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.    

 

 

The Difference Over Israel Is Not A Difference Between Being Left Or Progressive.

I agree with Michael A. Dover's comment on Portside that

"It is important to recognize that what is progressive at any one point in history is not necessarily what seems most 'left'."

Many progressives and leftists have never attempted to discern the differences arising from their common ground of honest concern for the welfare of humanity over the welfare of the wealthy.

So how do we tell the difference? In a pinch, a leftist is more concerned about being on the "left side" than anything else. Leftists have the highest regard for their ideological position as a shared value and base their sense of personal integrity on remaining true to the team's point of view. Any deviation from their leftist positioning is seen as betrayal of "Team Left." This sense of honor and faith to the collective base is what makes leftists feel pride in their sense of selflessness. The ideology as a determining factor is always set within a social context in which the consensus about what is left approach is the most important. This high value on the group also places great stress on the group's cohesion, and leads to the fracturing of group identity, such as the well known stereotype of Stalinists verses Trotskyites.

In the same pinch a progressive will ask, "In this situation what will lead to progress toward the betterment of the human situation?" This is a coherent ideal rather than a consistent ideology. As an ideal, the progressive is moved by a guiding star rather than a leftist's guidebook, so that individual's orientation to the situational betterment of the human condition is the central concern. The progressive's main concern is about progress toward betterment of the condition of the most (rather than the conservative's concern for the betterment of the condition for the "best" and the "fewest", i.e., themselves), but the progressive's group betterment goal is set within the personal value of letting people personally define how they are guided by their own star rather than a group consensus upon which constellation to follow. Of course, the downside for progressives is that group integration in a common strategy is weakened as each person is led by the sound of their own drummer when stepping toward progress. The images of herding cats or carrying frogs into a wheelbarrow are appropriate stereotypes for getting progressives to actually do practical political work.

So while leftists and progressives instantly see their shared value of working toward the betterment of the human condition for the widest number of humans possible, they often move away from each other when it comes to putting boots, loafers, sandals, sneakers, and high heels on the ground to march, walk, hike, jog, or stroll toward this goal.

How does this apply to the Israel-Palestine situation? The leftist will have a rule and apply it, and here the general rule is that oppression is always bad and must be aggressively opposed. However, when Israel is the case to which the rule is applied the team factor comes into play. For the mainstream Jewish Left and those who are their close friends, Israel in its very nature is a product of left thinking and the very existence of Israel is a continuing living example of the fight against oppression generally and the oppression of the Jews specifically. Any act that undermines Israel is therefore seen as an act against the left view that fights oppression. Any charge against Israel is discounted on the basis that Israel is protecting itself against the oppression of the attacks on its existence. Of course on the other hand, there is an International Left that reads the current facts as trumping the historical facts, and finds the current oppression of Palestinians by the Israel government and its forces to be just one more example of oppression by the powerful against the weak that now also must be diligently opposed. In this situation, the two versions of what is the true left position will be at odds while both claim to be on the left against oppression.

Similarly, progressives find themselves at odds over how to respond to Israel's behavior. Mainstream Jewish progressives and their close friends will argue that the hope for the betterment of the most people in the Middle East rests upon the continued existence of Israel as a neighborhood example of democracy and human rights. However, progressives with no personal attachment to Israel see the situation quite differently and say that there is no human argument that can condone the current oppression of the millions of Palestinians, and that the progressive thing to do to better the condition of the most in the Middle East is to clearly oppose Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. In this view, Israel is only a sham democracy and is running a con-game when it comes to protecting "human rights" as opposed to merely protecting the economic and military power of Israel.

From the perspective of this analysis, the main difference is not between the left and progressives as between those Jewish Left-Progressives (and their friends) who continue to equate Israel as the protector of Jewish identity as being against oppression and the rest of the left and progressives who see the government of Israel as the central betrayer of Jewish identity and values. I see no way to avoid this very unpleasant and inconvenient conclusion.

I identify my position as being a radical progressive of the kind that says the government of Israel has betrayed the core values against oppression. (Of course it is an open question of history whether or not those values were ever really in play on the ground as Israel was created by the forced ethnic cleansing as the USA was also created, but that is not the issue here.) The international ideal that legitimatized the creation of Israel by the UN was the simple value of protecting people from oppression. Israel has now clearly betrayed that value by oppressing the Palestinian people through collective punishment, committing social atrocities in the building of settlements, and other such oppressions. It is now time that Israel as a government and a nation either (1) guarantee that value against oppression equally for the Palestinians or (2) cease to have any continuing international legitimacy to exist.

Though the human mind has an infinite capacity to rationalize, I see no rationalization that can overcome the plain fact that Israel and the USA are not permitting the people in the Palestinian territories to exist as a sovereign nation.

Honestly, the Palestinians themselves have made a shambles of trying to work together for their freedom, but their inability to do so is understandable when it is seen in the context of their captivity (figuratively and concretely speaking) by Israel. When people are in prison and divided by their captors and guards, it is very difficult to work together effectively. This is why we see ethnic gangs in prisons fighting each other rather than working collectively against the guards and wardens, and it is precisely why the prison authorities keep the prison factionalism alive in order to prevent a concerted action by the inmates against their guards who are vastly outnumbered.

