Please spare me the handwringing over the political assassination of Charlie Kirk. Like you, I’ve heard our politicians say there’s no place for political violence in America. Others have said such atrocities are the province of the right or alternatively of the left
All of that is false. It’s complete B.S. Face it, America itself and its CIA (often in cooperation with organized crime) are assassination experts. It’s not a Republican thing or a Democrat thing. It’s not a question of “left” (as if there were a real “left” in America) or “right.”
No, it’s the American way. It’s what “we” do in the world. And to stop domestic assassinations, that’s what must change.
As Martin Luther King told us long ago, the U.S. (along with Israel, and NATO I would add) is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. (Vijay Prashad calls NATO “the machine that destroys humanity.”) Our government and those allies commit targeted and random assassinations all the time.
Think of the extrajudicial bombing of that Venezuelan fishing boat just last week. Without advancing any evidence whatsoever, those in the boat were blown up because of “suspicions” that they were drug dealers. No proof, no arrests, no trial. No handwringing or tears. Just killed remorselessly “on suspicion.” All the victims had (now severely traumatized) families.
Then think of Israeli threats to “take out” (decapitation, they call it) the elected leaders of Iran – or of their attempts a week ago to kill Hamas leaders as they participated in peace talks in Qatar. Think of the way Israel recently killed Yemen’s prime minister Ahmed al Rahawi and other Yemeni political leaders. And need we say the names Allende, Lumumba, Kaddafi, Guevara, or of a whole host of other political leaders routinely offed by the United States? Or all those attempts to murder Fidel Castro. Now they’re talking about taking out Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela
But Kirk was different you might say. Though liberals don’t agree with most of his positions, he was a journalist, a debater, an organizer. His assassination was an attack on free speech, on the first amendment. Killing him threatens the very concept of press freedom.
And the way he was killed was especially brutal. On “Breaking Points,” Krystal Ball even urged her viewers not to watch the video. “It will haunt you for the rest of your life,” she warned.
But all of that is B.S. too. “Our” assassins don’t care about free speech, free press, the first amendment or the assassinations’ brutality. For instance, “we” and Israel kill famous journalists virtually every day. And it’s all done in the most horrendous ways imaginable. More journalists (many of them award-winning) have been killed by U.S.-supported Zionists than all those killed in WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined.
AND IT HAPPENS VIRTUALLY EVERY DAY!!
Those routine atrocities occur in Palestine, where many of the victims have their heads blown completely off. And it’s not just the journalists and other public figures. In many cases it’s their families too – wives, children, infants, parents, grandparents, and great grandparents — who are killed along with them.
So, again, please spare me the crocodile tears! You can’t routinely assassinate innocents, political leaders, and journalists across the planet and not expect it to come home.
Yes, with the political murder of Charlie Kirk assassination’s homecoming is undeniable and horrific. The chickens have indeed come here to roost.
And it’s not something that can be cured by stricter gun laws or by left and right singing Kumbaya together.
What must change is U.S. policy. “We” and Israel and NATO must stop being the world’s foremost political assassins!
I never thought I would find myself writing these words. But I think the world is far better off with Trump as our president than with Genocide Joe Biden.
There I said it. I do so under the threat of great personal detriment. I mean, I can hardly voice such opinion in polite progressive company. I can’t even say so in my own family.
So, at the risk of complete isolation, let me try to explain myself.
I think the world’s better off with Trump because a head of state should at least be sui compos mentis. Clearly, Joe Biden was not. By most accounts, Jake Sullivan has been running the country for the last four years. Secondly, Trump is better because he’s backing us off from nuclear war with the Russians. Joe wouldn’t even talk with them. Thirdly, whatever we might think of his words about real estate in Gaza, the Donald has introduced a cease fire there. It seems to be holding. Fourthly, President Trump shows promise of dismantling the CIA and FBI. That has no downside as far as I can see. And finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, he’s unifying the country around the issue of truth-telling. I mean it. Let me explain.
Trump’s Not Senile
I can hardly believe the Democrats knew Joe Biden was mentally over the hill from the first day of his administration. And yet after four years, they were willing to run him out there for a second term, when everybody knew he could scarcely tell up from down.
How cynical is that? How disrespectful to voters! How anti-democratic!
Thank God for the first presidential debate that showed the old man mired in an advanced condition of senility.
As such, his defining issues became:
Billions and billions and billions for Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. (Trump stopped that right quick.)
His inability to do anything about a ceasefire in Gaza. (Trump turned that around even before he was sworn in.)
Unstinting cooperation in the genocide of Palestinians. (We have yet to see Trump’s final policy here, though his words and supply of 2000 pound bombs are not promising.)
Maintaining U.S. hegemony at all costs.
Those are the issues that obsessed and defined Genocide Joe – Ukraine, Gaza, genocide itself, and refusal to recognize that we live in a multipolar world. Little else he did really counts.
Trump Talks Russian
In sharp contrast to Biden’s foolishness, Donald Trump has agreed to peace talks with our proxy adversary in Ukraine. That war could have been entirely avoided had Biden even acknowledged reading and had he responded to Mr. Putin’s peace proposal in December of 2021. However, preferring war to diplomacy, he chose not to.
Shortly afterwards, the war could have been stopped in its tracks had Biden not (through Boris Johnson’s nefarious graces) effectively voided the peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine initialed by both belligerents in March of 2022. Instead, the old man again chose war that so far has exacted more than a million casualties.
In other words, Biden’s version of diplomacy was refusal to even talk with Putin.
Donald Trump has reversed all of that. Simple man that he is, Trump evidently realizes what all of us teach our children – make up with those you’ve been fighting with. Talk with your “enemies.” Try to see things from their point of view. No good parent would instruct them otherwise.
Diplomacy is as simple as that. Its exercise under Donald Trump has made the world a safer place.
Ceasefire in Gaza
So far, Trump’s policy in Gaza has made Palestinians safer as well.
The whole sequence of events since Trump’s diplomatic intervention illustrates the point. Since then, the whole world has witnessed:
Thousands upon thousands of Palestinians returning “home.”
The Zionist-caused rubble of their homes, schools, hospitals, libraries, mosques, and churches.
The uncovering of untold numbers of friends, relatives, doctors, nurses, and teachers buried and uncounted under the rubble raising the number of Palestinians indiscriminately killed to well over 100.000 – more than half women, children, and the elderly.
The survival of Hamas fighters still proud, well-armed, and undefeated by Israel’s genocidal attacks.
The testimony of Hamas prisoners about humane treatment on the part of their captors.
The contrasting emaciated and evidently tortured bodies of Zionist prisoners released by the Zionists.
None of this has been good for Israel’s image in the world. Instead, it’s made the world aware of the justice of the Palestinian cause.
To repeat, all of that makes Palestinians safer. It has also shown President Trump’s policy in Israel to be better than Mr. Biden’s, at least so far.
Today, Palestinians are better off under Trump.
Dismantling the CIA
And then there’s Mr. Trump’s appointment of Tulsi Gabbard to oversee the country’s 18 spy organizations. Those agencies spy on us! They engage in regime change operations. According to ex-CIA director, Mike Pompeo, they lie, they cheat, they steal all the time. They take entire courses on how to do so. Pompeo was proud of that. He thought it was a big joke.
