Is it true that there are two sides with a balance between them?

I write in very late December of 2023 as the Israeli slaughter in Gaza is continuing while the US stands by supplying anything needed for Israel to continue the project.

A man whose commentaries I admire, Murtaza Hussein, posted an essay in which he said he believes there is a balance between Israel and the Palestinians, that violence is not the answer and he is reluctant to take sides. I posted my disagreement which follows...

Murtaza your opening is deeply moving, but with all due respect I believe you are wrong in attempting to make equivalent the situation of Israelis and Palestinians.

I knew absolutely nothing about the situation until about 25 years ago when I took an undergraduate course in US national security and another about the history of the Ottoman Empire. I began to wonder why, time after time, Israel was able to continue to take land and the Palestinians lose it, not only violating international law but with the full protection in the UN by the United States, veto after veto being used to stop any sanction of international law, the very law that the US has always claimed should be honored and in whose design the US was a full participant after WW2.

Being proud of the US claim to stand for liberty and justice for all, I could not believe the hypocrisy of mouthing mild criticisms of Israel, calling for a two state solution but in the end always going with what Israel wanted to do. A perfect example was when Joe Biden was VP under Obama. The US had recently told Israel that it did not want to see any further expansion of settlements. Biden was on a visit to Israel when that country announced the expansion of settlements. Biden was furious. But, as always, nothing came of it and the settlements expanded.

You speak of Israelis you know and of Palestinians you know and how you cannot come down on one side or the other, yet you mention in your opening the inability of most Palestinians to visit the mosque you visited easily. That gives great power to your account of the man enraptured to be in a place so revered by him. Though the mosque has no religious significance to Jews (or Christians), Israel has total control of the site and is the party determining who will and who will not go there, in fact, who will and will not go anywhere in the West Bank and who will and will not be able to go in or out of Gaza.

You appear to believe that the mass of Israelis and Palestinians are benign and that it is only a selection of each that engages in violence. But surely you know that humiliation of Palestinians by Israelis has been a daily occurrence for decades, be it the IDF entering Palestinian homes at 3AM to take a "census" of the occupants, or settlers beating Palestinian farmers and setting fire to their olive orchards in the West Bank, or the "Independence Day" annual march by Israeli Jews through Palestinian East Jerusalem, fully accompanied by Israeli police ready to pounce on any Palestinian who might not appreciate the march.

You mention violence being ineffective, yet violence won Zionists the initial State of Israel. Violence by Israeli settlers is routine and the settlements expand. Violence won Israel the occupied territory of the West Bank and Jerusalem. Right now violence is clearing out Gaza. The Israeli human rights NGO, B'Tselem (bet-SELL-um) stopped reporting violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank by Israelis because the process was always the same - report submitted - an investigation opened - investigation clears perpetrators or is dropped entirely. In other words, the process was pointless.

What I am saying to you Murtaza is something I am sure you must know. Life has been hellish for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and filled with violence at the hands of Israelis, all of whom may carry arms (Palestinians may not) and with the only "justice" in the West Bank coming from Israeli military courts with a 98% conviction rate.

How have Israelis been living all the while? As most Americans do...decent homes, full civil rights, travel anywhere at any time in or out of the country, start up companies if they wish (it is "start-up nation") and here is the ultimate: if one is a Jew and an American, one can enjoy dual citizenship, having full rights in both the US and Israel plus, if wished, one can move to Palestinian land and make it one's own (Israel provides a financial incentive) retaining all the rights of an Israeli...of course there will be Palestinians nearby with no rights at all, but they are under tight control and the developed settlements are gated communities. Enjoy!

Not at all a balance.

Here is what convinced me that Palestinians might have a case for violence. In a poll held in Israel within the last two years, Israelis were asked about the future. What did they see as optimal? The answer was overwhelming, continue on in the same way. Why not? A lid was on the Palestinians, settlements were expanding, life was quite decent. What might a poll of Palestinians have revealed about an indefinite continuation of the status quo, particularly in the prison of Gaza?

In the 19th century in America, it was not Zionism, but Manifest Destiny that was taking the land from the natives. One of these "Indians" by the name of Red Cloud said, "They (the white man) made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it".

