By William A. Cook
Special to PalestineChronicle.com
The Annapolis Conference spawned a series of responses on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, almost all negative about any resolution to the conflict. Perhaps one of the most predictable reviews took place this past week when Rep. Tom Lantos chaired a hearing on the conference for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Despite attempts by the Council for the National Interest and other like groups to bring in non-Israeli supporters as witnesses, Lantos limited the witnesses to Dennis Ross and David Wurmser, two predictable advocates for the Israeli state based on “reality on the ground,” a euphemism for justifying the theft of Palestinian land. “The opening statements by Chairman Lantos and ranking minority member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R. FL) were even more biased than the testimony of two well-known pro-Israeli supporters Dennis Ross and David Wurmser.” (CNI news statement, 12/6/07). When our representatives predetermine the debate by hand-picking their speakers, they negate the efficacy of the effort and make a laughing stock of justice.
It occurred to me as I listened on the 26th of November to Mahmoud Abbas plea before the gathering at Annapolis that if justice for each and every person living in Palestine and Israel became the premise of a new syllogism for peace, a meaningful reconciliation would ensue and a lasting harmony would flower in this now desolate land. But until Justice is addressed, the dove of peace is only a cruel deception. Unless and until both Israelis and Palestinians accept the humanity of the other, recognize, accept and deplore the inhumane actions each has inflicted on the other, and seek forgiveness and reconciliation of the other, no lasting peace will ever bloom.
“With all frankness and without any hesitation, I have to defend the right of my people to open their eyes to a new dawn free of occupation, settlements, apartheid walls, prisons full of prisoners, targeted assassinations or siege of checkpoints around villages and towns.… I would also like to speak to the citizens of Israel on this exceptional occasion to tell them: our (sic) (we’re) neighbors on this small piece of land, neither you nor we are begging for peace from one another… Peace and freedom are our rights just as peace and security are your rights and ours. It is time that the cycle of bloodshed, violence and occupation end.” (Mahmoud Abbas, translation from PLO Washington Office)
How heroic, or, perhaps, how clownish, this scene appears in reflection. This man stands before the world community as the “accepted” representative of the Palestinian people, brought by the two powers that had abandoned him months ago as an effective negotiating partner. Perhaps he was tempted by the possibility that, somehow out of this everlasting morass, the conscience of both the United States and Israel had been pricked by the reality of the devastation wrought against the people of Palestine, and peace might be made and a future secured. One could weep with Abbas as he asserts the two essentials he and all Palestinians yearn for, a country free of occupation, land theft, walls of separation, prisons, assassinations, checkpoints and return of their rights under International Law. Thus does he stand, a lonesome voice dependent on the good will, the compassion, the sense of justice that lives in the hearts and souls of George W. Bush and Ehud Olmert, his benefactors that lured him to Annapolis hoping he might sign away the rights of the Palestinian people by giving credibility to a Jewish only state blessing in the process their right to deny citizenship to Palestinian Arabs and nullify the International Law of Return for those ethnically cleansed and forced from their home land.
No political intervention imposed by the biased broker of record, the United States, the Bush administration in particular, citing “the reality on the ground” as the basis for carving out of Palestine an Israeli State defined by its Wall and its annexed borders, leaving the remaining walled in fragments of overcrowded Bantustans for the poverty ridden Palestinians, will result in peace or justice. Indeed, should “the reality on the ground” become the basis for resolving the crisis in Israel/Palestine, we will have set in concrete the reality that neither justice nor International Law determines what is right, just the will of those with the might to willingly inflict their ends on the weak without mercy, compassion, or humanity.
It’s an old story told most tellingly by Joseph Conrad in “Heart of Darkness” when Marlow observes “They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind – as is proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” Conrad wrote about the conquest of the Congo over a century ago by Leopold II of Belgium whose sense of superior righteousness and advanced civilization gave him license to conquer at will only to find out that his superior status and advanced civilization had catapulted his nation back to primordial slime where they thrived in bestiality and personal degradation.