Tulsi Gabbard realizes all of that. In Senate testimony, she refused to identify Snowden as a traitor.
Clearly, she has the “intelligence” establishment quaking in their boots.
That makes all of us better off.
ConclusionBringing Us All Together
Recently, I saw a YouTube discussion between leftist comedian Jimmy Dore and progressive journalist Matt Taibbi. Dore raised a question about climate change. He confessed that in view of all the lies that have infected the scientific community (and American public life in general) he was for the first time having doubts about climate change. Was its threat being overblown?
In response, Taibbi admitted that the exposure of so many lies conveyed by politicians, clergymen, journalists, and university researchers had him wondering too. “I’m ashamed to say so,” he said in effect, “but all of that has me wondering about beliefs I’ve taken for granted over the last 30 years of my life.”
The exchange between Dore and Taibbi made me realize that even the falsehoods conveyed by the Liar in Chief currently manning the White House has important benefits.
On all segments of the political spectrum, it has us wondering about truth. We no longer trust those claiming to be truth tellers. We no longer trust the “fact checkers.” They’ve all been shown to be liars.
Regardless of where we stand on politics or climate change, that’s a hugely important point for Americans to realize and agree to. Thank you for bringing us together, Mr. Trump.
This past week, the world held its breath as South Africa’s top legal team pressed its case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The lawyers argued that the state of Israel is guilty of genocide by prosecuting its war against the people of Gaza.
On Thursday, the South Africans made their case in exquisite detail. It cited chapter and verse proving, the lawyers said, that Israel not only committed acts of genocide, but that according to its leaders’ own admissions, Israel did so with full genocidal intent.
On Friday the Israeli defense team gave their reply. It basically held that all of Israel’s actions including the deaths of 30,000 Palestinians (at least half of them children and women) are justified by the Hamas attacks of October 7th, 2023.
Final resolution of the case may take months or even years. Now however, we await the court’s preliminary directives.
Whatever those judgments and injunctions might be, the very fact that the world was forced to listen to the South African case against Israel represented a victory for the Palestinians and an education for the world at large – especially for the United States. That’s because the U.S. mainstream media (MSM) has largely excluded the Palestinian viewpoint from public awareness. In fact, to give sympathetic voice to the Palestinian perspective has been all but criminalized here.
Accordingly, since October 7th, Americans have been subjected to nonstop Israeli propaganda that presents the conflict in Gaza as though it began on October 7th — as though it was initiated without provocation by blood thirsty terrorists driven by irrational anti-Semitism.
So understood, that scenario gives to Israel the right to overlook international law and to follow a “morality” of revenge, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and even genocide. It is a “morality” completely supported by the United States.
The argument here is that such morality can have only highly disastrous effects.
To show what I mean, allow me to (1) summarize the case so eloquently argued by the South African legal team, (2) lay out Israel’s exceptionalist morality, (3) put the entire case in historical perspective, (4) apply Israel’s logic to that case, and (5) conclude with specific recommendations about legal responses to Israel’s policies.
South Africa’s Case
The case of the South African legal team was argued convincingly. It was founded on international law. The argument implied and/or specifically held that:
Illegal occupiers enjoy no right to self-defense.
Neither does any regime practicing apartheid. Apartheid is a war crime.
On the contrary, it is the illegally occupied who have the right of self-defense against their occupiers and any system of apartheid. That right includes taking up arms against the perpetrators in question.
No provocation, no matter how egregious justifies direct attacks on civilians.
In all cases, any response to terroristic attacks must observe the principle of proportionality. That is, Article 51 Section 6 of the UN Charter states that revenge attacks against civilian populations are strictly forbidden.
So are forced relocations of entire populations, deprivation of food and water to civilian populations, attacks on hospitals, medical personnel, schools, refugee camps, places of worship, and members of the press.
By ignoring such legal restrictions, the South African lawyers argued, Israel is guilty of genocide defined in law as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” The lawyers bolstered their case with statements from Zionists all the way from soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) to the country’s prime minister declaring their genocidal intentions.
Israel’s Syllogism of Genocide
In reply to the accusations just cited, Israeli lawyers laid out their case arguing that Israel’s right to self-defense justified all the actions listed by the South African barristers. The Israeli case and exceptionalist “morality” implies the quasi-syllogism immediately below:
Following unprovoked violent attacks on civilians by an enemy, the right to retaliate in self-defense overrides all moral principles and international law.
a) More specifically, it exempts the offended from all legal strictures against killing civilians including babies, infants, children, women, and the elderly in any way connected with attacks by the enemy in question.
b) In such cases, ethnic cleansing and genocide become morally justifiable.
2. But on October 7th, 2023, the Palestinian terrorist organization called Hamas violently attacked Israeli civilians near the Gaza border resulting in the deaths of more than 1000 Israelis (including many civilians) with over 2500 wounded.
3. Hence, according to the above-stated moral principle, Israel’s right to retaliate in self-defense overrides all other moral principles and international law. It exempts Israel from any legal strictures against killing civilians including babies, infants, children, women, and the elderly in any way connected with attacks by the enemy in question.
Such moral reasoning apparently makes sense to the political leaders of Israel and to most Israeli citizens. It also has been embraced by the political class of the United States, by its mainstream media (MSM), and by many U.S. citizens. For them, Israel’s right to self-defense reduces any talk of genocide (and of ceasefire) to anti-Semitism.
Arguably, this is because the relevant reasoning processes of those just mentioned begin on October 7th, 2023. Hamas struck first, they argue. It is therefore responsible for the violence now directed against it. Hamas has only itself to blame.
Historical Perspective
However, following Israeli logic, the situation changes, if the one’s thinking begins not on October 7th, 2023, but more than 100 years ago. That’s when European Jews supported by Great Britain committed what Pakistan’s UN envoy Munir Akram called the “original sin” in Palestine.
It was in 1917 that Great Britain exercising illegal imperial power issued its infamous Balfour Declaration. Without moral right and absent consultation of the indigenous of Palestine, the decree created a national home for Jewish Europeans from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and other countries where they had a long history subjected to anti-Semitic pogroms and persecutions.
Of course, the indigenous of Palestine experienced the arrival of European settler colonists with the same sort of resentment and sporadic resistance that Native Americans experienced when white conquerors from Europe arrived on the shores of Abya Yala. The latter came with their religious prejudices too, every bit as strong as those of Zionist fundamentalists. Like the latter (as recalled by Enrique Dussel in his Invention of the Americas) the settler colonialists from Europe considered the indigenous “human animals.” As sub-humans, they automatically forfeited their resources to the civilized new arrivals with their “holy Catholic faith.” It granted them rights to the “new world” ratified by the pope himself, the very representative of God on earth.
Palestinian resentment and resistance were compounded in 1948, when following the horrors of Hitler’s Holocaust, European Jews flooded Palestine. The settler colonists destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages, stole the homes of their inhabitants, committed more than 70 massacres, and killed more than 15,000 Palestinians in the process.
It’s no wonder that the Palestinians remember the sequence of events as The Nakba (the Catastrophe). It’s also no wonder that Palestinians aided by key elements of the Arab world fought two wars of resistance in 1967 and 1973 as well as implementing two major campaigns of largely peaceful resistance (Intifadas) against the settler colonists from 1987-1993 and from 2000-2005.
