Venkat,
The maps you pointed out (http://eatliver.com/i.php?n=1305)
show one of the many brutal aspects of political Zionism.
Obviously, there are several dimensions to this situation
that maps alone cannot express:
o The crushing poverty created by Israel's occupation
o The systematic destruction of homes, farms, orchards, etc.
o Daily humiliations at checkpoints
o The loss of hope after decades of bogus "peace plans"
Details of various "generous offers" made during "peace negotiations"
by Israel are usually down-played. Instead, we're just told that
they were "generous". See for yourself; here's a map:
http://www.fmep.org/maps/map_data/redeployment/barak_sharon_2001.pdf
Would you call that a viable state? Not many people have
(especially when they come to realize where the water and
the arable land actually are). Oslo is sometimes held up
as a missed opportunity, but how many people realize that
the number of settlements doubled during the "peace talks"?
None of this should come as a surprise. The long-term agenda of Israel
is not peace or accommodation; it is land. As Moshe Dayan (4th Chief
of Staff of Israel Defense Forces) once said to his cabinet:
We should tell the Palestinians that we have no solution
for you, that you will live like dogs, and whoever will
leave will leave, and we'll see where that leads.
Winston Churchill was also fond of referring to Palestinians
as sub-human. He also referred to them as dogs, and called
for ethnic cleansing:
I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to
the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long
time...I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these
people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race,
or at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way,
has come in and taken their place.
This is pure racism and hate speech. It's the language of colonizers
and oppressors throughout history. Political Zionism is predicated on
idea of "divine rights", not human rights, justice, or peace.
It's worth exploring this "divine right" in some detail.
Deuteronomy 20:10-17 does not mince words:
When you go to attack a city, first give its people a chance to
surrender. If they open the gates and surrender, they are all to
become your slaves and do forced labor for you. But if the people of
that city will not surrender, but choose to fight, surround it with
your army. Then, when the Lord your God lets you capture the city,
kill every man in it. You may, however, take for yourselves the
women, the children, the livestock, and everything else in the city.
You may use everything that belongs to your enemies. The Lord has
given it to you. That is how you are to deal with those cities that
are far away from the land you will settle in. But when you capture
cities in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, kill everyone.
Completely destroy all the people: the Hittites, the Amorites,
the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites,
as the Lord ordered you to do.
Here are some other noteworthy passages on the subject of "divine rights":
Numbers 21
Israelites slaughter all the Canaanites in Hormah, Heshbon and Bashan
Numbers 31
Moses orders the Israelites to murder all the men, woman, children
and babies, but to keep the young virgin women alive for the purpose
of raping them.
Joshua 6:21
Israelites massacre every man, woman, child, baby and donkey
(except the traitor Rahab and her household).
These days, the language is less direct but the message is the same.
A substantial segment of the population within Israel claims a "divine
right" to all of this land; just look at their actions. They're taking
everything, bit-by-bit, and they treat Arab-Israelis like second class
citizens despite the claim that they're a "democracy". This is fascism,
racism, and ultra-nationalism, dressed up for mass consumption as a
"safe homeland for the Jews".
If the United States were so concerned about the welfare of Jewish people,
perhaps they would have allowed more of them to flee from Germany when
Hitler's intentions became clear. Perhaps US would have bombed the
railroad lines leading to the death camps. It didn't. What many fail
to realize is that political Zionism does not value Jewish lives all that
much either; Theodor Herzl (the founder of modern political Zionism) said:
It is essential that the sufferings of Jews... become worse...
this will assist in realization of our plans... I have an
excellent idea... I shall induce anti-Semites to liquidate
Jewish wealth.... The anti-Semite will assist us thereby in
that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews.
The anti-Semite shall be our best friends
(From his Diary, Part I, pp. 16)
In 1938, David Ben-Gurion (the first Prime Minister of Israel) said:
If I knew it was possible to save all the children in Germany
by taking them to England, and only half of the children by
taking them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second solution.
For we must take into account not only the lives of these
children but also the history of the people of Israel.
The corporate mass media in the United States has focused on the
importance of fighting terrorism, and the horrors that the Jews
endured during the Holocaust. These are certainly important topics;
however, it's also worth remembering that the Palestinians never
attempted genocide on the Jews. That was a European atrocity.
Why is it that the Palestinians should pay the terrible price
of eviction from their homes?
Someone who denies an atrocity compounds it by attempting to erase
the memory of what was done from history. This is why those who
deny that the Holocaust took place even after being shown compelling
evidence of its reality are so dangerous. It is an illness.
Interestingly, the corporate media in the United States does not seem
to express any revulsion at all when it repeats the Zionist slogan:
"A Land Without People for a People Without Land". Nor does it dwell
upon the 500,000 children that died in Iraq as a result of 12 years
of sanctions (and having destroyed the water supply), or of the
estimated 600,000 civilians killed in Iraq as a result of the war.
These crimes are invisible within the United States. They are forgotten.
They cannot be spoken of in polite company, because offense might be taken.
This is the nature of hegemony. Slogans like "A War to End All Wars",
or "Never Again" ring hollow because illusion of selfhood takes most
people the better part of their lives to glimpse, if they ever do.
You can show people this map of Israel's expansion all you want,
if someone is psychologically unable to see it, they won't.
Instead, they'll just get angry, and claim you hate the Jews as
a way to short-circuit the conversation (or perhaps to avoid the
cognitive dissonance that a real conversation about human lives
dignity might produce).
You might also be interested in seeing what Albert Einstein had to say
about the nature of political Zionism. Here's a copy a letter he signed,
published on December 14, 1948 in the New York Times:
http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/study_res/einstein/nyt_letter.html
This is the Albert Einstein that the Israeli Zionist war-hawks would like
you to forget about. It is the inconvenient Albert Einstein. He is far
too precious as a cultural icon for vilification, so instead, he is
merely edited.
You and I may not be so lucky.
Attacking the messenger never goes out of style.
-Jon
* Venkat Mangudi ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [070409 02:21]:
> Came across this on Del.icio.us. Certainly explains the middle east
> conflict to a great extent.
>
> http://eatliver.com/i.php?n=1305
>
> Point is, how much of this is true, I wonder....
>
