Large Portion of Israeli Settlers In Palestine Are US Citizens
By Robert Barsocchini
01 September, 2015
Countercurrents.org
Native journalist Zebula Hebert told me that, in the Israeli colonization of Palestine, he sees “the United States’ genocide against American Indians. Gaza and the West Bank are two big reservations…”
A new study out of Oxford University further reveals that this statement is more literal than symbolic, finding that 15% of Israeli settlers illegally living in Palestine are US citizens; see IB Times. (Of Israelis overall, only 2% are US citizens.)
Though law on the issue is unambiguous and every authoritative body agrees Israeli settlements are war crimes, the Israeli government entices the settlers, many of whom are religious extremists needing no enticement, through subsidies, and the US subsidizes Israel with nearly $4 billion per year, in addition to lethal weapons transfers and other forms of support, such as blocking (virtually alone in the world) all UN resolutions condemning the settlements. Israel is the largest foreign recipient of US aid, and Obama has raised the level of aid after each of Israel’s three major massacres against Gaza since he took office, even though Israel is a super-rich nuclear state already armed to the teeth.
Robert Fantina points out that while “the average cost of tuition to earn a bachelor’s degree [in Israel] is $2,537.00 in U.S. dollars … [i]n the U.S., the average tuition for a bachelor’s degree is $29,408.00.”
Apparently, the US prioritizes even the war crime of colonization over the education of its own citizenry. But, considering analyst Finian Cunningham’s point that the “weaponization of ignorance” is one of the deadliest arrows in the US quiver, and that the US itself is the largest remaining settler-colonial society, still repressing the native populations and selling off their land for resource extraction, this shouldn’t confuse.
Author focuses on force dynamics, national and global, contributing regularly to Counter Currents. @_DirtyTruths
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