Some of the Hidden History of the Middle East: Israel, the US, and the Arabs

The study of history is the study of how we got here.  Nothing in the modern world can be understood without a full knowledge of the evolution of causes and effects that produced it, or without a working theory of human nature and society.  Let us consider the situation of the people of the Middle East, Muslim, Christian, and Jew. 

The Islamic world was, from the 10^th to the 17^th centuries, far ahead of the Western Christian world in every important way.  The last great Islamic empire was the Turkish Ottoman Empire.  It included all the Arab countries and extended into Greece and the Balkans.  Western countries took advantage of the weakening of the Turkish Empire to invade and control various parts.  Arabs, who had been under Turkish domination for centuries, now came under Western domination.  By the end of the 19^th century, the Western control and colonization of the Middle East was well underway.  Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, Britain took over Egypt from France in 1882.  France conquered Algeria in 1830, Britain took Aden in 1839.  Tunisia was occupied in 1881, the Sudan in 1889, and Libya and Morocco in 1912.  In 1915, the Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the remaining territories of the moribund Ottoman empire between France and England, in anticipation of victory in the First World War.  This chain of events constitutes the Ninth Crusade of Western Christendom against the Arab/Muslim world.  Needless to say, it came as a severe shock to the Arabs, and created tremendous resentment.  Movements within the Muslim and Arab countries towards modernity, towards reform in religion and society, were snuffed out by the West when it chose to invade and control the Muslim world, rather than welcome it into the fraternity of nations.

The Arabs regions were promised independence and self-government with the empire’s collapse after WWI.  In the McMahon correspondence, the British promised independence to the Arab-speaking people of the eastern Mediterranean, including the Palestinians, if they would rebel against the Turkish Empire that was allied with Germany (Remember Lawrence of Arabia?)  President Woodrow Wilson also declared that WWI was fought to “make the world safe for democracy”.  The 12^th of his Fourteen Principles for the post-war world was:  The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule (e.g. Arabs) should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development,…”  Wilson also stated, on July 4, 1918, that one of the four great ‘ends for which the associated peoples of the world were fighting was “The settlement of every question, whether of territory...or of political relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not on upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for their own exterior influence or mastery.”

Had the Western world adhered to McMahon’s promise and to Wilson’s admirable program, the Ninth Crusade against the Arab/Muslim would have ended, and nothing in the Middle East would be like it is today.  The Arab-speaking people would have decided what states to create and who would rule them.  They would have entered the world community as free nations, and would have undergone a process of democratization as all unassailed nations do.  However, Wilson failed to force his program on the war-mongering colonialists of Britain and France.  They insisted upon humiliating and ruinous terms for the German people—who had fought them to a draw before the US intervened in WW1, thus setting the stage for the rise of Hitler and a greater war.  They also insisted on occupying the Arab Middle East.  Think about it.  Instead of the democracy and self-rule that they were promised, the Arabs got military occupation by the Western powers.  France took control of what became Lebanon and Syria, and Britain occupied what became Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine.  (Shamed by this British betrayal of all he had worked for, Lawrence returned his medals to the British government). 

Why weren’t the people of the region simply granted the independence they were promised?  Why did the Western powers have to carve up the Arab world and place it under their domination?  Certainly they sought their own advantages and wanted to control the Middle East just as they had tried to do in the Crusades just a few hundred years before.  The most important reason however, as in the earlier Crusades, was religious—the desire to control the Holy Land.  In this case, they had a definite plan—they wanted to establish a permanent Jewish state in Palestine.  Zionism, the belief that Jews could not and should not live happily in the various countries where they were born, but should return to Palestine and there create a Jewish state, had arisen among many East European Jews in the late nineteenth century.  It was a tribalistic, racist doctrine akin to Hitler’s belief the Germany should be an Aryan nation free of Jews, gypsies, and slavs.  Most Jews in the world, including those in Palestine and America, wanted nothing to do with Zionism because they could anticipate the immense antipathy it would create between Jew and gentile—as it has done.