The "two state solution" was never a meaningful thing, never more than an empty phrase for politicians in DC to mouth. Netanyahu has now proudly stated that he alone has kept two states from coming to pass, but anyone who looks at a map of the West Bank can see that it is so filled with Israeli settlements, military zones, etc. that there is no contiguous Palestinian area for a state and this was in fact a goal of the settlements, to make two states impossible. Done!

Those 19th century American Indians had a choice. Remain peaceful and watch the land get taken, or turn to violence, make a stand, hopeless though it might be, but die fighting for the beloved land. Americans now look upon the Indians who fought as heroic. Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Cochise and many other turned to violence and now the very people who took their land look back in remorse at the relentless ethnic cleansing that swept a civilization away. And remember, Indian attacks on white settlers were vicious. They scalped, they burned people alive, they disemboweled and were called animals, savages, barbarians, snakes. Sound familiar? They were the HAMAS of their time.

But HAMAS is different in that the Palestinians are not a tiny group of people. Though Israel is now actively exterminating Palestinians in Gaza, this is not 1870. The Palestinians were, before Oct. 7, regularly suffering and dying and Israelis were saying, as I just noted above, no problem with that, keep it up. According to UN statistics, since the lawn mowing in Gaza began in 2008-9, the ratio of Israeli deaths to Palestinian deaths has been 1:20 and the world was ignoring it. Operation Cast Lead and Operation Protective Edge each killed Palestinians in a number similar to the Israelis who died on Oct 7. Did anyone notice? Now, after Oct. 7, that ratio of 1:20 is being approached and will likely be exceeded. At last the job of 1948 can be completed. A very recent poll of Jewish Israelis (80% of Israelis) indicates they don't think the IDF is doing enough in Gaza.

It just might have occurred to HAMAS that since death and suffering were to be the future, why not launch the Oct. 7 attack? Some Israelis would die and the resulting slaughter, a spasm of destruction, would open the eyes of the world to what Israel is about, what it has always been about from the early days of Zionism, to clear the land of the natives and take it for the exclusive use of Jews, a token 20% Arab Israeli population tolerated, but only just. For all the hell the American Indians took, what remains of that people are full American citizens. Israel wants no Palestinians as Israeli citizens and no Palestinians on the land. Everyone out.

To this extent, HAMAS has been successful. The world is appalled, the mask has been ripped from the face of Israel so that no hasbara can hope to cover the carnage. The most obtuse American is now aware of the slaughter. American Jews are rising up against Zionism in multitudes of the young who are closing highways and bridges, making a fuss that won't stop. Even mainstream media anchors cannot hold their revulsion when hearing nonsense coming from Israeli spokespeople about so much effort being made to avoid civilian casualties. Now Israel is on the spot as are US politicians who once had no firmer ground to stand on than support of Israel but are now sounding maniacal (Nikki Haley: FINISH THEM!)

I have not been reading an Israeli newspaper for decades, I have not been reading every book I can find on Israel/Palestine, I have not been attending Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) meetings for nothing.

I never thought I would be ashamed to be an American, but I am right now as my President does all he can to supply the genocide with all it needs, the zenith of the support in money, weapons and diplomatic cover the US has provided to Israel, essentially turning it into a superpower and by doing so inviting it to become the monster we now see in operation, eagerly destroying a people that it sees as less than human.

Liberty and Justice for All - NOT ethnic cleansing and apartheid. The blind are now beginning to see. The entire world is in opposition to a community of two, the US and Israel. The tail wags the dog with ease as Netanyahu is given all the time he needs to kill without limit, but it now is all in the open for all to see. No longer will Israel be able to (shamefully) use the millions who died in the holocaust as a protective shield to cover its own wholesale destruction of a people no less human than any Israeli.

Please people, Americans in particular, wake up.

A common question regarding Israel/Palestine...what is the solution?

 I found the following comment on a interview of Norman Finkelstein...

From @KelliLowrey:

"...would like to know how Jewish people are not considered indigenous to this land as well? Also, Norm is very book smart but what is his solution for this situation?"

My reply to Kelli...

Kelli, your statement is indicative of how Israel's status and policy are protected. Being indigenous and being exclusive are entirely separate things. The issue is not the former, entirely the latter. To ask about what is to be done has an obvious answer - to call into question the exclusivity and end it, yet it is never mentioned because it would mean change in what Israel is all about, what Israel fears most, that the state it is, is not legitimate. Therefor Israel will continue to do what it does by design: ethnic cleansing and apartheid running free. So it has always been but as of now it may not be true that so it shall always be. That all people are equally human is a powerful concept. Israel flouts it proudly, being in complete control, but ironically protected by the inequality Jews suffered in Europe 80+ years ago.

