Israel is wrong again and again and again

When the full dimension of the Holocaust became clear after World War II--the unspeakable destruction of six million Jews--the U.N. General Assembly voted in 1947 to partition Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state.
The partition violated international law but fulfilled the Zionist dream of Theodor Herzl to found a Jewish state. Nevertheless, planting Israel in Arab lands was a mistake, one of the greatest errors in history.
That mistake cannot be undone. Israel is a fait accompli. The world must live with the horrible consequences, consequences of everlasting sorrow to neighboring Arab states, endless bloodshed and destruction, and endless discord and wars.
Israel’s latest outrage has been to batter Lebanon and Gaza. In Lebanon, it slaughtered 750 women and children who had nothing to do with Hezbollah. It wrought catastrophic destruction, pummeling the infrastructure. It used cluster bombs and senselessly bombed the Beirut airport. In short: terrorism.
In Gaza, Israel killed hundreds of innocent people. It created thousands of refugees. It cut electricity to 700,000 people. It captured Palestinian legislators, putting most of the Hamas leadership behind bars. In short: terrorism.
The United States approved. Indeed, President Bush informed Israel that it not only supported the offensive in Lebanon but suggested an attack on Syria too.
Madness, absolute madness by a mad administration.
The invasion of Lebanon was a gross overreaction to the cross-border seizure of two Israeli soldiers. (Israel has long been kidnapping Palestianians and Lebanese, tossing thousands into jail.) Amnesty International rightly cited Israel for war crimes.
Norman Solomon, in a recent online Truthout essay, pointed out: “For several decades, to the present moment, Israel’s treatment of Palestinian people has amounted to methodical and despicable violations of human rights.” In other words: terrorism.
Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn elaborated on other outrages: road systems that bypass Palestinian towns and villages, ever-expanding clusters of illegal settlements and “increasingly intolerable conditions of life for Palestinians, the torture of prisoners, the barriers to the simplest trip, the harassment of farmers and school children, and house demolitions.”
Israeli historian Benny Morris talks of Israeli seizure of Palestinian land: “Like all occupations, Israel’s was founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation and manipulation.”
U.N. Resolution 242, mandating Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories, has been ignored by Israel with American acquiescence--as 45 other U.N. resolutions have been ignored. Earlier this year the U.N voted 170 to 4 for a Human Rights Council. The four dissenters were the United States, Israel and, forming a “coalition of the willing,” the powerful nations of Palau and the Marshall Islands.
Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano likened Israel’s West Bank Wall to the hated Berlin Wall, a Wall of Shame, a Wall of Infamy. The World Court condemned the barrier, saying it violated international law. But the United States and Israel were unperturbed. They decide what is lawful.
This evil coalition assaults Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon with impunity. Next targets: Iran and Syria? As media critic Edward Herman wrote:
“The central global problem of organized violence and lawlessness in the early 21st century lies in the aims, collaboration and the power of the U.S.-Israeli axis. These partners in aggression and state terrorism reinforce each other’s projections of power: the out-of-control superpower protecting the regional client’s ethnic cleansing.”
One reason America and Israel are in lockstep is the powerful Israel Lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
William Engdahl, writing in the Asia Times, commented: “No lobby has managed to divert foreign policy so far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essentially identical.”
The unwritten U.S. alliance with Israel has no justification.
Then there is the smothering bias of the U.S. media. A former executive editor of the New York Times admitted favoring Israel in its coverage. The editor of the Wall Street Journal with his 14th century mind says: “Shamir, Sharon, Bibi: whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me.”
The late Palestinian President Arafat was always the villain. Ariel Sharon, “the Butcher of Beirut,” was portrayed as a man of peace. The Israelis were always the good guys.
But the truth is otherwise. Israel is a terrorist state, its morality long since shattered. It gives the lie to Herzl’s prediction that Israel would serve as “the vanguard of civilization against barbarism.”