Britain, anxious to gain whatever advantage it could in the war against Germany, and under pressure from Zionist Jews with great money and influence and who knows what other leverage, committed itself, in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, to the establishment, in Palestine, of a “national home for the Jewish people…it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christians and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”  America joined this Crusade after the end of Wilson’s administration with the resolution adopted by the United States Congress on June 30, 1922 repeating the exact wording of the Balfour declaration.

There was a very simple problem with the British-American plan.  The Jews were a small minority among the 700,000 Christians and Muslims in Palestine and owned only 3% of the land.  There was no way that a Jewish state could be established there if Britain and America’s other promises and principles were to be upheld.  So the promises and the principles went out the window in the Crusaders’ zeal to control the Holy Land and the entire Middle East.  The British and French divided and ruled the Arab-speaking world.  Greater Syria, including Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, and part of Iraq, was arbitrarily divided into little countries each controlled under a British or French “mandate”.  They imported “rulers” from the Hashemite kingdom of Mecca, thinking that since they were supposed descendants of Mohammed, they would have some authority even though chosen by the Western overlords.  From that time until now, these states have been creatures of the West and have had the rulers that the West wanted or allowed them to have.  Britain’s Mandate over Palestine provided the necessary cover for the mass importation of Jews and their acquisition of land and arms—all against the wishes of the population of Palestine and the surrounding countries.  Knowing full well that the Zionist Jews meant to dispossess and control them, the Palestinian people revolted at times, but were suppressed by British soldiers and Zionist irregulars.  President Wilson’s King-Crane commission, in 1919, reported that “The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission’s conference with Jewish representatives that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine...the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a “right” to Palestine, based on an occupation of two thousand years ago, can hardly be considered.”

In the 1930s, the British allowed a mass immigration of Jews and there were many terrorist attacks against non-Jews by armed Jewish gangs.  In 1934, the British proposed that Palestine be ruled by a legislative council of 28 members on which the Arabs (both Christian and Muslim) would have fourteen seats and the Jews eight.  The Arabs were willing to consider it, but the Jews and the British House of Commons rejected it, and this sparked off the Arab rebellion of 1936.  The British, having some conscience, decided in 1939 that they had done enough to establish the “Jewish national home” and started to curb Jewish immigration.  Enraged, Zionist terrorists proceeded to attack and kill British soldiers and officials so that the Brits began to withdraw and turned the problem over to the United Nations.  At the opening of the London Conference on January 27, 1947, a statement was read by Jamal El-Husseini, vice-chairman of the Arab Higher Committee.  It deserves to be quoted at length as a snapshot of this momentous time and as evidence that they Arab people knew then, as they know now, what was being done to them, and why:

"During the last 25 years, however, Palestine had been denied the right to self-government, in violation of those rights and pledges as well as the covenant of the League of Nations.  An autocratic administration was set up with the primary aim of assisting the Jews in their invasion of Palestine.  The Balfour Declaration on which this policy was based was a vague and one-sided encouragement made by Great Britain to alien Jews in the absence and complete ignorance of the Arab owners of the country.

Since 1918 the Jewish elements in Palestine had increased by enforced migration from 7 per cent to 33 per cent of the entire population...

During this period Jewish political claims had inflated from a modest spiritual home to the establishment of a Jewish state which they sought to enforce by the present campaign of terrorism. This had driven the Arabs to the point of exasperation, for they beheld that all the apprehensions they had expressed 25 years ago were being rapidly fulfilled.

Certain quarters had proposed that justice might be done if the country were partitioned between Arabs and Jews.  The Arabs believed that such a proposal was an easy pretext for evading the difficulties of a problem that had been created by a gross injustice.  The creation of an alien Jewish state in Palestine would mean a running sore that would undoubtedly become a permanent source of trouble in the Middle East, and would mean the destruction of Arab continuity and territorial sovereignty."