Never in history is there a precedent to the tail wagging the dog like Israel does to the US

 

There is no historical precedent to Israel's control of US foreign policy, indicative of the upside down situation in Palestine/Israel

FDR spoke of the US as the arsenal of democracy. Now it is the arsenal of Israel, making Israel for the moment the world's only superpower because everyone in power in DC is a helpless puppet for a madman in Jerusalem. Israel in general and he in particular have worked the levers in DC far more effectively than the Wizard of Oz did in Oz.

Regarding the religious issue, it is the holocaust that drives Israeli psychology. Certainly there is pride in the history of the area of Palestine/ancient Israel but far more important is the learned self-righteousness that will abide, even applaud, any act of cruelty toward the Palestinians as justified. A poll in Israel revealed a great majority believed the IDF has not acting harshly enough in Gaza. What a flash in the pan is Gaza compared to six million dead at the hands of the Nazis. The mental transfer of Nazism to any opponent of Israel is easily done. Netanyahu even made the outrageous statement that Arabs had given Hitler the idea of the final solution!

Widely used by Israelis has been "they want to kill us!" attributed to the Palestinians while in actuality the killing ratio has been 10:1, 20:1 (P killed: I killed) since the first Gaza assault in 2008/9 and who can say what the current slaughter will show? We don't know the final toll, but there is no evidence the Israelis care with even gov't officials easily failing the ritual mention of HAMAS when hailing the elimination of a people.

This substitution of accusation for truth was on display at the hearing of Rep. Stefanik who roasted the three university presidents about a hypothetical call on campus for "genocide of the Jewish people" when she had no evidence of this phrase being used, though it is certainly possible it could be. The presidents afterward groveled to clear themselves of...what? Of nothing more than defending freedom of speech! This roasting of the presidents was taking place while mass killing was underway by Israel, leading more than a few to say it was the real thing - genocide.

We should be greatly concerned with something someone might say and not at all concerned with what people are actually doing?

Israel has used the holocaust as a mighty shield, to intimidate any and all who oppose what Israel does and to justify by comparison what Israel does. Just as nobody but an untutored boy would call out that the emperor had no clothes, so will no one call out this grotesque misuse of a monumental tragedy to cover for another one. Israelis are blind to this shameless use of the dead to cover dealing in death.

History will not be kind to Zionism.

Human Beings are Capable of Good and Bad, Israeli Jews Included

Israel is put in a class by itself and has been since its creation. It has never accepted responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees that it created in 1948, refusing a penny (or shekel) to support them. Instead the UN had to come to the rescue and is still, 75 years later, providing health and education services to the over 50 camps still sitting on the sites where they were established using tents so long ago. Incredibly, Israel has asked that even this UN relief operation be stopped.

That Israel is a colony is undeniable. That Israel is not a democracy because it rules over people who have no vote is undeniable. That Israel has openly engaged in ethnic cleansing is undeniable. That the US has protected Israel from any censure by the UN is undeniable. The Palestinians have been referred to as the niggers of the Middle East. It's true for everyone to see - no civil rights, constant abuse, constant questioning over what they are doing and where they are going. Easy conviction and imprisonment can be expected. And something never suffered by African-Americans, a registry of every single Palestinian by the Israelis, a number assigned to each just as numbers were assigned to concentration camp inmates by the Nazis.

While all this might make sense to Israelis, what is going on with America? It can only be the holocaust that makes Israel exempt. The movie Exodus was a blockbuster in the US, telling the story that Israel wanted told of its creation with handsome Paul Newman in the starring role. The intro to the movie that became famous is of crossed human arms holding weapons against a backdrop of flames. The British, portrayed in the movie as antisemitic by Peter Lawford, had in fact gone to great lengths to keep a lid on the region, up to and including a brutal suppression of the quite understandable Arab Revolt of 1936-38 that rejected the Zionist takeover that by then was perfectly obvious to anyone paying attention.

