BDS View: USA , Israel, Palestinian Conflict Sept 2005

If you get caught up in the who did what to who, when ,why , you can read tomes and spend years getting confused, and reach any conclusion you are predisposed to accept... but:

The bottom lines according to the BDS view are:

Israel is a country formed by stealing lands from indigenous people under the guise of pseudo-legal International resolutions. The Holocaust played a large part in the world allowing this to happen. Despite those horrendous catastrophes perpetrated by the Nazis, there is no basis for those region unresponsible indigenous peoples suffering the retribution for those crimes.

Despite the historical illegalities, the current situation makes it impossible to disband the state of Israel and go back to the pre-Israel state situation. Even if possible, that might not be desirable ... that was before the creation of current nation-states, and some sort of state building would be required to fit into the current International system of nations. (Despite the terrible pitfalls, some analogy to the Europeans wrestling the American continent form the indigenous Indians can be made.) The only pragmatic path forward is to find the most equitable solution for all region populations currently possible.

Israel is continuing to steal Palestinian land recognized by UN resolutions as belonging to a future Palestinian state. A large Jewish contingent believes the Bible gives them the right to such action despite no such standing under International law. The separation wall Israel is constructing is in violation of all International law and is a blatant example of that land pilferage.

The more land Israel pilfers before an ultimate resolution, the more they influence what is ultimately practical in their favor. However, demographics are working against total land theft. The Palestinian population is growing much faster than the Israeli Jewish population. It has been estimated that in about 20 years the non-Jewish population will outnumber the Jewish population if all currently occupied territories are incorporated into Israel. This is a big problem for a "democratic" nation that is based on being "THE" nation of the Jewish people. Therefore , Israel is attempting to further entice more Jewish people to emigrate to Israel, and, being selective in those contiguous lands it is attempting to "steal" and empty of Palestinians.... i.e.

Israel is a country currently practicing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians

The European Union (EU) and United Nations have many positions and resolutions recognizing what seem to be to me the basis of an equitable resolution of the existing situation.

The US routinely and consistently is almost the only country (except Israel of course) voting against those resolutions, and uses it's veto power in this regard routinely. This has been going on for many years.

Every year the US gives several billions of dollars in aid to Israel which they effectively divert to implement this strategy: moving indigenous people off the land and giving Israelis new settlements on that land. This aid is more than the total for all other similar foreign aid to all other countries! It routinely achieves Congressional approval without any serious debate due in large part to strong pro-Israel lobby groups in the US. The US media similarly has no inclination to promote this information to the general US citizenry. This is a pan-party line---Democratic, Republican,whatever.

The widespread anti-Israel ,anti-US sentiment in the Middle East and Arab.Muslim countries has roots to this unjust situation.

The senseless, unrelenting, "background" violence by both Israelis and Palestinians grabs the world's media attention, but does not impact the truth of the above. But ,I believe the Palestinians refusal "to go quietly" has helped their cause by keeping the world engaged in their problem. However ...

Radical Muslim and other persuasion terrorist groups are adept at invoking this injustice to lure people into supporting their causes, which in many cases are only remotely related to this particular injustice.

The Israelis are adept at luring the US into blind belief that Israeli interests are US interests and just. But that is not always true.

US response to the 9/11 terrorist attack was a knee-jerk Israeli type response. Iraq and domestic legislation like the Patriot Act infringement on the Bill of Rights are also Israeli-like, and in the long run ultimately ineffective, since they rest on a foundation of injustices.

There are no easy solutions, but the US needs to stop providing the annual billions of dollars to Israel in aid and join with the EU and UN in implementing an equitable solution. If the US stopped the billions of dollars in annual aid to Israel, and stood with the rest of the International community, I believe a break in the gridlock would come much sooner.

View1   Dec/06:Ex Soldiers Break 'Silence" on Iraeli Excesses   Dec06:The Contrived Stopper to Mideast Peace

Beseseller Book by Tel Aviv University Professor Shlomo Sand: The Invention of the Jewish People (English translation release date Oct 2009 by Verso)

Book: Palestine,Peace Not Apartheid by President Jimmy Carter. Carter's courageous book  traces the history of the conflict, and squarely places the blame on Israel stealing of Palestinian lands as the primary cause a settlement has not been made. This is the definitive book to read on the conflict without being distracted and confused by the miscellany of "who did what to who when".

