Racism: Alive and Well In the U.S. and Israel

            The media is reporting that three teenagers living in illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine are missing, and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated, on evidence he has not chosen to share, that they have been kidnapped by Hamas. In response, he has unleashed a new level of terrorism against Palestinians living in the West Bank, with mass arrests and a new level of harassment that is shocking even for his IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) terrorists.

            At this point the whereabouts of the three missing people is unknown; how and why they left, whether or not there is a criminal component and, if so, who is responsible, are also unknown. One hopes they are found safely. However, the outrage that Israel and the United States is demonstrating by this event is somewhat puzzling at best, and wildly hypocritical at worst.

            In an average year, between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are ‘arrested’ (read: kidnapped) by IDF terrorists. In most cases, they are asleep in their beds when these terrorists break into their homes and drag them out to waiting vehicles. Their parents are not told where they are being taken; they are often held for weeks or months without charge, and without access to parents or lawyers. Multiple sources report that children as young as 11 are arrested, held and tortured in Israeli jails.

            Where is the international outrage? Why does the United States not only stand quietly by, but actually finance the activities of this criminal regime, to the tune of $9,000,000.00 every day of the year? Why are the lives of three Israel teenagers, living in settlements that the entire world recognizes are in violation of international law, worth so much more attention that the hundreds of Palestinian children arrested and tortured every year?

            This doesn’t even include the children killed by IDF terrorists; Israel occasionally investigates these deaths, and always finds that the IDF was not negligent in any way.

            Is this not racism in its ugliest and most basic form? One group of people (Israelis) is somehow seen as more valuable, more important, than another (Palestinians). The U.S.’s elected representatives, almost all of whom are bought and paid for by the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), insist with a straight face that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Is such blatant racism an indication of a democracy?

            Before, during and following World War II, the world was horrified that Nazi Germany was exterminating Jews, believing that the Arian race was superior, the Jewish race inferior, and apparently feeling justified in killing Jews. Today it is Israelis who believe, somehow, that they are a superior race, chosen by God (by their bizarre interpretation of some Biblical passages) in ancient times, and that the Palestinians are inferior, and therefore killing them arbitrarily is completely acceptable.

            While this has been an ongoing atrocity for over 60 years, the United States, which is always blathering on about supporting the self-determination of downtrodden people, has supported it every step of the way. A look as some of the U.S.’s hypocritical statements is instructive.

            On January 8, 1918, prior to the bloody creation of Israel, President Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress, and presented fourteen points, a statement of basic principles outlining the goals of the post-war global environment. Point Twelve reads as follows:

“The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.”[1]

            Mr. Wilson’s Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, was greatly troubled by this concept of ‘autonomous development’. “In his private notes he wrote that it was loaded with dynamite, might breed disorder, discontent and rebellion. His neat, logical mind saw it leading the President into strange contradictions. ‘Will not the Mohammedans of Syria and Palestine and possibly of Morocco and Tripoli rely on it? How can it be harmonized with Zionism, to which the President is practically committed?’ he asked himself.”[2]

                Mr. Wilson continued this theme of independence and self-rule a month later, being even clearer: “National aspirations must be respected; peoples may not be dominated and governed only by their own consent.”^[3] Further: “Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.”^[4]

            More recently former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, widely seen as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, said this about Syrian rebels in 2012: “…we cannot ask the opposition to unilaterally give up their struggle for justice, dignity, and self-determination.”[5] Yet she has said nothing in favor of Palestine’s ‘struggle for justice, dignity and self-determination.’ Somehow, it isn’t quite so important. After all, if she is once again eyeing elective office, she will need the generous largess of AIPAC to help fund her campaign.  

            Sadly, regardless of what the U.S. espouses to the world, concepts of self-determination, equality and human rights are, for the U.S., nothing more than empty words. They sound good to the citizen-lemmings, who seem to be in some kind of peculiar awe of the moneyed elite who govern them.

            The current situation in Palestine is dire; the Gaza Strip is considered the largest open-air prison in the world, with the apartheid regime of Israel controlling all its borders, preventing any reasonable import or export that could help sustain the Palestinian economy, and periodically carpet-bombing it. In the West Bank, private homes and entire villages are destroyed with impunity for settlements that are condemned by the world community. This leaves countless thousands of Palestinians homeless.

            These are the actions of the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’. The kidnapping and murder of innocent men, women and children by the IDF are actions of ‘the most moral army in the world’. Black is white and white is black.

            Palestine must not look to either its own, corrupt, ineffectual leadership for assistance, or to the interfering United States, which only dances to Israel’s tune. No, it is concerned citizens around the world who will eventually force their governments to put an end to Israel’s atrocities. And until that happens, the horrendous suffering in Palestine will continue, financed by the U.S. and committed by Israel.