her life, liberty and happiness by some ogre who wanted to use her enslavement for his personal pleasure or economic benefit, we would move heaven and earth to find her and save her. We would take the ogre and lock him up for the protection of other children, then take the girl in our arms and console her. We would never be happy until she was free and safe, if she were ours. But shouldn't we consider every defenseless child to be ours?
Conclusion: Of course we should protect the first child, and every child, who becomes the victim of an ogre. Yes, the final death toll of the Holocaust was staggering. But the evil of a single innocent suffering unjustly is also staggering, if we consider her as an individual. Anyone who suggests that millions of people must die before we can oppose palpable evil has lost his moral compass. In the United States, every individual must be entitled to the same rights as every other individual. As long as this was not the case for women and minorities, the United States was far from a "democracy," and multitudes of innocents suffered unjustly. Because non-heterosexuals do not have the same rights as heterosexuals, the United States still cannot claim to treat all its citizens equally. But at least we have been moving in the right direction. However, this is not the case in Israel, where a baby born to a Jewish mother has vastly superior rights to any other baby. My wife isn't Jewish. If we had a child in present-day Israel, our child would be subjected to all sorts of racial and religious discrimination made incoherently "legal" by the racist citizenship, marriage and property "laws" of Israel. But as we will see, racist laws are clearly illegal, and it is not a crime to break an illegal law. Understanding this simple principle is the key to understanding why Israeli propaganda makes no sense. Until Israel establishes equal rights and justice for Jews and Palestinians alike, Israel cannot accuse Palestinians of being "criminals" or "terrorists" because it is not a crime to break an illegal law.
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily claims that the Palestinians left their homes "voluntarily" during the wars of 1948 and 1967, as if this somehow excuses the theft of their land, homes and property. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: If I leave my home voluntarily to avoid a flood, tornado, war or other "act of God" should someone else be able to claim "squatters' rights" to my land, house and other property?
Answer: No, of course not!
Reflection: A basic precept of civilization is the right of individuals to own property and not lose it unfairly. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, many people chose to flee their homes. What sort of nation would the United States be, if the first person who showed up while they were gone was able to claim their property as "free for the taking"? Should victims of disasters be turned into the defenseless prey of ruthless criminals?
Conclusion: The real question is not whether Palestinians left their homes voluntarily or otherwise, but why they were not allowed to return and reclaim their land, homes and property once the fighting was over. After the war of 1948, Israel bulldozed hundreds of Palestinian villages and refused to allow hundreds of thousands of farmers and their families to return and reclaim their rightful property. This is like telling black victims of Katrina, "Too bad. You left your homes temporarily and we decided to give them away to the first white supremacists who wanted to steal them." Civilized nations do not allow crooks to steal the property of other people because of their race or creed.
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily calls Palestinians "terrorists" for not obeying laws that would leave them with far less than equal rights. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: George Washington and Thomas Jefferson lived in mansions, and yet they chose to fight and kill Englishmen rather than obey the "law" of the land. Does this make them terrorists?
Answer: No, they were freedom fighters, not terrorists, since the "law" of the land was unjust and therefore illegal.
Reflection: Was it inevitable for the American Founding Fathers to go to war with England? No, because if England had granted the American colonists equal rights and representative government, most of the colonists would have chosen to live in peace rather than go to war, and anyone who defied the will of the majority could have been found guilty of breaking the legal law of the land. But as long as the law of the land was illegal (because it denied Americans equal rights and justice) the Founding Fathers were not criminals, but freedom fighters. Once they obtained equal rights and representative government, if they established illegal laws themselves, then the victims of those illegal laws would not not be criminals either, if their illegal "laws" were broken. And this is exactly what happened with slavery. Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. If a slave "broke the law" and escaped, was the slave a "criminal"? No, because it is not a crime to break an illegal law. The hypocrisy of a "democracy" which touted "equal rights" for one class of citizens while keeping other citizens in chains would plague the United States for the better part of two centuries.
