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The 40% believe the path to peace begins with humanity.
Among them are writers, soldiers, teachers and regular folk.
They come from all socio-economic level and represent
several races. In Israel, they are a substantial and
determined minority.
This is the Israel America believes it is supporting, a
republican democracy. Israeli propaganda has effectively convinced
Americans Israel is a democracy; by definition it is not.
The first step to eliminating the hate is acknowledging the
truth.
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Democracies do not illegally occupy lands or distribute
resources based upon preferences or racial superiority.
Democracies do not force other people to live in anarchy
behind barbed wire, without food and water for days at a
time in the summer. Democracies do not limit travel or the
commerce of one class of citizens in favor of another. They
do not require citizens of one faith to have one color
license plate while supplying those of the preferred faith
with another. Democracies do not provide gas masks in
wartime for members of one faith (and their pets), while
denying them to 3-million persons of other faiths
within their jurisdiction.
Democracies do not drive people from their lands at
gunpoint, lands held by their families for nearly a
thousand years without consideration and
compensation.
And democracies do not amuse themselves by
shooting unarmed children playing in sight of sniper towers
or attending funerals.
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"We have an Arab-Israeli
conflict," Bilal told
journalists in Madrid. He said that once Israel
accepted the right of Palestinian refugees to return
and retreated to the 1967 boundaries,
"all Arab countries will be willing to sign a peace
treaty with Israel. Total retreat in exchange for
total peace."
May 8,
2003,
Ha'aretz, Israel:
Full Article
Referring to the
"road map" to peace in the Middle East put forward
by the United States, the United Nations, the
European Union and Russia, Syrian Ambassador Mohsen
Bilal said the plan should go beyond the dispute
between the Palestinians and Israel.
Syria and other Arab countries put
forth the week of May 2nd, 2003 a proposal for
the complete nuclear disarmament and a stay on
development of nuclear arms for all Middle Eastern
countries. This proposal was rejected because
it also required Israel to do the same. Israel
has over 400 Weapons of Mass Destruction which it
has threatened to use on its neighbors publicly. It
has the 4th largest military force in the world. By
contrast, the Palestinians have no army and never
have.
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"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public
opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts
that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that
there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the
Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
Yoram Bar Porath,
Yediot Aahronot, of
14 July 1972.
Israel has no constitution, no separation between religion
and state. Regardless of faith, all residence are required
to abide by the state's faith law. 30% of those under
Israeli control have no civil rights or basic human rights.
Portions of the Israeli education system are controlled by
the Secret Service; 10% of Israeli citizens control 80% of
the resources. Prejudice is rampant, not just against
gentiles, but non-white Jews (Semitic (aka
Palestinian Jews. Palestinian Muslims and Christians
are also Semitic), Arab and Northern African) are
not afforded the same opportunities because of the color of
their skin. Over 1,000 people are currently being held
indefinitely without charges and Israel is the only country
with state sanctioned torture accepted and promoted as part
of the interrogation process. Does this sound like a
Democracy to you and the type of government Americans
should be supporting, underwriting and dying for?
The Other 60%
The United States supports the sixty-percent of
Israeli's whom believe and promote the ideas presented in
the
views below. Seventy years ago Nazis used similar
words to describe members of the Jewish faith.
Ironically, the tables have turned.
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Less than 30% of American citizens understand the
real conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,
and this is the reason it has continued. It is US
and British tax dollars that allow the occupation,
daily terrorism and persecution to thrive. It is
because of our support, underwriting activities
against fundamental American principles
(Reference the Bill of Rights, US Constitution and
International Law), that the majority of the
Arab world is angry at America. Contrary to the
sensational footage we see, most Arabs do not hate
Americans. They do hate our policies. They see our
double standards. One set of rules for one country
and another for everyone else. Our speeches of
equality and peace are muted by our continued
actions, making us a country of hypocrites.