But this is the tradition of imperial mentality that Ben Gurion and the Zionists brought with them from Europe when they invaded Palestine. They too held out the lamp of their superior status as rationale for conquest necessitating “robbery, violence and murder on a great scale.” Yet, as I consider the actions of the Zionists in those early years, I do not see an innocence wrapped in some incomprehensible intent, the ignorance that allowed the average Belgium to participate in the King’s cruel enslavement of the natives; I see rather a calculated undertaking to steal land and ethnically expel a population by forcing on the Jewish community a participation they had no choice but to join or suffer the consequences of a calculated punishment including coercion, violence, and death. And with that heartless and ruthless control they, too, like Leopold failed to reflect on their actions until they had subjected their people to a like bestiality and degradation. How horrible a thought that the Jews, who have endured centuries of discrimination at the hands of those stronger than they, should become in turn the agent of discrimination against a defenseless people.
We need a totally different mindset to resolve this conflict; patching together the tattered goals of the Oslo Agreements, the pot-holed byways of the forgotten Road Map, the changed reality that Sharon and Olmert have erected on Palestinian land, and the beliefs embedded in the unreal expectations of the Hamas charter, will not achieve peace, only a set of impossible goals already objected to by both parties. I wrote this psalm at the beginning of this century and it seems particularly relevant today:
“My friends, my friends, why do we continue in strife?
Why have we multiplied iniquity upon iniquity,
Wrecked havoc upon the weak, oppressed the poor?
Why have we driven wedges between our neighbors? Exploited envy and jealousy, fostered anger and hatred?
I hear my neighbors cry for they are held in bondage,
Yet your voices are silent, my cries go unheard.
Do not let me cry in vain, listen to the weeping of
Your friends who suffer the pangs of hunger and want.
I have trusted in you to deliver us from pain
Because you know the anguish of suffering;
Do not disappoint those who cry to you in desperation;
They seek only their share of the earth’s fruit,
What we must provide out of the kindness of our hearts
That all may live in peace and happiness.”
(Psalm 21, “I hear my neighbors cry,” Psalms for the 21st Century)
The psalm suggests that we must recognize the humanity of each and every person living in the land we call Palestine and Israel and seek from them the justice that is their right. Justice demands equity as determined by agreed upon law recognized by all peoples through international forums — justice through full implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of the United Nations, and the Conventions of the Geneva Accords.
We need to return to the origins of this debacle that has culminated in our day in the catastrophic evil that thrives in this ancient land that held such promise for the world. Is it not time for the United Nations, on behalf of people throughout the world, to confront this history that has, in 60 years, transformed Palestine into a despicable icon of modern humanity’s mentality to impose by calculated force degradation, despair, and death on a helpless people and stand indifferent to that devastation?
At the beginning of the last century, almost 100 years ago, Jews and Arabs lived in relative calm with each other, despite the superior numbers of Arab Palestinians living in the British governed Mandate of Palestine. That reality is noted by the High Commissioner of the Palestine Government in his reports recently made available to me through the Chief Archivist at the Rhodes Library at Oxford. It is also the opinion of Dr. Karen Armstrong in her historical studies of the mid-east, and Houston Smith author of The World’s Religions, among other scholars. Jews living in that period worked with Arab leaders to create agreements that would provide for increased numbers of Jewish immigrants, religious tolerance, and shared government. (MSS. Medit. S. 20 Rhodes House Library Archives, Bodleian Library, Oxford University).
Indeed, the British Government operating in Palestine attempted to assist this development and in so doing recognized the establishment of the Jewish Agency to work on behalf of the Jewish community. Unfortunately, this Agency and its security police were taken over by a small group of immigrant Zionists whose agenda did not include cooperation with the indigenous Arab population or the Arab states surrounding Palestine. Their agenda, in their own words, was to make Palestine a National Home for Jews alone. Over time, from the early to mid thirties through the declaration of the existence of the state of Israel in May of 1948, the Zionist Organization acted, in the words of the High Commissioner, as an Oligarchy that controlled every aspect of Jewish life using intimidation, coercion, and fear of physical harm and even death to impose their will. That, too, is recorded in the evidence presented to the British Secretary of State by the High Commissioner, evidence from seized documents of the Jewish Agency, the Hagana, its military force, and related sources.
By 1936, the Palestinian Arabs understood the Zionists’ intent and the protection being given to them by the British authorities, primarily as a result of the British policy outlined in the Balfour Declaration. In 1936, the Palestinians rose up against the Mandate authority and were severely beaten. By 1939, Britain understood the insoluble outcomes of the Zionist goal of an exclusively Jewish National Home that threatened the very real homeland of the Arabs living in Palestine. Under International Law, and under the expressed provisions of the Balfour Declaration reiterated by Winston Churchill, the Palestine Government had responsibility to protect both Jews and Arabs. Therefore in 1939 they issued the “White Paper” that set limits on Jewish immigration to Palestine. The Zionists reacted bitterly and became in effect terrorists against the British authority in Palestine.