Conclusion: Israel now faces the same dilemma faced by the United States prior to the Civil War. It is not a "crime" to break racist, illegal "laws." Therefore the Palestinians are freedom fighters, not "terrorists." They cannot be considered "guilty" unless they are first granted equal rights and justice. Only once they are full citizens of a truly democratic state of Israel/Palestine, or full citizens of an independent state of Palestine, can they be considered "criminals" if they break legal laws. As long as Israel denies Palestinians freedom, equal rights and justice, they are in the same position as American slaves or Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Any people fighting for their freedom and equal rights must be considered freedom fighters, as long as they are denied equal rights and justice.
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily calls the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising heroes, yet calls Palestinians who rise up "terrorists"? Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: The Nazis had "laws" the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto were supposed to obey. Were the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising "terrorists," since they broke these laws and killed Nazis?
Answer: No, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising were freedom fighters because is not a "crime" to break an illegal "law."
Reflection: Pro-Israel propaganda is full of contradictions because there is a continual double standard. Jews who fought Nazis are considered heroes, but Palestinians who fight Israelis are called "terrorists." The appeal constantly made to Americans is that Israel avoids harming civilians, while Palestinian "terrorists" target civilians. Of course Americans shudder to see civilians, particularly women and children, being mutilated and killed. But the simple truth is that Israel engages in daily, systematic, large-scale terrorism against Palestinians. Israel has vastly superior firepower to the Palestinians and uses it with impunity. If Israel treated American women and children the way it treats Palestinian women and children, the United States would rain down missiles and bombs on Israel until Israel treated our women and children like human beings.
Conclusion: Americans are practicing hypocrisy and racism, perhaps because we fail to see how we have failed to embrace equal rights abroad the way we have (increasingly although of course not perfectly) at home. We hypocritically reserve the right to protect Americans from any unjust harm, while denying Palestinians the same right. But according to our own Declaration of Independence, until Palestinians are granted equal rights, justice and representative government, they must be considered freedom fighters, not "terrorists." Yes, it is a terrible thing for Jewish civilians to be maimed and killed. But far more Palestinian civilians are being maimed and killed, and all Israeli Jews are free, while no Palestinians are truly free. As I pointed out before, it is a terrible thing for a free person to die prematurely, but at least a free person has a fighting chance and dies free. But millions of innocent Palestinian women, babies, toddlers, children, grandmothers and grandfathers are not free, and the suffering, despair and humiliation they endure on a daily basis cannot be ignored, or excused. If Israeli Jews die, at least they die free; Palestinians do not have that option. And it is clearly Israel's denial of freedom, equal rights, justice and representative government to Palestinians which leads directly to most acts of Palestinian violence. Israeli Jews are in the same position as the Nazis who ruled the Warsaw Ghetto with iron fists and machineguns. When one human being denies another human being his freedom and self-evident rights, he grants his victim the right to rise up and oppose him by any means necessary. There was nothing the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto could have done to the Nazis that the world would not have sanctioned, even lobbing bombs into German villages, because of the large-scale, systematic injustices and violence the Nazis perpetrated on the Jews. The Allies firebombed Dresden and the United States used atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so how can we deny the right of Palestinians to counter the injustices they suffer with force? And how many civilians has the United States left homeless, maimed and dead, in retaliation for 9-11? If we want to put an end to the violence we see in the Middle East today, we must stop being hypocrites and face the facts. There is only one way to achieve peace without large-scale violence: that is to establish equal rights and justice for all human beings on all sides of the conflict. Until Israel and the United States learn this lesson, our governments are like two bulls yoked together, hauling a wagonload of children toward an inferno. It is the responsibility of adults to lead children away from danger, not into the bowels of hell. It is our denial of freedom, equal rights, justice and representative government to Palestinians that makes us wrong, and them right. If we want peace, we cannot do to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews. We cannot herd Palestinians into walled ghettos and concentration camps and order them to obey the "laws" of their oppressors. If we do, they have every right to fight tooth and nail to the death, or until we admit defeat or mend our ways. Do only Americans and Jews have the right to say, "Give me liberty or give me death"? No. But there is a much better way: we can do what the British monarchy should have done for American colonists, and what American colonists should have done for Native Americans and African Americans. We can stop denying other people their self-evident rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We can stop claiming rights for ourselves that we deny to others. We can and must learn from the mistakes of the past, or we are doomed to never-ending cycles of violence, and our children will suffer the consequences.
