Behind the war on Palestinians

ARIEL SHARON may be responsible for the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. But this horror is only one chapter in a long history of violence against the Palestinian people.

This half-century of oppression is the inevitable consequence of the Zionist project of creating and defending a Jewish-only state on land stolen from Palestinians.

The movement to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine began more than a century ago. The leaders of the Zionist movement understood that to acquire the necessary military might to
drive the Palestinians out, they would need to appeal to the world’s main imperialist powers.

Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, made his case to Europe and the U.S. by promising that the Jewish state would be part of "the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of
civilization as opposed to barbarism."

When the Middle East emerged as the world’s biggest source of oil in the 1930s, the race to dominate the region intensified. For its part, the U.S. backed dictators and despots throughout the
Arab world, sponsoring coups to bring pro-Western leaders like the Shah of Iran to power.

Israel--formed in 1948 after Zionist militias carried out a reign of terror to expel Palestinians from their land--emerged victorious in its 1967 war against neighboring Arab regimes. The U.S.
stepped up its support dramatically--and has continued ever since as Israel’s main backer.

While U.S. support for Arab regimes has the potential of provoking anger from the mass of the population of these countries, Israel’s population is uniformly pro-U.S. As a result, U.S.
support doesn’t risk destabilizing Israel internally.

Israeli officials are keen to claim that the U.S. supports Israel because it is "the only democracy in the Middle East." This is absurd. For the 3.3 million Palestinians crammed into the
Occupied Territories, life is characterized by poverty, siege and the constant risk of death or injury at the hands of Israeli forces.

For the roughly 1 million Palestinians living inside Israel, life is scarcely better. Palestinians are second-class citizens, their land subject to expropriation and their communities underfunded in
every respect--from education to social services to water. Their conditions are essentially the same as those experienced by Black South Africans under apartheid.

Yet the U.S.--as part of its drive to control Middle East oil--continues to fund Israel’s war against Palestinians to the tune of $5 billion a year. The struggle for justice for Palestinians,
therefore, requires a fight against U.S. imperialism--the force that props up and benefits from Israel’s terror.