With their vast military superiority, the Zionist Hagana, Irgun, and Stern groups, a well trained and well equipped army that could field between 60,000 to 80,000 troops, overran the weakened Palestinian forces that had been decimated by the British in 1936. Before the demise of the Mandate Government in May of 1948, the Zionists had blitzed their way through 418 Palestinian towns and villages, razed them, massacred thousands, and forced 700,000 or more Palestinian Arabs onto foreign lands in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt or into refugee camps in the West Bank or Gaza. After the 1967 war, Israel owned or occupied by annexation or confiscation over 76% of the original land in Palestine.
Stunning both what that paragraph says and does not say. But it reflects in its depiction of what the Zionist forces did a mentality that needs to be explored because, for some inexplicable reason, neither Americans or Europeans seem to have confronted the moral contradiction that they support in allowing Israel to continue its cold-blooded savagery against a defenseless people. Europeans had turned a century ago against the barbarity of Leopold and his merciless conquest of the “savages” in the Congo; yet, today, they reflect a studied indifference as the Israeli government and its IDF defy International Law and act as a lawless state against the Palestinians by imprisoning thousands without charge or due process, commit assassinations, torture mercilessly, inflict collective punishment by demolishing homes, stealing land and resources, and terrorizing the people intentionally and brutally. It permits a mentality to impose its will that fits Conrad’s indictment of Russia in 1905 (“Autocracy and War”) “The idea of ceasing to grow in territory, in strength, in wealth, in influence – in anything but wisdom and self-knowledge – is odious to them (Zionists) as the omen of the end. Action, in which is to be found the illusion of a mastered destiny, can alone satisfy our uneasy vanity and lay to rest the haunting fear of the future.” How many times must the world suffer the “illusion of a mastered destiny” before it acts to halt this rogue state that has used biological and chemical weapons against Palestinians in 1948 when it released typhoid into the water supply at Acre as a means of forcing its population out (International Red Cross files G59/1/GC, G3/82) and continues to defy International Conventions against such weapons today as it did in Lebanon just a year ago when it used white phosphorus on civilians? Why do we look for WMD in Iraq and Iran when they exist and are used by our “friend” in Israel?
What does it mean to say “they blitzed their way through 418 towns and villages”? It means that the Jewish Agency and its military forces used plans drawn up months in advance for the destruction of these towns and villages, divided the armies into predetermined areas, identified the roads and by ways, the homes and the offices of town leaders, mapped out plans to surround the towns on three sides to force the inhabitants out the fourth, forced them from their homes, leaving the dinner still warm on the table, as they rampaged through the streets, and blew up homes burying the inhabitants beneath the rubble. “Women were raped, men tortured, children made to watch and no age or gender was spared from being killed, their mutilated bodies then stuffed down wells or left heaped in mounds of mangled flesh and blood.” (“The Ghosts of Deir Yassin,” Sonja Karkar.)
Curiously, the Zionist Organization had spent months and untold amounts of money gathering in advance a calculated, cold blooded slaughter of the Palestinians without any hint to the Palestinians that they would become victims of the Zionist zeal for their land. I say “curiously” because I find it hard to grapple with a mentality that can earmark a town of several hundred people with whom the Agency had a cooperative agreement and in seclusion construct a plan to eliminate the people and eradicate their town “from the face of the map,” to essentially erase the people and their memory from existence.
What kind of mind can act this way? How does that mind return home at night, open the door to greet his children and wife with hugs and kisses, remove his yarmulke, and sit down to dinner? How does one set aside the blow to the girl’s head that left her helpless as he tore her garments to thrust his savagery into her and then discard her limp body like a useless bale of hay? What mentality lets a people witness the actions of the IDF as they moved from this raw barbarity to the more sophisticated “precision bombing” that allows for a helicopter gunship to hurl a $300,000 dollar US missile down a crowded street to kill a blind, paraplegic in a wheelchair and those friends who pushed him from the Mosque where he had gone to pray? What notion of superior being gives license to this treatment of others? Have we advanced not one step beyond the chained slaves or the discarded dying skeletons that Conrad describes are the victims of Leopold’s “enlightened” imperial army?
