Israel or Palestine?
Judea or West Bank?
copyright April 2002 (links checked and
updated Jan. 1 2004)
Gush
Shalom--Israeli peace movement, & B'Tselem
Israeli Human Rights org
Since I'm already deeply enmeshed in political
pontification, I might as well stick my foot in my mouth
with this ugly, nasty issue. The problem with expressing
one's opinion about this issue is that anything but a
feigned impartial opinion can evoke virulent accusations
of racism. So, with no further ado, I'll proceed
to get myself in trouble.
My first premise is that, contrary to various
conspiracy theories, Israel does not control the American
government. Rather, the interests of Israel and
America tend to coincide. America
uses Israel for several purposes, I believe.
The most important function of Israel is a military base
to protect our Middle East oil interests. The second
interest is the victorious culmination of the Crusades,
which as any scholar of religious history knows is tied in
with proto-colonial Apocalyptic
metaphysico-politics that is so deeply entrenched in
the Bush administration in the form of his Neocon puppet
masters.
The Jews serve as a vicious guard dog to protect the very
cradle of Christendom, and military installations that
protect our petroleum interests. Beyond that,
the conspiracy theories of Zionist control of American
policy are not supported by the facts and events.
Rather, there is indeed a contingent among Israel's opponents
and even their supporters whose motives are nothing less than Nazi anti-semitism.
Not everyone who opposes the West Bank occupation
and the brutal oppression there is an anti-Semite, nor
are they trying to destroy Israel. In fact, polls show
(this was written in Winter 2001) that the majority of Jewish
Israelis support both the withdrawal of the occupying
forces and the establishment of the Palestinian State. They
are, like me, able to see that the West Bank occupation
causes violence, costs more money than it's
worth, and threatens the future existence of Israel.
Sharon and the proponents of the occupied state promote
the surreal idea that illegally occupying the land and
brutally oppressing them will make them docile.
Increasing oppression is creating even more wild and destructive
suicide bombing, thus contradicting any shred of credibility
that stupid idea might have had in the past. Apparently
they work on a Medieval or Classical notion of war in
which responding to aggression justifies taking the land
of your enemy and destroying their lives. Such reasoning
makes little sense today, but we are told that beating
the hell out of your enemy will make you safer. If
the policy worked, why are we now (October 2003) hearing
talk about the failure of Israel itself? If the
policy were such a good idea, why has it not worked?
Sure, the radicals can blame it on the lack of support
they get from the international community, but the fact
remains that the international community has tried very
hard to create peace. We can't help noticing that
the Bush administration has done nothing to slow down the
self-destruction of Israel. These events also raise important questions
about the viability of the broader "war on terrorism"
led by America, especially since a large majority of Muslims
believe that it's really a war on Islam. Israel's
inexcusable behavior only proves this point to
them, given their perception that America supports Israel.
It is true that our policies support Israel in the short
term, but in light of the current apocalyptic narrative
being woven around the Holy Land and the coming of the
Messiah, it is clear that both Jews and the Palestinians
are merely puppets in the drama of Christian salvation.
History has also demonstrated that the non-Palestinian
Arab states surrounding the area have not done anything
positive to help the Palestinians--rather, they have been
active forces in using them to destroy Israel. It's
really a very sick and twisted situation. The
epitome of dysfunctionality.
The notion of American anti-Semitism is
not something to be taken lightly. Nor is it an
accusation that many Americans would be willing to accept--unless
they listen to a lot of AM talk radio. However,
if Americans had been truly interested in providing the
Jews with a safe homeland during the rise of anti-Semitism
in Europe, they would have given
them Arizona, which was nearly as deserted after WWI,
when arrangements began to turn Palestine into the Jewish
homeland. Considering that Palestine was the focus
of the Crusades, it is implausible that the United Nations
believed that local Muslims would not be upset by the
sudden influx of Jews and American military support.
The United Nations heard complaints to this extent immediately
as soon as the plans for a Jewish state began. Certainly
the Jews were happy to have their homeland, but it is
absurd to think that this wouldn't spark memories of European
crusaders raiding the Islamic Holy Land, and violent reactions.
In 1917 Palestine was largely uninhabited.
Surely nomadic tribes of Muslim Bedouins wandered the
countryside, and a few Jews and Muslims lived in a few
cities. Compared to the population of today, Palestine
was unpopulated. But, there is no reason to take
seriously Zionist
arguments that the area was empty, though.
When the Ottoman Empire fell and the British came in,
the massive influx of both Jews and Muslims to the attractive
real estate of the Eastern Mediterranean coast exploded.
Jewish partisans like to refer to massive "illegal"
immigration of Arabs from surrounding states to Palestine.
Palestinian partisans are no less justified in criticizing
the simultaneous "invasion" of Europeans and
Americans. By the time of the 1967 war, the land
begins to show signs of reaching its saturation point
for human population.
