The silencing of America

 If a dominant football team ran up a score by a 10 to 1 ratio the public would be in an uproar.  Yet few are talking about the same ratio in lives in the conflict between Hamas and Israel, a kill ratio that will very likely increase.  What does that tell us about society?  Have we forever lost our moral compass?

I am in no way condoning the Hamas attack or the taking of hostages, but what I am saying is that egregious acts such as these don’t happen in a vacuum; they’re usually precipitated by unrelenting oppression.  Real peace will never be realized without objectively looking at both the Israeli and Palestinian points-of-view.

It’s common knowledge that the Israeli lobby has considerable influence in Washington, D.C., but I’m both astounded and alarmed by the unprecedented power it apparently wields as evidenced by what’s going on in the U.S. in the aftermath of the Hamas attack.  The Palestinian point-of-view has been conspicuously under-represented or purged in media, politics, and public discourse.

In a 2006 paper titled “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” John J. Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt from Harvard University concluded “The overall thrust of U.S. policy in the region (Middle East) is due almost entirely to U.S. domestic politics, and especially to the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby.’ Other special interest groups have managed to skew U.S. foreign policy in directions they favored, but no lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essentially identical.”

America’s financial and military support to Israel has only perpetuated the conflict.  Not only has it cost U.S. taxpayers $260 billion (adjusted for inflation) since World War II per a U.S. News and World Report analysis, but it has facilitated the oppression of the Palestinian people over decades, and helps Israel to continue building settlements on Palestinian land in defiance of international law.  This massive, one-sided support certainly puts American lives at risk as 9-11 demonstrated.  

According to The Congressional Research Service “Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II” adding that almost all current U.S. bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance.  Yet Israel is the only nuclear power in the region and the 10th largest weapons exporter in the world.  They receive more U.S. foreign military aid than all other countries in the world combined according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Every couple of years some Palestinians rise up from squalor in a futile attempt to stop the oppression by this regional juggernaut.  This only serves as a pretext for Israel to further destroy their infrastructure and colonize more of their land.

As a rule anyone criticizing Israel, even when it’s constructive, has been labeled anti-Semitic, but in the wake of the Hamas attack this has taken on disturbing proportions.  American democracy appears to have been hijacked and in its place a climate of McCarthyism has crept upon us.  These sophisticated, dark forces, abetted by U.S. politicians, have managed to intimidate or bamboozle the entire nation, at least on the surface, and consequently stifled any semblance of balanced debate while a genocide unfolds.  

Individuals criticizing Israel or simply offering an alternative perspective are being promptly fired from their jobs for exercising their right of free speech. Petty, yet elaborate, vindictiveness has even silenced protests on college and university campuses.  Students in prominent schools like Harvard and Columbia Universities have been blacklisted by prominent law firms and Wall Street because they signed open letters criticizing Israel.  Solid job offers to top students have been rescinded.

Trucks displaying the faces of some of these students appeared near the Harvard and Columbia campuses.  In New York City the photos were accompanied by the words “Columbia’s biggest antisemites,” the New York Times reported. According to some protestors, the Columbia photographs were taken from a secure, private student portal.  In the wake of such reprisals numerous Harvard students backtracked from their heartfelt beliefs.  Palestinian-American conventions and conferences scheduled before the Hamas attack are being outlawed, moved, or cancelled due to coercion.

Pressure is also being placed on school administrators by pro-Israel donors.  The Israeli newspaper, Jewish Currents, reports “Multiple donors to Harvard said they would cut off their funds because the university had been too slow to condemn the Hamas attack and the student groups’ statement. Some donors to the University of Pennsylvania have also said they will no longer fund the school because of what they described as its ‘silence’ on the Hamas attacks.”

The sophistication and breadth of pro-Israel pressure cannot be fairly compared to your isolated, primitive, garden variety anti-Semiticism that typically comes in the form of spray paint.

The Israeli lobby along with certain powerful Jewish-American citizens wield tremendous, disproportionate power, particularly over politicians, when you consider that Jewish-American adults account for only 2.4% of the adult population according to the Pew Research Center.  However, over 50% say they have an annual household income of a least $100,000, significantly higher than the U.S. average.  Palestinians, on the other hand, have little wealth and certainly no noteworthy lobby in Washington, D.C.

The politicians who do not demonstrate sufficient support for Israel can find themselves voted out of office because of dark money channeled to opposing campaigns. To expect elected officials to be more objective would be like asking a vampire to drive a wooden stake through their own heart.  It’s not going to happen without changing the ways foreign and domestic powers can influence our elected government.

“Three weeks into Israel’s assault on Gaza, only about 10% of House Democrats have called for an end to the bombing,” according to Jewish Currents, yet 80% of Democratic voters believe the “U.S. should call for a ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza” according to a Data for Progress poll.  So who do you think our elected officials are answering to?