The British conducted a survey of the population of Palestine in 1939 to try to find a way to settle things that would respect both the Jews and the Arabs. In the resulting white paper, which soon-to-be Israeli president David Ben Gurion rejected immediately but secretly, land was reserved for both sides. The Arabs, seeing what had been all theirs at the start of the 20th century rejected it for "offering" them 45% of Palestine though they made up 55% of the population. Ben Gurion vowed to fight WW2 with the Allies and then get serious about Palestine. So it would be.

In the movie and in the actual event, the British were despised because they called a halt to Jewish immigration after 250,000 had recently arrived from Europe, in line with the recommendation of the white paper resulting in the British boarding the ship Exodus, loaded with holocaust survivors, and forcing the refugees back to British controlled Germany. The world, including the US, unwilling to take the refugees as morality would dictate, instead denounced the British.

The fact that is not allowed to be expressed, and is something I have never, ever heard anyone in any American government say, is that Jews are no more or less human than anyone else. That they suffered a horror in Europe in no way justified their going to Palestine and forcing the Palestinians out. But this would not have won Harry Truman the vote of American Jews. Yet the movie Exodus would have us believe that Zionism was perfectly rational and even heroic as we see Paul Newman and Lee J. Cobb and a group of young Jewish kids deal with skulking Arabs hiding in the shadows, conniving with Nazis and murdering a beautiful white Jewish girl. Hollywood could have done no more for Zionism and Americans ate it up to our cost.

The US has thrown aside liberty and justice for all in favor of the Israeli exception. What makes this doubly strange is that American Jews would never ask for or be extended similar exceptionality here in the US where they are equal American citizens along with all the rest of us. There would be outrage if American Jews were excused when called before the justice system, if they were given a unique discount on home purchases, given land exclusively, from which they could pump sewage onto other land, etc., etc down the list of what Israelis do and have been doing to Palestinians openly and without apology for so many years.

Now we are allowing Israelis the ultimate: to kill and destroy without limit, to take more land, to determine what to do with all the money and weapons we give them while we stand by timidly and do not dare to intervene, our foolish Secretary of State running around the world trying to get other countries to join us! And this has been going at a lower level for decades with the US holding off all attempts at entirely peaceful sanctions from an outraged world via the UN, pressuring other countries economically to vote as the US and Israel wish them to vote.

The enormous irony of the holocaust is that it has so impressed the minds of Zionists and Americans that another holocaust is now underway perpetrated by those who believe that that victimhood 80 years ago makes them uniquely righteous, allowing any and all behavior on their part in the taking of land and the killing of people with the mighty US holding the world at bay with the immense armed force that is now truly doing the opposite of what that force is intended to do - PROTECT THE UNITED STATES, not a foreign outlaw country. Our Navy right now intimidates all for the sake of epic injustice to proceed without restraint. Need anyone wonder if this is ramping up hatred of the United States? HAMAS committed an act of terror, but in doing so it revealed, even to the most obtuse, the clear status of Israel as a unique oppressor that must not be stopped.

"Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."

The masses are huddled in Gaza waiting to be killed and have not been free in their lifetimes.

The Statue of Liberty is now nothing but a relic and a joke.

And our blind President is ready to go to the wall to leave unrestrained a foreign country with less than 2% of our population.

There are many American Jews who see exactly what is going on and denounce it. If you support them, as I do and have done for over 25 years, check out the Jewish Voice for Peace website. Let it also be said that there are a dwindling number of Israelis who denounce what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians over decades. Check out the website of B'Tselem (bet SELL um).

The Holocaust as Learned PTSD

Many Jews after the holocaust, not just survivors, but Jews around the world including in the US, were subject to the ultimate PTSD that altered their outlook on the world and their fellow man. It was crystal clear that Jews had been marked for wholesale extermination, limited only by the fight against Nazism to spreading even further than it did. I know of one Jew in particular, now very elderly, who has a terrible case of misanthropy, can see no good in anyone, is the first to offer a harsh judgement on people that I know not to be what he sees in them. His entire family with the exception of his parents died in the holocaust and he is also a victim in a way that has him in a mental prison that has turned him against all but other Jews and even against them if they don't think, like he does, that the Palestinians are animals.

His example of this mega-PTSD has so warped the views of so many people that they cannot see themselves as anything but victims-in-waiting if not actual victims as was the case on Oct 7. In fact, for these people, Oct 7 was nothing but validation of their upside down view. The history of who did what and why amounts to nothing. Rational argument amounts to nothing. As Netanyahu has said "we will always live by the sword" never considering it is the sword that Israel wields that gives credence to his words. He repeatedly says "ask HAMAS" as he truly believes it is HAMAS that is responsible for all his killing of innocent people. His hand is forced, but it is a clean hand. Mega-PTSD.

