Talking Bollocks

Does Israel apear sincere to you?

I hear that Israel will not extend it’s moratorium on settlement building in the West bank and the Palestinians, who have said they may pull out of the talks if the moratorium is not extended, are being encouraged to “compromise”. One wonders how much more they can compromise. They have given up half their country for the creation of the Jewish state. They have lived under occupation by Israeli troops for 40 years. They have seen Jewish fundamentalist settlers move into their land armed with machine guns funded by the American tax payer. Their land is crisscrossed by roads for the exclusive use of settlers. When they enter the land which is now Israel they are treated as second class citizens.

Now they are being told that they should accept the continued settlement of their land by jewish fundamentalists while they negotiate. The Man On The Radio (TMOTR) (BBC World Service) just said that between the start of the Oslo peace process and the date that it collapsed Israel doubled the number of Jewish settlers on Palestinian land.

To ask them to negotiate under these circumstance is unfair and perverse.

We are encouraged to believe that the Jewish fundamentalists in Israel are a minority and that average Israelis are fairly secular and believe in democracy. Settlement building is policy of ethnic cleansing driven by religious fundamentalists who believe that they are God’s chosen people. If Israel cannot even bring itself to confront this “minority” and disown this racist policy then one has question their sincerity. In fact one is forced to conclude that Israel does not want peace with the Palestinians, it wants a greater Israel populated only by Jews.

After September 11th America determined that it would address the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Since then they have invaded Iraq and forced regime change. They have invaded Afghanistan and forced the Taliban out of power. They have turned America’s tradition of freedom upside down from finger printing at airports to extraordinary rendition to water-boarding.

Yet they have taken no action against Israel and Israel has done absolutely nothing to help America.

That the United States cannot bring itself to pressure Israel to give up it’s racists policy betrays Americas core ideals and givens ammunition to Muslim fundamentalist. One has to ask what America gets from this one sided relationship?