“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human being than its opposite.”
-- Nelson Mandela
Read. Expand your options. Expose yourself to other viewpoints. Don’t agree with everything you hear on American radio or television, or read in the press.
You’ve read this book to this point. Investigate. Take what you’ve read in here and delve deeper. Find and watch the videos and stories that have been censored. Among them, The Lobby, the multi-part documentary which shows the insidious power of the Israel Lobby in its many forms. It’s available on the Electronic Intifada website. The One Day in Gaza program that was pulled from PBS television shortly before it was supposed to air; find it on the Council for the National Interest website. Watch the movie Defamation about the motives and workings of the Anti-Defamation League from 2009.
Read the book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel by Max Blumenthal. It’s full of deep, dark, ugly secrets that are not so secret to the rest of the world.
Continue the boycott of Israeli products worldwide; all products, not just those produced in the occupied territories, but throughout the country. If Israeli voters continue to elect nationalistic oppressors who support Zionist fanaticism in the occupied territories, then that general citizenry is complicit (supportive of wrongdoing) in the crimes. Until irrational, illegal, and inhumane policies committed against Palestinians are halted, all of Israel should be held accountable.
Support financially, through volunteerism and public relations, or in person if at all possible, humanitarian aid for the Palestinians, necessarily delivered via the Mediterranean Sea and through other methods. Israel cuts off aid whenever it chooses as a collective punishment in the Gaza Strip in particular. This includes limiting or preventing food, money, water, fuel, building
supplies, school supplies, and other products from reaching Palestinians in need. Support all humanitarian efforts.
Term limits in the United States Congress and Senate are essential. Career politicians have embedded special interests and certain ideologies that are bought or politically forced. The President of the United States is limited to two four-year terms, thus Senators should be limited to two six-year terms, and Congressmen/women to six two-year terms. The current system is broken and the arguments against term limits are absurd, made by those in power and the special interest groups that own them.
Urge Congress to de-fund the almost $4-billion gift it gives to Israel every year. This is mostly defense spending, some of which is spent on the wall Israel built around the Gaza Strip and portions of the West Bank. It’s all a part of an American foreign policy that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Arab civilians, the murder of thousands of Palestini- ans in the name of policing and protectionism, and the death of thousands of American troops killed fighting in conflicts that have benefited Israel alone. American taxpayers should refuse to pay for it. Organize a taxpayer rebellion on this topic.
Think about it: Israel murders innocent men, women, and children in Palestine while simultaneously making it illegal to criticize those actions in the United States. They have rendered outright freedom of speech meaningless. Some Americans worry about “they’re going to take my guns away,” while ignoring the erosion of the freedom of the press and speech guaranteed by the US Bill of Rights.
Revert back to previous standards of media ownership in the United States. Federal government regulations that once prevented putting too much power in the hands of too few voices have been degraded or eliminated over the last three decades. Break up the media conglomerates and re-establish diversity of message. Of course, the people who own the media are the same ones who oppose term limits and will use “free-market, pro-capitalist, pro-democracy” arguments. They will cry and scream that limiting free market media is Socialist and un-American. This is pure fear-mongering (deception to arouse fear in the public). In reality, the whole point of having a government is to regulate greed. Right now, those in power enjoy greed run amok with
total control of the money and the message.
A “democracy” is no different than a totalitarian dictatorship if the regime’s message to its people on any topic is uniformly insidious.
Support the “two-state solution” even though some “experts” have declared it an impossibility. The two-state solution involves following the original 1948 United Nations doctrine, or a slight variation thereof, that divides pre-World War II Palestine into two separate states, one for the Israelis, one for the Palestinians. What challenges this solution is the amount of Palestinian land stolen by Zionist governments and handed it over to Jewish settlers. Give it back! Giving it back would be no more radical than stealing it in the first place. The United States of America, the European Union, and the United Nations must take a stand in support of this concept.
