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Why Does the US Turn a Blind Eye to Israeli Bulldozers?
Most of the West Bank is under rule which amounts to apartheid by paper
"Palestine" is no more. Call it a "peace process" or a "road map"; blame it on Barack Obama's weakness, his pathetic, childish admission - like an optimistic doctor returning a sick child to its parents without hope of recovery - that a Middle East peace was "more difficult" to reach than he imagined.
But the dream of a "two-state" Israeli-Palestinian solution, a security-drenched but noble settlement to decades of warfare between Israelis and Palestinians is as good as dead.
Both the United States and Europe now stand idly by while the Israeli government effectively destroys any hope of a Palestinian state; even as you read these words, Israel's bulldozers and demolition orders are destroying the last chance of peace; not only in the symbolic centre of Jerusalem itself but - strategically, far more important - in 60 per cent of the vast, biblical lands of the occupied West Bank, in that largest sector in which Jews now outnumber Muslims two to one.
This majority of the West Bank - known under the defunct Oslo Agreement's sinister sobriquet as "Area C" - has already fallen under an Israeli rule which amounts to apartheid by paper: a set of Israeli laws which prohibit almost all Palestinian building or village improvements, which shamelessly smash down Palestinian homes for which permits are impossible to obtain, ordering the destruction of even restored Palestinian sewage systems. Israeli colonists have no such problems; which is why 300,000 Israelis now live - in 220 settlements which are all internationally illegal - in the richest and most fertile of the Palestinian occupied lands.
When Obama's elderly envoy George Mitchell headed home in humiliation this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated his departure by planting trees in two of the three largest Israeli colonies around Jerusalem. With these trees at Gush Etzion and Ma'aleh Adumim, he said, he was sending "a clear message that we are here. We will stay here. We are planning and we are building." These two huge settlements, along with that of Ariel to the north of Jerusalem, were an "indisputable part of Israel forever."
It was Netanyahu's victory celebration over the upstart American President who had dared to challenge Israel's power not only in the Middle East but in America itself. And while the world this week listened to Netanyahu in the Holocaust memorial commemoration for the genocide of six million Jews, abusing Iran as the new Nazi Germany - Iran's loony president supposedly as evil as Hitler - the hopes of a future "Palestine" continued to dribble away. President Ahmadinejad of Iran is no more Adolf Hitler than the Israelis are Nazis. But the "threat" of Iran is distracting the world. So is Tony Blair yesterday, trying to wriggle out of his bloody responsibility for the Iraq disaster. The real catastrophe, however, continues just outside Jerusalem, amid the fields, stony hills and ancient caves of most of the West Bank.
81 Comments so far
Show AllIsrael will die with Palestine - they are brothers after all - like Kane and Able.
INVADERS ---- NOT BROTHERS
Israel was destroyed by God refusing to defend it when Babylon invaded and carried the Hebrews off to exile.
Palestine was born by an act of God, by all of the promised land being given to the founding fathers of those who now live in Palestine.
God? Who'se "god" are you referring to? It aint my God, so keep it to yourself. The study of politics is not about mythology it is about Power and Interests.
Please.
Not only is your history inaccurate, your religious sensibilities are absurd. Keep your crap to yourself.
Somebody always has to drag religious fantasy into a serious discussion!
Humbaba; The following story portrays your predicament quite nicely;
The scorpion needed a ride across the river, so he said to the camel "May I hop on your shoulder and get a ride across the river? I promise I will not bite you." The camel then said to the scorpion " Why should I trust you?" The scorpion said "All I want is to get across the river." The camel then said "I still don't trust you, but hop on my shoulder and I'll give you a ride across the water."
Well....when they were halfway across the river..you guessed it...the scorpion bit the camel. As the camel felt the scorpion's poison circulating through his body and he began sinking, he said to the scorpion "Now that you have bitten me, we will both go down together."
Obama was asked by a student in Florida this past week to condemn Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians. Obama said:
"I will never waiver from ensuring Israel's security."
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/local/article1068814.ece
It's simple why the US does nothing: the US is an occupied territory of israhell.
Quite the reverse for Palestine we occupy as a police state, it being ruled by legalized killers funded by us and trained to be in submission.
For Empire USA is a dog, and Israel most certainly only the tail, surely Israel and in no way wages this dog.