To all this, Israel responded with overwhelming violence taking thousands of Palestinian lives. The most recent non-violent campaign, the Palestinian’s “Great March of Return” in 2018 saw 214 protestors (including 46 children) killed by Israeli sniper fire. More than 36,100 (including almost 9000 children) were also wounded. Virtually none of this received due attention in the U.S. MSM.
Noam Chomsky summarizes the atrocities just described using the Israeli phrase “mowing the lawn.” That refers to the Israeli practice (at least since 2005) of periodically invading, bombing, and imprisoning (often without charge) thousands of Palestinian civilians. Chomsky enumerates the steps as follows:
A truce accord between Israel and Hamas is established.
Hamas lives up to it.
Israel violates it.
Israel escalates the violation.
This elicits a Hamas response.
The reaction provides a pretext for what Israel calls “mowing the lawn” – i.e. one of its major periodic attacks on Palestinians.
Then comes the western propaganda: “Poor Israel is attacked by rockets. What can it do? They must defend themselves.”
If Hamas Followed Israel’s Moral Logic
Keeping in mind the history just recounted as well as Israel’s “moral” logic about self-defense and dispensation from observing international law and prohibitions against revenge, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and even genocide, Hamas was perfectly within its rights to perpetrate its acts of violence on October 7th. In fact, those acts compared to Israel’s can be characterized as restrained and moderate.
In any case, following Israel’s logic, here’s how Hamas’ quasi-syllogism might run:
Following violent attacks on civilians by an enemy, the right to retaliate in self-defense overrides all moral principles and international law.
a) More specifically, it exempts the offended from all legal strictures against killing civilians including babies, infants, children, women, and the elderly in any way connected with attacks by the enemy in question.
b) In such cases, ethnic cleansing and genocide become morally justifiable.
2. But for the past 100 years and more, Israel has violently attacked Palestinians resulting in the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians with many other thousands wounded and maimed.
a) Hence, according to Israeli “moral principles,” Hamas’ right to retaliate in self-defense overrides all moral principles and international law.
b) More specifically, it exempts Hamas from any legal strictures against killing civilians including babies, infants, children, women, and the elderly in any way connected with attacks by the enemy in question.
3. And so, Hamas can claim the moral right to ethnically cleanse Israel of its entire population and to commit acts of genocide against it.
Conclusion
Of course, the point here is not to argue for the genocide of anyone. It is only to underline the absurdity and danger of Israel’s (and the United States’) blatant disregard of international law and common-sense morality.
It is also to make the point that Israel’s logic cuts both ways. If its attacks on Gazans are justified by Palestinian atrocities, Palestinian attacks on Israel are even more justifiable. That is, it might be argued that the Palestinians as victims of Israel’s “original sin” and repeated atrocities over the last 100 years have much more right to revenge than their colonial occupiers.
In any case, if Israel and its U.S. enablers are found guilty of genocide by the ICJ, the country’s leadership, and its weapons suppliers (including the U.S. President and Secretary of State) should be placed under arrest.
So should those identified as responsible for the planning and execution of Israel’s particularly egregious war crimes. All should be tried following the example of the post-World War II trials of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. Those convicted should be executed or given lengthy prison sentences as were the German war criminals found guilty during the Tribunal held from 1945-1948.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, our family watched together one of our favorite films, “Life of Brian.”
It’s the comic story of Brian Cohen, a Jewish man born on the same night as Jesus of Nazareth in an adjoining stable. Like the historical Jesus (described for instance in books like Reza Aslan’sZealot), Brian becomes part of a political resistance movement intent on expelling Roman occupiers from the Jewish homeland.
Setting comedy aside, what struck me this time while watching the film were its undeniable and highly ironic echoes of the current struggle in Palestine between Jewish colonial settlers there and resistance movements such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Fatah. That’s because the movie successfully portrays the overbearing nature of Roman imperialism itself, the consequent resistance of Israel’s people, and the power of Rome’s “divide and rule” tactics bolstered by highly effective imperial propaganda.
I find the same techniques employed today in Israel’s struggle with Hamas. Like the Romans in the first century, the settler-colonial regime in Israel seeks to impose its will on indigenous Palestinians by overwhelming force of arms. The Zionists employ imperialism’s traditional “divide and rule” strategy. They also disseminate powerful propaganda that to this day convinces many of the benign nature of colonial robbery and oppression.
Let me show you what I mean.
The Life of Brian
As already indicated, “Life of Brian” portrays a biography that parallels in many ways the life of the prophet, Jesus of Nazareth. Both along with thousands of other Jewish insurgents suffered crucifixion under Rome’s cruel imperialism. (Remember, crucifixion was a form of capital punishment reserved for insurgents, revolutionaries, and related “terrorists.”)
Despite that threat, Brian decides to join one of the many Jewish resistance movements that characterized early first century Israel. Young and naïve, he seems unsure of his exact motivation. But it’s somehow connected with trying to impress a girl in the movement called Judith.
Because of his “success” in covering Jerusalem’s walls with anti-Roman graffiti, Brian soon finds himself gradually moving up in the ranks of The Jewish Resistance Front. He also becomes associated with resistance preachers who, like Jesus, find anti-Roman inspiration in Judaism’s religious traditions. People gradually come to regard him as a prophet.
Somewhat reluctantly fulfilling that role and after many narrow escapes from the pursuing Roman occupiers, Brian is finally arrested. In the end, he’s crucified like Jesus who, of course, found himself identified as a prophet as well.
Divide and Rule
In terms of understanding Roman and today’s Zionist imperialism, “Life of Brian” places high emphasis on Rome’s infamous tactics of “divide and rule.” This means setting resistance groups against one another, so that they end up identifying comrades in arms as enemies rather than their real oppressors, the foreign occupiers themselves. To the bemusement of the Roman occupiers, “The Jewish Resistance Front” finds itself at odds with “The People’s Front of Judea,” “The Front for Jewish Resistance,” and with “Jews against Roman Occupation.”
The effectiveness of “divide and rule” is portrayed in a key scene in “Life of Brian” where members of two opposition movements meet on their way to a kidnapping (a traditional resistance tactic employed even today by Hamas). In any case, the two groups end up fighting each other over whose idea it was to employ the tactic. Meanwhile the Roman military observes the encounter from afar– as if they were unaware of Rome’s deliberate complicity in sowing discord among resistance movements.
Similarly, “Life of Brian” portrays the complete effectiveness of propaganda both in our contemporary world and even among those suffering directly under foreign occupation. In the contemporary world, our schools portray Rome as somehow benign and beneficial to the occupied. In doing so, our teachers forget the telling words of the Briton insurgent, Calgacus (as recorded by Tacitus). Calgacus reportedly said “ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant.” (They create a desert and call it peace.) The Romans were brutal.
According to “Life of Brian,” that propaganda’s effectiveness was accepted even by those directly experiencing the brutality. In one memorable scene, a resistance leader gives a speech whose central question asks, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
In response the leader’s audience end up listing one after another, benefits such as sanitation, the aqueducts, education, safe streets, wine, and peace. In so doing, they put the leader to shame. He must admit such benefits of the Roman Empire.
Forgotten in all of this is that the benefits listed overwhelmingly belonged to the imperial center, Rome itself, and typically not to remote and “backward” provinces. The Romans weren’t interested in educating Jewish provincials. Any roads they built were meant to ensure quick passage by Roman Legions responding to outbreaks of Jewish rebellion.