In his March 26, 2009 column in the New York Times, Roger Cohen made reference to a multi-national peace proposal produced and signed by ten economic and foreign policy executives and advisors called “Bipartisan Statement on US Middle East Peacemaking.” Cohen refers to the template:
The first is clear US endorsement of a two-state solution based on the lines of June 4, 1967, with minor, reciprocal, agreed land swaps where necessary. That means removing all West Bank settlements except in some heavily populated areas abutting Jerusalem— and, of course, halting the unacceptable ongoing construction of new ones. The second is establishing Jerusalem as home to the Israeli and Palestinian capitals. Jewish neighborhoods would be under Israeli sovereignty and Arab neighborhoods under Palestinian sovereignty, with special arrangements for the Old City providing unimpeded access to holy sites for all communities. The third is major financial compensation and resettlement assistance in a Palestinian state for refugees, coupled with some formal Israeli acknowledgment of responsibility for the problem, but no generalized right of return [for Palestinian refugees, long ago tossed off their land]. The fourth is the creation of an American led, UN-mandated multinational force for a transitional period of up to 15 years leading to full Palestinian control of their security.
Time heals wounds. Patience is a virtue. These are clichés for a reason. We need to rid ourselves of the old normal driven by deceit, greed, and aggression.
Once the next generation, and even more so the one after that, gets used to peace and a fresh reality, a new normal will prevail, marked by peace, dual security, cultural acceptance, and integration.
Logic must reign over fanaticism. A strong suggestion is to follow the peaceful guidelines established by the Geneva Initiative of 2003 that were expanded upon in 2009. It was a nonbind- ing agreement between representatives of both governments, which met in secret. Approximately sixty world leaders, some of them normally considered inflexible or biased one way or the other, proclaimed support for the provisions.
It coincides with some of the items in Cohen’s aforementioned article.
First and foremost is security. Israel must feel secure. It already has its border wall. Now the Israelis must trust that an international peace-keeping group and eventually the next genera- tions of Palestinians and Israelis to maintain the peace.
Palestine should be utterly demilitarized. Other than possessing a police force, the Palestinians would have no reason whatsoever for a formal military, and any militant group that rises up in the early stages of a transition must be squashed, and violently if necessary. This chapter is about peace, but the legitimate transitional powers put in place must be able to protect themselves, without needing to use an excess of military force. Similarly, radical Jewish settlers conducting terror operations must be arrested, tried, and punished appropriately.
Although much smaller in scale, the resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland serve as an example. Bad feelings can persist, but eventually the tide becomes more peaceful and gen- erations move along. The Good Friday Agreement (a.k.a. the Belfast Agreement) of 1998 formal-
ly ended the violence. Eight years later, the St Andrews Agreement between Britain, Ireland, and the major parties of Northern Ireland further normalized life and security in the region.
The Geneva Accord cemented the international border between Palestine and Israel on boundaries established in the summer of 1967, with some leeway for land swaps. Jerusalem would be the capital of Israel. East Jerusalem would be the capital of Palestine. Neutral Jordan, or an equivalent international peace-keeping entity, would continue to monitor and enforce ac- cess to respective holy sites.
Idealistic? There are clear-cut reasons to be optimistic, ones that those presently in power never want you to realize or see. The status quo is just fine with the land-grabbers.
In the years leading up to the militant regime of “King Bibi” Netanyahu, who re-assumed power in 2009 by inciting violence, responding with slaughter, and riding a law-and-order and protection-from-terrorism platform, the mood in Israel was changing.
Ariel Sharon became prime minister of Israel in March of 2001. He was the leader who oversaw the removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and the return of that land to the Palestinians in 2005. Unfortunately, in exchange Gaza became a “prison” and Israel began stealing land from the West Bank to make up the difference, but a conciliatory (to pacify) mood, not seen since the mid-1990s, had been struck in the relationship.
Part of it came from guilt, or self-reflection, on both sides.
Glenn Frankel wrote in the Washington Post on Monday, May 24, 2004 under the headline “Key Israeli Condemns Offensive in Gaza—Deputy Premiere Says Images Evoke Holocaust Memories”:
In stark and emotional language, Deputy Prime Minister Yosef Lapid, who also holds the Justice Ministry portfolio and is a Holocaust survivor, told Israeli radio that the country risked further international condemnation if the army continued its campaign of pursuing Palestinian gunmen, demolishing homes and expelling civilians from the heart of the populous Rafah refugee camp. “On TV I saw an old woman rummaging through the ruins of her house looking for her medication, and it reminded me of my grandmother who was thrown out of her house during the Shoah,” or Holocaust, Lapid said in a radio interview after the weekly cabinet session. “We look like monsters in the eyes of the world,” he added. “This makes me sick.”