I agree; saying Israel owns the place is only a part of the picture. Israel serves the geostrategic interests of the Empire, just look at a map. The USA killed several million in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos during the Vietnam war. We installed dictators all over the world who killed millions. Israel is small potatoes compared with the atrocities commited by the Empire and its puppets.
Does that mean murder is OK so long as fewer than 1M are dead?
Yes, of course murder is always cool. I have advocated for murdering innocent folks for years. Thanks for your well thought out and intelligent question.
but seriously smartass try re-reading my response to the above.
You got that right, Dead GI, and the story of how we got to this place is in the history books. You might want to start with the World War I era and the players of that time and the secret deals made.
/cm
The United States is supporting, with some $3 billion per year in foreign aid, a nuclear-armed rogue terrorist state in the Middle East.
Israel.
Mr Fisk is right to say that the peace process, if there ever was such a thing, is absolutely dead. Even before Netanyahu, it was obvious that the Israelis meant to slowly but surely cleanse the West Bank of ethnic Palestinians. What was barely covert has now been openly acknowledged, with a bitch-slap to the entire international community.
It's time for us to demand that aid to Israel be withdrawn, and for our government to aquiesce in international sanctions and criminal charges.
"It's time for us to demand that aid to Israel be withdrawn"
YES!!!
Israelis snub US and the Entire International Community, just remove the $3Billion dollars the US gives, yet so badly needs itself - and see if they keep behaving criminally.. Or are they threatening to take us all down if we don't help them?
"Why Does the US Turn a Blind Eye to Israeli Bulldozers?"
"Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel gave the Palestinians a chance at a two state solution and the US tried to help but Hamas blocked reform.
That all depends on who owned the war zone around Gaza, that 30 mile strip of land where small cheap rockets are being fired by the Army of Gaza.
From "Israel’s propaganda mainstay, Sderot, is a lie (like everything else)" by Stuart Littlewood:
http://www.redress.cc/palestine/
slittlewood20090107
Sderot, the Israeli township on which Hamas rockets have been “raining down”, is the main plank of the Israelis' attempt to justify the bloodshed they have inflicted on the people of Gaza.
They use it ad nauseam to brainwash the media and their own people. They have studiously counted and broadcast the number of erratic, home-made Qassam rockets coming into Israel, without ever admitting to the huge number of missiles, bombs and shells that Israel's high-tech military fires into Gaza with much more deadly effect.
Those sympathetic to Israel – can there really be any who still wish to be associated with such appalling crimes? – will be mortified to know that Sderot has no business being where it is. It is built on the lands of a Palestinian village called Najd, which was ethnically cleansed by Jewish terrorists in May 1948, before Israel was declared a state and before any Arab armies entered Palestine. The 600-plus villagers were forced to flee for their lives. Britain was on watch as the mandated government, while this and many other atrocities were committed by terrorists.
Palestinian Arabs owned over 90 per cent of the land in Najd and, according to UN Resolution 194 and also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they have a right to return home.
But as we have come to expect, Israel refuses to recognize the rights of others and will not allow them back. Anyway, what is there for them to return to?
The 82 homes there were bulldozed. Najd was one of 418 Palestinian villages and towns ethnically cleansed and wiped off the map by Zionist Jews. Its inhabitants, presumably, became refugees in Gaza and their families are probably still living in camps there. The sweet irony is that some of them were probably manning the rocket launchers – well, wouldn’t you? ....
The apartheid state of Israel continues its slow-motion holocaust against the Palestinians, hoping that enough of them will be killed or driven out so that Israel can take all of their land and water resources.
This holocaust is financed by the U.S.; Israel and Egypt (whom we pay to be Israel's accomplice) receive 1/3 of total U.S. foreign "aid." Through our support of Israel's human rights abuses and consistent violations of international law, we make ourselves targets of the rage of people all over the world.
Please spare me the phony "Israel has a right to defend itself" and "Hamas blocked reform" arguments. Israel "defends" itself by murdering Palestinians and stealing their land. (You may remember Israel's recent slaughter of civilians in the Gaza Ghetto, an action reminiscent of the Nazi slaughter of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943.)