It
is a combination of our actions, those of our allies
and the conditions Christian and Muslim
Arabs are forced to live in that creates the hate,
distrust and desperation.
Terrorism is a byproduct of the systematic
dehumanization of an entire race of people.
This dehumanization is directly against everything
we as Americans have fought and died for. It is
directly against our values and principles as a
nation. Yet, we continue to finance it and defend
it, directly and indirectly.
How
do we finance it? We finance it through the $9
million dollars a day we give Israel, (2001, more
now). So am I
saying we shouldn’t support Israel? No. We
should support the 40% Israelis whom believe as we
do: All men and women, regardless of faith,
origin, sex or color have the right to live in
peace, free from tyranny, oppression and
manipulation.
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The story we hear in the US says that Israeli
forces do not use our tanks and weapons to target
civilians.
Amnesty International, the United Nations, Israeli
non-government controlled press, CNN International,
Worldlink, The BBC, The Mirror and hundreds of
International publications and broadcasters report
and document otherwise.
Between September 2000 and 2 January
2003:
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Israeli forces
killed 239 Palestinian schoolchildren & wounded
over 2,500 on their way to or from school
-
166 students
and 75 teachers were arrested
-
1,289
Palestinian schools were temporarily closed
-
197 schools
were damaged, 11 schools completely destroyed, and
9 vandalized
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25 schools
have been taken over by the Israeli Occupation
Forces for use as army barracks and detention
centers
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185 schools
were shelled by Israeli defense forces
Sources: Defense for Children
International and The Health, Development,
Information and Policy Institute
To understand the daily
threat to unarmed Palestinians, review the
Jenin
Destruction of April 2002, as told by an
Israeli D-9 driver. |
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But we don't support the 40%; we don't even support our own
citizens trying to change the circumstances.
Rather we vilify young American activists like
Rachel Cory, the Washington State 23-year old woman who was upholding United States values
this March when the D-9 tank crushed her to death. She's not alone.
Attacks
on unarmed civilians and peace workers in the Occupied
Territories by Israeli soldiers are a daily occurrence, courtesy of US tax dollars,
media censorship and unquestioning support.
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Until our policies change, including how we
spend American tax dollars, the hatred, terrorism and oppression
will continue and we will be targeted. Until the United States insists upon
adherence to the original charters defining the state of
Israel, we will continue to promote and support the following
ideas and incur the hatred of those existing beneath the
tyranny.
The Voices of Hatred:
Israeli leaders past and present voice
their views answering the question, "why?"...
1. "There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies not
just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and
conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a
distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do
not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong
to a different galaxy."
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Israeli president
Moshe Katsav.
The
Jerusalem Post,
May 10, 2001
2. "The Palestinians
are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want
more".
... Ehud Barak,
Prime Minister of
Israel at the time -
August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000
3.
"[The Palestinians are] beasts
walking on two legs."
Menahim Begin,
speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the
Beasts". New Statesman,
25
June 1982.
4. "The
Palestinians" would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads
smashed against the boulders and walls."
Israeli Prime
Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York
Times
April 1, 1988
5. "When we have
settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will
be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle."
Raphael Eitan,
Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, New York Times,
14
April 1983.
6. "How can we
return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them
to."
Golda Meir,
March 8, 1969.
7. "There was no
such thing as Palestinians, they never existed."
Golda Maier
Israeli Prime Minister
June 15, 1969
8. "The thesis that
the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that
Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff,
which was born and developed after the war."
Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19
March 1972.
9. "If I were
an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with
Israel. It
is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised
it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not
theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler,
Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we
have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they
accept that?"
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David Ben Gurion
(the first Israeli Prime Minister):
Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish
Paradox), pp121.
9a.
Ben Gurion also
warned in 1948
: "We must do everything to insure they ( the Palestinians)
never do return....The old will die and the young will forget."
10. "We have to kill
all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as
slaves."
Chairman Heilbrun
of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat,
the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.
11.