Under Sharon and Olmert, Israel has annexed or confiscated all the land in the West Bank that runs parallel to the eastern border of that area, the Jordan River, and with its wall that slinks through remaining Palestinian land, especially that where aquifers and farm land exist, has commandeered all but 14% of historic Palestine. Into this paltry patch work of their remaining land, the 3.5 million Palestinians must live surrounded by a nuclear armed military power with state of the art ordinance including an air force second only to that of the United States, a tank force of over 4000, and a modern navy including submarines. All of this is paid for by the taxpayers of the United States to protect the Zionist goal of an exclusive National Home for Jews from their proclaimed nemesis the Palestinians that have no military whatsoever.
Perhaps we should stop here to reflect not on Israel’s past atrocities, but on what is happening today, in 2007 during this season of peace as we sing the praises of the Almighty Son of God, the Prince of Peace. Certainly, the people of Israel realize that their country has stolen all but 14% of the land that the Palestinians owned just 60 years ago? Certainly they know that Israel allots these people a fragment of the water they owned but now have to buy from those that confiscated it. Certainly they realize that the foreign squatters that have been given homes paid for by Americans have swimming pools and green, lush landscapes while the indigenous people live in cement bunkers stacked like egg crates on top of each other and scramble for water from trucks when the IDF is kind enough to let the humanitarian groups from the rest of the world enter the prison they have constructed around these people. Certainly they know that Israel as an occupying army has responsibility under International Law to provide for the oppressed, to recognize that they are human and require basic food stables, water, medicine, and schooling. Certainly Israeli citizens know that the “U.N. Refugee World Administration reports that as of “November 2006, 40.3% of Palestinian households lived in ‘deep poverty’ (daily per capita consumption of less than $2.10); in Gaza the figure is 79.8%.” (Counterpunch Nov. 1-15, 2007). And that was a year ago. Today, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency described the situation on November 7 as grim. “Whereas two months ago, there was zero stock of 61 medicines, the figure has now reached 91… There are no fruits and vegetables to supplement the basic rations that 80% of Gaza’a population receive – flour, oil, sugar, a bit of lentils and powdered milk – either from UNRWA or the UN World Food Program.” (Terry Walz, “Gaza – A Vast Unimproved Refugee Camp.” 11/13/2007).
“The government of Israel has structurally and institutionally dismantled the Palestine economy as well as undermined the fabric of Palestine society and the expression of cultural and political identity.” (“Israel’s Iron Heel”, Counterpunch, Sara Roy, Harvard). Can anyone imagine the outcry that would attend a like decimation of the Jewish culture and economy if, for example, Iran’s government were to create such conditions on the people in Israel? Why do the people of the world hide from such barbarity? Why do our Christian Congressmen support these outrages against human decency, what Jesus proclaimed to be the basis of human interaction and brotherhood, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, not a calculated genocide of a people? Have our representatives, like Faust of legend, sold their souls to the devil?
Certainly, the Israeli citizen asks himself and herself, as I ask myself since as an American these horrors are done in my name and with my taxes, if Jews were treated as the Palestinians are treated wouldn’t the world rise up in anger and stop the barbaric treatment against them? Am I not as a Jew committed by my belief to “Godliness” in all that I do; is not this what the Torah demands? And I, as an American, despite the Satanic sermons of pastor John Hagee, am I not committed to the teaching of Jesus to love my enemy? What has become of my faith that I condone this cold hearted behavior against my brothers and sisters? Have I handed over every ounce of my morals to a government devoid of any? How long can I live in a country that starves children so that vitamin A deficiency in children 12-59 months reached 22%, and 50.5% of West Bank children under 24 months and 71.9% of Gazan children are anemic, statistics that are considered “a severe public health situation”? Have I become immune to the devastation inflicted in my name on these poverty ridden people because that Wall, that hideous Wall dressed out in pretty, painted ballet dancers camouflages the psychological torture we (Americans and Jews together) impose on the women and children buried on the other side? Yes, I include myself in these questions since Bush provides the means to erect this monument to human depravity in my name and to allow the Zionist government in Israel to create the slow torturous journey to death that has become the day to day reality of the Palestinian people.
