Israel/Palestine is thousands of miles away. What has it to do with me?
Here are 10 reasons it’s a local issue:
1. Nearly half of Palestinians are 17 and under, so the treatment of Palestinian children under Israeli military law will greatly affect future Israeli-Palestinian relations, with consequences for everyone else.
2. Our state is a military-based economy and our weapons are exported to Israel. Ruger rifles made in CT are believed to be used by Israeli snipers to kill Palestinians.
3. Far more US aid has gone to Israel than to any other country, and the largest military aid package in history ($38 billion) was recently approved by the Senate. Israel already has the 4th strongest military in the world. US weapons in Israel are used in human rights violations against Palestinians and re-exported to other countries where they are put to illegal use. US aid to Israel also violates US law banning support for countries with clandestine nuclear weapons.
4. US cities increasingly are policed with weapons and tactics developed in police exchange programs with Israel. Israeli weapons and tactics are tested and used against their own Palestinian population and are geared to controlling civilians and punishing racial minorities and protesters. They are now used against African Americans and others in our own cities.
5. Israeli influence on US politics is helping to push the US toward a war against Iran and to bring the whole Middle East under increasing Israeli and US control.
6. Israeli influence is causing changes in US domestic law to restrict political resistance and free speech, cause dissenters to lose their jobs and bar organizing on US campuses.
7. US backing for Israel has placed it beyond reach of international law, so that Israel can now claim that it can break any law it wants to with impunity.*
8. Israeli treatment of Palestinians reflects treatment of indigenous people all over the world, from Native Americans in the US, to Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and apartheid South Africa. It is an outgrowth of colonialism, which has not ended but simply changed form.
9. The US failure to admit Jewish refugees in adequate numbers in the period from World War I to the formation of Israel in 1948, left the refugees feeling that they had no choice but to form another country far away where Jews would be safe. They did this under the aegis of British colonialism and dispossessed another people of their land creating another population of millions of refugees. Palestinians thus ended by paying for Europe’s and America’s crimes against Jews.
10. Jewish refugees from Europe who entered Palestine, hoped to create a model and democratic society, but Israel has evolved away from democracy and is increasingly restrictive in its laws for Jews and others. Many Jews in Israel, the US and throughout the world want Israel to become a democratic state for all its inhabitants. They deserve the support of Americans.