As quoted in The Palestine Diary by Robert John and Sami Hadawi (New World Press, NY, 1970)

Here in 2002, this running sore is getting ever more inflamed for the simple reason that radical Zionists insist on expanding the Jewish state into the West Bank and eventually expanding racist Israel to include all of mandatory Palestine. 

Under pressure from the US, the UN, in 1948, decided to partition Palestine and create the new Jewish state of Israel.  Jews, who still owned only 7% of Palestine, were given 55% of the land, but the Zionists wanted more land and less Palestinians.  They planned and executed a vast ethnic cleansing operation under the cover of the 1947-49 war.  The surrounding Arab states attacked only after and because the Zionists forced 300,000 people from their homes.  Having lived under Turkish and then Western occupation, the Arabs had no significant military forces.  The Zionists, on the other hand, had been preparing for war for decades and were well equipped and trained.  Outnumbering all Arab soldiers by three to one, they proceeded to terrorize the Palestinian population, forcing 750,000 people from their homes and enlarging their state beyond the UN Mandate.  They shelled towns and villages and committed many massacres of civilians including woman and children.  Mass killings like the slaughter at Deir Yassin frightened many Palestinians into running away when they knew that the Jews were coming for them.  The Zionists ended up with 78% of Palestine.

Britain and the United States carried out their promise to the Jews, but completely failed to honor their pledge to protect the rights of "Christians and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”  The Arabs tried to get the International Court of Justice to rule on the right of the UN to partition a country against the will of its people but were voted down—so much for Western promises and Arab rights, then as today.  Today, over 80 years later, the West is still waging war against the non-Jewish people of Palestine and of the entire region.

The state of Israel, racist, illegitimate, and criminal as it was, may have been able to live in peace with the surrounding countries.  However, the Israelis were not content with only part of ancient Greater Israel.  They wanted it all.  So in 1967, through a series of calculated provocations, they pushed the Egyptian leader Nassar into taking diplomatic steps that they could use as a pretext to take over more territory.  They attacked and grabbed the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Sinai from Egypt.  Knowing that they could never compete militarily with Israel, the Palestinians and Arab governments offered peace in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from these areas beginning in 1973.  Sadat offered peace with Israel under generous terms in 1971 if only Israel would leave the Sinai.  Israel refused and built more settlements there.  Sadat knew they understood only one language, so he attacked the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the Sinai with the limited purpose of forcing Israel to withdraw.  It worked.  When the PLO accepted a two-state solution in the mid 1970s, and UN resolutions demanded its implementation, Israel responded to this “peace offensive” by invading Lebanon in 1982 with the purpose of destroying the PLO.  Israel killed 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese people, mostly civilians—just to avoid having to relinquish the West Bank.  By 1988, the Palestinians realized that there was no international salvation for them.  They started the largely non-violent Intifada I.  Israel responded with brutal repression—but the first Intifida stimulated the talks that led to the Oslo accords.  In Oslo, Israel tried to legitimize its apartheid model for dealing with the unwanted Palestinians.  It offered the corrupt Arafat and his cronies all the perks of statehood if they would agree to run an orderly bantustan state-within-a-state.  Israel promised the Palestinians that they would eventually have a state based on 242, but instead used the cover of the Oslo accords to double the settlement population in the West Bank, from 200,000 to 400,000.  The Palestinians, initially hopeful for peace and a state in the ’67 borders, eventually realized that Oslo was just another Israeli ruse intended to forever deny them their basic human rights and forever imprison them in an Israeli-controlled collection of bantustans.  Barak’s "generous offer" didn’t meet the minimum requirements for a viable solution as attested by no less than former president Jimmy Carter.  To make matters worse, the Israelis elected a psychopath and war criminal, who himself purposefully triggered the second Intifada, to suppress Intifida II with ever greater violence.  The recent Saudi offer, which added new concessions to UN Resolution 242, was ignored by the US and Israel—and Israel responded with more “targeted assassinations” in order to inflame the situation and stop another Arab “peace offensive”.  When Palestinian terrorist groups, in consultation with European diplomats, decided suspend their attacks within Israel, Ariel Sharon responded by dropping a one-ton bomb in a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza, killing 16 people and 9 children.

