ISRAEL’S AMAZING CON JOB

Zionists and official Israel combined forces when Israel was created to frame the Middle East debate on their terms through lies, distortions, and attacks. These maneuvers are designed to win sympathy and support—especially in the United States—and to marginalize the Palestinians and their claims to their own state.

Here are some of their main ploys:

1. The accusation of anti-Semitism. Whoever criticizes the policies and actions of the Israeli government is promptly accused of anti-Semitism—never mind that neither Israel nor Zionism is synonymous with Judaism. What other country is immune from criticism because it played the guilt card?

2. Invoking the Holocaust as justification for what they do, and for the original establishment of Israel. Never mind that the Palestinians, who have been systematically pushed off of their land, had nothing to do with the European Holocaust.

3. Labeling any defensive action that the Palestinians take as ‘terrorist’ activities, even though the majority of Palestinian actions are directed at military targets—an acceptable act of resistance for an occupied territory, under international law. Attacks against civilians, like many of the suicide bombings, are in violation of international law. Most of Israel’s actions are directed at the general Palestinian population and are designed to punish the Palestinian people as a whole; both are clear violations.

4. Constantly claiming that Israel doesn’t have a partner in peace—that Palestinians don’t want peace and therefore reject any attempts at a resolution. In fact, the Palestinian leadership and the Arab League (surrounding Arab countries) have both accepted peace proposals that Israel then delays. Jimmy Carter says, “In order to achieve its goals, Israel has decided to avoid any peace negotiations and to escape even the mild restraints of the United States by taking unilateral action, called ‘convergence’ or ‘realignment,’ to carve out for itself the choice portions of the West Bank.” [Jimmy Carter, ‘Palestine Peace Not Apartheid’, p. 210]

In addition, Israel makes a resolution impossible by a) refusing to discuss where Israel’s permanent borders are going to be, b) refusing to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in spite of the international law called ‘Right of Return’, and c) demanding that before an agreement can be enacted, there must be no single hostile action taken against Israel by any Palestinian anywhere—something that would be impossible for anyone to guarantee. Plus, it ignores the daily siege by the Israeli military of the Palestinian people living in the Gaza Strip.

5. Unilaterally declaring Jerusalem as unified in 1967, proclaiming it as the Israeli capital, in spite of the fact that, when Israel was created by the United Nations, Jerusalem was set aside as an international city due to its importance to all the Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Tel Aviv is the internationally recognized capital; no country recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

6. Europeanizing Israel through immigrants, architecture, and vegetation, so that the U.S. can easily identify with the country rather than with the Arab Palestinians, who are automatically identified as ‘the other’ through appearance and customs. These efforts have also wiped out the Arab nature of the cities and the landscape, with places being renamed in Hebrew, and native crops, like olive trees (as well as emptied Palestinian villages) being plowed under and replaced by more European-looking forests. [Ilan Pappe, ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’, pp.216-227]

7. Claiming divine right to historical Palestine as having been given to them by God—never mind that many Jews do not agree with that religious interpretation. The claim itself is undermined by the fact that a number of locations—including Uganda, Turkey, and Argentina [Phyllis Bennis, ‘Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’, pg. 175]—were originally considered as possible locations for the Jewish homeland. Palestine was selected because the Zionists thought a strong emotional attachment to the land would motivate Jews to immigrate there.

8. Portraying themselves as victims when, in reality, the balance of power is in their favor to an extraordinary degree. [Pappe, p. 245] Israel vastly overshadows the Palestinians in military and economic might, mostly due to the financial and technological support of the United States—to say nothing of the massive public relations campaign of Israel and the American Jewish organizations such as AIPAC that relentlessly support whatever Israel does. They have used that might to dispossess and marginalize the virtually powerless Palestinians.

9. Claiming and popularizing the statement that historical Palestine after World War II was ‘a land without people, for a people without a land’—totally ignoring the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who already lived there.

10. Describing Israel as a democracy, although the country has two tiers of citizenship. Israeli ‘Nationals’ have full rights. Nationals (Jewish Israelis) are Nationals because they serve in the military, but Arab Israelis are not allowed in the military because they ‘can’t be trusted’. [Tom Wallace, International Solidarity Movement]. Arab Israeli citizens have limited voting rights and no real power.

Fortunately, these ploys mostly work just in the United States—and even here, their effect is beginning to weaken. Rabbi Tamara Kolton of Michigan says, “Most Jews have mixed feelings about Israel. They support Israel, but it’s complicated. Until now, you never heard from those people.” [N.Y. Times, 5/6/10, pg. A14] And Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder of the liberal Jewish lobby, J Street, says, “People are tired of being told that you are either with us or against us. The majority of American Jews…support the two-state solution and do not feel that they have been well represented by organizations that demand obedience to every wish of the Israeli government.” [N.Y. Times, 5/6/10, pg. A18]

Elsewhere in the world, including within Israel, there is much discussion about and disagreement with Israel’s tactics. Up until now, the United States has given unqualified financial support and the latest updated military technology to Israel, as well as vetoing any attempt in the United Nations to censure Israel for its constant, decades-long violations of international law.