"Every time we
do something you tell me
America will do this and will do that
. . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about
American pressure on Israel. We the Jewish people, control
America and the Americans know it."
-
Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon,
October 3, 2001, speaking to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael
radio.
12. "We declare
openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one
centimeter of Eretz
Israel... Force is all they do or
ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the
Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours."
Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli
Defense Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New
York Times 14 April 1983.
13. "We must do
everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do
return."
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David Ben-Gurion,
in his diary,
18 July 1948,
quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet,
Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.
15. "We should
prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash
Lebanon,
Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the
Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We
shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash
the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us.
We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and
Sinai."
David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From
Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New
York 1978.
16. "Jewish villages
were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know
the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because
geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not
exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in
the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz
Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place
of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this
country that did not have a former Arab population."
Moshe Dayan,
address to the Technion,
Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969.
17. "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion
accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done
with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a
gesture which said 'Drive them out!'"
Yitzhak Rabin,
leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs,
published in the New York Times,
23 October 1979.
18. "We shall reduce the Arab population to a community
of woodcutters and waiters"
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Rabin's
description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of
Plan Dalet.
Uri Lubrani, PM
Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs,
1960. From "The Arabs in
Israel" by Sabri Jiryas.
19. "There are some
who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high
percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under
our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary,
i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the
activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend
to support the latter view and have an additional
argument:...the need to sustain the character of the state which
will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited
to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position
as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary."
Joseph Weitz,
head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From
Israel: an
Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5.
20. "Everybody has
to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge
the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours...
Everything we don't grab will go to them."
Ariel Sharon,
Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from
the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse,
November 15, 1998.
Note: Each Israeli Settler's family choosing to
go against international law and settle in the Occupied
Territories is rewarded with $30,000. Most of this is made
possible from US Tax dollar grants, loans and aid, which go to
fund other services allowing monies to be diverted to the
establishment of settlements outside of Israel in the Occupied
lands.
21. "Spirit the
penniless population across the frontier by denying it
employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal
of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
Theodor Herzl,
founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs
of Palestine, Complete Diaries,
June 12, 1895
entry.
22. "One million
Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."
-- Rabbi Yaacov
Perrin,
Feb. 27, 1994
[Source: N.Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1]
Note these quotes and
the general sentiment span 108-years. Regardless of the
political statements and finessing in the press in any given
time, the underlying hatred is consistent and evident through
the words of those leading the Israeli nation and determining
its policies in each decade. The 1948 entries are particularly
telling. These confirm the Zionist political movement
never intended to adhere to the charters of sovereignty creating
Israel. The objectives were already laid out even before
the country became a nation.
Americans
Behaving Badly:
Israeli leaders don't have an exclusive on
hate. Hatred has become insidious in
American culture; many examples including anti-Arab bumper
stickers, T-shirts and rallies are acceptable. It seems as
a nation we can be prejudice and hateful selectively.
Several examples exist, but the following outside of evangelical
Christian church Grace Community in the Southwestern United
States illustrates how far
this hatred has come. Keep in mind the man spouting this
hatred and racism believes he is Christian. He also
believes he is an unprejudiced American.
TOP
Outside Grace Community
church January 19, 2003:
A churchgoer, first noticed leaving the parking lot onto
Southern Avenue in a white SUV after the first service, pulled
over the curb and parked on the sidewalk on the south side of
the church. There he left a woman and children behind and
confronted two ladies peacefully protesting the pending war
holding signs that read "BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS." The
man carried an open Bible, from which he commenced to read aloud
to them about "breaking God's law."
"YOU ARE GOING AGAINST
THE STATE OF ISRAEL...THE PALESTINIANS SHOULD BE KILLED AND
THROWN OUT OF ISRAEL, I HAVE JEWISH FRIENDS THAT WILL BACK ME UP
AND YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO THEM."
Click link to understand where this Idea comes
from.