Ultimately, what the UN gave, the UN should be able to take away. UN Generral Assembly Resolution no. 181 of 1947, and subsequent related resolutions, put into effect the previous intent of the League of Nations when creating the "Mandate for Palestine" in 1922. UN Resolution no. 181 recognized that the Mandate of Palestine should be divided into two nations one as a Jewish State and one as an Arab State. The context for the Palestinian request for recognition as a nation and continuing implementation of Resolution no. 181 and its progeny, should be the inherent power of the UN to pass a resolution under its parliamentary plenary power to amend or even repeal its prior resolutions including No. 181. In other words, if Israel and the USA continue to oppose and thwart the recognition of a sovereign nation for the Palestinians and continue to violate Resolution no. 242 by military occupation and blockade, then Resolution no. 181 should be repealed and recognition of Israel should be removed.

I continue to believe that the Palestinians have the best chance for a common sovereignty if they recognize the separate statehood of Gaza and the West Bank and form a federal connection as the expression of their unity rather than attempting to establish a single state with a single government. The fact of their territorial separateness cannot be ignored and just as the different states of the USA allow for a certain amount of both local control and local experimentation, so too will separate states in a unified federal system allow the Palestinians to have the best of local organization and common identity and citizenship. So far, I have not heard of any practical steps in this direction, though I am admittedly a world away from hearing what the insiders are planning in Palestine. However, if they want to have world opinion on their side when the question of their sovereignty comes before the UN, then it would behoove them to have a very practical plan for their nationhood status to present in order to inspire confidence.

At a minimum, their "Outline for Nationhood" should include the following proposals of trust:

1. Declare that the new nation of Palestine will consist of two states of contiguous geographical integrity, i.e., the West Bank and Gaza, bound together in a federal unity.

2. Affirm that there will be a federal constitution defining the powers of the federal government, including issues of legislative, judicial, executive, monetary, military, diplomatic, citizenship, etc., and there will be separate state constitutions for the functioning of the two states within their federal unity.

3. Establish a general timeline for the creation of the constitutions.

4. Ratify the importance of human rights with a statement of commitment to the principles spelled out in the UN's Universal Declaration on Human Rights and promise that the new Palestinian nation will protect the human rights of its citizens regardless of ethnic or religious identity.

5. Recognize the six basic principles of democracy: (1) The people are sovereign; (2) The people exercise their sovereignty by the rule of law not individuals, cliques, or juntas; (3) The people govern by majority rule; (4) The majority rule is constitutionally limited by minority rights; (5) The governance structure has a separation of powers so that no one branch or government function has all the power; and (6) The governance system has checks and balances to prevent the abuse of power between or within the branches from becoming tyrannical. And that within these "ground rules" of democracy the people of Palestine will create their constitutions and government structure.

6. Affirm that the new nation of Palestine will accept and abide by the unanimously approved UN Security Council Resolution no. 242 of 1967, and affirm that as soon as Israel withdraws its armed forces from the occupied territories as referenced in Resolution no. 242 and ends the blockade of Gaza, then the provisional government of Palestine will officially recognize the territorial inviolability and political independence of Israel according to Resolution no. 242.

If the Hamas and Fatah political organizations can agree on an Outline for Nationhood with a provisional governmental authority, then as soon as they have that agreement, and without waiting for the UN vote of recognition, they should send out diplomatic envoys to all the nations of the world asking for individual diplomatic recognition of Palestinian sovereignty and the provisional government. France has already recognized the Provisional Transitional National Council of Libyan rebels as the rightful Libyan regime. A transitional government of Palestine would have a much greater justification for receiving recognition. By demonstrating their ability to function as a sovereign nation and seek diplomatic recognition on their own without prior approval, the Palestinians would create greater pressure on the UN as a body to officially recognize the nation of Palestine and provide the necessary assistance for the nation building that will be required after the devastation wrought by Israel.

Letter to Senator Barak Obama on Israel

Israel is the issue.
March 10, 2007

Dear Senator Obama,

I'm am very concerned about the reports of your recent speech before AIPAC of Chicago. According to the Jewish Daily Forward, you stated,

“We should all be concerned about the agreement negotiated among Palestinians in Mecca last month. The reports of this agreement suggest that Hamas, Fatah and independent ministers would sit in a government together, under a Hamas prime minister, without any recognition of Israel, without a renunciation of violence, and with only an ambiguous promise to ‘respect’ previous agreements…. We must tell the Palestinians this is not good enough.”

Contrary to your statement, there is nothing wrong with the agreement reached in Mecca. The Palestinian people must be given the recognition and sovereignty equal to the people of Israel. If Israel won't allow the Palestinians to be allowed to elect their own government then Israel does not have a right to exist!

There is no basis to recognize the legitimacy of Israel as long as it continues its illegitimate apartheid occupation of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza.

I understand the very difficult situation you are in having to deal with American Jewish organizations regarding Israel, however, if you choose to placate them as your method of dealing with them then I have no interest in voting for you. I will only vote for a candidate who will stand up to the Israel lobby with the truth and facts as they exist.

Did you tell AIPAC that the occupation of the West Bank is illegal? That it is apartheid? That peace in Israel and Palestine will come when Israel acknowledges the right of the Palestinian people to exist as a state?

You see, neither the USA nor Israel have the right to tell the Palestinian people who they can elect to govern them, otherwise the democracy you offer them is just a sham, AND EVERYBODY KNOWS IT TO BE A SHAM when Hamas is treated with such prejudice!

You were clear enough to oppose the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the invasion and occupation of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza should be opposed for many of the same reasons, including that the occupation violates international law.

Israel is a state with the unique history of being created by United Nations approval. Every day that Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and Gaza in violation of UN resolutions, to militarily control the territories, to surround them and prevent travel and business to freely pass their boundaries, to terrorize their citizens, then Israel is indeed forfeiting its right to exist under it UN birthright.

Gregory Wonderwheel