Above all, Jews could hardly consider streets patrolled by Roman occupiers as somehow “safe.” Nor could they consider their occupiers as bringers of peace. Again, the Romans had no respect for Jewish life. Recall that in the end (70 CE) the Romans absolutely wiped Jerusalem and its temple off the map. They killed more than a million Jews and enslaved 97,000 more. Safe streets for Jews was not high on their list of priorities. What the Romans called peace was the tranquility of the graveyard.
Imperialism in Contemporary Israel
Figures like the ones just cited remind one of the brutalities of today’s Zionist occupiers of Palestinian territory. In a few short weeks since October 7, 2023, the settler-colonialists have slaughtered more than 14,000 Palestinians – half of them children, women, and the elderly.
At the same time, forgotten in all of this is the history of Israel’s “creation” of Hamas as a force against other Palestinian resistance movements such as Hezbollah and al Fatah. Yes, by all accounts, Hamas is a Zionist product. It represents their implementation of Rome’s infamous “divide and rule” strategy.
Similarly, Zionist propaganda has persuaded many beyond Palestine of the following absurdities, viz., that:
Zionists illegally occupying Palestinian territories have the right to self-defense. As illegal occupiers, they do not.
Meanwhile, those illegally occupied do not have the right to self-defense. UN Charter Article 51 says they do.
We should unquestioningly believe Zionist accounts of Hamas’ attacks on Jewish settlements on October 7th, 2023, even if the only sources of those accounts are Israeli officials who have repeatedly lied to us before.
The alleged brutalities of Hamas attacks nullify the application of international law forbidding population transfer, collective punishment, the bombing of hospitals, schools, and United Nations facilities.
Cutting off food, water, and electricity are legitimate military tactics.
All Palestinians (including babies and children) are somehow legitimate targets of Zionist bombs and artillery fire.
Conclusion
After watching Monty Python’s “Life of Brian,” the conclusion I’ve reached is that imperialism is imperialism. On the one hand, it is a system of robbery intended to transfer resources from resource-rich provinces to a resource-poor imperial centers such as Rome. As such, imperialism has no humanitarian intent.
On the other hand, imperialism (like Zionists in Palestine) establishes location in an area rich in resources (like the Middle East floating on its ocean of oil). In the latter case, the purpose is to protect the resource in question from control by those to whom the resource belongs (viz., the Arab nations).
The imperial tactics that ensure such resource transfer and control are those depicted in “Life of Brian.” They involve setting resistance movements against one another and spreading propaganda that has the rest of us (and even some of the colonized) believing that the oppressors are world benefactors, and that their indigenous opponents are somehow terrorists.
As I see it, “Life of Brian” should awaken viewers to such absurdities.
Simply put, empire is empire. Robbery is robbery. Propaganda is propaganda.
The film warns us: open your eyes; identify your real enemies; don’t believe the lies.
Readings for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time: Malachi 1: 14b-2: 2b, 8-10; Psalm 131: 1-3; 1 Thessalonians 2: 7b-9, 13; Matthew 23: 1-12
The liturgical readings for this 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time are about the hypocrisy of national “leaders” who bring disgrace to their office and who become for their people a curse rather than a blessing.
They pretend to know more than the ones they “serve.” As a result, though they might say the right words about freedom, peace, and even “God,” every action they perform contradicts the basic divine imperative (found in all the world’s Great Religions) to treat others as we would like to be treated.
Consequently, the only policy these hypocrites know is war. In Israel-Palestine, they supply weapons to kill women and children (centralized in today’s readings) and they prefer continued slaughter to cease-fires.
Religious pretenders all, they disgrace themselves before the world’s poor majorities who know exactly what lawless settler-colonialists (and their facilitators) are always about. As Haitian film maker, Raul Peck has shown, they’re always about ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, and outright extermination. Always!
Today, the whole world is watching the script unfold once again in Apartheid-Israel.
A Pro-Palestinian Demonstration
All of that was brought home to me two weeks ago when I attended a pro-Palestinian rally in New Haven, Connecticut near the Yale campus.
By my estimate the highly enthusiastic crowd that gathered there numbered between 2000 and 3000 people. We marched from the New Haven Green through the town’s center chanting slogans like “Free, free, free. . . free Palestine!” The whole experience was highly inspiring.
The signs people carried were inspiring too and very thought-provoking. One caught my eye more than others. It made me think more deeply about Hamas. It caused me to realize that contrary to acceptable opinion in the United States, Hamas is not “pure unadulterated evil” (as our confused president’s handlers made him say). Neither is it simply a “terrorist organization.”
The sign I’m referring to read “OCT. 7 IS AN OUTCOME NOT A TRIGGER.”
I took that to mean “IF YOU PUT HAMAS’ ‘TERRORIST’ ATTACKS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT, THEY BECOME FAR MORE UNDERSTANDABLE THAN THE MUCH WORSE APARTHEID-ISRAELI RESPONSE TO THE HORRIFIC EVENTS OF OCT. 7TH.”
So, before we get to this Sunday’s readings, let’s once again think more deeply about Hamas. This time, my guide will be Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector in Iraq who tried to tell our government that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. He was relieved of his post as a result. As usual, the White House and Congress preferred lie to truth.
Hamas
According to Ritter, Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey, a NATO member, agrees.
For Ritter, Hamas is no more terroristic than were Americans like Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty whom the British called “terrorists” during the Revolutionary War.
Hamas, he says, is also no more terroristic than was Menachem Begin, the future Israeli Prime Minister. Back in 1946, Begin headed the Zionist Irgun gang which set off explosives in the King David Hotel, killing 91 people and injuring 45 including women and children. (Later, invading Israeli settlers ended up killing 15,000 Palestinians whose homes and other property they stole outright.) Begin’s goal in that strike against Great Britain was to bring international attention to the Zionist campaign for a Jewish homeland.
Seeking similar international attention for the largely ignored Palestinian cause, Hamas has at succeeded in putting Palestinian statehood back on the table. According to Ritter, its bold action has shaken up a calcified, Zionist-and-American-dominated Middle East.
In that sense, October 7th was highly successful and a game changer. In fact, it eliminated the principal obstacle to peace in the Middle East – Israel’s opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state. Simultaneously, by provoking a predictable overreaction by Apartheid-Israel, Hamas has succeeded in turning a global majority against the Zionists.
In Ritter’s eyes, rather than an act of terrorism, October 7th was a brilliantly planned military assault carried out with far more precision and far less collateral damage than what we witness Israel doing now.
The former U.S. Marine analyst points out that such observations are supported by the testimony of Kibbutzim survivors of the Oct. 7th Hamas attacks. The survivors claimed that it the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were responsible for most of the casualties falsely attributed to Hamas. The IDF’s indiscriminate fire killed large numbers caught in crossfire between the Hamas cadres and the IDF.
Ritter concludes with a probing question. If you’re against Hamas’ tactics, he asks, tell me what you would do as an alternative. Gazan resisters have tried non-violent approaches with the First Intifada (1987-1993) and Second Intifada (2000) and in the Great March of Return in 2018. The demonstrations achieved virtually nothing for the Palestinians on Israel-Palestine’s West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. Instead, direct action by Palestinians saw hundreds of peaceful protestors killed and maimed by Israeli snipers. Very few in the West remember that, even if they were aware of their implementation at the time.
