ZGram - 9/11/2002 - "Liberating America from Israel"

irimland@zundelsite.org irimland@zundelsite.org
Wed, 11 Sep 2002 19:49:07 -0700


ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

9/11/2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Paul Findley is one of my favorite writers, and this editorial is the 
most measured in tone I could find to mark the first anniversary of 
the WTC terror attack not one of us is going to ever forget:

[START]

Liberating America From Israel

by Paul Findley

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

How did the American people get into this fix?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

If Bush suspends U.S. aid, he will liberate all Americans from long 
years of bondage to Israel's misdeeds.

[END]

=====

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