I hope you get the point—Israel is not now, nor has ever been willing to trade any land for peace.  It has instead used its considerable military might to destroy and chance for a peaceful, workable, two-state solution to this horrible conflict.  Now that radicalized Muslims have decided to take this war to Israel’s Enabler—the USA, we in American and the rest of the world can no longer sit on the sidelines and hope for a good outcome from this 55 year Crusade and 35-year military ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.  Every human being has the moral responsibility to judge what has happened in Palestine, what is happening now, and how to create a just and lasting solution to this conflict. 

As partisans love to attack the messenger, let me tell you who I am.  I’m an American of English/German/Danish descent and Protestant upbringing.  As a physician and a philosopher, my goal is to diagnose and eradicate moral/social pathology.  I take the largest possible view of human social evolution and morality.  I do not blame individuals for their actions, nor do I favor one group of persons over another.  I seek to expose the false and pernicious ideas that produce violence and suffering, I do not hate or blame the victims whose brains they infect—no matter how evil their actions.  I oppose all racism, religionism, culturism, and nationalism.  We are not primarily Jews, Arabs, Israelis, Christians, Muslims, or Americans.  We are all human beings, members of the same species living together on this planet Earth.  Only false ideas separate us and put us in conflict.  Like most Americans, I was raised to worship Israel as a bastion of freedom and moral superiority in a sea of evil Jew-hating, freedom-hating Arabs.  However, my views slowly changed after living in the Middle East for 12 years and studying the history of the region.  I came to realize that the root of the conflict there was Zionism.  Zionism is plainly a form of racism.  It is the doctrine that a certain racial/religious group, the Jews, have a right to create, protect, and expand a racist/religious “Jewish” state in Palestine by any means necessary.  In practice, Zionism created the Jewish supremacist state called “Israel” accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews, 55 years of war against the non-Jews of the surrounding countries, and a 35-year military occupation and slow ethnic cleansing of the Golan, West Bank and Gaza.  America’s support of Zionism has put the lie to America’s image as an enlightened nation and international protector of human rights, and placed it in a state of war against all Muslims and Arabs.  America’s religious prejudices and the tremendous influence of Jewry in America have drawn it into and now force it to continue this Ninth Crusade against the Islamic world. 

Ask yourselves, Americans, why did you support the violent creation of the state of Israel, by Jews and for Jews, with no regard for the rights of the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine?  Why did you support the Zionists as they killed, terrorized and expelled 750,000 non-Jewish civilians from their homes in 1947 to 1949?  Why did you support the Israeli invasion of Syria, Egypt, and the West Bank in 1967, the expulsion of another 500,000 non-Jews from these territories, and the 35-year military occupation?  Why did you support the invasion of Lebanon and the murder of 20,000 people when the PLO had accepted UN Resolution 242 and agreed to end all violent action against the state of Israel?  Why have you supported this Zionist/Israeli war against the people of Palestine and the surrounding countries for 55 years?  If you are where I once was, you think that you know the answers to these questions--the same answers trumpeted in the media every day by American politicians, journalists, academics, and clergyman.  I ask you to consider the possibility that you have been grossly misled.  After all, the first casualty of war is truth, and the victors write the history.  If you want to know the truth, you must look beyond your media and read revisionist (objective) histories of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  You must talk to Palestinians and other Arabs.  You must open your eyes to the blatant racism of the “Jewish state”.  You must open your eyes to the devastation Israel has wrought in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria.  If you have not done these things, then your knowledge consists only of the various pro-Israeli, pro-Western myths designed to support this Crusade against the infidels.  In fact, I know that you don’t dare to investigate this matter, because you know, deep down, that what you will discover will shake your faith in America and its values to their very core. 