Such failures have heightened despair, desperation, and anger in the Gazan concentration camp. Every Gazan man, Ritter claims, wakes up each morning with one thought in mind. Perhaps like Jews in Auschwitz, he thinks of the Israeli concentration camp guards and wonders, “How can I hurt them today?”
Such desperation led to the desperate acts of October 7th.
If any of us were forced to live under similar circumstances, Ritter concludes, we’d likely be thinking the same way. With Patrick Henry’s famous words in mind, he speculates that if you asked Gazans if they would give their lives to free their people, most of them would probably reply affirmatively. For this reason, Hamas communiques refer to the thousands and thousands of victims of Apartheid-Israel’s terrorism as “martyrs.”
Today’s Readings
Please keep all of that in mind as you read this Sunday’s liturgical selections. I’ve “translated” them below. You can read the originals here to see if I got them right.
Malachi 1: 14b-2: 2b, 8-10
The Great Goddess promised Jewish priests that they and their people will be cursed if they forgot the nature of Mosaic Covenant. It was forged to protect slaves escaped from Egypt – to protect the poor and powerless. Priestly hypocrisy, She promised, transforms into curses any “holy words” uttered to bless Israel. The whole people suffers when official decisions favor the rich instead of God’s impoverished and oppressed. After all, everyone without exception has dignity in the eyes of the One Creator. Ignoring that simple fact violates the essence of God’s Law.
Psalm 131: 1-3
Favoring the poor is the key to peace. That however is something the rich cannot see as they concern themselves with their “great things” and their “sublime” matters which they deem beyond the ken of the poor majority. But even a still and quiet child on its mothers lap exhibits more wisdom than the haughty. What children embody gives hope for peace.
1 Thessalonians 2: 7b-9, 13
The apostle Paul understood that truth. He went even further. For him nursing mothers offered lessons about generosity and self-giving. They embodied the love of our Great Mother. Accepting that helped Paul see everyone as a sister or brother worthy of his service and hard work. His vision enabled him to communicate the very word of the Great Goddess to any who cared to listen.
Matthew 23: 1-12
That’s what Yeshua did too. He understood the power of the Mosaic tradition about the liberation of the oppressed. However, he also saw that the politico-religious “leaders” of his day were hypocrites. They said the right words, but never lived them. Rather than bringing the “Good News” of God’s peace and love, their laws and policies made matters worse for the poor. Their concern was not that of the Great Mother, but with retaining personal power, profit, pleasure, and prestige. “Don’t be like that,” Yeshua said. Consider no one your Master, no one your Father. Instead, be humble and serve. Think for yourselves!
Conclusion
Those words speak for themselves. Like the ancient Jews, we’re led by hypocrites and liars. They should not be our masters. Though old and feeble, they are not our fathers. They are worthy of contempt and curses.
Far from embodying the Golden Rule, their guideline seems to be lawlessness, revenge, extermination, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Don’t be like them, Yeshua says. Their actions speak louder than their lying words.
Yes, thank God for Hamas. At least that’s what I’m thinking. Hamas could be the unlikely agent of God’s revelation.
That Hamas possesses such agency seems likely in the light of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions in general and in that of the liturgical readings for this Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time. All three can enable discerning people of faith to see past western propaganda to what Hamas is actually up to. Hamas is lifting the veil to help us identify who’s responsible for most of the world’s problems. It’s the United States and Israel. Both represent brutal criminal enterprises.
That’s my two-point message for today. it’s one that we’d do well to let into our consciousness blinded by nonstop propaganda that hates Muslims and the poor, that hates non-whites, and those who dare to defend themselves against imperialists, colonialists, and racists.
So, don’t expect here the de rigueur denunciation of Hamas’ “atrocities.” In terms of freedom and justice for Palestine’s oppressed, that requirement is deceptively counterproductive. It creates a detestable false equivalency between the tactics of resistance fighters on the one hand and the infinitely worse barbarisms of their overlords on the other. Once again, it ends up justifying Israel’s slaughter of their concentration camp captives.
[By the way, Pakistan’s UN ambassador, Munir Akram, recently said something like that to the General Assembly. He refused to criticize Hamas unless Israel was also criticized as the root cause of the crisis in Israel-Palestine. But, of course, the U.S. and Israel refused to allow such critique. (Be sure to view Akram’s speech above.)]
No, my points for us living within a nearly impenetrable “veil of ignorance” are to affirm that (1) Hamas may well be the agent of God’s revelation, and (2) the scriptural traditions of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions suggest that strongly.
Hamas
To begin with what do we know of Hamas? I mean, what do we really know that’s not filtered through western (i.e., through imperial and colonial) propaganda machines?
The answer is, “almost nothing!”
Think about it. What we know of Hamas comes from its inveterate enemies. It’s like getting information from the Nazis about Jews in the 1930s. And we fall for it every time. I think Goebbels said something about that.
In other words, our information about Hamas comes from proven compulsive liars (like the colonialist Benjamin Netanyahu, the imperialist Joe Biden, and their lackey press corps). Uniformly, they tell us:
Hamas cadres wantonly killed innocent young people spraying them down with machine gun bullets at a rave dance. (Nothing about crossfire.)
Unlike Apartheid-Israelis who hold more than a thousand Palestinians in custody (often without charge) Hamas has no right to take political prisoners.
After all, hostages and political prisoners are not the same.
Hamas militants even beheaded infants and children. Joe Biden said he saw the photos. (Later, his team “walked that back.”)
They raped women. (No evidence. Again, a claim “walked back.”)
Their rockets, not Apartheid-Israelis, destroyed a Gazan hospital. (Without investigation, Joe Biden believes that too – on the word of the highly principled Benjamin Netanyahu.)
They’re worthy of condemnation because they have chosen violence over the non-violent tactics so obviously favored by virtuous Apartheid-Israelis and Apartheid-Americans. [Nothing about Palestinians’ non-violent “Great March of Return” (2018), Apartheid-Israel’s brutal response killing hundreds, and the general lack of coverage in the west’s mainstream media.]
That’s what we know about Hamas. Am I right or wrong?
And every one of those allegations is a lie or at best a prevarication containing a tiny grain of truth. Every one of them!
I won’t waste my time or yours debunking them one-by-one. You can find that information elsewhere.
Instead, let me tell you briefly what we’re never told about Hamas. (You can find all this on Wikipedia):
To begin with, it is a political organization democratically elected by the people of Gaza in 2006.
It is also a religiously inspired social services collective that funds welfare projects helping people survive the hardships of hostile governments throughout the Middle East.
It represents a kind of Islamic theology of liberation that (in the name of the biblical and Koranic God of the poor) serves the impoverished and embraces the right to revolution recognized by Article 51 of the UN Charter.
For instance, in Gaza, Hamas provides food, water, medical and rent assistance for residents. It funds nurseries, schools, orphanages, soup kitchens, women’s activities, library services, and sporting clubs. That’s the foundation of its popular support.
And, of course, Hamas also has a powerful military wing to defend Gazans from the atrocities that Apartheid-Israelis have routinely inflicted on Palestinians for the last 70 years.