No doubt Ben Gurion and his Zionist brethren knew of Leopold’s Christian fervor to bring to the dark Continent the teachings of Jesus. Perhaps that intent gave him intellectual liberty to believe that he could use the historical right of a covenant made 4000 years ago to erase from his land the people that lived on it for two thousand. But does that manufactured reasoning that negates history and International Law satisfy today? Are we willing to destroy the belief that nations exist to protect the citizens through the implementation of laws that are equitable to all and replace that enlightened concept with rule by dictatorial mandate, imprisoning and assassinating individuals at will? Do we not fear that what we do to others can become the measure of actions done against us? And by that measure, what would justify the community of nations from having a moral responsibility to Jews should they become victims once again?
Had the early Jewish residents in Palestine succeeded in their cooperative efforts with the Arabs both in Palestine and the surrounding countries, agreements negated by the Zionists that gained control over the Jewish community, the need for nuclear “protection” and assembling the fourth greatest military on the planet to protect 6 million people, would never have arisen. The root problem of the conflict resides in the erection by the Zionist Organization, identified by the Mandate authorities as the controlling force in Palestine, of an exclusively Jewish State that would have to “expel” the natives as soon as the numbers of the “race” (Jews) in Palestine made that possible.
The reality of the insoluble and conflicting goals that existed then, exist now. Britain realized it could not solve the conflict, did not agree to the UN partition plan because they saw that the Jewish forces would crush the Palestinians, and, for lack of resources and will, handed the problem over to the UN. After 19 attempts to resolve the problem with 19 different committees, the UNGA accepted the proposal for a partition.
Before the assigned date for implementation, the Zionists acting on behalf of the Jewish community, declared the existence of the Jewish State, and continued its ethnic cleansing of Palestine as recorded by Dr. Ilan Pappe in his recent book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
Today, at Annapolis, the very same Zionist intransigence to exclude the Palestinians from their homeland exists in Olmert’s government since it depends, to stay in power, on the racist party Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman, who advocates expelling them.
Fortunately there are many, in Israel and elsewhere, that defy the Zionists that control the actions of the Israeli government and call for peace in Palestine. B’Tselem, the Jewish Human Rights Organization, the Committee against Home Demolitions led by Jeff Halper, Jews for Peace in Palestine, European Jews for a Just Peace, Union Juive Francaise pour la Paix, Joint Action for Israeli-Palestine Peace in the UK, Jewish Voice for Peace in America, the Coalition of Women for Peace in Israel, these and many others in virtually every country in the world add their voices to that of Abbas as he pleas before the world for justice for the Palestinians. But there is no justice.
Why not return the problem to the UN that caused the conflict in 1947? Every year since 1948, the UN has passed resolution after resolution declaring that Israel return the land it has stolen to its proper owners and to abide by International Law including Right of Return. In many countries of the world, for example in Bosnia, the UN sends in peace keeping forces to bring about a cessation of conflict. Why not in Palestine? Why not hold Israel to the resolutions mandated by the UN? Both Israel and the US want Iran to be held to these resolutions; what makes Israel different? If the actions undertaken by the Zionists from 1948 to the present have made Israel’s actions as a state illegal and anathema to International Law and International Agreements that the rest of the world abides by, then either the world imposes its laws on this rogue state or it takes the dictates Israel will impose by sheer force on the will of the international community, and we enter a new century victims of those who have the might to control having knowingly and willingly abandoned rule by law as a hallmark of our civilization.
If Justice becomes the beacon that guides the UN toward peace, it would have to begin at resolution 181, the partition of Palestine. Assumptions were made at that point, assumptions that had both positive and negative effects: a moral determination was made that the Jews deserved a homeland as a consequence of the horrific slaughter that had decimated their people – the world accepted a moral responsibility to right that atrocity; in so doing they, perhaps unwittingly, assumed that they could grant to the Jews a portion of another people’s land – that assumption was not shared by the natives of that area. Yet the reality remains that the division and its assumptions became the basis for the existence of Israel as a state, and the area apportioned for the Palestinians remains identified as theirs as the on-going resolutions attest. Justice dictates that the rights of both be addressed.