If you’ve read this far, my arguments and assertions about this conflict have shocked you, and you've been tempted to dismiss me as anti-Semitic racist.  In fact, I have, by personal experience and great personal effort, deprogrammed myself from Zionist propaganda sufficiently to grasp our society's own unacknowledged Zionism:  our pro-Israeli—anti-Arab racism.  As African-Americans know all too well, suppressed racism is all the more powerful and controlling because those infected with it are unaware of it—they therefore act on these irrational feelings against their conscious intentions and principles.  This is the case with Americans’ suppressed Zionism.  In America, anti-Arab racism spews from the mouths of countless commentators and politicians.  So hear me out.  If you want peace on Earth, you’ve got to start by being completely honest with yourself and making sure that you have your facts straight.  If you don't want to lose your own illusions about this conflict, don't read any further, for in this case, the facts are indisputable, clear, and compelling.  The establishment and enlargement of the State of Israel was one of the greatest crimes against humanity of the twentieth century.  This original aggression initiated 50 years of war in the Middle East that has distorted and impoverished the lives of all non-Jewish people in Palestine and the surrounding states.  Various wars fought by Arabs to reverse this aggression, return hundreds of thousands of refugees to their homes, and retake stolen land have failed due to the overwhelming military might of Israel—supplied and supported by the United States of America.  The forceful establishment of this fanatical Jewish state, along with America's pro-Israeli interventions in the region have been the dominant factor in the political evolution of the region; and the direct or indirect, necessary or sufficient cause of all the subsequent violent conflicts in the region, from the Iranian Revolution and the civil war in Lebanon to the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War, and Al-Qaeda’s attacks against America.  If there had been no Zionist-American Crusade, America could have nurtured democracy and prosperity in the emerging Arab states of the region, instead of warring against them.

We must take the long view—the historical perspective.  For centuries, the Christian West has sought to wrest control of the Holy Land from the Arabs and Turks.  In the early 20^th century, the Arab world was just emerging from centuries of Turkish domination when the Western powers thrust a racist, expansionist Jewish state into its heart.  The consequences could have been predicted.  Fanatical Islam, slow to develop at first, is a completely understandable reaction to fanatical Zionism and its pitiless, unending victimization of the Palestinians and surrounding Arab countries.  The Arab people, Christian and Muslim, became progressively more humiliated and angry as, with every passing year, the United States continued to support Israeli ethnic cleansing, expansionism, and occupation.  The U.S. used its diplomatic strength in the UN to veto every attempt by the rest of the world to reign in the Israeli state.  The U.S. gave, and still gives Arabs the

Contrary to popular mythology, it has been Israel, not the Arabs, that has evaded all attempts at a peaceful and just settlement, preferring always to expand its boundaries by creating facts on the ground and grinding down the Palestinians and other Arabs until they will agree to its terms.  Israel has killed over 100,000 Arabs, mostly civlian, while losing 20,000 of its own, mostly soldiers.  Israel continues, on a daily basis, to talk peace while building settlements between Palestinian communities in the West Bank and using all violent means that are politically feasible to drive the Palestinians out.  The international community, bullied by the U.S., sits by silently as one of the century's most horrific episodes of ethnic cleansing continues with an unparalleled military occupation that imprisons millions of Palestinians in a violent racist nightmare and makes their lives unbearable.  The hysterical pro-Israeli propaganda that assaults us from our televisions and newspapers is a necessary part of the cover-up of this ongoing crime against humanity.

