Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Israel is a Serial Killer That Must Be Stopped


 

We have to stop lying to ourselves.  The whole notion of Peace Talks to solve the Israel and Palestine question is a complete and utter sham. Israel has no intention of solving the Palestinian issue by any other means than genocide and ethnic cleansing. The whole world must ask itself, how do you negotiate with a serial killer to stop the killing?  

In a fundamental way, how is the Likud Party any different than Hamas?  Or to be even more blunt and to the point, how is the Likud Party today any different from what the NAZI Party of Germany was in the 1930s?  

The Israelis demand that the Hamas Party “recognize Israel as a Jewish State” before everything else, but why does no one on the world stage demand that the Likud Party “recognize a Palestinian State”? The Likud Party has in its charter the claim of divine right that the Jordan River is the permanent eastern border of Israel and that the Palestinians have no right to a state.  The Likud Party has no intention of allowing Palestinian control of any of the land of “Greater Israel.” As the Likud Party Charter states:

The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting." 

Thus, the Likud Party has no intention of ever conceding the settlements and only intends the ultimate expansion of the settlements to include all of the West Bank and Gaza and their current leadership of Israel demonstrates by their attacks on Gaza and their apartheid administration of the West Bank their primary intent of gaining the whole territory that they claim is Israel by either genocide or ethnic cleansing of the land. For the Likud Party and their supporters, the end game is the conversion of the entire Palestine Mandate into the Jewish nation of Israel. Yet, where are the current world leaders who dare to criticize this for what it is?  

We in the USA can’t avoid any responsibility for what is happening in Israel and Palestine.  Now, U.S. supporters of Israel are supporting the holocaust in Gaza, are supporting the war crimes of Israel, are supporting genocide and apartheid committed by the Israelis. The government of Israel has ceased to be legitimate by its own acts.

This is not a question of politics, nor is it a question of religion; it is a question of humanity.  As the article “Central to the Achievement of the ‘Zionist Dream’ is theNotion That Jewish Lives Matter More Than Arab Lives  by Donna Nevel makes clear, at every crossroads of the so-called roadmap to peace, the Israelis have chosen the road that values Israeli lives while dehumanizing Palestinian lives, just as the Nazis dehumanized Jewish lives. 

If anyone thinks this is over stated, and my comparison to the Nazis is just a crass example of “Godwin’s Law” the issue is settled by simply taking any official statement of the Likud Party or the current Israeli government and substituting  the roles with words like “Jewish” changed to “Aryan” and “Isreal” changed to “Germany.”  The language and the intent will be just as clear today as it was in 1930s Germany.

For instance, the Likud Party Charter also states:

"The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river. The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel’s existence, security and national needs."

How is this any different from Nazi German propaganda which would have likewise stated:

"The Government of Germany flatly rejects the establishment of a Jewish state north of the Mediterranean Sea. The Jews can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Germany’s existence, security and national needs."

Doesn’t that make the very idea of a “framework of self-rule” a complete farce? Of course it does, but this is the official position of the leaders of Israel and the leading party of Israel and the people of Israel who continue to elect Likud and the other right-wing Zionist parties into government.

Israel has become a serial killer.  Out of the depths of despair and the atrocities committed against it, the nation of Israel was born. This is how most serial killers began: abused and tortured as children and then they grow up.  If we look into the lives of serial killers we can feel compassion for their early childhood, for the complete deprivation of empathy and love in their development, for the cruel punishments that twisted parents inflicted upon them, and so too, can we feel compassion for the Jews who suffered and survived the Holocaust that birthed the nation of Israel.  But when the tormented childhood gives birth to the adult personality of the serial killer, no amount of compassion for the child can excuse the acts of the serial killer.  Likewise for Israel, no amount of compassion for the suffering experienced in the Holocaust that has no given birth to the serial killer nation of Israel can condone or excuse the holocaust, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid that Israel is now inflicting on another people while mentally and emotionally protecting itself under the iron dome of propaganda that the people and nation of Israel are more valuable and scared as human beings than the people whose land the Israelis have taken over for their Jewish homeland.

The serial killer nation of Israel must be stopped. Even if it ever was, the government of Israel is no longer legitimate because its actions against the Palestinians are no more legitimate than the Hutu treatment of Tutsis in Rwanda, than the Afrikaner treatment of the native South Africans in South Africa, or than the treatment of the Nazis against the Jews in Germany.

