Did the Palestinians build death camps? Did the Palestinians subject Jews to pogroms? If so, I'd probably go along with radical Zionism even though it is something Theodore Herzl didn't subscribe to.
Prior to radical Zionism, Jews, Arabs and Christians lived for many hundreds of years side by side in that God forsaken strip of desert--if not necessarily practicing good neighbor policies--then at least in a symbiotic capitalist construct. If they had a common enemy it might have been the Ottomans. After that, to a lesser extent, the British. And the heat. Everybody bitches about the heat.
Radical Zionism believes that Jews (more specifically only Orthodox Jews) have a right to that land because a fucking burning bush (a fucking talking burning bush no less!) said they could have the land 5,000 years ago. Don't believe me--look it up in the same kooky book of laws that forbids eating shrimp, ham sammiches and considers homosexuality an abomination--including amateur videos with woman-on-woman action.
And according to the same wacky anthology of desert camp fire tales, ghost stories and a lascivious obsession with who was porking whom, the Canaanites owned this land 6,000 years ago. Their descendants are Levants. Shouldn't the Lebanese also have some claim to the land? Maybe the Poospatuck and Unkechaug tribes should be the ones levying taxes and controlling rents in Manhattan. Or the Lenni-Lenape tribes running numbers, drugs and trafficking prostitutes in New Jersey.
Know what I think? I think that any progressive quasi Commie at heart (my kind of people) who claims to have compassion for the dispossessed, who slaps a FREE TIBET sticker on the right side of their rear car bumper and an AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL sticker on the left, who champions the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the right to habeas corpus, freedom of speech, the right to pursue happiness, gays in the military, gay marriage, universal health care, civil rights, equal opportuntiy legislation, and all that power to the people, rainbow coalition jazz BUT dismisses the plight of the Palestinians is a blind, hypocritical cunt. The Palestinian people are subjected to pogroms and live a diasporic existence, caused, ironically, by the one group of people who should be most sympathetic to this.
Gaza is the new Warsaw Ghetto--with a few exceptions. Jews could leave the ghetto and enter into Warsaw proper to work. The Palestinians do not have the same privilege. And obviously, no trains to death camps, but if those right wing Biblical border lunatics could get away with it, I do not doubt that they'd be stock piling Zyklon B as I am typing this rant.
And while this is going on (and on and on) we not-so-quiet Americans who believe in separation of church and state continue to send secular tax dollars to this fascist theocratic regime. Why? Beats me. Maybe it has something to do with AIPAC. There is one thing and one thing only that all US politicos running for national office can always agree upon. One cannot seriously wage a successful campaign without first giving AIPAC its mandatory blow job, figuratively speaking. I hope.
There are many, many decent, fair minded people in Israel and Jews around the world who are on a Quixotic pacifist mission to grant civil liberties to Palestinians, who want to return to them their lands, dismantle settlements, even give them a real country. But they're outliers. And apparently, they're pussies.
At the same time, to be fair, when I suggest to Palestinians friends that, according to the book of me, in order to achieve basic freedoms and civil liberties and perhaps reclaim land currently in violation of God knows how many UN resolutions, they need their Palestinian Gandhi, their Palestinian Martin Luther King, their Palestinian Nelson Mandela. But instead, they have Hamas and douche bags like Ahmadinejad speaking for them and continue to believe that violence is the only means to an end.
On the other hand, (and this really baffles me) radical Zionists have on their side Christian fanatics who believe Israel must exist in order for baby Jesus to come thundering out of the skies to whisk them off to paradise--(and when he does, everyone else will go to hell, including Jews, so go figure).
The UN granted Israel a charter in 1948. Any military action within those borders is legal, outside those borders in violations of international law.
The Saudi Peace proposal--which could put an end to all of this (including piracy and murder in international waters) doesn't even ask for a return to those borders in the original 1948 charter. The plan, endorsed by the League of Arab Nations, asks for a return to pre-1967 borders and Palestinian statehood (which is in the 1948 UN charter).
As a left leaning secularist, a half ass Buddhist and hard core pacifist, I can only pray that a Palestinian passive resistance movement has gotten its jump start with the humanitarian flotilla and that it will continue to gain steam. As a realist who understands real politik and who has to live in the real world from time to time, I know that next up will be more rockets, more bullets, more bulldozers, more bombs. Same old shit.