That’s right.  Americans have been fed a constant diet of lies and propaganda so long that they cannot even see reality when it stares them in the face.  Zionists, whether American or Israeli, justify Israel’s ongoing violence against and military control over 4.5 million Palestinians with many rationalizations and lies.  They claim that Arabs are inherently violent and anti-semitic.  They claim that Arabs want to kill all Jews.  These claims are partially true—but only because of the violence that Israel has committed and continues to commit.  Zionists claim that Israel must retain  _____ (fill in the Sinai, Southern Lebanon, Golan, West Bank, Gaza strip, etc.) for its own "security".  In fact, Israel has enjoyed overwhelming military superiority since before 1947.  It now has one of the world’s strongest armies and nuclear arsenals and the full backing of the United States of America.  It has no security problem except its vulnerability to suicide attacks—which are the predictable and understandable result of its criminal 35-year occupation, humiliation, and ethnic cleansing of the inhabitants of Palestine.  Notice that our press glosses over the reasons for the Arabs' hatred of the racist Israeli state and the U.S. government that supports it, preferring to dismiss it as irrational and uncaused, or by claiming that Arabs hate “freedom and democracy”.  Lies are piled upon lies to in order to cover up and to justify Israel's crimes.  Yet in spite of what Israel is and what it has done, every Arab country and every Palestinian group, including Hamas, has said that it will accept the existence of Israel, even as a racist Jewish state, if it will completely withdraw from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Golan and come to terms with the refugee problem it created.  This is, after all, what UN Security Council Resolution 242 requires.  That is precisely the outcome that Israel has been fighting to avoid for the last 35 years.  Whenever the pressure to withdraw becomes too great, the Israelis strike out at the Palestinians of surrounding countries, thus assuring that a state of war continues to exist.  The Arab League recently repeated its call for a withdrawal to the 1967 borders in exchange for peace and full diplomatic relations.  But like all peace proposals to Israel, it has been swept aside.  Israel wants land, not peace.  In fact, Israel has never withdrawn from any land it conquered until forced to do so by violent opposition.  Where Israel has been forced to withdraw, as with the Sinai and Lebanon, it has been rewarded with peace with those countries.  It is obvious to all objective observers that Israel can achieve peace and security now only by withdrawing from all the territories it occupied in 1967.  Israel should jump at the opportunity to obtain legitimacy in this way; for as long as the occupation continues, it remains a criminal state in a state of war with its neighbors.  But, as Israel has demonstrated over and over again, it does not want peace; it wants land, it wants Greater Israel.  Consider this:  all the conflict in Palestine, all the terrorism and all the deaths since 1967 have been caused by Israel's attempts to hang onto East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan heights.  It’s that simple.  Israeli racism, belligerence, and military occupation are the problems in the Middle East today.  The war in the Middle East continues because Israel and America want it to continue.  They can put an end to the conflict today if they choose to do so by withdrawing completely and unconditionally to the 1967 borders.  The war today is all about the Jewish settlements in the West Bank!

Had America taken a balanced, humanitarian view of the situation from the beginning, we wouldn’t be at war with the Arab world now.  But against its own best interests, America has chosen war and has made Israel what it is—a shameless, belligerent, racist, mono-religious, criminal state—of the kind not generally accepted in this day and age.  Just imagine the reaction if certain groups in America got their way, declared our country to be a Christian state, and killed or expelled most non-Christians?  Of course, you’ve been told over and over that Israel is a democracy and therefore worthy of our support.  Think about this and do some research.  Is killing or expelling the undesirable majority of non-Jews to create a majority of Jews any way to found a democracy?  Do you know the odds of a non-Jew immigrating to Israel?  Try zero.  In fact, the state of Israel has a law specifying that the non-Jewish population of Israel must never be more than a certain percentage!  Arab citizens of Israel can vote, but they do not have full citizenship rights.  Take a look at the gross double standard that exists for Jews vs. non-Jews in Israel.  Non-Jews are not allowed to buy any property from Jews—as this would return "redeemed" land back to the goyim.  Seventy thousand non-Jews live in 100 villages within Israel but not recognized by the Israeli state.  They pay taxes but get no services, and all building is illegal.  Non-Jews are not even allowed to live in many areas of Israel.  Non-Jews are segregated for schooling, in schools with far inferior funding.  Non-Jews have to adhere to a great number of Jewish religious laws.  Non-Jews must all carry cards specifying their religion and ethnic origin.  Everywhere you look in Israeli law and society you find this double standard.  This is the democracy we’re supposed to love and support?  This is apartheid, not democracy.  How you have been fooled, America!  Lastly, Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza effectively makes these areas part of the Israeli state.  The difference in the treatment afforded to Jews (settlers) and non-Jews in these areas hardly needs to be mentioned.  If we consider the West Bank as occupied territory instead of a part of the Jewish state, then we have the fact that the Israelis are violating nearly every rule in the Geneva Convention concerning the treatment of civilians in occupied territories!  To believe that this racist and criminal state is OK because it is a “democracy” is not only wrong, but pernicious and dangerous.  Shouldn’t we demand that Israel outlaw racism and discrimination as the U.S. has?  Why not?  Why don’t we shudder when we hear Israelis invoking the need to maintain the “Jewish character” of the state of Israel?