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily claims that Israel's treatment (i.e., mistreatment) of Palestinians should be ignored because Arab nations have not always treated Palestinians well. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: If another man beats his wife, should I beat my wife even more cruelly? If my son is bullied at school, should I tell him to bully some other student even more brutally?
Answer: No, of course not!
Reflection: I'm surprised that professional Israeli propagandists are so abysmally bad at logic. No one has treated the Palestinians worse than Israel, but it is immaterial what other nations have done or not done to the Palestinians in the past. The question is what Israel is doing to them today, on a daily basis. If Cuba tortures its dissidents, should the United States torture its dissidents? No, of course not. The United States is solely and entirely responsible for how it treats all human beings under it aegis. The Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are under the military jurisdiction of Israel. Israel issues them identity cards and controls virtually every aspect of their lives. A man with a Jewish identity card is treated like a king in the West Bank, where he is an alien, while a Palestinian who is a legal resident is treated like a suspect, even if he has never been convicted of a crime. Israel has created "Jew only" roads and "Jew only" settlements in Palestine. How would Americans feel if rich Chinamen created "Chinese only roads" on American soil, and let anyone with a Chinese identity card go to Disneyworld, while building towering walls around American children and keeping them from reaching nearby hospitals when they became ill?
Conclusion: Who wrote the racist, illegal laws of Israel? Israel. Who determines how Israel treats the human beings under its aegis? Israel. Overtly racist treatment of men on their native soil, much less women and children, is imperialistic and inexcusable. And yet the government of the United States pours billions of dollars of aid and advanced weapons into Israel. Why?
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily often informs me that the rights of Jewish professors have been impinged upon. But no mention is ever made of the Palestinian children who are kicked, cursed and spat upon by Jewish settlers and the Israeli military as they walk to school. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: Who is better able to determine his circumstances: a well-educated, well-paid Jewish professor who lives as a free man and can hire teams of lawyers to defend his rights, or a Palestinian schoolgirl surrounded by Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers armed with submachine guns, who curse and spit on her?
Reflection: Of all the injustices and hypocrisies I have enumerated, this one galls me the most, and forces me to question the sanity of the propagandists who now deluge me with racist emails crying for constant sympathy for Jews, while ignoring the humanity of Palestinians. Yes, the rights of Jewish professors are important; clearly they should not be discriminated against. But what about the rights of Palestinian children to walk to school unmolested?
Conclusion: I believe many Jews are treading on far thinner ice than they realize. Yes, I have sympathy for the suffering of Jews through the ages. But I have come to realize that my sympathies have been constantly demanded, manipulated, and used to excuse the inexcusable. Yes, I care about the rights of Jewish professors. But I care far more about the rights of children not be be abused and humiliated. My Jewish friends risk alienating me, because I refuse to prefer the rights of free adults to the rights of oppressed, abused children. If Israel will not protect innocent children from abusive adults, what sort of government and what sort of state am I being asked to "support"? How can my Jewish friends fail to understand how furious I am with this abominable double standard? Even Jewish intellectuals who advocate better treatment of Palestinians on "humanitarian grounds" really don't seem to "get it." I don't want my Jewish friends to condescend to Palestinians; I want them to treat Palestinians in every way as their equals. To condescend to a person of another race is abominable: those who do it reveal the seriousness of the disease they suffer. Any Jew who believes Jews have rights that Palestinians do not share, such as the right to live in or visit Jerusalem, suffers from a dangerous, deadly disease: racism.
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily seems to assume that only Jews are entitled to reparations. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: If the Nazis stole the land and property of a Jewish family in 1941 and Israel stole the land and property of a Palestinian family in 1948, shouldn't both families be entitled to compensation?
Answer: Yes, fair is fair.
Reflection: Are Jews entitled to reparations for the land and property the Nazis stole from them prior to and during World War II? Yes, definitely. But then so are Palestinians who had their land and property stolen by Israel more recently.