As such, according to international law, it enjoys the legitimacy accorded those resisting illegal occupation by foreign powers. (As illegal occupiers and aggressors, Apartheid-Israelis have no such corresponding rights.)
With all that in mind, Hamas atrocities turn out to be no different (except in their lesser severity) from those of the Apartheid-Israelis which preceded and followed upon them.
In the Palestinian case, they are acts of anger and vengeance for a whole series of brutalities inflicted upon them by their oppressors for the last 70 years. Those acts are far more understandable and justifiable than the acts of Apartheid-Israel that preceded and followed them.
Agent of Revelation
Moreover, (and this is a principal point in this homily) whatever you might think of its tactics today, Hamas is functioning as the agent of God’s revelation as articulated in this Sunday’s readings.
And here I’m using the word “revealing” in its etymological sense – removing the veil.
That is, (according to Scott Ritter ) Hamas has forced Apartheid-Israel and Apartheid-America to show their true colors. As a result, we finally see the blood drenched palette every day on our TVs. Simply put, the colonizer and its imperial sponsor have revealed themselves as brutal reincarnations of that other genocidal European force whose name can barely be printed in the mass media. Apartheid-Israel and Apartheid-America are revealing themselves to be racist, white supremacist, and N*zis.
According to Ritter, such revelation is what Hamas’ strategy is all about. They desperately realized that the settler invasions and occupations of Palestinian lands coupled with Israel’s Abraham Accords with surrounding Arab nations signaled a window closing on any hopes for an independent Palestinian state.
So, Hamas decided to force Israel’s and America’s brutal hands. They took up arms against their concentration camp captors. And the captors reacted in exactly the way Hamas knew they would – by bombing the concentration camp itself. Their keepers responded with wholesale slaughter of women and children – with obvious war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and outright genocide.
And the world finally noticed. The Hamas tactic worked. Everyone (outside the western bubble) now sees Israel and the United States for the criminal enterprises they are.
Both the latter claim to embrace the Judeo-Christian tradition. But nothing could be further from the truth. It’s all hypocrisy.
Just read today’s first selection from the Book of Exodus. It’s so short and to the point that I risk quoting its first paragraph verbatim here:
“Thus says the LORD: ‘You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry. My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword; then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans.’” (Ex 22:20-26).
And then there’s today’s Gospel selection from Matthew. Confronting the upperclass Pharisees and Sadducees whom the Jewish Yeshua saw as blaming the victims of the Romans (in the case of the Pharisees) and directly cooperating with their imperial oppressors (in the case of the Sadducees) he reminds them that they must love those they despised. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” he says.
Those words expressed the Christ’s mystic insight that all humans are one single entity. We are all equally “chosen.” We are more than brothers and sisters. Our neighbor is Our Self. In killing Palestinian women and children, elders, teachers, doctors, nurses, first responders – and Hamas supporters – we are committing suicide. We’re killing our common indwelling Spirit.
All that promises to become even more apparent as Israel’s genocide of Palestinians continues while the whole world is watching. The horrific revelation will continue.
Conclusion
So, yes, I’ll dare to say it: thank God for Hamas. Yes, it’s removing our veil of ignorance. In that sense, it is the agent of God’s re-veil-ation. The thousands and thousands Apartheid-Israel is executing before our eyes are martyrs reminiscent of the early Christians. They are revealers too.
The world’s poor, the Global majority living in the West’s former colonies and current neo-colonies see that more clearly than any of us. While Israel and the U.S. scandalously oppose a cease fire, the Global South (i.e., the world’s vast majority) supports it.
It’s far past the time for westerners like us join their chorus demanding that the criminal Apartheid-Israel state and its criminal American counterpart STOP THEIR CRIMINAL OPPRESSION.
Like Scott Ritter, I find myself praying for the complete defeat and humiliation of Apartheid-Israel — and of the United States on every front.
Readings for 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Isaiah 25: 6-10a; Psalm 23: 1-6; Philippians 4: 12-14, 19-20; Ephesians 1: 17-18; Matthew 22: 1-14
One of the often-repeated memes justifying Apartheid Israel’s oppression of Palestinians was repeated yesterday by presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson. In an otherwise admirable statement (see below) “On the Israeli-Hamas War,” and in reference to Hamas’ surprise attack on Jewish settlements Ms. Williamson wrote:
“Hamas is a terrorist organization, and this was a terrorist attack. The aspirations of Hamas have nothing to do with striking a peace deal with Israel; their stated goal is the complete eradication of the state of Israel, and they will settle for nothing less.”
Of course, we’re all familiar with such perceptions, even though Hamas is much more complicated than Ms. Williamson allows.
Nevertheless, what if Hamas’ position as alleged by Williamson is correct? What if Apartheid Israel has no right to exist and as such deserves to be eradicated?
That might be a shocking idea for most. But what if it’s correct?
That’s a thought I’d like to explore in today’s homily which will try to relate it to today’s Gospel selection. There the Jewish author Matthew attempts to explain why Israel actually did cease to exist as a nation and was driven from the Holy Land after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The words Matthew attributed to Yeshua also suggest a rejection of Israel as God’s “Chosen” in favor of the socially marginalized who more resemble today’s Palestinians. Read them for yourself here.
My reflection will also include candidate Williamson’s wise and highly practical recommendations for ending the current conflict in Palestine.
Finally, I’ll add a call for truthful reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians who are actually brothers and sisters according to the religious traditions of both peoples.
Apartheid Israel
Begin by briefly thinking about apartheid and state legitimacy.
Did apartheid Rhodesia have the right to exist? What about apartheid South Africa? And Nazi Germany?
I’d say NO in each case. Apartheid systems are abhorrent, immoral, and always terroristic. And according to Amnesty International, Israel’s version represents an egregious crime against humanity.
Yes, Israel’s system is illegal. To begin with, it flies in the face of UN Resolution 242 which mandates return of all Palestinian lands seized since 1967.
This means that every one of Apartheid Israel’s settlements on the West Bank and its incursions into East Jerusalem and Gaza are illegitimate. So are its periodic bombings of Palestinian neighborhoods, and its associated and regular mass killings of Palestinians including women, children, and members of the press.
As a result, Apartheid Israel is an internationally criminal nation. International law condemns it in no uncertain terms. As an apartheid system, it has no right to exist.
The same international law, while prohibiting Hamas’ acts of terrorism, accords to Palestinians the right to take up arms against its oppressors.
Today’s Readings
As I said, I bring all of that up this Sunday because the day’s central liturgical reading has the Jewish prophet, Yeshua of Nazareth, condemning the leaders of his people for going along with a Roman system of discrimination. They cooperated with the foreign occupiers and hence refused to share the land’s abundance (its God-given “banquet”) with the poor and oppressed whose welfare is centralized in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Yes, the Jewish high priests and elders cooperated with the Roman occupation forces in repressing poor Jews, Samaritans, Canaanites, and resident aliens while neglecting such rejects who were always the favorites of Yeshua and Israel’s Divine Parent.
Today’s Gospel selection responds to such refusal and cooperation with an apartheid system.
It is the familiar parable about a king who throws a wedding party for his son. But the ones originally invited to the feast ungratefully refuse to come. They’re all too busy with selfish pursuits. Some even kill the king’s servants who bring the invitation in person.