In contrast, Netanyahu’s policy would be to censor the media, as to not let anyone see the woman in the ruins of her home, and even if some did see it in the Middle East or Europe, he’s assured no one would see it in the United States of Israel.
On the flipside, “Hamas Spokesman Blames Palestinians for Gaza Chaos” was the headline above Steven Erlanger’s article in the New York Times on August 29, 2006. He described the self-criticism of the Hamas official and former newspaper editor Ghazi Hamad:
He urged Palestinians to look to themselves, not to Israel, for the causes. But he appeared not to be placing the blame on Hamas or the Palestinian Authority’s prime minister, Ismail Haniya of Hamas. He said various armed groups in the Gaza Strip—most affiliated with Fathah, Hamas’s rival—were responsible for the chaos. “We’ve all been attacked by the bacteria of stupidity,” Mr. Hamad wrote. “We have lost our sense of direction.” He addressed the armed groups: “Please have mercy on Gaza. Have mercy on us from your demagogy, chaos, guns, thugs, infighting. Let Gaza breathe a bit. Let it live.”
Factional infighting among the Palestinians themselves has contributed to the ongoing despair. But there have been multiple moments of cooperation. One headline came on September 12, 2006 in the Washington Post, “Abbas Announces Deal with Hamas—Rival Palestinian Movements Agree to Work Together to Create Unity.”
This came very shortly after some major changes on the Israeli side.
Ariel Sharon’s stroke in 2006 precipitated an election. Ehud Olmert, who briefly served as the interim with Sharon unavailable, became prime minister. The results of the parliamentary election were encouraging for peace, as described in the Washington Post’s official editorial on March 30, 2006. It was called “A Decisive Election—Israelis Overwhelmingly Vote to Withdraw from the Occupied West Bank”:
Though Mr. Olmert’s Kadima Party won fewer parliamentary seats than it hoped for, up to two-thirds of the new Knesset will probably support a West Bank withdrawal. That doesn’t mean it will happen in the next four years; this is still the Middle East. But the Israeli parties that favor holding on to all of the remaining occupied territories and settlements were devastated by the election. The Likud Party, which governed Israel for most of the past 30 years and pursued the cause of a “greater Israel” during most of that time, won only 11 of 120 Knesset seats; even among right-wing parties, it took second place to one that favors a territorial separation of Israelis and Palestinians.
Likud is Netanyahu’s party. Following a devastating war with Lebanon in 2006 and con- tinued incitement in Gaza, that peaceful tide was turned back. The country managed to disavow itself from the last true American-led peace talks held in Annapolis, Maryland in 2007 and 2008.
Just after the Gaza slaughter in early 2009, Netanyahu re-took the prime minister’s office, and he’s been there ever since, as of October 2020.
On March 31, 2009, the Washington Post’s editors submitted an opinion piece under the headings “Israel’s New Government—Will the Obama Administration Accept Binyamin Netanyahu’s Dodge on Palestinian Statehood?”:
Today the Israeli parliament will probably approve a new government that, from Wash- ington’s point of view, looks problematic. Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu had a rocky relationship with the Clinton administration when he last held the post in the late 1990s. His new coalition is dominated by nationalists and religious fundamentalists; his choice for foreign minister has proposed stripping Arabs of citizenship unless they pledge their loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state. Arab leaders are sounding the alarm about a coalition that, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat charged on the opposite page Saturday, exemplifies “some of the worst traditions in Israeli politics.”
Over the last eleven years, all of Erakat’s and the Post editors’ nightmares have come true. Netanyahu would have a good chuckle if he went back and read the last line of the editorial now:
Israelis—starting with Mr. Netanyahu—need to get the message that acceptance of a two- state solution has become a prerequisite for normal relations with the United States.
That should be the prerequisite, and at times there have been blips of optimism that eventually get shuffled under the rug. It’s important to highlight them.
