What does it really mean?, by Les Blough, Axis of Logic, June 11, 2003

Today we see what is hyped as a widening rift between Washington and Israel with the smoke and mirrors of U.S.-Israel negotiations of another so-called peace plan - "The Roadmap".  Is the Bush regime, coached along by people like Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Wurmser, Kristol, Safire and other neocons, really "getting tough with Israel"?

With all the nuanced phrasing & "selected news" in the U.S. Corporate Media, - with the incestuous relationships, spying, oil, drugs, money & weapons flowing between the U.S. and Israel for so many decades, how are we to believe that Bush is now "getting tough with Israel"? 

Questions:

"The Roadmap" - What does Bush's "Roadmap" really offer the Palestinian people? Does it offer any more than Ehud Barak's so-called "generous offer" at Camp David in the year 2000 - already summarily rejected by the Palestinian people?

What does it really mean? -

When Ariel Sharon promises "a viable Palestinian State" to Palestinians who existed peacefully with Palestinian Jews for thousands of years, long before Britain "gave" their land to the new "State of Israel" 50 years ago under the Balfour Resolution?;

When Israel tears down an "unauthorized settler outpost" on Palestinian land without touching the hundreds of illegal "settlements" that remain in place?;

When Israel "gives" Palestinians land that already belongs to them?;

What does it really mean? -

When pictures of "outposts" being torn down appear on the front pages of the New York Times?;

When Israel agrees to a cease-fire, but attacks it's Palestinian concentration camps with helicopter gunships and tanks?;

When Israel continues it's assassinations of Palestinian leaders?;

When it terrorizes Palestinian civilians by killing their teenagers and kids, bulldozing their homes and orchards, and cutting off their water and access to their only source of income?

When critics of Israeli policies are attacked for being "anti-semitic"?

What does it all really mean?

For Palestinians it means; continued occupation, more poverty, lost sons, daughters, grandchildren and parents; lost art, culture, freedom of movement, education, careers, health-care, homes and financial stability for their families; more humiliation, suffering and death; more anger and reprisals.

For Israeli citizens it means more resistance from the Palestinians who will fight back with the only weapons they have: their own bodies strapped with explosives; more fear of going to a favorite cafe for lunch; fear of allowing their children to board a bus to go to school; more fear of watching their teenagers go off to a club for an evening of fun and socializing and a devastated economy.

For the "Bedouins of Israel" it is a reminder of how Israel's Green Patrol stole their sheep, their only source of income and independence; - a reminder of having their their nomadic dwellings ripped down on top of them and their children as they slept under the desert sky, of how Israel corrupted their teenagers with drugs, erased their Bedouin way of life, forced them into squalid camps outside Israel's resort towns to provide cheap labor for beautiful landscaping, house-cleaning, and road construction enjoyed by Israelis on-holiday.

For Syria and Iran it means the realities of more economic sanctions and their growing national stress of a possible invasion by the U.S. at the behest of Israel, which claims it is threatened by these countries as "rogue nations" and members of the "axis of evil"; the same Israel that claims it will be "pushed into the sea" while it sits with the only nuclear arsenal and most powerful military machine in the region.

For Europe it means growing anti-American and anti-Jewish sentiment and widening breaches between their populations and their democratically-elected governments who are bullied into signing on to the "coalition of the willing".

For the U.S. citizen, it means more taxpayer money flowing on demand to Israel for their "security"; more anxiety and fear of "terrorist-attacks" trumped up by orange and red-code alarms of the Ashcroft contingent; greater encroachment upon their civil rights by the Patriot Act; more fear of traveling freely and safely throughout the world; a deepening national debt to be carried on the backs of their offspring for generations to come.

For the Christian Zionist, it means fulfillment of a biblical prophecy in which they arrogantly believe, enticed by Zionist promises to share in the spoils of Armageddon.

For the Zionists, it means expansion of Israel into an increasingly unstable Arab world, more land, more bounty and a "Greater Israel" - a fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant.

For Hamas and the Second Intifada, it means another U.S.-Israeli ploy, meant to expand Israel's occupation of Arab land and greater oppression of the Palestinian people.

For the Arab-world it means an advancing threat from Israel's nuclear- weapons arsenal.  It means the masses of Muslims turning against the regimes in countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Pakistan.

For the U.S. it means more anti-American sentiment throughout the world, continued threats of attacks on U.S. civilians abroad, U.S. embassies and military bases; more money taken away from education, food, healthcare, retirement, social security, medical research and scientific innovation -diverted to the industrial military complex and expanded military-spending for the myth of "national security".

For the world, it means more hunger, poverty, infant mortality, epidemic disease, conflict, assassinations, civil wars and less attention to the needs of the masses throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa, North and South America and Europe.

Can Bush "getting tough with Israel" really mean all of this?  Is Israel to blame for all of this?  Of course not.  One can correctly blame the massive global strife that besets all of us on other phenomena, like Western Imperialism, and international greed, racism and hatred that infest all people of all lands.  But each of us also has the responsibility to answer these questions by examining - and re-examining the roots of conflict from the attacks of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the Spring of 2003.  The importance of the role played by Israel in global conflict cannot be ignored or minimized as some would have it.  Who can deny that the Middle East has been recognized throughout the world as a locus of global conflict and that the world's only superpower is the major contributor, fanning the flames of fear in that region of the world as they lick out into other nations.  So we must ask ourselves, "What does it really mean when we are told that Bush is "getting tough with Israel"?

What did Robert Fisk mean when he recently wrote:

You can ask anything you want about 9/11; but for God's sake, don't ask why!

What does "The Road Map" mean for you and your loved ones?