Why Helen Thomas was Right about Israel

When Helen Thomas dared to criticize Israel, America's sacred cow, her decades-long career as a journalist was summarily brought to an end with the predictable false claims of anti-semetism. To do this she was of course taken out of context when she said “Jews should get the hell out of Palestine.” When asked where they should go she said they should “go home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.”

Obviously she was refering to the tens of thousands of Jews who immigrate to Israel every single year and the implication that has on the single biggest stumbling block to peace, Israel's continuing refusal to stop building settlements on Palestinian land and carving up their country. Helen Thomas dared to put her finger on the problem and got burned.

The Israeli people want peace, but they're held hostage by the ultraorthodox (fundamentalists) who, like all nationalists, believe that they hold claim all the land that was under their rule at any time in history, by god! It appears that the Palestinian people are also held hostage by the fundamentalists in their midst and want to move forward to peace.

From yesterday's Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/24/headlines
(emphasis added)

A new poll shows a majority of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories support reaching a peace agreement with the Israeli government. According to the Norwegian-based group FAFO, 73 percent of Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza say they support negotiations with Israel but that the talks should be preconditioned on a settlement freeze. The poll also shows growing support for nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation, with the number of Palestinians who oppose rocket attacks from Gaza increasing to 61 percent from 53 percent. Israel has refused a settlement freeze while also rejecting any peace agreement that would involve giving up its large settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank.

Israel is a Democracy?

Graphic and Shocking!

I'll admit, I usually sigh and roll my eyes at any news coming out of Israel/Palestine, it just seems so intractible and futile (then again so did the South African version of apartheid). There's plenty of blame to go around, but the Israeli's hold all the power and I've had it up to here with their intransigent behavior, our media's one-sided coverage and our government's unshakeable one sided support. Not only is it morally wrong, but it's endangering us and our troops (see below).

One of the truisms trotted out all the time is that Israel is the only democracy in the middle-east and our interests are aligned so we must support Israel no matter what. I'll leave the "interests are aligned" thing alone for now. what I question is whether Israel is really a democracy. Israel's population is roughly 7M of which about 2M are Arab citizens who enjoy for the most part equal status with the Jewish citizens, although not entirely. There are about 12M Palestinians and about 7M of those live in the occupied territories (insisde the boundaries on the map above) with the rest being refugies. How can one call a country a democracy where half or more of the people living under it's rule do not have equal rights and no real justice, self government or self determination? It's a huge stretch if you can do it at all. It's more like a little empire and empires NOT democracies. America should not blindly support empires, it's wrong and it's dangerous.

From The Nation Magazine: One of the many platitudes ritually invoked at the annual AIPAC conference is the claim that US and Israeli strategic interests are indivisible. It was repeated again this year, by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among others, even as the allies struggled to patch up a nasty rift arising from the Netanyahu government's announcement of new settlement construction during Vice President Biden's recent visit to Israel.

But what if the claim isn't true? This year it was challenged from unusual quarters, when Gen. David Petraeus, Centcom commander, told the Senate that the Israel-Palestine conflict-and widespread anger in the Middle East over Washington's favoritism for Israel-is hampering regional partnerships and fueling recruitment by Islamist extremists. And while Biden delivered the usual boilerplate about standing "shoulder to shoulder" with Israel in his public remarks there, in private he was harsh; according to the daily Yedioth Ahronoth, he told Netanyahu, (Biden) "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us, and it endangers regional peace."
Here is a short, interesting history of Isreal's land grabbing and marginalization of the Paletstinian people that included the above maps: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/16-6

Oh and don't bother with calling me an anti-semite. Not only is that knee jerk response to any criticism old and tired, in my case it's just flat wrong.