THE OCCUPATION: VIOLATING INTERNATIONAL LAW

In June of 1967, Israel simultaneously attacked and invaded the West Bank (under Jordanian rule), the Gaza Strip (under Egyptian rule), the Golan Heights (part of Syria), and the Sinai Peninsula (part of Egypt). Its first strike in this Six Day War was on the Egyptian and Jordanian air forces, which completely disabled them and gave Israel free rein to invade.

Israel’s excuse for making a preemptive strike was that Egypt, Syria, and Jordan were supposedly massing troops near their borders with Israel. The Israelis claimed they were going to be attacked by the Arab countries. In 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin acknowledged that they didn’t have proof that an attack was imminent; they decided to attack Egypt anyway. This gave Israel the opportunity to push 250,000 more Palestinians into exile. [‘Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’ by Phyllis Bennis, pp. 159-160]

The final outcome of the Six Day War, a total victory for Israel, was the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem (the last portions of historical Palestine that were intended for a Palestinian state), which has lasted for 43 years. Israel denies it is occupying East Jerusalem, having unilaterally annexed it as their capital, even though the United Nations declared it a multi-national city when Israel was created. No nation recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. At any rate, military occupation of any area is illegal under the Geneva Conventions.

Although the Fourth Geneva Convention “prohibits an occupying power from transferring any part of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” and “international humanitarian law prohibits any permanent change to an occupied land”, [Bennis, pg. 20], Israel began building Jewish settlements throughout the Palestinian lands immediately following the Six Day War. The goal has been the conquest of Palestinian land through colonization. In 1973, Ariel Sharon told a British journalist, "We'll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We'll insert a strip of Jewish settlement, in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlement, right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years time...nobody will be able to tear it apart."

The control of Palestinian life is absolute. While Israel dismantled its settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2005 and withdrew its troops, the military surrounds Gaza and maintains a total vertical occupation: absolute control of movement on the land, under the land, in the air, and by sea. President Jimmy Carter says of Gaza, “They are being strangled since the Israeli ‘withdrawal’, surrounded by a separation barrier that is penetrated only by Israeli-controlled checkpoints, with just a single opening (for personnel only) into Egypt’s Sinai as their access to the outside world. There have been no moves by Israel to permit transportation by sea or by air. Fishermen are not permitted to leave the harbor, workers are prevented from going to outside jobs, the import or export of food and other goods is severely restricted and often cut off completely, and the police, teachers, nurses, and social workers are deprived of salaries…the poverty rate has reached 70 percent…with more than half of all Palestinian families eating one meal a day.” [‘Peace Not Apartheid’ by Jimmy Carter, pp. 175-176]

This absolute control can only be maintained by violence. “Israeli soldiers, checkpoints, tanks, helicopter gunships, and F-16 fighter jets control every aspect of Palestinian lives, and have recently brought social, family, and economic life to a virtual halt.” [Bennis, pg. 2] Rockets are fired into neighborhoods that border Israel on a daily basis, striking civilians, including children, indiscriminately. Palestinian homes are regularly bulldozed by Israeli troops without provocation and without warning. “Israeli-only” roads in the West Bank cut off Palestinian communities and families from one another. The Apartheid Wall that Israel is building completely encircles Palestinian towns, further cutting off Palestinian from Palestinian. The most fertile of the Palestinian lands and the majority of their water rights are taken over and given to Israeli settlers, who use guns and troops to keep Palestinians from tending their own orchards and crops. Palestinians, including women and children, are arrested at will and held indefinitely without charges. Every one of these actions violates international law.

Israel avoids and postpones the peace process in order to further consolidate their hold on Palestinian lands. Jimmy Carter states, “Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land. In order to perpetuate the occupation, Israeli forces have deprived their unwilling subjects of basic human rights. No objective person could personally observe existing conditions in the West Bank and dispute these statements.” [Carter, pp. 208-209]

The rest of the world stands by while Israel, one of the strongest military powers on earth, continues to subjugate the nearly powerless Palestinian people. No other country deserves more blame for this than the United States, whose government finances Israel’s military, gives the country $10,000,000 a day in aid, and blocks every attempt by the United Nations to impose penalties on Israel. George H.W. Bush is the only president who succeeded in stopping the Israelis’ settlements; he did so by threatening to withhold funding. However, as soon as the first President Bush left office, the building resumed. The U.S. still has the power, if we can find the will, to insist on a just and lasting peace.