Lots More Anti-Israel Bias Needed in the New Year
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)
UK Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour’s 67-word declaration to British Zionist Federation’s Lord Rothschild launched a century of Palestinian and regional misery.
Israel’s partnership with the US threatens world peace. The Jewish state is run by Zionist ideologues, war-mongering fascist extremists, and religious fundamentalists - their agenda hostile to what just societies hold dear.
Like America and other Western nations, Israel is a fantasy democracy, not the real thing, the way it’s always been from inception.
Its regimes defile the rule of law, attack regional states, and govern by apartheid ruthlessness.
They terrorize Palestinians, hold them hostage to their imperial agenda, steal their land, breach their fundamental rights, and wage slow-motion genocide to achieve maximum Jews and minimum Arabs.
Their racist, violent, destructive agenda is fully supported and encouraged by Republicans and undemocratic Dems, the world community complicit in what’s going on by doing nothing to challenge it.
Zionism is hostile to Jews and non-Jews alike. Challenging it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Claiming otherwise is a long ago discredited canard.
Its ideological extremism is tyranny by another name – undemocratic, hateful, ruthless, racist, destructive, and hostile to peace, equity and justice.
It’s contemptuous of fundamental legal, moral and ethical principles – a monster threatening everyone and everything it opposes, a cancer infesting Israel, America, other societies.
It defends the indefensible, espousing Jewish supremacy, strength through militarism and intimidation, dominance through violence over conciliation, confrontation, not diplomacy, war instead of peace, racist hatred toward Palestinians for not being Jews.
Terrorized by Zionist zealots, they have no control over their daily lives, living in constant fear, not knowing from day to day if they’ll live, die, or be arrested and confined to gulag harshness – for being Arabs, not Jews, for being unwanted in their own country, stolen by Israeli conquest and brutal occupation.
They’re victimized by Fourth Geneva-banned collective punishment (Article 33), apartheid ruthlessness, isolation, economic strangulation, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences, separation walls, curfews, displacement, and settlement construction on land stolen for exclusive Jewish development and use.
They’re denied fundamental human rights affirmed under international humanitarian laws, enduring every imaginable indignity and degradation under illegal occupation.
Edward Said called Israel’s agenda an “atrocity,” a longstanding crime against humanity, the Mahmoud Abbas-led PA serving as its enforcer.
Said deplored its betrayal of their own people, comparing the actions of its officials to asking an “executioner if he wouldn’t mind sharpening his axe a little before having another go.”
He advocated what Israel and its US paymaster abhor and won’t tolerate - a one-party state for all its people, saying what’s vitally needed is “entirely missing from both Israeli and Palestinian realities today: the idea and practice of citizenship, not of ethnic or racial community, as the main vehicle of coexistence.”
“Palestinian self-determination in a separate state is unworkable. The question” isn’t separation. It’s “to see whether it is possible for (Jews and Palestinians) to live together as fairly and peacefully as possible.”
“What exists now is a disheartening…bloody impasse. There is no way for Israel to get rid of Palestinians or for Palestinians to wish Israelis away.”
“I see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way, with equal rights for each citizen.”
Neither side deserves “special status at the expense of the other,” Said stressed. For millennia, Palestine was (and remains) “multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious.” No “historical justification for homogeneity” or “notions of national or ethnic and religious purity” exist.
“The alternatives are unpleasantly simple: either the war continues” with its unacceptable costs or an equitable solution is achieved. There’s no in between, not now or ever.
In 1948, supported by the West, Zionist ideologues stole 78% of historic Palestine, taking the rest in June 1967, including Jerusalem, a UN-designated international city, colonized and controlled illegally as Israel’s exclusive capital.
Its ruling authorities defied seven Security Council resolutions, constituting international law, condemning Israel’s seizure and control of the international city, calling its action legally invalid, including its 1980 Jerusalem Law - unlawfully declaring it “complete and united” as Israel’s exclusive capital.
In December 2016, Security Council 2334 was adopted by a 14 – 0 vote, Washington abstaining.
It said settlements have “no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation under international law.”
It demanded “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”
It recognized no territorial changes “to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations.”
It “(c)alled upon all States, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”
It “(c)alled for immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation and destruction, calls for accountability in this regard…”
Israel ignores all SC resolutions and other international laws opposing its lawless agenda - supported by Washington, notably the Trump regime, more one-sided for Israel than its predecessors.
Looking ahead in the new year, things are likely to worsen in Occupied Palestine, the region, and elsewhere globally - because of the US/Israeli axis of evil, supported by their imperial partners.
As long as war criminals, crooks, and likeminded scoundrels run things in these countries, a criminal class waging war on humanity, wanting whole continents carved up for control and plunder, Palestinians and all other ordinary people will be brutally exploited and abused - things exceeding the worst of Orwell’s 1984.
Peace, equity and justice aren’t coming in the new year, not in Occupied Palestine or anywhere else - not as long as the US/NATO/Israeli killing machines continue their relentless aim for unchallenged dominance.
A year ago I suggested the new year will be more dismal than the previous one. US-led wars of aggression rage endlessly, new ones in the wings to be launched when ordered.
Russia, China and Iran are prime targets for regime change by whatever it takes for the US to achieve its imperial aims.
Ordinary people in the West are exploited, what continuing Yellow Vest protests in France are all about, Israeli state terror against Palestinians ongoing with no end of it in prospect.
Another Israeli war on Gaza is just a matter of time. US/UK-led Russophobia in the West risks WW III by accident or design.
Holiday season tidings are grim. Harsher times than already are likely coming. As long as dark forces exploit others for their own self-interest, the world will remain unsafe and unfit to live in.
Jack Kennedy once said “if more politicians knew poetry and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live…”
Maybe so, maybe not. He likely didn’t imagine how badly things could deteriorate since his time.
Possible nuclear war haunts humanity because of Washington’s rage to dominate, risking armageddon to achieve its aims.
I yearn one day for looking ahead in the new year with hope for better times. Maybe some day, not now, not any time soon - the disturbing reality of what imperial rage is all about.
VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].
My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."