Conclusion: I find it galling that many Jews seem to believe they have rights other people don't have. If Jews have rights to reparations, then so do Palestinians. Fair is fair. But pro-Israeli propagandists seem to have no concept of fairness. They demand that Americans see all injustices suffered by Jews, while ignoring all injustices suffered by Palestinians. But why should we demand justice for Jews and ignore the self-evident rights of Palestinians? It makes no sense.
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily constantly trumpets the superiority of Israel to Arab nations. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: What is the mark of a civilized nation?
Answer: The hallmark of a civilized nation is that it establishes freedom, human rights and justice for all human beings under its aegis, equally.
Reflection: In what way is Israel "superior" to its neighbors? Can a government have racist laws and courts and be considered civilized, much less "superior"? When I think of the United States I'd like to live in, I think of a nation where all citizens are treated equally as long as they don't harm each other unfairly, and where no man is a king, lord, peasant, serf or slave. Everyone would have the maximum freedoms possible, with the laws being designed to protect citizens from undue harm not of their own making. (A man would be free to jump out of an airplane, but another man would not have the right to push him.) My mother is English and it seems to me the English as a people are still somewhat infatuated with their royals and nobles. But I have no interest in bowing down to anyone, or tipping my hat to someone because of the circumstances of his birth. I am thoroughly American in this regard. The idea of being "born to the purple" is alien to me and a "House of Lords" seems like an anachronism, if not an outright blasphemy. Isn't it very late in the history of the world for one person to "lord it" over another? I like the idea of equal rights. So for me the mark of a civilized nation is that all its citizens must have equal rights and be considered peers. In a truly civilized nation, no person should be demeaned or denied human rights on the basis of race, creed, sex, age, sexual preference, or any other nonsensical measure. (But of course an elderly man might not be licensed to drive if he's blind as a bat.) A civilized nation should believe in the essential equality of its citizens, even if its citizens don't "get it." Of course everyone isn't born "the same." Even identical twins are individuals. But in the eyes of a civilized nation everyone must be born, live and die entirely equal in terms of human rights.
Conclusion: Israel cannot claim to be a democracy, or a civilized nation, as long as it allows Palestinian children to be spat upon, kicked and cursed on their way to school. Israel cannot claim "superiority" over any other nation because its policies and actions are clearly racist and either cause or allow the daily humiliation of innocent children. A civilized nation does not allow invading, conquering colonists armed with pitchforks to demean and abuse native kindergartners, while its soldiers stand by with machine guns, protecting the abusive adults while all too often interjecting their own racist insults, jeers, taunts and spittle. How must small Palestinian girls feel, when they hear soldiers with cocked machineguns calling them vile names? The message Palestinian children receive when soldiers abuse rather than protect them is terrifying: "We hate and despise you, and we have all power over you." If anyone doubts me, the racist laws of Israel are matters of public record: anyone can study them as I have, online, or read what the UN and Jewish humanitarian organizations have said about them and the way they allow Palestinians to be treated on their native land. Many Jews despise Israel's policies and actions, just as many Americans despise our government's funding and support of this ongoing Holocaust. Today Jews of good conscience, Americans and other internationals often act as "human shields" in Gaza and the West Bank, placing their bodies between Palestinians and the Jewish settlers and soldiers who revile and abuse them. Hopefully you, too, will take the time to investigate the easily verifiable facts, if you haven't already, and stand with us, opposing racism, cruelty, barbarity and injustice. (Please pardon my obvious anger, but the thought of racists abusing children infuriates me; I think of little black girls in the Deep South being cursed, jeered and and spat upon by American Christians. Where are American Christians capable of discernment, who understand that they are doing the same thing again today, by proxy, when they support Israel without holding Israel accountable for what Jesus and the Hebrew prophets commanded: chesed [mercy, compassion, lovingkindness] and social justice?)
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily claims it is unfair for the Obama administration to oppose the "natural growth" of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: If I am trying to steal your land and property, should my family be allowed "natural growth" in your backyard?
Answer: No, of course not!
Reflection: The Obama administration is correct when it opposes "natural growth" of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Why? Because Israel has already taken huge amounts of Palestinian land by force and outright theft. The stolen land should be returned, or just compensation paid for it. It makes no sense whatsoever to say that even more land can be stolen just because Jewish babies are being born on Palestinian land.
