Israel’s Settlement On Capital Hill
By Robert Weitzel
29 November,
2008
Countercurrents.org
“With
[traditional Israeli defense strategists] it’s all about tanks
and land and controlling territories . . . and this hilltop and that
hilltop. All these things are worthless.”
-Incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
Soon after the sand settled
following the Six Day War in 1967, Jewish settlements began dotting
the hills in the occupied territories. These settlements are typically
located on the high ground to better control the surrounding landscape.
Today there are 127 Jewish settlements with a population exceeding
468,000 in the West Bank, the Golan Heights and in the suburbs of
East Jerusalem—the last of nearly 8,000 settlers were removed
from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
According to a recent Amnesty International report, “In the
first six months of 2008 Israel has expanded settlements in the West
Bank/East Jerusalem at a faster rate than in the previous seven years.”
Unbeknownst to most Americans, Israel’s westernmost settlement
is not located in Palestine-Israel, but is 6000 miles away on the
high ground overlooking Foggy Bottom in Washington D.C.
This Capital Hill settlement of pro-Israel lobbies and think tanks
strategically controls the high ground overlooking the United States’
Middle East policy landscape by having made kibbutzniks of most members
of the executive and legislative branches of the government—including
President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden (a wannabe Zionist),
and future Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chief of Staff Rahm
Emanuel (a born Zionist).
While Israel’s hilltop settlements in the occupied territories—violating
over 30 UN Security Council resolutions since 1968—are “facts
on the ground” that make the two state peace solution unlikely,
their hilltop settlement in the center of the world’s only superpower
makes it equally unlikely that Israel’s right-wing government
will feel compelled to end their “self defensive” brutalization
of the Palestinian people, which has been condemned by the international
community (UN, EU) as crimes against humanity.
John Holmes, UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, said
that Israel’s blockade of vital supplies to the Gaza Strip in
retaliation for rocket attacks “amounts to collective punishment
and is contrary to international humanitarian law.”
Collective punishment is forbidden by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva
Convention, which states, “No protected person may be punished
for an offense he or she has not personally committed.” A “protected
person” is someone who is under the control of an “Occupying
Power of which they are not nationals.” Only the most ideologically
blinkered individual would fail to recognize the Gaza Strip as occupied
territory.
Israel’s current blockade of Gaza, which began on November 4,
is resulting in what the UN Relief and Works Agency is calling a humanitarian
catastrophe. Before the blockade, 1000 truckloads of food, fuel and
essential supplies per day were necessary to sustain the 1.5 million
Palestinians imprisoned behind the concrete and barbed wire of the
25-mile long border. Eighty percent of Gazans live on two dollars
a day and depend on international aid to survive. Since the border
crossings were sealed, less than 100 truckloads have been permitted
through.
The imprisoned Palestinians—50 percent of whom are younger than
15—are slowly starving. They lack the fuel to generate electricity
for lighting, water purification, and sewage treatment. The erratic,
intermittent electrical power puts the lives of patients in intensive
care wards and those who are connected to live-sustaining equipment
in grave peril. The lack of basic medicines such as antibiotics and
insulin pose an equally fatal threat.
Twenty human rights organizations and all Israeli and international
journalists have been barred from entering the Gaza Strip since the
blockade began. A letter of protest signed by most major news organizations
was sent to Prime Minister Olmert. Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman
Shlomo Dror responded to the letter by saying that Israel was afraid
journalists would inflate the Palestinians’ suffering. No one
is allow to speak out on behalf of this beleaguered population.
President-elect Obama has been speaking out “swiftly and boldly”
about the economic catastrophe threatening our 401Ks, but his silence
regarding the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe threatening the lives
of Palestinians is both deafening and telling of the price he’s
willing to pay to maintain his status as kibbutznik-in-good-standing
in Israel’s westernmost hilltop settlement.
Obama’s unconditional support for Israel’s policy of “self
defense,” preemptive attacks, and repressive occupations is
not one iota different from that of George W. Bush, an internationally
recognized war criminal. This is not an encouraging beginning for
a man whose battle cry was “change we can believe in.”
By any rational, humanitarian standard, Israel’s treatment of
the Palestinians amounts to collective punishment and crimes against
humanity. Perpetrators of such crimes, whether they are individuals
or governments or willing allies, are criminals who should one day
sit in the dock of the International Court of Justice in The Hague—just
as defendants sat in a Nuremberg court 60 years ago—and be held
accountable for their crimes.
Until Israel’s hilltop settlement in our nation’s capital
is dismantled, allowing for the possibility of a just and lasting
peace in Palestine-Israel, its influence on both branches of our government
and its insidious affect on US Middle East policy will continue to
make willing—or unwitting—kibbutzniks of all Americans.
We will be held as complicit, and as culpable, as the citizens of
the country whose leaders sat in the dock at Nuremberg.
The world will ask, “Why didn’t you do something to stop
it?” The majority of us will reply, “We didn’t know!”
Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to Media With a Conscience (www.mwcnews.net). His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He can be contacted at: [email protected]