Mega-PTSD fired up Zionism and drove the terrorism that was led by such as Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir who would both become Israeli Prime Ministers preceding Netanyahu (whose father was a rabid Zionist). Mega-PTSD drives the odd tunnel vision version of "never again" which means destroy before being destroyed (pre-emption) and the most perverted aspect of all which is that what one thinks is true, is true, and there can be no refutation of it by anyone, anyone who for the simple act of disputation is per se antisemitic. A Zionist cannot be questioned regarding any destruction or killing by Israel as it is, by definition if Israel is doing it, a necessity and only a pale shadow of what Jews suffered in the holocaust against which no tragedy, past, present or future is worthy of the name. Thus the slaughter without hesitation we are witnessing. Mega-PTSD.

Most Israelis suffer from this mental illness because of the holocaust though the problem is not limited to Israel. Israel promotes this mental illness, seeking to pass it on by sending public high school students to Auschwitz to be bathed in the horror and supplied with Israeli flags they are welcome to wrap around themselves as they contemplate what is clearly intended as a horror that is directed at them for which Israel is the one and only shelter.

This mental illness cannot be cured, short of some trauma that results in waking up, so the only hope of escape is the rise of new generations that can see clearly rather than down the dark holocaust tunnel with Israel a shining light at the end. Because of the indoctrination of Israeli youth, it is American Jews that offer real hope and that is evidenced by the outstanding actions of Jewish Voice for Peace, which I cannot praise too highly and with which I have been actively involved since before the turn of the century. These "kids" are inspired by their Judaism, using it as an escape from Zionism by which it has been hijacked.

If you hate what you see going on in Gaza, as I do, don't hesitate to not only give generously to JVP but to turn out for any event they sponsor near you. They welcome all, including Palestinians, Christians, atheists, you name it, because they understand so well the humanity we share and that they believe is not just valued but honored by their religion. They say "not in our name" and "never again for ANYONE!" from the heart and I say bless those hearts that have escaped the cruel grip of Zionism.

 

Antisemitism as a Zionist Shield

Jews are as integrated into American culture as it possible to be. This is the place they are not only safe, but successful in every field be it in science, the arts, business...actually the only occupation where I think it would be rare to find Jews is in manual labor.

I grew up with Jews many of whom I never knew were Jews because it wasn't of any significance. As an adult it's the same way. For me, all the uproar about antisemitism in the US seems preposterous as the actual slaughter of people who are equally human beings with those dropping bombs on them is being conducted with gusto in Gaza. Clearly it is "look HERE, not there!" and a significant number of Jews (as are in JVP) are not buying it.

What really astounds me regarding Zionism is that nobody thinks it strange that American Jews as I have just described above, and they uniquely among Americans, may at any time and virtually instantly be given Israeli citizenship while retaining their American citizenship. This allows the epic hypocrisy of having full civil rights and freedom here in America while at the same time being able to move to Israel, have full rights and freedom there and move on to land where the natives have no rights at all. How blind can one be?

More than that, many settlers in Israel are dual citizenship Americans so can go out and beat up the natives, even be fully armed by the gov't to kill those natives right now. Have your cake, eat it too while just outside the window are the natives barely getting by, under the boot of your military and, not surprisingly, thinking of giving you serious, even lethal grief after getting that from Israel for decades. Who can possibly be surprised at HAMAS any more than surprised at the terror visited on US settlers by the American Indians? The Indians were essentially wiped out. Israel is working on that now in Gaza. Was nobody paying attention to previous lethal assaults on Gaza that killed far more Gazans than the number of Israelis killed on Oct 7. Are Americans asleep?

The crazy accusation of antisemitism to anyone opposing what Israel does is the height of absurdity. Any group of people is capable of the full range of human behavior from the pit of horror to the height of benevolence. Jews are no exception. To say that Jews who are Israeli are doing and have done terrible things to the Palestinians routinely is not antisemitism but a statement of fact. To call Israel a colony, to say that it has repeatedly violated international law under the protection of 45 UN vetoes courtesy of Uncle Sam is not antisemitism but history.

Joe McCarthy is back. Are you now or have you ever been an antisemite?!