- Nine-eleven would not have occurred if the U.S.
government had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy
Palestinian society. Few express this conclusion publicly, but many
believe it is the truth. I believe the catastrophe could have been
prevented if any U.S. president during the past 35 years had had the
courage and wisdom to suspend all U.S. aid until Israel withdrew from
the Arab land seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
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- The U.S. lobby for Israel is powerful and
intimidating, but any determined president - even President Bush this
very day - could prevail and win overwhelming public support for the
suspension of aid by laying these facts before the American
people:
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- Israel's present government, like its predecessors,
is determined to annex the West Bank - biblical Judea and Samaria - so
Israel will become Greater Israel. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who maintain a
powerful role in Israeli politics, believe the Jewish Messiah will not
come until Greater Israel is a reality. Although a minority in Israel,
they are committed, aggressive, and influential. Because of deep
religious conviction, they are determined to prevent Palestinians from
gaining statehood on any part of the West Bank.
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- In its violent assaults on Palestinians, Israel uses
the pretext of eradicating terrorism, but its forces are actually
engaged advancing the territorial expansion just cited. Under the
guise of anti-terrorism, Israeli forces treat Palestinians worse than
cattle. With due process nowhere to be found, hundreds are detained
for long periods and most are tortured. Some are assassinated. Homes,
orchards, and business places are destroyed. Entire cities are kept
under intermittent curfew, some confinements lasting for weeks.
Injured or ill Palestinians needing emergency medical care are
routinely held at checkpoints for an hour or more. Many children are
undernourished. The West Bank and Gaza have become giant concentration
camps. None of this could have occurred without U.S. support. Perhaps
Israeli officials believe life will become so unbearable that most
Palestinians will eventually leave their ancestral homes.
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- Once beloved worldwide, the U.S. government finds
itself reviled in most countries because it provides unconditional
support of Israeli violations of the United Nations Charter,
international law, and the precepts of all major religious
faiths.
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- How did the American people get into this
fix?
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- Nine-eleven had its principal origin 35 years ago
when Israel's U.S. lobby began its unbroken success in stifling debate
about the proper U.S. role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and
effectively concealed from public awareness the fact that the U.S.
government gives massive uncritical support to Israel.
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- Thanks to the suffocating influence of Israel's U.S.
lobby, open discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been
non-existent in our government all these years. I have firsthand
knowledge, because I was a member of the House of Representatives
Foreign Affairs Committee in June 1967 when Israeli military forces
took control of the Golan Heights, a part of Syria, as well as the
Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. I continued as a member for 16 years
and to this day maintain a close watch on Congress.
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- For 35 years, not a word has been expressed in that
committee or in either chamber of Congress that deserves to be called
debate on Middle East policy. No restrictive or limiting amendments on
aid to Israel have been offered for 20 years, and none of the few
offered in previous years received more than a handful of votes. On
Capitol Hill, criticism of Israel, even in private conversation, is
all but forbidden, treated as downright unpatriotic, if not
anti-Semitic. The continued absence of free speech was assured when
those few who spoke out-Senators Adlai Stevenson and Charles Percy,
and Reps. Paul "Pete" McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney, Earl Hilliard, and
myself-were defeated at the polls by candidates heavily financed by
pro-Israel forces.
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- As a result, legislation dealing with the Middle
East has been heavily biased in favor of Israel and against
Palestinians and other Arabs year after year. Home constituencies,
misled by news coverage equally lop-sided in Israel's favor, remain
largely unaware that Congress behaves as if it were a subcommittee of
the Israeli parliament.
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- However, the bias is widely noted beyond America,
where most news media candidly cover Israel's conquest and generally
excoriate America's complicity and complacency. When President Bush
welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, sometimes called the
Butcher of Beirut, as "my dear friend" and "a man of peace" after
Israeli forces, using U.S.-donated arms, completed their devastation
of the West Bank last spring, worldwide anger against American policy
reached the boiling point.
-
- The fury should surprise no one who reads foreign
newspapers or listens to BBC. In several televised statements long
before 9/11,Osama bin Laden, believed by U.S. authorities to have
masterminded 9/11, cited U.S. complicity in Israel's destruction of
Palestinian society as a principal complaint. Prominent foreigners, in
and out of government, express their opposition to U.S. policies with
unprecedented frequency and severity, especially since Bush announced
his determination to make war against Iraq.
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- The lobby's intimidation remains pervasive. It seems
to reach every government center and even houses of worship and
revered institutions of higher learning. It is highly effective in
silencing the many U.S. Jews who object to the lobby's tactics and
Israel's brutality.
-
- Nothing can justify 9/11. Those guilty deserve
maximum punishment, but it makes sense for America to examine
motivations promptly and as carefully as possible. Terrorism almost
always arises from deeply-felt grievances. If they can be eradicated
or eased, terrorist passions are certain to subside.
-
- Today, a year after 9/11, President Bush has made no
attempt to redress grievances, or even to identify them. In fact, he
has made the scene far worse by supporting Israel's religious war
against Palestinians, an alliance that has intensified anti-American
anger. He seems oblivious to the fact that nearly two billion people
worldwide regard the plight of Palestinians as today's most important
foreign-policy challenge. No one in authority will admit a calamitous
reality that is skillfully shielded from the American people but
clearly recognized by most of the world: America suffered 9/11 and its
aftermath and may soon be at war with Iraq, mainly because U.S. policy
in the Middle East is made in Israel, not in Washington.
-
- Israel is a scofflaw nation and should be treated as
such. Instead of helping Sharon intensify Palestinian misery, our
president should suspend all aid until Israel ends its occupation of
Arab land Israel seized in 1967. The suspension would force Sharon's
compliance or lead to his removal from office, as the Israeli
electorate will not tolerate a prime minister who is at odds with the
White House.
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- If Bush needs an additional reason for doing the
right thing, he can justify the suspension as a matter of military
necessity, an essential step in winning international support for his
war on terrorism. He can cite a worthy precedent. When President
Abraham Lincoln issued the proclamation that freed only the slaves in
states that were then in rebellion, he make the restriction because of
"military necessity."
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- If Bush suspends U.S. aid, he will liberate all
Americans from long years of bondage to Israel's misdeeds.
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- Mr. Paul Findley, who served as a Republican
congressman from Illinois for 22 years, is the author of 'They Dare to
Speak Out' and a member of the American Educational Trust's Foreign
Relations Committee
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- From RePortersNoteBook.com
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