In response, the king destroys the murderers themselves and reissues his invitation to the poor and marginalized.
But what does the parable mean? Historical considerations help us answer that question.
The story represents the reflections of a Jewish author called “Matthew” writing for Jews at least a half century after Yeshua’s death. Matthew knows that Jerusalem was completely razed to the ground by Rome in the year 70 CE. As a nation with its own homeland, it ceased to exist. His question is why?
The answer Matthew puts in Jesus’ mouth explains Jerusalem’s erasure in terms of karmic punishment meted out to its “leaders” for refusing God’s abundant gifts and not sharing the abundance of the Promised Land (referenced in today’s first three readings) with those Matthew describes as mere street people – outsiders, “the good and bad alike.”
In other words, Matthew’s judgment is that the land of Israel belonged to all its inhabitants not just to Jews, Israel’s political class and the rich – and certainly not to the Romans. Refusal to share God’s banquet for all led to the death of a nation.
Moreover, the parable suggests the Jewish Matthew’s new understanding of “chosen people.” God’s “chosen” are (and always have been, Matthew realizes) the poor and oppressed in general. They are people like today’s Palestinians — rather than a single arrogant, rich, and self-satisfied ethnic group represented by the “priests and elders of the people.”
Applying the Parable
The question for us today is how can Yeshua’s prophetic vision of a new chosen people and a motherland shared with the poor and oppressed be applied to Israel-Palestine now?
The answer is: By ending all systems of apartheid and recognizing humanity itself (including both Jews and Gentiles) as God’s Chosen.
Here’s where Marianne Williamson becomes more helpful and articulate than Joe Biden or anyone else in our country’s vengeful Uni-party. In today’s context, she advises:
Establishing a U.S. Department of Peace as a cabinet level office.
Making peacebuilding not war the cornerstone of American foreign policy.
Standing firmly not only with Israel, but “no less” for the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.
Beginning a deeper dialog on the current situation by meeting not only with Jewish American leaders (as President Biden has done) but with Arab-American leaders (particularly Palestinian).
Ending the siege of Gaza.
Immediately restoring power there and access to food, water, and medical supplies.
Changing U.S. policy towards Israel so that while continuing to support it militarily, the changes emphasize the need for justice towards the Palestinians.
Moving the U.S. embassy back to Tel Aviv.
Demanding justice for the American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead by the Israeli Defense Forces.
Strongly opposing Israeli occupation of the West Bank, illegal settlements there, and the blockade of Gaza.
Demanding that no military assistance to Israel be used to support any of those policies.
Supporting all efforts to create the resurrection of plans for a two-state solution to the problems of Israel-Palestine.
Working assiduously with Middle East peace builders both in Israel-Palestine and in the United States.
Using American power to side with our highest ally: humanity itself.
To Ms Williamson’s list I would add for the sake of clarity: Never referring to Israel without calling it “Apartheid Israel.”
Conclusion
In faith perspective, what is really needed to solve the current problems in Israel-Palestine is a genuine process of truth and reconciliation. Israel-Palestine needs a Truth and Reconciliation Process like that implemented in South Africa after the end of apartheid there.
To begin with, truth demands that both parties recognize the fact that they are cousins at least, if not brothers and sisters. Both Jews and Palestinian Arabs are Semites. In that sense, both have been guilty of anti-Semitism.
Both peoples also share horrendous histories as victims of prejudice and persecution – both communities at the hands of Christians for centuries, and Palestinians by Jews since the beginning of the 20th century and especially after 1948.
Both Jews and Palestinians must also confess and repent of their acts of terrorism. Jews must face the fact that they have unrelentingly terrorized Palestinians on a daily basis since 1948. And despite their internationally recognized right to take up arms against their Jewish occupiers, Palestinians must admit that nothing can justify responses like those we all witnessed last week.
Such facts and admissions alone should provide bonds of honesty, humility, empathy and shared identity that can soften hearts and open the way to any peace and reconciliation process.
As candidate Williamson would put it: “humanity itself” demands such fellow-feeling, confession, repentance, and open hearts. So does the entire Judeo-Christian tradition – which, of course, is shared by Muslims as well.
As I listen to the debate surrounding the awful events unfolding in Israel Palestine, I can understand how many are fooled by the one-sided pro-Israel propaganda circulated in the mass media and by their refusal to understand the Palestinian viewpoint. The media’s welter of misinformation and knee-jerk support for U.S. policy in the Middle East coupled with their implicit appeals to sentiments of revenge can be confusing even for the well-informed.
To clarify my own thinking, I feel compelled to express in writing what I think about the tragic drama as it unfolds.
So, for what it’s worth, please let me share my tentative conclusions. Perhaps they might help others formulate their own positions which, of course, may differ drastically from mine.
In any case, here are my tentative thoughts distilled into 25 points:
As a person of faith and a critical thinker, I can NEVER support empire.
That’s because I’ve come to realize that empire is a system of robbery whereby a militarily stronger nation imposes its will on a weaker nation for purposes of transferring the latter’s resources to the imperial center. That’s criminal.
Currently, the United States is the planet’s only empire.
As Martin Luther King said, it is the “world’s greatest purveyor of violence.” As such, it has NO moral right to render any judgments about the immorality of violence. None!
This means I cannot NEVER support the foreign policy of the United States. With less than 5% of the world’s population, it seeks to control the entire planet by the violence just mentioned as well as by a system of unequal trades, war, sanctions, regime change, and routine support of dictators. Again, all of that is criminal. It makes no moral sense to support U.S. empire.
By the means just mentioned and ever since the Second Intercapitalist War (WWII), the United States has exercised the same power Adolph Hitler sought in the decades of the ‘30s and ‘40s.
In that sense, it is a fascist regime that historically has supported fascists throughout the world. It NEVER supports the people its system has impoverished. It is ALWAYS on the side of the rich and powerful and instinctively opposes changes that serve the poor.
Today, Israel is an instrument of U.S. fascism. It represents the alter ego of the United States in the Middle East facilitating the U.S. control the sea of oil beneath land masses in the region – to benefit the already wealthy in their struggle against the poor majority.
In fact, Israel represents a colonial regime whose purposes at the local level are the same as imperialism’s at the macro level. [Remember, Israeli Jews are basically European invaders (from Poland, Russia, and other mostly European states housing the Jewish diaspora since their eviction from Palestine in the middle of the second century). European Jews invaded Palestine in 1948 and have since gradually stolen more and more land from the indigenous people of Palestine.]
This land theft has long been recognized and denounced by the international community, e.g., in UN Resolution 242.
But Israel (with full support from U.S. imperialists) has refused to obey international law.
Like its U.S. sponsor, Israel is therefore an international criminal nation.
It is also a state sponsor of terror within the borders of Palestine. It represents an apartheid regime MUCH WORSE than that of South Africa.
For nearly 100 years in the process of its land grabs, Israel has killed and maimed thousands of Palestine’s indigenous people including women and children with complete impunity and virtually without coverage by the mainstream media.
This has made the state of Israel the principal terrorist in the region.
In the face of its endless list of atrocities, any war crimes allegedly committed by indigenous resistance organizations (such as Hamas) pale by comparison.
Yes, Hamas represents an indigenous people resisting imperial and colonial oppression.