The mother asked: "ARE
YOU SAYING THE PALESTINIANS SHOULD BE KILLED?"
And the man from Grace
answered: "THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN KILLED A LONG TIME AGO.
SORRY, I HAVE TO DRIVE MY SON TO A BALL PRACTICE, I'LL BE
BACK." He then entered the white SUV and departed.
Read Full Article Nowhere in the Torah, Jewish
Faith or within
Christianity does it say that in the establishment of the state
of Israel: "We
must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation,
and the cutting of all social services to rid the
Galilee of its
Arab population."
Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum"
Within both faiths hatred, oppression and
bearing false witness are condemned. Yet this is the path
we as Americans support and it is the path Israeli
leadership has chosen. Israeli leaders believe all of
Palestine is theirs by faith-right so I ask: Is it logical
for God to mandate a nation and require the extermination and
oppression of its inhabitants to fulfill his prophecy?
Or, does this
sound like something men would do?
Conclusion:
The road to peace is paved with many obstacles, but the one
constant is hate.
Americans have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by guilt and
hatred. In so doing we've found ourselves the target of
terrorism. Israel is not the enemy. Palestinians are
not the enemy. Arabs and Muslims are not the enemy.
The enemy is within. It is created through
ignorance, fear and guilt. It is created by proxy,
supporting actions as a nation each of us is against and then
refusing to see and take accountability.
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Passing laws limiting or abolishing our freedoms will not protect us from
terrorism. Restrictions create resentments and undermine
society. The only way to end the terrorism is to eliminate the
problem. The problem is hatred. We have control over
this and can change the circumstances causing it. To do so,
we must open our eyes and acknowledge our own contributions to
the problem, then take steps both diplomatically and
financially to end the problem for good.
Bottom line, the hatred cannot continue without US support
financially, socially and materially. The terrorists know
this and will continue to target us until we stop providing the
means and shield that dehumanized them. US tax dollars
should only be used by foreign governments to support the ideas
we embrace as a nation: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of
Happiness irregardless of race, creed, origin or sex. Conditions
need to be placed and enforced that insure US funds are always
free of cultural manipulation, oppression, favoritism or anarchy.
If we as a nation stick to our principles and do not allow
hatred or the acts, ignorance and self-righteousness that cause
it to go undeterred, we will usher in world peace and end the
terrorism. When this happens,
everyone wins.
Related Articles:
Additional Resources: Recent
stories or websites dealing with the issues brought up in the
above commentary.
For more information on the strategies being used to garner
American support for the continued illegal occupation read:
"Wexner Analysis:
Israeli Communication Priorities 2003,"
Interested in
finding out more about the Political Movement of Zionism, the
history of Palestine and why it is not supported by Torah
faithful Jews? Check out
Jews Against Zionism.
11/14/2003:
Israel's secret torture prison
Paid by U.S. taxpayers and supported by
Israel's Supreme Court...
Facility 1391: Israel's secret torture prison.
It has been removed from maps and airbrushed from aerial
photographs. But Facility 1391 certainly exists - you just have
to ask the Palestinians and Lebanese who have been imprisoned
and tortured there. Chris McGreal reports for the London
Guardian
11/11/2003:
Israeli chainsaw massacre
Palestinian farmers seek protection against
settlers
Men with chainsaws turned Fawzi Hussein's (55, a father of 14)
olive grove into a wasteland overnight — 255 trees cut down at
the trunks, fruit-laden branches wilting on a West Bank slope,
at the height of the harvest season (For an American, this
would be the same as someone destroying your only source of
income, rendering your family destitute, and preventing you from
using legal action, government assistance or an insurance
settlement to reestablish it)
There have been hundreds of settler attacks,
including rampages through Palestinian villages, since fighting
broke out in 2000. A Palestinian human-rights group says 25
Palestinians have been killed by settlers in the past three
years. Palestinian gunmen, in turn, have targeted settlements,
killing dozens of residents. -Associated Press
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