The USA is the only nation with enough power over Israel to stop it.  We are the primary and chief nation enabling Israel’s serial killing spree.  Without the aiding and abetting of US support Israel could not maintain its blockade of Gaza and the West Bank, could not maintain the settlements, and could not maintain the apartheid occupation. At any time, the US has the power to stop vetoing United Nations Security Council review of the conduct of Israel.  The USA is completely hypocritical at the UN Security Council when it demands intervention for nations like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, yet prevents discussion of intervention to protect the Palestinian people. 

Since the USA won’t act, the only other avenue is for another Nation to take the reins and lead a movement to break the blockade of Gaza and the West Bank in the manner of breaking the 1948 Berlin Blockade.  Some nation of compassion must unilaterally step forward and begin an airlift and sealift to Gaza and airlift to the West Bank to remind the world that the serial killing by Israel must be stopped.  Only by calling Israel’s bluff aimed at other nations, only by directly challenging the legitimacy of Israel’s apartheid occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza and of Israel’s serial killing of Palestinians, will the world wake up from its delusional dream that Israel is and remains a humanitarian nation no matter what is does.

A movement to Break the Blockade must be based on humanitarian principles and avoid any politicization of the issue.  In fact the Break the Blockade movement has already begun with several organizations such as the Free Gaza Movement, and people’s flotillas, such as the Gaza Freedom Flotilla  of May 2010 that attempted to provide aide to Gaza that was stopped and illegally seized by Israel. But no nation came to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla’s protection in international waters and so Israel was allowed to commit piracy on the open seas.  

The second flotilla named “Freedom Flotilla II” was publicly opposed by the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Canada, the “Middle East Quartet” (consisting of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations, and the United States), and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Thus, these are the nations with direct complicity in Israel’s continuing serial killings.  And this is why there must be a nation that comes forward to conduct either a flotilla or an airlift to show that Israel’s attack on attempts to break the blockade are acts of war against humanity that are not condoned and abetted by the so-called “important” nations.  

What nation of stature and compassion could dare to confront the imperial nations of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Russia?  The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Spain, are possibilities. Could the people of Canada, France, the UK, or even the USA change their governments positions?  Could the General Assembly of the UN formally adopt a call to Break the Blockade and invite nations to conduct sea or airlifts under the authority of the General Assembly?

While the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is aiming in the right direction, it is only a prelude to the real action necessary to Break the Blockade and reestablish the protection of the human rights of the Palestinians and to stop the serial killing spree by Israel.

Israel is a serial killer that must be stopped, and before any violence is used to stop it, any and all nonviolent means must used. A movement to Break the Blockade is a nonviolent method. If Israel chooses to violently attack a nonviolent sea or airlift, then it will be clear to the whole world who is the real perpetrator of the serial violence.    


 

 

Thursday, July 10, 2014

The Joy of Awakening

Someone asked:

I see the trees bend. I feel the sun. I hear the birds sing. I see my daughter skip before me. I feel joy in the moment. But is that joy illusory; transient and born of the cravings of the self, or is it zen itself, the illusion stripped away and the universe revealed?
I struggle with this simple question.

My reply: 

Great simple question, that because of its very simplicity, will evoke very different and contradictory responses!

The word "joy" can refer to selfish illusions or the true nature of the universe revealed.

The Sutra of Queen Srimala's Lion's Roar says joy is one of the paramitas of the Dharmakaya. So there is nothing wrong with joy. By a paramita of the Dharmakaya is meant that joy can carry us over to the other shore of the true suchness of the Dharmakaya.

But of course we can have illusions of and about joy just like we can have illusions about everything based on our antithetical polarized conceptions.

To struggle with this question is an example of the natural arising of a koan of life (genjo koan).  Keep the "don't know" of inquiring doubt alongside the faith in joy as a manifestation of suchness and resolve the apparent dilemma on your own with the struggle of determined practice.


Someone else responded to the first question with:

Joy and happiness and suffering are all things that change.
The saying goes, "This too shall pass." Transient.
Born of greed, hatred, ignorance.



To which I replied:

This presumes the definition of "joy" as something belonging on the list of all things that change. Joy is definitely not something born of the three poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance, so it doesn't belong on the list.

Actually, joy never changes, it is only our thoughts about joy that change.  The never beginning and never ending continual radiation of the joy of the Dharmakaya is like the light of the sun always shining but being obscured by clouds or by the rotation of the earth.

When we see the trees bending in the wind, the beauty of the flowers, or the zest of the children and these bring us joy, that joy is the joy of the Dharmakaya manifesting.  If we mistake that joy as being dependent on the trees, the flowers, and the children, then we are mistaking joy for something that is impermanent and changing because we are confusing true and genuine joy with the object that is associated with arousing our recollection of the joy of awakening!  That confusion is what is born by the three poisons, not the joy.

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