The colonization of Palestine by Jews in
search of cheap beach front real estate and poor Palestinians
seeking jobs and water became a battle of numbers--who
can fill the land quickest with their people? Neither
the Jews nor the Palestinians have an especially persuasive
claim to the land. Both are guilty of inexcusable
violence. Furthermore, I am convinced that Americans
in general, and our government in particular have only
a selfish interest in Israel. Anti-semitism still
exists, making it much easier
for Gentiles to ignore and tolerate the violence.
Both Arabs and Jews are Semitic peoples.
It should be noted that many Jews are vehemently
opposed to Zionism. They have Biblical reasons to
believe that the formation of Israel should not happen
until the Messiah comes. [Jews
United Against Zionism * Israel
Shahak's book * Zionism
& Holocaust Israeli
Refusenik soldiers * The
Official Declaration of the Refuseniks & Gush
Shalom--Israeli peace movement, & B'Tselem
Israeli Human Rights org] The
Israeli state was begun long before 1947, and evidence
shows that Jews around the world were not interested in
moving there until 1939. Alternative locations
like Uganda were
proposed, but Zionist special interests suppressed anything
that undermined the mass relocation of Jews to Palestine.
Apparently Hitler was very interested in getting the Jews
out of Germany and into Israel.
Nobody in their right mind would question the occurrence
of the Holocaust, or the fact that Anti-Semitism still
exists. Immigrants from other countries come to
America and Europe without persecution. Multi-cultural
nations have fewer problems with racial conflicts, the
idea underlying Israel and the policies that it has been
applying under conservative leadership all point to an
aggressive racialist doctrine of imperialism. Many
Jews say the same thing. Rabbi
Michael Lerner has a rather bizarre argument against
the idea that Zionism is racism--an argument that falls
flat on its face in light of the events that have occurred
since he wrote it.
Following a historical process of Israeli
expansionism and military aggression, combined with the
extreme cruelty of the retaliations (cutting off water,
detaining ambulances, preventing burials, knocking down
houses), Israel has crossed a line of acceptable self-defense
and moved into the realm of genocide. It is
especially ironic that a nation built of people who survived
the largest genocide in history would in turn be perpetrators
of another genocide against their own brothers in Abraham. Current
activities in the West Bank are no less atrocious
than the suicide bombings, and no less atrocious than
the Holocaust itself. Besides the concentration
camp lifestyle of the Palestinians, the Israelis have
placed a great deal of emphasis on preventing conventional
weapons from getting to them. Given that the West
Bank Palestinians, who are the majority in that area,
have no say about their own lives, I don't find it in
the least surprising that they are choosing to use suicide
bombers. I would probably do the same thing under
those circumstances, if I believed the Qur'an (which
I do not). There are no viable alternatives for
them. The Zionists cling to their idiotic idea that
this area provides them safety. Palestinians are
so blindly enraged that they may never be able to accept
the existence of the Jewish people, let alone the state of
Israel. The conflict is
doomed to be eternal and utterly internecine. My
pessimism here grows daily, though I try hard not to
despair. I keep telling myself that maybe the next
president of America will be more interested in peace than
evoking the Seven Horsemen of the Apocalypse to ride
across the oil fields..
I find it appalling that the Israeli approach
to the situation has been to beg and subsidize even more
Jews from America and Europe to move into the illegal
settlements. Not only does this gathering together
(Tikkun) offend and abuse the Palestinian Christians
and Muslims of the area, but it also destroys the fragile
ecosystem of this arid and beautiful land. The Jordan
River is being sucked dry by Israel, leaving very little
for anyone else. This results in the disappearance
of the Dead Sea, which is little more than a dry lake
bed now. If the literal land of Israel is important
to God, it's hard to believe that He is pleased with the
way the land itself is being treated.
It's not surprising that the West Bank land
designated Area C (under complete Israeli control) contains
over 60% of the West Bank lands, nearly all the fertile
land closest to the Jordan River, and a minority of the
West Bank population. It's not coincidental that
one of the Israeli's preferred methods of terrorizing
the Arabs is to cut off their water. The hidden
battle here is a racist struggle over resources: water,
land, jobs, food. In the process of racing to fill
the land with their people, the farmland is being filled
with townhouses, the water is being polluted and depleted,
animal habitats are being destroyed, and Mediterranean
coastline is turning into private property. Israel
is being destroyed. Perhaps the story of Solomon
and the disputed baby could teach both of these groups
a lesson.
Another little detail that makes this story
even more repulsive is that the more poor and less
educated, Russian Jews are
being placed in trailer courts surrounding the wealthy
settlements of the Jewish American and European illegal
settlements. They are providing a front line defense
for the more affluent yuppy housing developments.
More educated Russian Jews come from a completely secular
environment of soviet atheism and institutionalized anti-semitic
propaganda. As if that weren't enough, Israeli orthodox Jews are searching
the world for converts to move into the West Bank.