International law (e.g., Article 51 of the UN Charter) gives them the right to defend themselves by armed resistance, which necessarily entails killing their oppressors.
Yet the imperialists and colonialists (masquerading as advocates of non-violence!) predictably adopt the standard imperial practice of labeling as terrorists any who exercise their legal right to armed self-defense.
Their propaganda persuades the inattentive by isolating or even manufacturing atrocities by indigenous freedom fighters to illustrate the barbarity of the latter as if such acts were not faint shadows of their own greater atrocities committed over decades upon decades.
It’s all reminiscent of European colonialists in North America who in their “Declaration of Independence” described other indigenous resisters as “merciless Indian savages, whose warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.”
I oppose all this not only on the just noted grounds of historical understanding, but on that the Judeo-Christian tradition.
The latter is not neutral, but always takes the part of the poor and oppressed by exercising the Biblical God’s “preferential option for the poor” and its opposition to imperialism and colonialism.
This option is clearly demonstrated by the Divine’s incarnation as Yeshua of Nazareth, a poor person who lived under empire and who himself was executed as a terrorist and revolutionary by the Roman Empire).
None of this means that the current conflict in Israel-Palestine is irresolvable. Historically, both parties have more in common than what allegedly separates them. Both parties are Semites. Both have long histories of persecution by empire. This shared background opens the door to negotiation, resolution, and shared resistance to imperial designs.
Where have our national “leaders” been all these years? To judge by their statements concerning the current crisis in Israel-Palestine, they haven’t been following the news about Israeli-Jews’ treatment of Palestinians in the territories the former have illegally occupied for decades.
Are mainstream politicians unfamiliar with international law, with President Carter’s concept of apartheid in Israel-Palestine or of Gaza as the world’s largest open-air prison?
Or are they just completely dishonest?
Listen to what they’ve said in response to the recent massive expression of Palestinian resistance to Jewish-Israeli oppression. Listen to the Biden administration and even Volodymyr Zelensky.
Then consider what’s really happening in Israel-Palestine in both legal and moral perspective.
Our Leadership’s Comments
Once again, our “leaders” are talking about an “unprovoked” attack by a long-designated official enemy – in this case not Russia, but the Palestinians and Hamas “terrorists.” Leadership’s reactions are predictably ahistorical, contrary to international law, and (in the case of Zelensky) shockingly self-contradictory.
Here’s what the White House had to say: The U.S. “unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians. . .. There is never any justification for terrorism. We stand firmly with the government and people of Israel and extend our condolences for the Israeli lives lost in these attacks. . ..”
Say what? “Unprovoked?” There’s that loaded, ahistorical word again. Historically speaking, such perception is even more short-sighted and historically ignorant than calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “unprovoked.”
Which brings us to Volodymyr Zelensky. Despite his objections to an outside force (Russia) invading a supposedly innocent Ukraine (which he insists has the right to defend itself) he sides with Israel. Yes, he sides with the invaders and illegal occupiers.
Zelensky says, “We in Ukraine have a special feeling about what has happened. Thousands of rockets in the Israeli sky… People killed just on the streets… Civilian cars shot through… Detainees being humiliated … Our position is crystal clear: anyone who causes terror and death anywhere on the planet must be held accountable. Today’s terrorist attack on Israel was well-planned, and the entire world knows which sponsors of terrorism could have endorsed and enabled its organization.”
Is the TV-comedian-turned-president trying to be funny? Does he not see that according to the logic of his perceptions, Palestine is like his Ukraine – a country invaded and occupied by foreigners in contravention of international law and in possession of the inalienable right to defend itself?
Imagine the West’s response if Ukraine’s repeated attempts to invade Russia and if its frequent drone attacks had the same effect in terms of lives lost and property damaged as the current Palestinian attacks on Jewish settlements. What do you think the response of Zelensky and the West would be? Would it be unqualified sympathy for Russia’s innocent women and children? Or would it be to blame Putin for the whole thing? I think everyone knows the answer to that one.
Legal Considerations
Now consider international law and the current crisis.
For nearly a century, Jews in Israel (with the full support of the United States) have stood in blatant contravention of the U.N. Charter and of the United Nations’ Resolution 242. By refusing to return illegally occupied territories to Palestinians, Israeli-Jews (including) many civilian “settlers” are international criminals — legitimate targets.
More specifically, recall Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. It reads: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
In other words, those living in territories illegally occupied by an invading force have the internationally sanctioned right to take up arms against the invaders. By attacking Israel and its aggressive civilian settlers, Palestinians are claiming their right to self-defense.
Besides all this and according to international law, Palestinian lands have been illegally occupied for decades. That’s what U.N. Resolution 242 says.
And it’s not just illegal occupation. Anyone paying attention knows that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) kill and maim Palestinian children on a daily basis – with most westerners hardly raising an eyebrow.
And to repeat, it’s not just the Jewish-led government of Israel that has perpetrated violence and terrorism against Palestinians. Civilian Jewish settlers have been responsible as well. With the IDF standing by for their protection, they have evicted Palestinians from their homes, burnt their olive orchards to the ground, and have routinely shot and mutilated their children for years on end.
In fact, a proximate provocation of the current Palestinian uprising took the form of an attack just last month by Jewish settlers on the Al Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. For Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world, this represents an extreme provocation.
Many Israeli-Jews are as guilty as their government.
Moral Considerations
Besides all this and in moral terms, international law does not indiscriminately condemn “violence.” Rather, it implicitly recognizes that all forms of “violence” are not equal. In fact, some are morally justified.
Morally speaking (and according to moralists like St. Oscar Romero of El Salvador and Dom Helder Camara of Brazil) the term has at least four principal levels. And to repeat, the current Palestinian form (as self-defense) is the only one that enjoys legal and moral justification:
The first form of violence is institutionalized, e.g., Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. Violence here takes the form of border walls, check points, exclusion of Palestinians from access to work and healthcare, as well as police and IDF unpunished killings of women and children. This is the form condemned by the already-referenced U.N. Resolution 242.
The second form of violence resists the first. Again, this violence is approved by the just-cited Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. In fact, it is the only form of violence that has any chance of being justified.
The third expression of violence is the response of those defending illegal institutionalized violence. It is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to when he promised that Israel will “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known.” Obviously, such defense of the indefensible share’s the latter’s indefensibility.
The fourth type of violence is terroristic. In Israel-Palestine, it principally involves use of force against innocent civilians in order to dissuade them from resisting violence’s first form. In Israel, Jewish-Israeli government and its IDF are the main perpetrators here. They routinely impose overwhelming state violence. For every one Jewish-Israeli killed by Palestinians, Israel regularly and indiscriminately kills ten Palestinians.
To drive the point home: Palestinians are standing on firmer moral ground than the Jewish Israelis.
Conclusion
By the way, please don’t characterize what I’m writing here as somehow anti-Semitic. Rather, it has been the Israeli Jews who over nearly a century have practiced a hidden but virulent form of anti-Semitism. (Remember, Palestinian Arabs are Semites too.)
No, considerations just reviewed show that it is the Israeli Jews who practice the most virulent contemporary form of anti-Semitism. As the Palestinians themselves put it: They (the Palestinians) are the “Jews’ Jews.”
In other words, Israeli Jews’ apartheid practices are reminiscent of those of German N@zis from 1933 to 1945.
About Things That Matter 