Of Lice and Vermin
U.S. Support of Mideast Genocide
December 12, 2001
There is no rational reason that the United States should tolerate the lies and disinformation emanating from the conflict in the Middle East.
History has demonstrated a simple premise; the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors is a mutual Holy War between religiously fundamental nations. On both sides of the conflict, there is a racial and religious fervor as repugnant as Nazism. In addition to considering each other as subhuman, the zealots to the conflict each believe that they are God’s chosen people.
Under a very transparent veil of polite propaganda, the warring factions are obviously eyeing their opponent’s genocide as the ironic final solution.
The United States should have no involvement in this conflict unless and until both the Israelis and Arabs adopt some candor. Continued support of either side by the U.S. constitutes the ultimate crime of religious selection on the part of the American government. It is a hypocrisy that wins no true friends for the U.S. and will continue to cost the lives of innocent American citizens.
The latest tragedy in the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict was the Sunday, December 2 horror in which a Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens when he blew himself up on a bus in northern Israel hours after a double suicide attack killed 10 in Jerusalem.
As reported by Reuters:
In a nightmarish sequel to Saturday night’s suicide bombings in the heart of Jerusalem’s cafe district, a Palestinian man boarded an inter-city bus in the port city of Haifa and blew himself up just seconds later.
The explosion tore the roof off the bus, shattered windows and spread bodies and mangled body parts across a street in a residential neighborhood. Medical officials said at least 15 people were killed and 36 wounded, 17 of them seriously.
“Such was the force of the blast that the victims—both those who died and those who were wounded—didn’t utter a word, not even a cry for help. There was complete silence.”
President Bush “demanded that Arafat bring those responsible for the attacks to justice and act swiftly and decisively against the organizations that support them.” That would be good advice except for the complicity of the U.S. as a direct supporter of the terror.
For instance, on July 31, 2001 Reuters reported “8 Palestinians Killed in Nablus.” The report further informs that:
Medical teams combing through the debris of an Israeli strike against leading Palestinian militants on Tuesday had to use tweezers to collect the tiny fragments of their flesh and bones.
Eight people died in the attack on the Nablus headquarters of the militant Islamic movement Hamas, including two senior Hamas members, a local journalist, a Hamas bodyguard and two young boys passing by the building.
Witnesses described the attack as a missile strike and projectiles were fired from an Israeli helicopter.
Doctors said the force of the blast—one of the deadliest Israeli attacks since the start of the Palestinian uprising 10 months ago—blew the heads right off two men.
The bodies of others were charred black from the explosion and some had limbs blown off.
Or, even more to the point, the United Methodist missionaries reported that “rockets had hit the Holy Family Hospital in Palestine…3 Israeli rockets hit the hospital at once. The intensive care room, laundry room and another building on the complex were hit. The strike in the intensive care unit caused a small fire and smoke. There is much broken glass. In the orphanage section, there are currently 50 children in residence, ages infant to 4 years old. The children began screaming and crying. Some asking, Why? Why?.”
As duly noted by the Palestinians and never reported by the U.S. media, many of the munitions used against the Palestinians, militant and civilian alike, are supplied to Israel by the United States. “The Israeli troops are basically waging a one-sided aggressive war against an unarmed population. The gunships, by the way, are the helicopters the Pentagon supplies Israel and calls Apache…at the demonstration today, we picked up one of the tear gas canisters, CS gas canisters that had been fired, and verified by looking at it, we have it our possession that it was made by Federal Labs in the United States…The Israelis were using CS gas in such quantities in the first Intifada, firing it into people’s homes, that many people were dying from it. But Federal Labs is still producing CS gas and they’re still supplying it to the Israeli military, along with all the other weaponry like the helicopters that comes from the United States. And the people here know the U.S. role is not that of an honest broker but a supplier for Israel.” (Forth Human Rights report from the often biased International Action Center)
Violence begets violence. On October 17, 2001, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine assassinated Israeli Tourism Minister, Rehavam Ze’evi. “The United States was firm in its response to the assassination, insisting that it was not enough for the Palestinian authority merely to condemn the murder. ‘It is time for the Palestinian Authority to take vigorous action against terrorists,’ the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said…the President, George Bush, also condemned the assassination ‘in the strongest terms’ and called it a ‘despicable act’.”
What Mr. Fleischer, President Bush and all other officials of the U.S. government failed to condemn was the racism of Israeli Minister Ze’evi who called for the “transfer” of all Arabs and Palestinians from Israel and referred to Palestinians working and living in Israel as “lice” and a “cancer”. Surely the United States would never have condemned the assassination of Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels who called for a “transfer” of all Jews to ghettos and likened them to “rodents” and “vermin”.
In a tit-for-tat, Israel retaliated for the December 2, 2001 bombings by “striking back” at Palestine:
JERUSALEM (Reuters Monday December 3 2:05 PM ET) - Israel launched air strikes on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's helicopter compound in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank city of Jenin on Monday in retaliation for a devastating wave of suicide bombings… A helicopter missile strike wrecked three of Arafat's helicopters and damaged a hangar in densely populated Gaza City. At least 17 people were injured, hospital officials said.
Little more than an hour later, two Israeli warplanes fired missiles at one of Arafat's West Bank offices and a Palestinian police headquarters in Jenin, witnesses and army officials said.
What a sad state of affairs. What a sad commentary on the ability of humanity to self govern. With so many people, on all sides of the conflict, who would support moderate policies that allow all to live in relative peace, how is it that militants, both Israeli and Palestinian, are able to set the agenda? Who is to blame?
The finger of guilt points at the failed Middle East policy of the United States.
The U.S. cannot keep supplying weapons of almost-mass destruction to Israel and then, when those weapons are used on Palestinian civilians, look the other way. How can the U.S. condemn only the Palestinians when thus far, at least 742 Palestinians and 222 Israelis have been killed in the bloody new phase of this conflict?
This is not a war between good and evil. The lines are not that clearly drawn. This is a religious conflict between parties who both think that God, their God, supports them.
For the United States, it is a lose-lose situation.
The United States must be even-handed in its treatment of all parties and have no “Favorite Son”. In practical terms, the U.S. cannot withdraw support from Israel and stand idly by to see its ally destroyed. By the same token, the U.S. cannot expect another generation of Palestinians to remove “Made in America” shrapnel from their dead and not blame this country. For the U.S. to be effective, it must hold all sides accountable to the same standards. The suppression of human rights and the murder of civilians in quest of hegemony is terrorism no matter which flag it is committed under.
If the best that the U.S. can do is to condemn suicide bombers and condone rocket attacks on civilian populations then America’s policy is morally bankrupt. And that moral bankruptcy is the stuff that justifies more September 11th’s in militant minds of any persuasion.
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