Conclusion: All Jewish settlements on Palestinian land are illegal, according to international law, which states that an occupying army cannot acquire land by force or by transference of populations. The idea of "natural growth" of illegal settlements is absurd. An analogy would be my claiming "squatter's rights" to your land, by pitching a tent in your backyard and urging my children to quickly have babies on your property. Should your land become mine because my family's babies are born there? Of course not. My family's "natural growth" should occur on our land, not yours. Does anything the propagandists say make any sense whatsoever?
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily claims that the Palestinians are without rights because they were never a nation in their own right. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: At one time there was no nation called the United States. Does this mean American colonists were born without rights?
Answer: No, of course not! All human beings have equal human rights.
Reflection: The basis of the American Declaration of Independence is that all human beings are born with self-evident, equal human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Conclusion: It makes no difference whether the Palestinians were a nation in the past. All that matters is that they are human beings today, and thus must have equal rights, justice and representative government. Therefore, they must be equal citizens in the existing state of Israel, or they must be granted independence and allowed to establish an independent Palestinian state. According to the American Declaration of Independence, if they are denied equal rights, justice and representative government, they have every right to use force to gain their freedom.
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily claims that Israel has the right to establish "defensive" outposts in the West Bank, on Palestinian territory. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: Should the US be able to establish "defensive" outposts in Mexico, because Mexican drug cartels endanger the lives of Americans?
Answer: No, because Mexico is a sovereign nation.
Reflection: The United States has the right to establish security posts on its own side of the border. The United States does not have the right to put American soldiers in Mexican territory, without the consent of a democratically elected Mexican government. A dictator has no right to invite American troops to set up shop on his people's land, because the land belongs to the people, not to him. A dictator is always a usurper.
Conclusion: The "security outposts" established by Israel in the West Bank are not "defensive" in nature. Instead, they are clearly colonial (i.e., conquering) in purpose. This can clearly be seen by considering the situation in Gaza. At one time Israel had colonists (Jewish settlers) in Gaza. But when it became evident that Gaza was a "lost cause," Israel removed its colonists from Gaza and concentrated its colonial efforts on stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank. If the main goal is "security," why were Jewish colonists removed from Gaza, where security is a bigger problem than in the West Bank? The presence of Jewish colonists in the West Bank has nothing to do with "security," and everything to do with Israel's goal of stealing prime Palestinian land from its rightful owners. Land in the West Bank is now far more lucrative to Israel than land in Gaza; this is the obvious reason for Israel abandoning its "security" interest in Gaza and focusing on its "security" interests in the West Bank. An analogy would be pirates preferring to seize the Queen Mary rather than a leaky barge. As the Obama administration understands, the presence of Jewish colonies in the West Bank precludes peace in the region. This is why the Obama administration has said "no" to the "natural growth" of Jewish colonies in the West Bank (because both the colonies and their growth are entirely unnatural).
The pro-Israel propaganda I now receive daily seems to claim that Israel has the right to imitate the Nazis and institute the law of the jungle rather than civilized laws, because Jews suffered and died during the Holocaust. Does this make sense?
Thought experiment: If a wild animal attacks and harms my child, should I revert to the law of the jungle myself?
Answer: No, I cannot base my actions on the actions of brutes, whether animals or Nazis.
Reflection: The law of the jungle is "might makes right." In the jungle alpha males brutalize other males, dominate the pack, and get their pick of the best food and choicest females. But a civilized nation must be based on justice, not "might makes right." In a civilized nation, the rights of women, children, the elderly and the physically and mentally challenged must be protected, regardless of what happened in the past, or what continues to happen in less civilized nations. Israel and the United States are responsible for their own laws and cannot blame Cuba or Syria for Israeli and American injustices. Yes, what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust was horrendous. But civilized nations cannot emulate either wild animals or Nazis. A civilized nation must establish justice first, then identify and prosecute criminals individually. There is no such thing as "collective justice," only collective punishment.
