Zionism

I have always considered myself to be a zionist. It seemed fair to me that the Jews of the world ought to have a homeland and that a logical place for it would be the place described in the bible as the home of their predecessors: the Hebrews.

 I knew many Palestinians when I lived in Saudi Arabia. They were all professional people holding responsible jobs in the Kingdom and they rarely ever spoke of Palestine. Actually, most of them had earlier moved to other countries like Jordan and got their educations in Europe or the USA.  It never occurred to me that they might have been forced out. One friend, an engineer/contractor, was from Jerusalem. He revealed that his grandfather was the Grand Mufti. I had no idea what a Mufti was, but I later found out that he had the right last name. He, too, never mentioned life in Palestine.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized what was actually happening in Palestine, and the oppression suffered by the native Palestinians. Strangely enough, it was an American Jewish woman who had lived there who enlightened me. I probably wouldn’t have believed anybody else. And I don’t think many Americans, Jew or Gentile, know to this day what’s really going on over there.

Certainly, anybody exposed to the current rhetoric emanating from virtually everybody in the government and/or media can’t know.

Not all correspondents are parroting the party line. Chris Hedges is a (very) independent, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who tells a very different story. He’s a rare brave honest man. If only many others would open their eyes ears minds……

Here’s one of his comments on Gaza:

The incursion and bombardment of Gaza is not about destroying Hamas. It is not about stopping rocket fire into Israel. It is not about achieving peace.  The Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza, to use lethal weapons on the modern battlefield and a largely defenseless

civilian population, is the final phase in the decades-long campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. The assault on Gaza is about creating squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos in the West Bank and Gaza, where life for Palestinians will be barely sustainable.

You can see him here:

And here’s another slant by someone who’s not a Christian:

Outrage   By Noam Chomsky  August 03, 2014 “ICH”  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39311.htm

–  Almost every day brings news of awful crimes, but some are so heinous, so horrendous and malicious, that they dwarf all else.

An excerpt:

Israel’s goal had long been a simple one: quiet-for-quiet, a return to the norm (though now it may demand even more). What then is the norm?

For the West Bank, the norm has been that Israel carries forward its illegal construction of settlements and infrastructure so that it can integrate into Israel whatever might be of value to it, meanwhile consigning Palestinians to unviable cantons and subjecting them to intense repression and violence.

For the past 14 years, the norm has been that Israel kills more than two Palestinian children a week. The
latest Israeli rampage was set off by the brutal murder of three Israeli boys from a settler community in the occupied West Bank. A month before, two Palestinian boys were shot dead in the West Bank city of Ramallah. That
elicited no attention, which is understandable, since it is routine. “The institutionalized disregard for Palestinian life in the West helps explain not only why Palestinians resort to violence,” the respected Middle East analyst
Mouin Rabbani reports, “but also Israel’s latest assault on the Gaza Strip.”

Quiet-for-quiet has also enabled Israel to carry forward its program of separating Gaza from the West Bank. That program has been pursued vigorously, always with US support, ever since the US and Israel accepted the Oslo accords, which declare the two regions to be an inseparable territorial unity. A look at the map explains the rationale. Gaza provides Palestine’s only access to the outside world, so once the two are separated, any autonomy that Israel might grant to Palestinians in the West Bank would leave them effectively imprisoned between hostile states, Israel and Jordan.  The imprisonment will become even more severe as Israel continues its systematic program of expelling Palestinians from the Jordan Valley and constructing Israeli settlements there,
enjoying quiet-for-quiet.

I used to believe that any activities by Israel versus the Palestinians were totally justified by atrocities committed against Israel..  Now, I believe there are wrongs committed by both sides, but the responses by
the Israelis are way out of proportion to the offenses, strongly suggesting a hidden agenda.

Hedges and Chomsky suggest what that agenda might be.