Enough Bullets for Everyone

“The victims are themselves the culprits. This is exactly what the Palestinians have had to endure for 70 years.” Robert Fisk

Watching Israel and the United States stand truth on its ear is like riding Space Mountain at Disneyland in pitch blackness for hours on end; climb, descend, twist left, then right. Hearing Donald J. Trump compared to King Cyrus of Persia -- Persia! -- by nutjob pastor Robert Jeffress is nauseating. Too much irony and cognitive dissonance. I’m sure Trump thinks Persia is a theme park or a competing luxury hotel. “Where is this Persia?”

American evangelicals adore Trump, the thrice-married womanizer, pornstar banging, lying adulterer, and unabashed pussy-grabber. So much for Christian principles.

To hear Bibi Netanyahu and Nikki Haley tell it, Israel is simply protecting itself from hordes of Palestinians who have the temerity to approach the border. It’s all Hamas, Hamas, Hamas. Rinse, repeat. The American corporate media dutifully report the bullshit -- if they bother to report at all. Somewhere in America a cat is stuck in a tree, a community has been ravaged by a tornado, or a passenger airplane was forced to make a dramatic emergency landing. These are “breaking news” stories which must be covered in breathless detail.

The plight of Palestinians in Gaza? Not worth thirty seconds. Too complicated for Americans to understand.

Bibi Netanyahu: “We are besieged by the forces of Hamas. Don’t be fooled by the seemingly non-violent protests, the women and children waving flags -- they are killers, every one of them, trained by Hamas, armed by Hamas, controlled by Hamas. Israel faces a grave threat, an existential threat. Our brave soldiers face bloodthirsty Arabs armed with slingshots and Molotov cocktails and wire cutters. These wicked Arabs set tires on fire which threatens the health of our forces. The smoke gets in their eyes and lungs. One of our soldiers suffered a scratch on the arm that almost bled. Israel will not tolerate this. We have a right to protect our border and we have done so with extreme care, only firing on Hamas when under mortal danger from their advanced weapons. The casualties on the other side are caused by Hamas, not Israel. Hamas shoots its own people and then blames Israel. We have incontrovertible proof of this! Don’t fall for propaganda. Listen to me, I am telling you the truth. Israel is righteous and moral. We do not kill innocent people, only Hamas terrorists whose sole aim is to destroy Israel!”

Nikki Haley: “I have a message to convey to the UN Security Council from the President of the United States, the great and wonderful Donald J. Trump, who knows everything about the Middle East because he is the smartest human being to ever walk the earth: Hamas bad, Israel good.”

The gross injustice heaped on Palestinians for decades by Israel and the US has long troubled me, nagged at me, and infuriated me. The longer I live, the more I read, and the more I understand the difference between American rhetoric and American actions, the angrier I become. Israel could never have occupied Palestinian land for as long as it has without the unqualified support of the United States. As author Rashid Khalidi pointed out in his book, Brokers of Deceit, the US has long been an unreliable intermediary between Israel and the Palestinians; how can the US claim to be neutral and objective when it hands Israel billions of dollars in various types of aid every year? US allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt turn their back on the Palestinians.

In the same way that the American government does not represent the views of the majority of the American people (we are not as immoral, corrupt, greedy, and murderous as the political hacks, CEO’s and bankers who rule us), I want to believe that a majority of Israeli citizens realize that the actions of their government toward the Palestinians are unlawful, immoral, and antithetical to a real, lasting peace.

The American media has an infuriating habit of painting the Israel-Palestine conflict as one waged by equals, which is simply ridiculous. For years now, Israel has changed the reality on the land in the West Bank, displacing Palestinians, building settlements, walls, restricted roads, and making it next to impossible for Palestinians to return, ever.

In the meantime, the Israeli Defense Forces have plenty of bullets and no shortage of unarmed human targets.

Love, Israeli-Style

Terrorism n. Terrorist principles and practices; the systematic employment of violence and intimidation to coerce a government or community, esp. into acceding to specific political demands. The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary

Ironic to hear a Jewish rabbi, the head of a pre-school not far from Santa Barbara, reacting to a third incidence of vandalism against the school, swastikas spray-painted on the walls in the dead of night. The rabbi spoke of Jewish values handed down the centuries and from every corner of the globe – tolerance, love, understanding, and knowledge – that are the antidotes to hatred, bigotry and racism.

While the rabbi spoke of Jewish values, Israeli rockets, artillery shells and deadly cluster bombs rained down on Gaza, indiscriminately killing Palestinian men, women and children. As the rabbi spoke of love twelve miles from where my family dwells, a United Nations school in Gaza was destroyed by three Israeli tank shells, killing 40 human beings who had taken refuge inside.

And while this act of terror – and what else can it be called? -- was taking place and the lifeless, bloody bodies of innocent children were pulled from the rubble, an Israeli spokesperson had the audacity to accuse Hamas of “war crimes.”

Israel never lacks a justification for its actions. When Israel destroys a Palestinian ambulance with Hellfire missiles (purchased from, or provided by, the United States), the fault lies with Hamas, not Israel, because only Hamas is diabolical enough to transport guns and ammunition in ambulances and thereby make it necessary for Israel to target them for annihilation.

The abuser is really the victim, you see, and the abused deserve to be punished.

And of course that UN school jammed with petrified and helpless people was a Hamas ammunition depot. As an Israeli spokesperson told the Al Jazeera network, Hamas had "booby-trapped" installations in Gaza, leaving Israel no choice but to retaliate. "This is how it is in wars,” the spokesperson said. “We did not choose to be in a war. However, Hamas chose to target Israelis, we did not force them to do anything, and Hamas chose terror."

Like the United States under the Bush/Cheney regime, Israel is always righteous, moral and only acting in its own defense against an implacable enemy; Hamas, on the other hand, never rises above being a “terrorist” organization with no regard for human life, law or recognized standards of decency.

F-16’s, Hellfire missiles and cluster bombs are not instruments of peace. Israel says it has no beef with the Palestinian people, just Hamas, but let’s be clear: Israel’s ferocious assault against Gaza is punishing Palestinians collectively. Hamas did not block critically needed supplies from entering Israel or build settlements on Israeli land or disregard one “peace” treaty after another. Does Hamas bear some responsibility for these hostilities? Of course, but what else can a dispossessed, occupied, and downtrodden people do when politics, diplomacy and decades of UN resolutions fail?

Israel, the United States, and Britain either have short historical memories or willful myopia. A little more than six decades ago, Israel boasted homegrown terrorists determined to wrest Palestine from British control and establish a Jewish homeland. As all people do, Jews ached for their own land and control of their own fate. One leader in this struggle was Menachem Begin, who would go on to become Prime Minister; yesterday’s terrorist is tomorrow’s politician.

Why can’t Israel and its principal benefactor, the United States, understand that the Palestinians want the very thing that the Jews wanted in the early years of the twentieth century? Why does the West always ascribe righteous motives to Israel and evil motives to the Palestinians? The more important question –the one never addressed in the Western mass media – is this: why is Israel allowed to slaughter innocent people with impunity? Is killing really the road to peace and long-lasting security or does it just inflict fresh wounds and slice into old scars?

But don’t say Israel can’t act benevolently – yesterday the Israeli army gave Gaza residents a brief cease fire so they could stock up on supplies before the next wave of attacks. One wonders where in war-ravaged Gaza the people were supposed to buy bread, drinking water, baby formula, medicine, coats, blankets or fuel oil.