They have found yet a new way to take advantage of American
Indians. Orthodox missionaries (itself a rather
odd concept) are active in Peru where they recently converted
90 descendents of the Inca culture living in remote and
fairly peaceful mountain isolation and moved them all
into the same bullet-brigade trailer homes on the risky
outskirts of the West Bank occupation towns of Alon Shvut
and Karmei Tzur. Ostensibly, this is because Orthodox
Jews in Israel proper would not accept them, whereas these
battlefront settlements are quite eager for warm bodies
to fill up land. They also claim that living in
the more secular Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem would undermine
these Indians' adherence to the 600 and some odd mitzvoth--an
essential condition of their all-expense paid relocations.
Never mind the shocking offense of using Indians in such
a perverse way, can you imagine the effect this has on
already angry Palestinians as they see people who aren't
even Jewish by ancestry being shipped in just to piss
them off more??
It's a disgusting war any way you look
at it, and I find it extremely difficult not to criticize
both sides. I can find no justification for
the suicide bombings. I can understand them, but I
cannot see them as in any way just. They are
perverse and evil. It is probably too late for any
remedy at this point, particularly since the Bush
administration has demonstrated such apathy in regards to
the peace process. Perhaps the best remedy would
be for the Isreali Jews who oppose the settlements and
favor a Palestinian state simply abandon Israel,
and move back to America and Europe. Leave the greedy
maniacs like Sharon and the vengeful terrorists like Arafat
to tear each other to shreds. The extreme danger
of the Holy Land undermines all arguments based on the
notion of protecting the Jews from Holocaust. Israel
just is not that important, except
for those who for religious reasons relish the idea of an
apocalyptic war there. It surprises me
that nobody seems to have noticed that these conservative
Christians, who thirty years ago would have embraced a
pretty blatant anti-Semitism, are suddenly huge supporters
of Israel. Pay attention folks. They are
talking about Israel, not the Jews. The whole thing
centers on Apocalyptic metaphysics connected to the land
of Israel and a prophecy relating to getting the Jews back
there in order to initiate the sequence of events foretold
in the book of Revelation. Similarly, the Jews who
readily embrace these Christians who are using them,
cynically understand that the only thing they have in
common is politics. Both believe that the other is
utterly mistaken in regards to their prophecies.
Sadly, the Christians know that, with or without divine
intervention, Sharon's policies will lead to the
annihilation of Israel--both for Jews and Palestinians. The war in Israel is fundamentally a war
for land and resources in a desert environment that
cannot support anywhere near the population it has, let
alone provide homes for even more immigrants. It is essentially an economic
war--the rich are beating the hell out of the poor and
the poor are desperate to strike back at their oppressors.
The same thing is happening in Colombia too. Whenever
the poor take up arms to strike at the wealthy oppressors,
American political rhetoric labels them as terrorists,
while hiding the oppressions and humiliations that led
the people to revolt. There is a thinly veiled message
in the fact that Islam has always appealed to people
who are oppressed. It spreads in tropical and arid
zones where extreme poverty, dark skin, drugs and petroleum
deposits abound. Islamic law shares much in common
with Marxism, and it rejects many of the concepts that
underlie modern neocolonial capitalist morality.
Islam represents an austere moral doctrine far more
powerful than we see in any Christian country (unless Tom
Delay gets his way). Rather than
deal with basic human rights of food, health and education,
corporate interests only wish to promote "free"
markets (monopolies and neocolonialism) and pseudodemocracy.
The whole damn world sees the truth, but Americans are
masters of ignorance and self-deception.
The Bush administration's policies in Israel
are laughable. In fact, I would go a step further
in suggesting that the dramatic upswing in violence
against Jews in Israel is a direct result of the Bush
regime's international idiocy. Either they were planning for this
bloody outcome, or they are utterly incompetent in the
strategy of their war on terrorism. It's difficult
to feel optimism about this, but I shall try. My
chief method of working against this nonsense is to unveil
the sinister motives of Sharon's enablers.
Supporting information:
Green
Course is an interesting Israeli/Hebrew environmental
group that is an active voice in protecting the land of
Israel. The original site at www.greencourse.org.il
has apparently been replaced by a much less impressive
website.
Applied
Research Institute Jerusalem interesting information
about Israeli abuses of Palestinians and the land.
The sequence of images of the Har
Homa settlement and the Uprooting of Abu Ghnaim Forest
are especially illuminating.
This
sequence of United Nations Maps from 1947 to 1996 clearly
shows that Israel took a great deal more than just the
West Bank, Gaza and Golan. Watch Israel grow and Arab
territories disappear!
This sequence of
United Nations Maps from 1947 to 1996 clearly shows the
expansion of Israel into surrounding territory.
1991 map of Israeli
settlements on Arab land established AFTER 1967:
1996 map of Israeli
illegal immigration into the West bank
The
University of Texas at Austin has a splendid map archive,
though not so effective at showing Israel's process of
territorial expansion from 1947 to the present.
More
background information is found on my Afghanistan page.
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