Why are taxpayers in the United States subsidizing the tyrannical rule of Israel over thePalestinian people to the tune of $3 billion in military aid every year? Americans who mourn the murder of any innocent person need to be asking themselves this question.
U.S. taxpayers need to take a serious look at the suffering of the Palestinian people, who have been massacred by Israel, robbed by Israel, and humiliated by Israel for many decades. Without free U.S. tax money, Israel could not afford to continue its illegal, deadly, and humiliating occupation of the Palestinians.
Does this indictment of Israel seem harsh to you? If so, then please read Israeli Professor Ilan Pappe’s excellent history of Israel’s 1948 war against the Palestinians, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Using evidence from the archives of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), Professor Pappe describes in detail the IDF’s strategy to remove at gunpoint about one million Palestinians from their homes in 1948, a strategy of ethnic cleansing that has continued off and on until the present day. In order to create the state of Israel, Israelis massacred hundreds of Palestinian civilians and destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages.
For his courageous efforts to tell the true story of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Professor Pappe was condemned by the Israeli Knesset, received death threats from Israelis, and fled to England with his family. He now teaches History at the University of Exeter in England.
On September 26, the partial Israeli moratorium on building settlements on occupied Palestinian land expires – and predictably, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will not renew it.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas may be forced to withdraw from the peace talks if Israel will not renew the construction moratorium. Abbas has pursued a strategy of seeking a Palestinian state by negotiation, but this has not stopped the Israelis from building more Jewish-only settlements on land the Palestinians hope to use to build their state. According the B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, Israel has already taken about 42 percent of the West Bank land that should be part of a Palestinian state.
Exclusions of Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem have increased. Construction continues on segregated, Israeli-only roads. Palestinians face roadblocks, suspension of their civil rights, mi
litary occupation, expropriation of their land, and hundreds of other humiliations and injustices. The situation is explosive.
Israel, the aggressor, has received almost unconditional support from the U.S. government, which looks the other way as Israel continues to expand Jewish-only settlements at the expense of the Palestinians. As U.S. leaders continue to provide Israel with billions of dollars in sophisticated weapons to enable it to continue its devastating occupation, they also have the audacity to tell the oppressed Palestinians not to fight Israel’s aggression.
How would Americans respond to an aggressor like Israel who is taking over their country?
Resolving this conflict peacefully is the best solution. The United States should not continue to provide Israel with billions of dollars of weapons each year while Israel continues to aggressively expand Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land.
U.S. leaders need to show some moral backbone and tell Israel that continuing its moratorium on new construction on occupied Palestinian land is essential if Israel wants any more aid from the U.S. Understandably, the U.S. government does not hesitate to stop aid to the Palestinians when the Palestinians engage in terror tactics. It should not hesitate to stop aid to Israel when Israel uses violence and discrimination to brutally occupy the Palestinians.
Israel can and should change its policies to enable the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
It is time for the people of the United States and the U.S. government to stand up and tell Israel that its tyranny over the Palestinian people must end.