Book: The Case Against Israel: by Michael Neumann; "Michael Neumann argues a brillant case against the legitimacy of Zionism,whose essence has been the pursuit of Jewish domination over Palestine" argues Kathy Christison,former CIA analyst.... Israel is a criminal country and the US is an accessory to its crimes--Bill Rowe

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Note the following review  of Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine,Peace Not Apartheid" from Amazon.com:

A Blow to Oppression,Injustice, and Zionism, March 16, 2007
Reviewer: Mohamed "marvelmann" (marvelmann) - See all my reviews

Jimmy Carter says that Israeli troops should leave the West Bank and he is thereby an Anti-Semite by the standards of the Israeli Webster Dictionary. A person who can say what they think is right, regardless of the publics opinion or the status quo, should be respected. Martin Luther King was called very bad names and was killed in his protest for civil rights. Nelson Mandela was called a communist and a terrorist, and he became a figure of hatred among many South African whites in his struggle against apartheid. Carter is in a different position. He is not black and his people are not the ones oppressed. He is taking the unpopular position of criticizing Israel and its policies and The Jewish Lobby has dispatched an army of people online and in the media to ridicule, humiliate, and slander Carter. I suspect that some of the people who keep commenting on reviews like D__D or Jill Malters are part of that army, but I'm not sure. They have rebuttals for every positive review and it amazes me how dedicated they are. Keep it going guys.

Why are government officials afraid to speak negatively about Israel? Why does every member of Congress always take Israel's side, even when its army intentionally kills Americans as it did in the six day war when it killed 34 U.S. servicemen and wounded at least 173? Even the Stern and Irgun gangs were notorious for bombing buildings and killing British troops and civilians in their fight for statehood. They are called Jewish underground freedom fighters but not terrorists. Even when a Jewish settler in 1994 went into a mosque and murdered 29 Palestinian Muslims and wounded 170, the media and President Clinton called it a terrible tragedy but if a Palestinian would have gone into a synagogue and just punched one Israeli, he would most definitely be called the t word. Can we all agree that the U.S. has been pro-Israel in its stance? Can we all agree that Israel has been given lots of money (more than 80 billion dollars in grants/loans since 1949 which is more aid than to Africa, Asia, and Latin America combined and costs US taxpayers $134,791,507.00). And can we agree that Palestinians do not have the same rights as Israelis and have no real economic opportunities nor do they have the same freedom to just move around the country as Israelis do? Since a Palestinian can never become an Israeli citizen (thanks a lot Zionism) Israel must do 1 of 2 things to solve the problem. It must kill all the 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank with a final solution type of deal, or it must leave the West Bank and take the settlers back to Israel proper.

The true end to the conflict is embodied in UN Resolutions 242 and 338, which was accepted by both sides at the Madrid Summit in 1991 and later in the Oslo Accords of 1993, which cost the life of Yitzhak Rabin for agreeing to those Accords. Carter acknowledges that these talks have failed and brings up the Geneva Initiative which will also fail because of the unwillingness of Israel to dismantle the illegal settlements. It is also worth noting that the Jews that were in Gaza were just moved to the West Bank so it wasn't a real move towards peace. If you want another controversial book that bares it all, read: The Power of Israel in the United States. by James Petras.,The Question of Palestine by Edward W. Said. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe.

I leave you with these quotes:

"My position is that the foreign policy of the United States says we do not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem. President George H.W. Bush, press conference -March 3, 1990

"The Israeli people also must understand. . . the settlement enterprise and building bypass roads in the heart of what they already know will one day be part of a Palestinian state is inconsistent with the Oslo commitment." President Clinton's farewell address to the Middle East -- January 7, 2001


"I am a black South African, and if I were to change the names, a description of what is happening now in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could easily describe events in South Africa." Archbishop Desmond Tuto, observed during visit to Jerusalem, December 25, 1989. Israeli daily Ha'aretz.

David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): "If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel.; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country.
Quoted by Nahum Goldmann (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121

"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

UN Partition Plan and Arab Catastrophe      Does Israel Really Have A Right to Exist?         Chronology of Endless War   Finkelstein: Thinks Americans are Finally Geting the Facts   Talking to a Wall: Palestine in the Minds of Americans