Most would be shocked to read this headline from December 27, 2006 in the New York Times, “First Settlement in 10 Years Fuels Mideast Tension.” Yes, Israel had gone a decade without building a settlement in the West Bank. They of course were occupying the Gaza Strip up until 2005, but this is a remarkable overlooked fact.
A day before that in the UK’s The Times: “Israel Agrees to Remove 2 Dozen Checkpoints.” Two more headlines from the same newspaper: on July 21, 2007, “In Gesture to Abbas, Israel Releases 255 Palestinian Prisoners” And on August 8, 2007, “[Israeli] Police Fight to Remove West Bank Settlers.”
On July 29, 2007, the New York Times published “Coalition of Evangelicals Voices Support for Palestinian State.” The story by Laurie Goodstein pointed out that not all fundamentalists took a hard line against the concept of Palestine. In fact, it may be a very vocal minority, enveloped by Israel’s public relations machinery that wants you to believe all Christian voices are opposed to Palestinian statehood:
Now more than 30 evangelical leaders are stepping forward to say these efforts have giv- en the wrong impression about the stance of many, if not most, American evangelicals. On Friday, these leaders sent a letter to President Bush saying that both Israelis and Pales- tinians have “legitimate rights stretching back for millennia to the lands of Israel/Palestine,” and that they support the creation of a Palestinian state “that includes the vast majority of the West Bank.”
Goodstein lists a variety of religious organizations representing thousands of churches. Pre-Netanyahu, there were other positive trends. Also in The Times, on August 2, 2007, an article by Helene Cooper and David S. Cloud, “Saudi Arabia Says It May Meet Israel,” defines clear objectives that need to be tabled to achieve progress:
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said Wednesday that his country would consider attending President Bush’s planned Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in the fall, which would put Saudi officials publicly at the same table as their Israeli counterparts for the first time since 1991. But Saudi officials said a precondition of its attendance was that the conference tackle the four big “final status” issues that had bedevilled peace negotiators since 1979; the fate of Palestinian refugees who fled or were forced to flee their homes in Israel, mostly before the 1948 war; the status of Jerusalem; the borders of a Palestinian state; and the dismantlement of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Saudi Arabia reiterated these demands in a very simple manner in September 2020 after it was announced Israel had formally normalized already active ties with the United Arab Emirates, a development the scope of which Trump and Netanyahu blew up into a major public relations event. The Saudis were once again clear; sure we’ll talk about normalizing relations as well, as soon as the Palestinians have their own legitimate state.
There have been other messages and methods along the way. Palestinian Mustafa Barghouthi had his editorial published in the New York Times on February 22, 2012, called “Peaceful Protest Can Free Palestine”:
Over the past 64 years, Palestinians have tried armed struggle; we have tried negotiations; and we have tried peace conferences. Yet all we have seen is more Israeli settlements, more loss of lives and resources, and the emergence of a horrifying system of segregation. Khader Adnan, a Palestinian held in an Israeli prison, pursued a different path. Despite his alleged affiliation with the militant group Islamic Jihad, he waged a peaceful hunger strike to shake loose the consciences of people in Israel and around the world. Mr. Adnan chose to go unfed for more than nine weeks and came close to death. He endured for 66 days before ending his hunger strike on Tuesday in exchange for an Israeli agreement to release him as early as April 17.
Barghouthi emphasized “To gain freedom, we must embrace nonviolent resistance.”
Mr. Adnan was not alone in his plight. More than 300 Palestinians are currently held in “administrative detention.” No charges have been brought against them; they must contend with secret evidence; and they do not get their day in military court.
A disgrace: people starving themselves to near death in the Middle East’s lone “democracy,” while the US government sits idly by, having to go along with it, while its taxpayers go about their business without a clue.
It’s this reality, like an emotional version of blunt force trauma, which has led many within the Jewish state itself to make contrarian commitments. On August 20, 2009, Jewish Israeli Neve Gordon wrote an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times simply called “Boycott Israel.” The subtext read, “An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it’s the only way to save his country”:
It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself. I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country’s future. The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state.
Eleven years later, the facts on the ground that led to that statement have worsened, the noose on free speech has tightened, and the Netanyahu regime’s ownership of the American mind has expanded.