For Israel to obtain by force 86% of Palestine using laws they instituted for their own people and impose those laws on the occupied people means that the Palestinians are virtual slaves to the occupying force since they had no say in the laws that govern them. This is analogous to the thieves and murderers who have occupied a family’s home determining how much of that home the owners can have. This is why the Palestinians cannot recognize the existence of the State of Israel for Jews only. To accept that as reality would justify what the Zionists have done and legally exclude Palestinians from living as citizens in their own land. It’s up to the UN to right that wrong. This is not a responsibility that the United States can assume; it is not an objective judge. Nothing the United States says will be or should be accepted by the Palestinians as honest or sincere. Only an acceptable, objective party, preferably one created by the UN to bring about a final status in Palestine, can accomplish this goal.
Ironically, the conditions that exist “on the ground” now, brought about by Israel’s confiscation of land and its establishment of the settlements, makes the division of the area exceedingly difficult. As a matter of fact, one could argue that Israel, by its incorporation of settlements and its network of Israeli only roads, has forced on itself a one state solution. The original partition plan created a contiguous Israeli state and a contiguous Palestinian one. Israel’s planting of its settlements throughout the West Bank and its confiscation and annexation of Palestinian land now lived on by Israelis, makes it virtually impossible to create either a contiguous Israel or Palestine.
This can only be resolved by the agency that created the original design for two states. Perhaps the two state option has to be abandoned and a one state solution implemented? Under those conditions, persons born in Palestine/Israel would be eligible to run for President/Prime Minister while all others granted citizenship in Israel and those born in the West Bank and Gaza would receive citizenship. Should that be done, Palestrael (?) would exist as other nations do based on citizens birth and laws that permit others to receive citizenship not on acceptance and admission to a religion which by its very definition is exclusive and non-democratic.
The Zionists’ zeal to aggressively confiscate as much Palestinian land as possible, to use its control of the US Congress to acquire vast sums of money and military equipment to enforce its will and to create a constant stream of Jewish immigrants to ensure its dominance, to control the flow of information in and out of Palestine, and to establish in the public’s mind a compassion for this “victim state” that others want to destroy can become the albatross that will hang about the neck of Israel as its ruthless actions become known in time and the world reacts against a state that shows no concern, no pity, not the least recognition of the suffering of the Palestinians.
Today, there are those in Israel who understand that the Zionists influence through its lobbies on the American Congress can be seen as pushing the US into war on behalf of Israel. That same influence appears to be pushing this administration toward yet another war, against what Israel has determined as its major enemy in the mid-east, Iran. As Americans awake to the power of those who support without question the desires of the Israeli State, and understand that they do not mean security for America, that indeed they are detrimental to America’s security, there could well be a backlash that would leave Israel to fend for itself, isolated in a sea of Arab states, states it has treated with arrogance and violence. It is in Israel’s best interest to find a just and equitable solution to the crisis if it is to become a major player in the world community and not be seen as a destructive force that must use power to attain its ends.
Justice demands that Israel and the United Nations address the enormous inequities that exist in Palestine. There is no justice if the division of the land remains 86% to 14% when both populations are of approximately equal size, especially if the Right of Return is acted upon according to International Law. There is no justice if Israel remains the controlling power over a faux state that cannot manage its own affairs and control its own destiny. There is no justice if Israel does not compensate those from whom they have stolen land and return to Palestine the natural resources it has commandeered. There is no justice if a reconfiguration of the land is not achieved so that both peoples can move freely from one sector of their country to another. There is no justice if the Wall continues to imprison the Palestinians with its constant reminder that Israelis defied International Law to impose their own and made visible the unacceptable attitude that one people has a right to psychologically and physically isolate others from communication with their neighbors or the world, a collective punishment that denies the very humanity of the people. There is no justice if the status quo remains the day to day reality of the Palestinians because that way is a slow torturous route to sickness, psychological torture, deprivation, starvation and death; it is the Israeli government’s heinous action of a slow genocide acted out on the world stage as the European Union, the Asian nations, and America look on indifferently. There is no justice if the United States blocks the UNSC from enforcing the means to bring about justice in Palestine, an action that may require the UN to stand against the US or lose its credibility as an international body that protects the weak as well as the strong. And, conversely, there is no justice if the Palestinians do not accept the people of Israel to live in peace and security, in separate states or in one, so that all may thrive and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
“Do not disappoint those who cry to you in desperation;
They seek only their share of the earth’s fruit,
What we must provide out of the kindness of our hearts
That all may live in peace and happiness.”
