Gaza Suffers Israeli Wrath

It is time for Israel to stop punishing the people of occupied Palestine and the Gaza Strip for aspiring to freedom and statehood. Stop the bombing Now! It is time for Israel and its apologists to acknowledge what has been painfully obvious for years, namely that they have no real appetite for negotiating a peace, coexisting with the Palestinian people, or conforming to any UN resolution that doesn't suit their purposes.

Yes, frustrated and unemployed Palestinian youth launch home made rockets into Israeli settlements. And they often create shock and minor injury, rarely hospitalization and on an even rarer occasion a single fatality. In the last three days of Gaza incursions, the Israeli Defense Force has killed almost 300 residents, half civilians and about twenty children. Read about a father who lost five of his children to Israeli bombs, here. This was after weeks of border closures and blockades that made it hard for the average Gazan to buy bread to feed his family.

Of course the Palestinians are frustrated. They've been forced to endure decades, generations of scorn and neglect - after being summarily evicted from their ancestral lands. Then, locals have been witness to an unprecedented boom of illegal settlement villages and cities on formerly Arab land. And now, Israelis funded by American Jews are buying up every square inch of Arab land to convert to Jewish control. These "deals" are often shams that take place long after the death of the supposed seller in foreign countries that were never visited by any of the parties involved. Read this recent article about the practice, involving a business and notary in Tustin, California. Uh-huh. Like we're believing that!

The Israeli military monitors travel, transportation and access. Israeli gates and checkpoints have a long history of denying passage to the elderly, the sick and pregnant women for hours or days. This winter, the Israeli government has sanctioned a policy that has kept even heating and cooking oil out of the Gaza Strip.

Then there's the wall, separating Palestinian families and dividing up what is left of traditional Arab olive groves and agricultural land. Adding insult to injury, the Israeli authorities are now building a rapid transit, light-rail train through Arab Jerusalem to connect illegal Jewish settlements to the Israeli part of town. Trains that the local Arab residents will never be able to use.

I have posted about the enormous vacuum of U.S. Policy in the Middle East in previous articles. I noted that the United States provides Israel with more annual foreign aid than all other countries on the planet combined. Combined? That's right. We do so in spite of the end of the cold war, questionable national security benefits, and the ill-will our positions engender in the entire Muslim world. Go figure! For the record, there are about 7.2 million Israeli citizens including about 2 million Arab Israelis; and, there are almost 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide. Can you say: Do the numbers?

There's just something so wrong about a people who were treated in such a horrific manner in recent history spending four decades systematically committing small-and-sometimes-large everyday insults and ignominy to a group that they perceive to be weaker and less powerful than they are. The irony is just too profound. The justifications and rationalizations just too paltry and insufficient. Have you seen the pictures? Can you imagine the pain that comes from a generation of teenagers in prison for resisting an unfair and heavy-handed occupation? Not to mention the outrage of collective punishment and the wholesale revision of history.

I confess to having a dog in this fight. It wasn't always that way. Like most Americans, I admired the thinking and work of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir even if I knew nothing of the politics behind the creation of the state of Israel. But things changed rapidly. Angry far-right Stern Gang sorts with attitude and muscle took over the Israeli political scene and put an end to the dreaming of their socialist colleagues. One has to wonder if the underworld wasn't also involved in that transition. In any case, I had been working closely with the Rainbow Coalition in the early and mid-eighties on racial justice and the political campaigns of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. A colleague who was also involved with me in that process, Alex Odeh, was murdered in an explosion, caused by a bomb planted by a Jewish terrorist in his office in Santa Ana, California. Blew his legs off and he bled out, right there in his office on 17th Street. The Jewish Defense League member that was implicated and in his guilt fled to open arms in Israel has never been returned to justice in the United States.