Why is it that e Americans, blinded by false information and religious/racial prejudice, have granted this Jewish racial state a moral carte blanche to discriminate against non-Jews and commit any atrocity.  Like a psychopath who finds he can get away with anything, Israel has responded by acting with increasing recklessness, flaunting international law and abusing the Palestinians and people of the surrounding states as if they are not human beings.  It killed 20,000 civilians in Lebanon, it slaughtered thousands of Egyptian prisoners of war, it attacked the USS Liberty, it tortures Arab prisoners, it has turned the West Bank into a concentration camp and a death camp.  Yet Americans don’t care!  The American media doesn’t even tell us what is happening!  Not only has America never been an honest broker in the Middle East, it has been the superpower partner of Israel—using all its economic and military power to force the Palestinians to renounce their human rights and allow Israel to enjoy the fruits of its violence in peace.  Without American support, Israel would be forced to make peace with its neighbors.  WHY??  Why has America helped the victims of Nazism to become like Nazis?  Why is America the primary impediment to any just and lasting peace in the Middle East?  Why are Americans so blind?

The current state of affairs is not only terrible for Arabs, but also for Jews and for all sensitive human beings.  What damage has been done to the cause of human rights and international morality by Western support for ethnic cleansing, military occupation, and apartheid in the Holy Land?  What damage has been done to Jews and Jewish culture by the actions of Israel!  In fact, large portions of orthodox and secular Jewry outside Israel are absolutely opposed to the Israeli state and its actions.  Israel itself is split by conflict.  America’s support for racist oppression in the Middle East is a huge gaping wound in our moral consciousness.  What message does America's support for Israel send to all the oppressed people of the world?  It puts the lie to everything America says about truth, justice and democracy!  I ask all Americans, all Jews, and all citizens of Israel:  Is the dream of a Greater Israel worth the price of perpetual war?  Do you really want to incite the hatred of all Arabs and all Muslims forever?  Do you want to continue feeding religious radicalism in every country of the Islamic World?  Do you want to keep killing Arabs until the entire world turns against you?

Given the situation, how can a lasting peace be obtained?  It is clearly dishonest, prejudicial, and futile to expect the Palestinians to stop attacking Israel and negotiate a peace with Israel when Israel occupies all Palestinian land, exercises complete control over them, and offers them no hope that it will allow them to have a viable state.  Morally, this is tantamount to demanding that concentration camp inmates stop attacking their guards and negotiate a peace that requires them to ignore the past, give up their rights, and agree to stay forever in the camp.  We didn’t ask the Kuwaitis to negotiate an Iraqi withdrawal with Saddam Hussein, did we?  In fact, the Palestinians have every right to attack Israel and Israelis in every way possible as long as they are under military occupation.  We must end the occupation, not merely condemn acts of violence on both sides.

There are two possible solutions at this point—one more attainable in the short term, the other the best long-term solution.  Right, now, the immediately possible solution is to create a small Palestinian state next to Israel using the1967 borders as a guide.  The American government must force the Israeli government to announce that it accepts UN Resolution 242 and the Saudi/Arab League proposal and will withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza within a certain time.  The US and UN must broker an agreement on the nature and the timing of such a withdrawal.  They must involve all parties including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Brigades, and the international community.  Israel must be pressured as needed to agree to a reasonable plan to end this occupation quickly—on the basis of UN Resolution 242.  This plan must then be properly supported by the US and UN, including the money needed to make it work and international troops to patrol the new border. 