This book isn’t about the Jewish race—it’s about a regime supported by religious fanaticism and by the financing and power of those like-minded people in the United States. Those like-minded people in the US of I make up the actual regime. Over the decades, Philadelphia and Tel Aviv have become interchangeable, as policies and public relations that support and govern the US of I find the light of day although they are half a world apart.
It is the greed of power that has led to Israel the enigma, or as Neve Gordon put it, a country that needs to be saved from itself.
It is the Jekyll and Hyde, the yin and yang of Israel that is beyond mind boggling. A modern, industrious, creative, dynamic society, locked into an archaic policy of hate and human injustice by extremist religious doctrine.
Organized religion in its extremist forms: Islam—kill yourself to kill non-believers. Judaism—murder non-Jews and lie about it. Christianity—support the fanatical Jews because their existence supports biblical prophecy, and then remind them that they’re going to Hell if they don’t convert.
The insincere madness of the religious co-existence of the latter two is a veil for the true motives of greed and self-interest.
Allison Kaplan Sommer reviewed two Israeli documentary films in Haaretz on September 9, 2020. She called her article “Israeli Filmmakers Put AIPAC and US Evangelicals under the Spotlight, and Are Alarmed at What They Find.” In the subtext, “Two new documentaries, ‘Kings of Capitol Hill’ and ‘Til Kingdom Come’ offer a fascinating snapshot of the past, present and future of pro-Israel lobby groups in Washington.”
Her review reveals a powerful feeling expressed by some American Jews as to where American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Israel are headed:
“They were heartbroken,” she [film director Mor Loushy] says. “These were people who were inside the organization, who have given their lives to Zionism. And you can see their pain looking at where Israel is today—and it’s a pain you see across the liberal Jewish community.”
Her review of the latter film, from Emmy Award-winning director Maya Zinshtein, involved what she called a much simpler matter:
Her protagonists, pastors William and Boyd Bingham—father and son preachers at Bing- hamtown Baptist Church—are both deeply connected to Israel through the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, an organization that was founded in the 1980’s by the influential American Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein. ... Evangelicals like those in Binghamtown [Kentucky] have little use for discussions on the occupation or Palestinian rights, the topics that are eroding support for Israel within America’s Jewish community. Their interpretation of gospel dictates that the entire Land of Israel belongs to the Jews by divine right, period. This stand has endeared them to the Israeli political right, particularly the settler movement.
Apparently this element of the gospel supersedes “though shall not steal” and “though shall not kill” and other basic principles of Judeo-Christian doctrine:
This specific congregation is also dear to the heart of the Fellowship’s Yael Eckstein, daughter of the late Rabbi Eckstein. She travels across the American heartland to such communities, collecting more than $100 million annually, which the Fellowship uses to operate charity programs in Israel.
The next part is cringe-worthy:
The moments causing the most discomfort in Zinshtein’s film occur when she shows the poverty of the Kentucky community in which the church is located. Half of the children who put their coins in the charity box for Israel live below the poverty line. When Eckstein accepts their donations with a smile before jetting off to her next destination, isn’t that exploitive? “They definitely don’t feel exploited,” Zinshtein says. “You can ask how they got to a place where they feel that way, but it’s true.”
It’s the root of all evil. As this book has readily proven, ignorance is easily exploited. Among all of the activities or actions people should take to improve their society, demanding massive, across-the-board funding for public education at all levels for all people, regardless of race, creed, or color, has to be the top priority. It’s easily done: the entire infrastructure could be rebuilt, teachers employed, and supplies provided, by taking just a fraction from the bloated annual defense budget. Or better yet, take the $4 billion earmarked for Israel and give it to American public schools.
Those in control of the US of I do not want this, not just for the obvious financial reasons, but more so because a well-informed, educated public is the ultimate threat to unseating their power.
Just as Israel has complete and utter control of the outcome of any military confrontation in the West Bank or Gaza, the United States of America, if acting unabated and in its own self-interest, would have utter control creating, negotiating, and if need be, imposing a fair and just peace and land resolution in the Middle East. As long as the US of A remains the US of I, it will never happen.
The United States of Israel has been the new normal for at least four decades. Bring back the United States of America.
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