After elections that were internationally recognized to be free and fair, and which had been insisted on by the U.S., Hamas won, which was not the outcome Israel and the U.S. wanted. So Israel jailed the newly-elected Hamas legislators and tried to prevent Hamas from taking office. The "reform" Hamas has blocked was the giving away of most of Palestine to Israel, and pretending that a scattering of South-African-like cantons, controlled by Israel, could be a Palestinian "state."
Israel had a chance at a two-state solution and has prevented it by continuing their illegal land grabs and genocide for 60 years Most of the world will rejoice when Israel vanishes, replaced by the one-state solution, where all citizens have equal rights, whatever their religion or race. Unfortunately, many of the Israelis will choose to return to the U.S., giving us even more sociopathic residents than we have now.
Israel has never wanted a two-state solution, nor would it ever remotely consider a multi-ethnic, secular single state in the whole of mandated Palestine.
Its aim since the fortuitous (from the Israeli perspective) 1967 war has been to incorporate the West Bank and expand the state of Israel to encompass what the settlers--and increasingly large numbers of otherwise sensible Israelis--claim as the Land of Israel. The United States was, incredibly, duped into believing that the withdrawal from Gaza was some sort of nod to the two-state solution. Gaza holds no importance to Israel, except as an open air prison into which to transfer West Bank Palestinians as their lives are destroyed by the continued carve-up and annexation of "Judea and Samaria."
As Moshe Dayan infamously said over 40 years ago: "There is already a Palestinian state. It's called Jordan."
Or Gaza.
Get used to it. The game has been over for fifteen years. The referees just waited a while to blow the whistle.
All Americans should be ashamed of our part in this deceit and occupation.
EncinoM: an absolute hasbara lie
You might try using the google search engine feature on your computer to check out your "facts."
“If you don’t know history, it's like you were born yesterday.”
Howard Zinn
I have a right to defend myself against liars like you, with disproportionate force if necessary. Bring it on down to my house...
Israel has a right to defend itself. But it is illegal to steal land, and Israel kills to steal land. It also kills to deliberately incite a terrorist response, so Israel can claim to be the victim when it is actually the aggressor. None of this military action is defensive, legal, or moral.
When Israel kills, more Israelis die. Israel is such a safe place, however, that it can afford the casualties.
VOTERS WITH A DICTATOR MENTALITY
How we should end our War on Gaza, this depends entirely on who owns the war zone around Gaza, that 30 mile strip of land where small cheap rockets are being fired by the Army of Gaza.
For if what Gaza says is true, that the promised land was given to Palestine when God allowed all the Hebrews to be exiled to Babylon, then Israel is using its citizens as human shields to protect their troops, tanks and artillery as they kill off their helpless victims in Gaza.
For surely if voters with a dictator mentality have a right to self-defense while enslaving a foreign land, then our world serves no purpose but to prove the harm in it.
QUESTION: Our voters with a dictator mentality, do they have a right to self-defense while enslaving and occupying foreign lands such as Iraq and Afghanistan?
If so, then our world serves no purpose but to prove the harm in it.
"TIME WOUNDS ALL HEELS"
I have said it here so many times but it bears repitition. This country's legislative branches are controlled by the AIPAC no politician who wants to keep his career dares speak against their racist and murderous plot in palestine.
True, but only part of the picture. Congress is run by the Corporate Mafia, which includes the MIC. If these interests did not find Israel to be useful, the level of support for Israel would not exist as it does. Israel clearly serves the interests of the Empire, this much should be clear just by looking at a map.
Israel is part of the Corporate Mafia that controls the US government.
Yes, part of the MIC family.
Netanyahu has destroyed any chance of peace. With Irsaelis leaving, 50,000 per year for the U.S., and the best and brightest of Israel, one has to ask, "Why are the best and brightest leaving Israel in record numbers?"
They should be refused entry, and the Zionist American Jews whose loyalty lies with Israel should go with them. How about a one-way ticket for Joe Lieberman?
http://www.redress.cc/palestine/jcook20100129
Israel is growing quite desperate. The recruiting grounds for Jewish Immigrants from Russia has dried up. Jews no longer want to leave Germany, France or the USA for the promised land.
Now there are groups trying to recruit from India claiming certain tribes in India are "Lost tribes of Israel".
They want these peoples to help "Colonize" The West bank. In essence claiming people from India have more right to the land then the Palestinians.
Why Does the US Turn a Blind Eye to Israeli Bulldozers?
