President Barack Obama is all for freedom and democracy in the Middle East, but not for the brutally occupied Palestinians.
U.S. officials have made it clear that Obama intends to veto the Palestinian bid for statehood in the U.N. Security Council. This is an obscene act that will shame America – especially when Arabs are dying throughout the region for freedom from autocratic one-man rule.
Obama’s brazen obedience to the Israeli lobby (AIPAC) is understandable. He’s running for reelection. The problem is the Republicans; especially the new Evangelical Tea Partiers, who have already been wined and dined by the Israeli government. Furthermore, they don’t quite trust Obama even when he gives them the sun, moon and the stars.
There is no question Obama and his team did everything to block Palestinians seeking human dignity after living for more than 60 years in serfdom under the Israeli heel.
The Israeli oppressors have been subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars and aim to win wars against the freedom-seeking Palestinians in the West Bank and the blockaded Gaza.
If the Palestinian government fails to get statehood, Israel will retaliate, keeping Palestinian tax money in its own well-padded treasury. Who wouldn’t fight for his land? Palestinian land has never been negotiable.
The Zionist movement began in the 19th century under Theodor Herzl, a Pole who decided the world’s Jews needed their own country. The problem is the country he chose was already occupied by the Palestinians. Many falsely claimed, “A land without people, a people for a land.”
The U.S. used all its power to beat down the Palestinians’ hope for statehood. Israel, of course, did not want to go to the negotiating table with an opponent that has as much status and recognition as it has.
Israel has always had the upper hand. She has broken international laws by expansive occupation, building illegal walls and kicking Palestinians out of their homes and off of their land.
Obama evidently doesn’t mind the oppression of the Arab people, who had counted on his sympathy and heart.
Palestinians fled, hearing of the massacres of their neighbors. Many of the refugees are still in camps run by the U.N.
President Harry S. Truman mentioned in his memoirs his later regret to being awakened at the White House, May 15, 1948, by Israeli supporters who insisted Israel become a state at 3 o’clock in the morning, while the issue was still being debated at the U.N.
The British eventually pulled out of Palestine, having been killed by the Zionists. British soldiers were hung from trees. Perhaps Mr. Blair, special envoy to Quartet on the Middle East, needs a history lesson.
The Western powers betrayed the Palestinians who at first sold their homes and holdings to rich Israelis. By the time the Palestinians realized that the Israelis planned to take over their land by military force, it was too late.
The influx of the Jews after the horror of Hitler gave them the sympathy of the world – but a world not ready to give them their land. With U.S. military support, the Israelis managed to take three quarters of Palestinian land for their own.
Now the nuclear armed Israelis are being urged to negotiate. Why should they with all the cards and military backing of the U.S., bother negotiating?
No American Jew can visit Jerusalem and not see the hundreds of Arabs going through brutal checkpoints. The rank humiliation of the natives is much like the treatment of the blacks in the segregated south before the civil rights laws.
David Kuttab, a journalist and former professor at Princeton, wrote in Newsweek, “The impasse over direct talks has given cover to Israeli expansionism; Palestinian lands continue to be confiscated. Jewish only settlements continue to be built, and the Israeli constructed security wall strangulates the Palestinians.”
The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in 2004 that the wall built inside Palestine territory is illegal, according to international law, yet it continues to be a concrete example of the oppressive occupation.
So I say to the President, “What does it matter if you win the whole world and lose your soul?”