However, we must realize that this two state solution has been rejected by Israel since 1967 because Zionist fanatics are committed to a Greater Jewish Israel.  So is there a better way?  I believe that there is, although I may be looking decades into the future.  The best solution is for Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank to form a new, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual state with a new constitution.  This has, in fact, been the state goal of the PLO all along, and even some Zionist Israelis are now calling for this.  Isn't such a state the generally avowed aim of the U.S. and U.N. in other regions of the world?  Israelis could thus have their Greater Israel, if only they will give up their racism!  This solution has the great advantages of morality and simplicity.  It also would not require the evacuation and movement of all settlers from the West Bank.  It would allow Jews to live in a state encompassing most of what they consider their historic home.  It would solve the many internal tensions in Israel between the orthodox and secular Jews, between the Ashkenazi, the Sephardim, and the Russians.  It’s so simple.  Instead of creating a second state, simply remove the Green Line that separates the West Bank from the rest of Israel/Palestine.  Give Jews, Christians and Muslims—all human beings—equal rights before the law in a non-racist secular state.  Offer citizenship to all Palestinians, including the refugees.  Return all property to its rightful owners or compensate them appropriately.  Write a new constitution to create a liberal democratic state with no government intervention in religion or education.  Hold “Truth and Reconciliation” hearings as was done in South Africa.  Let the healing commence.  Non-Jews would certainly constitute the majority in this state, but that itself is not a problem for Jews IF the constitution fully protects individual rights.  What to call this new state?  Let them negotiate it.  I believe that the Palestinians would accept the name “Israel”.  A Zionist Israeli has suggested “Holyland”, but I prefer that it should keep its traditional non-racial, non-religious name of “Palestine”.  Maybe someday.

The Arabs are a pragmatic people.  They want and need peace as much or more than the Israelis do.  The Arabs and all Muslims could live in peace with Jews in the Middle East if only Israel would comply with international law, and either withdraw from the West Bank or reconstitute itself as a secular democracy.  Peace in the Middle East will bring happiness and prosperity to all.  The Arabs and Jews are, after all, far more alike than different.  They are both Semitic, Levantine peoples who share a common lifestyle.  Personally, I have no doubt that with a just settlement age-old grudges would be soon forgotten and these mercantile people would return to doing what they do best, buying, selling, and enjoying life in their own unique way.  Religious fanaticism on both sides would dissipate.  The end of the 55-year Crusade would permit the gradual democratization and liberalization of all governments in the area.  Libertarian democracies would be able to open their borders to their neighbors.  Arabs and Jews would be freed from their respective national and ideological prisons and would be able to travel freely throughout the Middle East!  Imagine a free trade and free movement zone encompassing the entire region!  The different peoples would get to know each other and discover just how much they have to offer each other.  Prosperity and peace would replace poverty and war throughout the Middle East.  The Middle East could become a vibrant and prosperous region, like the European Community but with Sun, sand, tabbouleh, and a unique flair for life!  The American and Israeli people can make it happen with a simple choice.  They must stop living in the past and begin to envision fair and attainable end to this conflict.

If America and Israel end the occupation and create a just settlement for the Palestinians, the root cause of Arab-American hostility will be removed.  It will then be a relatively simple matter to resolve the American-Iraqi and general American/Muslim conflict.  American troops could be removed from Saudi Arabia (as is being done now anyway) and the embargo against Iraq could be lifted.  We need not fear weapons of mass destruction if we make peace with our enemies.  With the resolution of these three issues, the demands of Al-Qaeda would be met, it’s raison d’etre would vanish, the Ninth Crusade would end, America would no longer be threatened, and the American people could regain their sense of security and their civil liberties.

The choice lies with you, the American people.  You can continue to wage war against “evil” and “terrorism” forever, or you can admit your moral failures, remove the causes of the Arab’s grievances, and bring peace and prosperity to the region.