I suspect that many of the Americans who do support Israel right now are reacting exclusively to the horror of the Hamas attacks with little or no knowledge of the oppression that has been inflicted on the Palestinian people for decades, especially during the ongoing and unlawful 16-year land, sea, and air blockade of Gaza depriving civilians of basic human needs like food, water, electricity, and medical supplies.  Palestinians and humanitarian organizations often refer to the Gaza Strip as the world’s largest outdoor prison. What would anyone do under such oppression?  

How many Americans are well informed of the insidious building of settlements on  Palestinian land in the West Bank over decades in defiance of international law and world opinion?  

In the months preceding the Hamas attack, escalating violent attacks perpetrated by settlers and the Israeli Defense Forces on defenseless Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, people who have no affiliation with Hamas, were given minimal or no coverage in the U.S. press while they were far more prominent in the international press.  A recently disclosed plan to build 10,000 illegal housing units for Israeli settlers on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem has also been virtually ignored or relegated to the back pages.

Israel has an insatiable appetite for land, simply that, and it needs war or instability as a justification to obtain it.  The claims to need a security buffer requiring more land doesn’t hold up in my mind when you consider they are the only regional power with nuclear weapons and have one of the most technologically-advanced militaries in the world, not to mention the undying support of the strongest nation on the planet.  There’s no better example of Israel’s military supremacy in the region than the 1967 six-day war when it crushed the combined forces of three Arab nations after Israel preemptively attacked Egypt destroying 286 of their 420 combat aircraft and surged through the Sinai with their tanks.

Furthermore, the relentless advancement of technology will make weapons of mass destruction smaller and more deadly as time goes on.  No buffer is going to stop a chemical agent from being released in a crowded city or blown across the border in the wind.  We now live in an age where it’s unwise to stoke the flames of hatred.               

The status quo over the years has not made Israeli citizens any safer as demonstrated on Oct 7th.  It’s in the best interests of Israeli citizens to wholeheartedly seek a meaningful peace which must include a two-state solution.  Completely leveling a city where tens of thousands of civilians are trapped will only encourage anti-Semitism in the global community.

I wonder whether most Americans even know that we are largely alone right now in the global community in our unconditional support of Israel as evidenced by the recent non-binding, Jordanian, UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and adequate humanitarian aid which passed overwhelmingly 121 to 14.  Beside the U.S. and Israel only Austria, Croatia, Czechia, Fiji, Guatemala, Hungary, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay and Tonga voted against the resolution.

The decades of Israeli’s oppression of the Palestinians is in many ways akin to our own genocidal treatment of native Americas for which we now effusively apologize.  So how then can we now turn a blind eye in the Middle East when we’re the only nation who can likely put a stop to it?

It’s time for Americans to see the true bigger picture both in terms of the suppression of free speech and the genocide of the Palestinian people rather than being led by dark forces down an ignominious path from which we might not return.

   

Let’s go to the videotape – if we have the courage

Having been born into the white race, the race of privilege in America, it’s easy to misunderstand what it means to be black.  Even with desegregation, the majority of whites and blacks still live in separate worlds divided by wealth, individual biases, and an unforgiving and racially discriminatory justice system, among other things.

Many well-meaning whites simply don’t appreciate the depth of oppression in black communities, but social media affords us an opportunity to see some of the truth. 

Ubiquitous Smartphone images on the Web provide a window into this other world, yet many of my friends don’t want to look.  Maybe it’s because the window also serves as a mirror.  They may occasionally watch a video, but generally speaking, they don’t want to see the plethora of brutal images that conflict with the more sanitized and justifiable world in their mind’s eye. 

The recent, senseless killings of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd are eye-opening, but so are the more insidious examples; take for instance, the white, somewhat hysterical woman in Central Park, NY who calls 911 falsely accusing a non-confrontational, black birdwatcher of threatening her life when all he did was ask her to leash her dog.

How can we effectively right wrongs like these without fully appreciating the breadth of humiliation, degradation, and terror facing people of color everyday.  Indifference when the truth is right there on our smart devices is unconscionable and ultimately incites the huge demonstrations and rioting we see today. 

Wake up white America and go to the videotapes – if you have the courage. 

Another compelling video shows a Glynn County Police officer confronting a young, black adult who is parked in plain sight on an open, grassy field at the edge of a Georgia park.  It’s broad daylight and he’s chillin’ on music on his day off.  Although he is doing nothing suspicious, he is subjected to lengthy, accusatory questioning, a body search, and several attempts to inspect his car without cause.  A second officer arrives and without provocation pulls his Taser and shoots the non-threatening man.  The gun malfunctions and the man is ultimately left alone. 

Any white person subjected to such treatment would have been apoplectic and a lawsuit would likely have followed.   But, blacks are not readily afforded such options.  They often get brutalized and in some cases killed if they display any dissatisfaction or resistance, and they don’t have the same avenues of justice we do.  They have little choice but to bite their tongues and swallow their pride.  The harassed man, Ahmaud Arbery (also mentioned earlier), did just that and was thereby granted another two years of life before he was killed while jogging this past February by a retired cop from the same police department and his son.

