Israel's Declaration of War

Israel’s method of waging war on Palestine goes like this: 1) Agree that East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip belong to Palestine. 2) Begin building Israeli “settlements” IN East Jerusalem, the West Bank and next to the Gaza Strip. 3) Restrict Palestinian access to those new settlement areas. 4) When Palestinians react by attacking in the settlement areas from which they have been driven, the Israeli army retaliates, kills Palestinians, walls are built around the new settlements and Palestinians are prohibited from passage through those areas between Israeli settlements. 5) American congressional and administration leaders smile sadly and say that Israel and Palestine (and the US) need “go forward from where we are now”. 6) the rest of the world kind of watches, knowing that the United States is somehow, through this process providing some restraint on Israel. 7) Repeat steps 1 to 6.

One of Obama’s stated goals was to work toward achieving peace in the middle east. Palestine has held back because of the settlements recently built on “their” territory. Finally, Palestine agreed to try “one more time”.

To pretend that we “really intend” to “move forward”, Vice-president Biden is sent to Israel to pretend to initiate negotiations. Within hours though, after Biden’s arrival there, Israel announced the construction of a new 1,600 person settlement in the Palestine areas in East Jerusalem. This is the diplomatic equivalent of Netanyanhu banging on his glass with a spoon at an internationally televised dinner at UN Headquarters, then standing on his chair and announcing “This is for the United States and President Obama, the rest of the world, and especially all Arabs!” as he shoots a bird for all the press to record. Vice-president Biden, representing the people of the United States, and who has just arrived on this pretend peace mission, is seated across from Netanyanhu as the consciousness of the world swings like klieg lights and TV cameras might have done, from Netanyanhu’s upraised finger to Biden’s downcast face.

For a number of years now, Israel has been more and more independent of American support. They have taken over the planning, organizing, and development of their action. All we need to do is just cover the checks they write. It has become more and more obvious to more and more people throughout the past ten years or so that Israel no longer needs the support of the United States. They may be willing to accept whatever aid, weapons, armament and money we might send their way but as far as matters of life and death or war and peace are concerned, we should just butt out. Israel doesn’t need us any more. Money? That’s OK, just send it and shut up. Apparently Israel realizes that the American dollar isn’t what it was a few years ago, and of course that is another part of our pretend.

This action by Israel clearly calls for a major change in the United States-Israel relationship. Not just this one action in itself, but that it comes as an obviously developing construct on Israel’s part. This is a natural result of the Gaza Humiliation to All of Mankind, which in turn grew out from other Israeli settlements built on the West Bank which followed other settlements they built in East Jerusalem. America's continued "support" of Israel is now proclaiming to all nations of the world that we are NOT INTERESTED in peace in that region but only in the support of Israel domination of the entire middle-east. One can only wonder how long it will be before Israel will strike Iran and once again throw the middle east out of its fragile, constantly out of balance alignment.

Furthermore, since it is now clear that the United States has no control over Israel, the time has come for us to prepare to cut the swollen financial, armament and diplomatic umbilical cord between us, and set Israel free to find and develop support and friends among its neighbors.