Then there are the two, high-level spies (here and here) in Federal Prison for life for conducting espionage for the state of Israel. In my experience, allies don't spy on allies. And finally, there is the still open folder of the U.S.S. Liberty, sank while on a research assignment in the Mediterranean in 1967. Is this the kind of friend we want (or need) in this moment in history? I may be in a very small minority, but I think not.
Gaza
Israel
Occupied Palestine

China's Reprehensible Repression in Tibet

It's not bad enough that China has Disneyfied Lhasa and turned an ancient people and religion into a tourist attraction. No the Chinese government has been Hanifying Tibet as well. The Han, China's powerful ethnic elite, have a long history of heavy-handed regional adventurism. In Tibet's case, that has meant the exile of tens of thousands (govt. in exile) and importing thousands of ethnic Han to cleanse the country of its indigenous influences and authority. It is, therefore, an insidious form of government-sponsored ethnic cleansing. Now, they're shooting citizens, and gassing monks and nuns. No wonder there's local resentment and unrest. The Chinese government's answer? Mobilize hundreds of thousands of troops, fill Tibet and surrounding provinces where ethnic Tibetans reside with troops and police, clamp down on Monasteries, and imprison monks, nuns and average Tibetans suspected of speaking out. Read Mark's comprehensive post on Boing Boing about the riots.

The foreign press has been rounded up and moved away from the action. The Internet has been comprehensively filtered, and the Chinese government is denying any culpability - instead falling-back on their long-time practice of blaming and demonizing the Dalai Lama. Yea, uh huh. Like I'm buying that. Like anybody's buying that. This is brutal repression, pure and simple. The massive denial of basic rights and respect to an entire people and their religion. Though I've been known to condemn the antics of wingnuts and fundamentalists of all strips, the actions of the Chinese authorities in the case of Tibet are over-the-top. There are several petitions making their way around the progressive blogosphere, and The Author has signed all he's seen. I hope my readers will consider doing the same, and taking whatever other actions that may be available to let the Chinese government know that this is not acceptable behavior.

It would not be proper for me to offer such advice and direction without acknowledging the human rights violations of the US in Iraq and Guantanamo. I have posted about my revulsion regarding our current president and foreign policy on many occasions. That is just the point. I can voice my opinion in any forum without fear of sanctioned, state retribution. Unlike the Tibetans, who are being summarily shot and imprisoned for being frustrated and protesting. Now that's dictatorship. It will be a very unfortunate endorsement of this kind of repression if the leaders of the FREE world attend the Beijing Summer Olympics 2008 "Opening Ceremony." Free Tibet Now!

Technorati Tags: Tibet,China,Olympics,Han,Dictatorship

New Book Looks at The Israel Lobby

There's a newly released non-fiction book that I'm putting on my personal wish list. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. The Iraq war and our new focus on Middle East regional politics are reason enough to read the book. And getting all sides of a complex picture is important to context and perspective.

The issue has been of personal interest to me for decades and was brought home when my acquaintance, Alex Odeh, was assasinated by an explosive device while sitting at his desk in Santa Ana, California in 1985. It is clear that Alex, a Palestinian/American and a Christian, was killed by a Jewish/Zionist extremist. In fact, two members of the JDL fled to Israel following his murder. He was bombed because he suggested that Israel should negotiate with the late Yasser Arafat (Abu Mazen). In 2001, the FBI classified the JDL as a violent, extremist Jewish organization.

I'd add a couple more facts to the mix, then ask you to search the net and do your own research on this controversial topic. We should not forget that Israel sank the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967, has had several high-profile spies (here and here) caught in this country stealing American secrets, and defied 20 years of U.N. resolutions to build and deploy a large nuclear arsenal. Unlike South Africa, which abandoned its nuclear ambitions when confronted by the U.N., Israel has stubbornly clung to its WMD.

In spite of its extensive nuclear arsenal and economic prosperity, Israel has received more direct and indirect economic and military aid from the United States than any other country; the largest total aid package since World War II (reference). The Israel Lobby is largely responsible. I know that I want to learn more, that's why I'm buying the book.