Conclusion: It's terrible when the rights of innocent people are trampled on. Whenever we see the rights of innocent women, babies, toddlers, children, the elderly and the handicapped being subverted, we know something is very, very wrong. And this is how we know something is very, very wrong with the state and government of Israel. Individual justice has been subverted and punishment has become collective. In the jungle, alpha males ignore the needs and rights of others and do whatever they please. When we see innocents being punished collectively for the "crime" of not being born Jewish, we are seeing the same behavior we see in the jungle when male lions kill the cubs of other male lions. In the jungle an alpha male prefers his own genes, but in a civilized nation the rights of all individuals must be protected equally. To put it simply, Israel must stop preferring Jewish genes to non-Jewish genes, because all babies are self-evidently created equal.
I hope I have given you ample food for thought. My basic premise has been this: every nation is responsible for its own laws, and until a government establishes equal rights and justice for all human beings under its aegis, that government is not legal. According to the American Declaration of Independence, anyone denied equal rights and justice has the right to oppose an illegal, unjust government with force. The only path to peace without violence is the same path which leads to a legal government: establishing equal rights and justice first. Israel has become an obstacle to world peace because it insists on the right to practice racism, inequality and injustice until the victims of its racism, inequalities and injustices "obey the law." But when laws are racist and therefore illegal, it is not a crime to break them. So it is imperative for Israel to do what every government must do, unconditionally, first: establish equal human rights and justice. Then if people on either side disobey fair laws, they can be prosecuted individually in fair courts and brought to justice. But there is no such thing as "collective justice," only collective punishment, and innocent Palestinian men, women and children cannot be punished collectively for the crimes of a few hard-to-find criminals. Before any Palestinian can be called a "criminal," he must first be granted equal rights and justice. This, I believe, is a "no brainer" and explains why pro-Israel propaganda makes no sense. Israel must establish equal rights and justice first, unconditionally, in order to have a legitimate government.
So here is my "simple plan for peace in the Middle East": We should have a new UN resolution calling for Israel to unconditionally grant Jews and non-Jews alike equal rights and access to fair laws and fair courts. The laws and courts should be the same laws and courts, not the current system in which Jewish boys who throw rocks are subjected to civil courts for misdemeanors while Palestinian boys who throw rocks are subjected to military courts where they can be held indefinitely without bail or trial, and denied access to lawyers and even their own parents. The new fair courts established must be able to set legal precedents and should have peer review by judges appointed by the UN.
With equal rights, fair laws and fair courts, peace through justice becomes possible.
Although the United States has vetoed many previous UN resolutions that might have helped bring peace to present-day Israel/Palestine, I don't believe the United States can veto a resolution based on the American Creed.
If this resolution passes, as I believe it will, and Israel complies, then disputes over land, water and property can be settled "organically" over time, even if Israelis and Palestinians can't agree to eternal borders in single sittings. Where other attempts at peace have stalled and broken down in the past, this one will move forward on a daily basis, just as racial equality and peace continue to chug forward on a daily basis in the United States, with fair courts arbitrating and settling individual disputes.
If this resolution passes but Israel refuses to comply, the UN can institute economic sanctions. Economic sanctions often do not work with dictatorships for the obvious reason: tyrants will thrive even if their subjects starve. Saddam Hussein was building new palaces while multitudes of Iraqi children were dying due to economic sanctions imposed before the United States invaded Iraq. But economic sanctions will work in this case because Israel is a modern nation which relies on imports and exports to sustain its economy and the lifestyles of its citizens. And while Israel is not yet a true democracy in which all human beings have equal rights, it is "democratic enough" for unhappy voters to replace racist leaders with new leaders willing to establish peace through justice. Like the voters in any democracy, Israelis will "vote their pocketbooks." So economic sanctions should bring about regime change the modern, democratic way, without bloodshed.
If you want the world to avoid more events like 9-11 and the possibility of World War III and nuclear Armageddon, I hope you will consider my "simple plan for peace in the Middle East" and urge your family, friends, newspapers and political representatives to consider it also. If my plan, or a variation thereof, leads to peace in Israel/Palestine, it could lead to peace throughout the Middle East, and eventually the world. Why? Because if peace through justice is possible in Israel/Palestine, then no one can ever say that peace though justice is impossible anywhere in the world. And who knows: perhaps we will see the visions of the Hebrew prophets fulfilled in our lifetimes.
The HyperTexts