A common reaction of my white colleagues is that blacks may have cause to be angry, but rioting and looting are not the way to bring about change.

Yet, American history suggests otherwise.  Wasn’t the celebrated Boston Tea Party looting?  A great deal of meaningful social change in America has come as an outgrowth of social upheaval like the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the Great Depression, and the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960’s.  There is fertile ground for promising, social change when virtually every American is unsettled by national events.

When blacks do use peaceful means, white society always finds a way to ignore the message and demonize the messenger.  They say it’s inappropriate to deliver an impassioned speech about injustice while accepting an Academy Award or unpatriotic to kneel during the national anthem at an NFL game.  White America is particularly incensed when the unsavory truth invades their comfortable living rooms and disrupts time-honored, American television traditions.

Colin Kaepernick did what few Americans would do:  He put his lucrative and celebrated professional football career in jeopardy for what he believed in.  And yet few applauded his courage or discussed his cause, instead they spent all their time criticizing his method.  Kaepernick was eventually blacklisted from the NFL and essentially gagged by white society.

How can we then criticize the rioting and looting?  If you gag the oppressed too long with apathy, violence will erupt.  Oppressed people need to be heard.

The root cause of terrorism is oppression

In the wake of the San Bernardino and Paris attacks, fear and anger have given rise to hubris and xenophobia.  The inclination of many is to advocate for more surveillance, closed borders, and to bomb perceived enemies further back into the Dark Ages in an age of unending Middle Eastern warfare.  Little, if any, deep thought seems to be given to what motivates people to sacrifice their own lives to do us harm?  Instead, convenient answers are tossed about:  The terrorists are envious of our standard of living or driven by religious fanaticism. 

Many Americans I speak with know little about our record in the Middle East or care to know.  They rely exclusively on narrow, often reactionary, sound bites from politicians and media.

The truth is the West has been meddling in the Middle East for more than two centuries, and longer if you consider the Crusades.  Even the borders of modern Middle Eastern countries were, in large part, arbitrarily drawn by the West after the fall of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, often ignoring ethnic, religious, and tribal differences. 

The United States’ role, a relatively recent one, has been motivated by an insatiable appetite for oil, protection of Israel, and a fear of the spread of communism.  In pursuit of these goals, the U.S. has long supported despots who permit the exploitation of their nation's natural resources and strategic locations in exchange for their own personal enrichment and protection. 

As a consequence, the general populace of most of these nations live in abject poverty and oppression.  They have little hope and no voice, and see terrorism as the only way to be heard.  Promoting democracy in the region would give them that voice, but we don't aggressively advocate democratization because authoritarian governments are easier to buy, predict and control.

The story of Iran illustrates this point.  By the CIA’s own admission, they instigated a coup in 1953 that overthrew the highly popular, democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh.  He lost favor with the West when he decided to nationalize Iran’s petroleum industry which, since 1908, was fully controlled by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company owned in large part by the British government.  First Lord of the Admiralty at the time, Winston Churchill, called the British control of Iran's oil fields “a prize from fairyland beyond our wildest dreams.”

The removal of the Prime Minister ushered in decades of brutal oppression at the hands of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, a pivotal Western ally until he was overthrown during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.  The radicalism we see in Iran today is largely a result of this Western interference.  Former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright stated in 2000 that “the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development.  And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs."

Today our allies in the Middle East include some of the worst human rights offenders in the world including Bahrain, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.  Radicalism is usually born from oppression so it is counterintuitive to wage a War on Terror without considering what role the West plays in oppressing countries where terrorism is born.

Limited warfare waged principally by drones and other air strikes has removed the unsavory prospect of mounting U.S. casualties and made war more palatable.  But, what we don’t readily see are the enormous civilian casualties. 

Pentagon censorship of media in war zones has helped keep these casualties from the public’s eye.  Even by conservative counts civilian deaths in Iraq alone since 9/11 far exceed 100,000, but without disturbing My Lai-type images on the 6 o’clock news there is no public outcry.  Out of sight, out of mind, while animosity for West, particularly America, grows stronger. 

Terrorists have always existed in world history and always will so long as there are oppressed people.  What is different today is the terrorist’s ability to kill great numbers of people.  The unrelenting advancement of technology will continue to put more concealable, more powerful weapons in their hands.  In an age of biological agents and drones, no amount of security or military aggression is going to stop determined terrorist groups from killing more and more people. 

The root cause of terrorism is oppression and we can’t address terror effectively without giving oppressed people self-determination.  Our foreign policy can no longer cling to the century-old mantra, “speak softly and carry a big stick.”  That won’t work in the 21^st century.

Hope, reason, and goodwill must shape our view of the world rather than fear, hatred, and exploitation.  If we don’t change with the times, we will continue to reap what we sow and the consequences will only grow worse.