Media Manipulation:Benet

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Israel, Palestine, International Law and US Foreign Policy...* Article From: Bob kinsey's Blog

This noon I joined about 20 in the blowing snow at Colfax and Lincoln to express my sadness that Israel has chosen to respond to Palestinian outrage with outrageous violence using an Israeli Defense Force partially paid for by US military aid. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert responded to international criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, saying that “nobody has the right to preach morality to the State of Israel for taking basic action to defend itself.” Israel has returned the lex taliones to a pre-Hammurabi style definition of “Ten eyes for an eye and ten teeth for a tooth.” Modern airpower, usually the least discriminating in whose lives are taken, was used in response to rockets that in this case took no Israeli life. But the growing outbursts of Palestinian violence are in response to having the Gaza strip turned into a walled camp with no economy. At the same time Israel refuses to leave the Palestinian occupied territories on which they have built settlements in the West Bank and walled the area within it to make life nearly impossible for Palestinians there. The refusal of the Israelis to give up this land and control of water rights they occupied (and were told by the UN to leave) has been the long term factor driving the violence. The Palestinians have been expected to swallow this in addition to being required to accept the legal right of Israel to exist within borders that include land Palestinians once saw as their homeland.

No Peace Process can work under these conditions and yet the United States has accepted the Israeli position implicitly by continuously supplying Israel with large military aid packages even while occasionally expressing some concern over its use. The United States also has extended this aid against its own laws that prohibit it to provide military aid to countries that do not keep the Nuclear Non Proliferation Agreement. Regardless of denial by Israel it is know by everyone in the world that Israel has a strong nuclear weapons program with perhaps 200 warheads at the ready. The Arab world sees the United States willing to invade an Arab country with shock and awe in order to defend itself against weapons which the UN inspection agency said were not there. They see the United States threatening military action against another Arab Islamic State, Iran, in the name of destroying nuclear weapons that its own National Intelligence Estimate says are not there. It sees the United States occupying a country in the name of destroying terrorists that only came to that country after the original pre-emptive war against Iraq. It saw the United States carry out this war despite the fact that not a single Iraqi was involved in 9/11. So terrorism grows as a result of invasion and occupation carried out in the name of anti terrorism and self defense. Terrorism grows and tons of innocent Arab Islamic deaths are accepted by the United States and its ally . This is unjust, against international law and will never solve the problems claimed to be addressed by such actions.

The Jewish God who is also the God of the sons of Ishmael by a similar name demands Justice and Mercy. The concept of trying to define by Law what the contents of Justice require is as old as the Torah. The workings of Mercy are laid out in what Christians call the Sermon on the Mount or the New Law Jesus laid out. The Rule of Law is the Secular Enlightenment embodiment of these ideas.

Justice and Mercy are not found in giving Israel a blank check to ignore the International Law of the very United Nations that defined Israel a state with the right to exist. UN resolutions more than 20 years old required Israel to leave the Palestinian Occupied Territories because land is not to be taken as a result of war. Until the United States stops this blank check policy for Israel a Just Peace cannot be found in the Middle East. The resolution affirming this blank check policy have poured from the US Congress. My opponents Mark Udall and Bob Schaffer have voted for this blank check several times in House of Representatives Resolutions to that effect. I will not. Nor will I vote to continue military aid to any country that frails to conform to the Non-Proliferation Treay or fails to work for elimination of weapons of Mass Destruction world wide. These requirements are inour Law and our Constitution you know.