________________________________________
Mr. Fisk's superb reporting repeatedly reveals that the US and Israel are co-dependent rogue states and partners in crime.
Still, with all due respect, I don't think it's fair or accurate to characterize the US as "turning a blind eye to Israeli bulldozers".
After all, isn't it the US who's SELLING the damned bulldozers to Israel?
I believe that the USA Caterpillar Corporation's "Corrienator" is their most popular model; it's crucial to Israel's higly popular and successful "lebensraum" program.
Other than that cavil, good article!
· Yr Obd't Servant
Yes, I fully agree (as I usually do with your posts) and yes to the above reply as well (the CD editors likely wrote the caption). The few things that are still made in the USA seem to be weapons and machines of destruction.
Correct. And, a partner in crime is not going to admit guilt unless forced to.
Robert Fisk deserves great credit for his brave and extensive reporting over the years, but it should be noted that his article does not answer the question posed in the article's title, "Why Does the US Turn a Blind Eye to Israeli Bulldozers?" --The short answer is that the USA is the world's preeminent imperialist power, bent upon "full spectrum dominance" of the globe by any means necessary; that Zionist Israel is the preeminent local imperialist power of the Middle East, with an insatiable lust for Arab land; and that the USA and Israel are allied to advance their joint and several imperialist ambitions. A couple of years ago the Zionists murdered a decent young woman, Rachel Corrie, who dared to stand in front of a US-supplied bulldozer that was destroying Palestinian homes. After pro forma flatulence from US politicians, most notably those from Rachel's home state of Washington, the matter was consigned to the memory hole. Moral of the story: Imperialism is premised upon the denial of the humanity of its victims; which denial only proves the inhumanity of imperialism itself.
I agree, perhaps Fisk used the question rhetorically. Fisk is fully aware of the situation, evidenced by his prolific writing on the subject.
I believe you're responding to soloduff, not me.
But FWIW, I agree that the headline-- though probably not even written by Fisk-- is a rhetorical question. Fisk knows what's what.
Thus, my rhetorical answer.
· Yr Obd't Servant
oh our eyes are far from blind- how could they be when the bulldozers are ours?
what's really been scaring me is the path Israel is on now can only end in exterminating Palestine and all its brave people. Just look at the maps. what does that look like?
never mind "apartheid". this is genocide.
Exactly. It fits the definition established at Nuremberg.
Exactly. It fits the definition established at Nuremberg.
“It aint my God, so keep it to yourself. The study of politics is not about mythology it is about Power and Interests."
Its like the time in 1976 when on a flight to California, and this guy kept trying to force his religion at me, his blind faith in politics with all its fake morality. In an angry voice without me saying a word this went on for twenty minutes until finally I said, “Instead of faith in man why not have faith in something eternal, like the Bible.”
So he yells back at me, “I don’t force my religion on you, so knock it off!”
But surely, a man’s religion is his opinions, his convictions, the beliefs he is willing to fight for and die for.
For man has not the intelligence to prove there is a God or prove there is no God, and any such conviction must be established by faith and faith alone.
So condemn no man’s religion, or hypocrisy shall we call your convictions.
Netanyahu and his theocratic allies never intended real peace. They can prevail in the short run but in a sea of hostile neighbors who will strike back in the long run. Where are the Israeli peacemakers?
Why?? Because they are always portrayed as the victim and being labeled an anti-semite quickly comes to mind when condeming any of their babarian actions...BTW, why no discussion of the alleged newks they may or may not possess?? The ones allegedly at Dimona? While were at it,why no discussion on their laundry list of UN violations?? Like to see WolfieBlitzer do segment on any of those topics on "the situation room" Whadda joke....
~Some people live their whole lives without ever waking up~
Why?? Because they are always portrayed as the victim and being labeled an anti-semite quickly comes to mind when condeming any of their babarian actions...BTW, why no discussion of the alleged newks they may or may not possess?? The ones allegedly at Dimona? While were at it,why no discussion on their laundry list of UN violations?? Like to see WolfieBlitzer do a segment on any of those topics in "the situation room" Whadda joke....
~Some people live their whole lives without ever waking up~
Those in our government who support this neverending ethnic cleansing and genocide are guilty of crimes against humanity. These are the treasonous ones who pledge their allegiance to the Israel Lobby and not to the American people or their own conscience.