Crush US powers, resist Israel, save Palestine

M Mahfuzur Rahman: Journalist Theodor Herzl, father of modern political Zionism, had set out his vision of a Jewish state and homeland for the Jewish people in his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) in the late 19th century.

But before he was born in 1860, British Christian writer and lobbyist lord Shaftesbury in an article published in the Quarterly Review in 1839 called for England to support a Jewish state in Palestine and used the phrase, Zionism. And all violation, oppression and repression had been started against the Palestinian people then.

The Austro-Hungarian journalist, playwright and political activist Herzl, in chapter 6 of his book, The Jewish State, he concluded saying:

“Let me repeat once more my opening words: The Jews who wish for a State will have it. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes.”

To historians, Shaftesbury invented the phrase and was also blamed and responsible for the propagandist slogan, “A country without a nation for a nation without a country’ which later been modified into the Zionist slogan, “A land without a people for a people without a land’. And later this racial slogan was worded in attempting to propagate another anti-Palestine slogan, ‘Palestine is a land without a people,” and it was a great lie against Palestinians.

All of that cruel propaganda was formulated by the British-German-American Anti-Palestinian propagandists. Those are the core things of the creation of the landless Israel and of the near-century conflict between the Israel and the Palestine. But why is the conflict going too long?



For Palestinians, violence is not new there. Israeli forces have been killing Palestinians since the Israel was declared independence 70 years ago on May 14, 1948 where America is there long-ally from the very beginning. According to the Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs of the United States Department of State, on May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. The then US President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation almost on the same day!

To continue the planned killings, Israelis have another slogan against Palestinians- “The more you protest against us, the more you will be killed.” The United Nations Human Rights Council reportedly said that 112 Palestinians including 14 children have been killed by the Israelis and more than 12,000 have been seriously injured since the protests began on March 30 this year while in accordance with a BBC report, in the course of Israel's creation in 1948 and its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, more than half the Arabs of pre-1948 Palestine are thought to have been displaced. Today there are millions of Palestinians living in exile from homes and land their families had inhabited for generations.

Israel and Palestine. Still 70 years they are in disagreements, they are in extreme confliction. And yet some 700,000 Palestinians became refugees with oppressed decades after decades. Someone says the main conflict is with Islam vs Jews but it is not true.

It’s also a modern propaganda against the Palestinians. Religious disagreements have created some problems between the Israelis and Palestinians but actually, the conflict begins as a struggle over land of approximately 10,000 square miles!

If we lend from the history, from the end of World War I until 1948, the area that Palestine and Israel claimed was known internationally as Palestine. Following the war of 1948–1949, this land was divided into three parts: the State of Israel, the West Bank (of the Jordan River) and the Gaza Strip.

During the 1948 war, 750,000 Palestinians fled in terror or were actively expelled from their ancestral homeland and turned into refugees. The state of Israel then refused to allow them to return and either destroyed their villages entirely or expropriated their land, orchards, houses, businesses and personal possessions for the use of the Jewish population.



This was the birth of the state of Israel and this was the root cause of the Palestine-Israel conflict. (“The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict” by Jews for Justice in the Middle East, published in Berkeley, CA, 2001).

In this long course of Israeli conflict, violation, killings and illegal settlement in Palestine, the USA is remaining as their great ally of all time. It is now open to all that the Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II.

A recent study shows that the United States has provided Israel $134.7 billion (current, or noninflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. Almost all U.S. bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance, although in the past Israel also received significant economic assistance.



In accordance with an article, published in the Palestinian Chronicle, speaking on June 4, 2008, before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the day after receiving the Democratic nomination for President, Obama stated the following:

Year after year, century after century, Jews carried on their traditions, and their dream of a homeland, in the face of impossible odds. The story made a powerful impression on me. I had grown up without a sense of roots.

My father was black; he was from Kenya, and he left us when I was 2. My mother was white; she was from Kansas, and I'd moved with her to Indonesia and then back to Hawaii. In many ways, I didn't know where I came from.

So I was drawn to the belief that you could sustain a spiritual, emotional and cultural identity. And I deeply understood the Zionist idea - that there is always a homeland at the center of our story.

I also learned about the horror of the Holocaust, and the terrible urgency it brought to the journey home to Israel.

"… Those who threaten Israel threaten us. Israel has always faced these threats on the front lines. And I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel's security."

In this speech towards the Israelis, Obama had hit all the talking points of Israel's state propaganda! Did not he support the illegal Israeli statehood? Did not he bow down to the illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestine?

Did he support the State of Palestine in any means? And these ways the American powers managed strengths for the Israelis against the Palestinians, and indeed against the humanity.



These ways the America had been extended their powers to those of the regions for geopolitical stands but the Arabians bulls (The Arab rulers) always were used as slaves by Americans. They are unable to raise voices against the illegal Israeli statehood. They even can't talk about the decades-long Israeli massacre in Palestine! The actual Arab cowards!

The recent tensions between Israel and Palestine arisen after Trump's announcement of recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and transferring its embassy to Jerusalem, reversing nearly seven decades of American policy and created a frantic situation among the Palestinian people and bloodshed started again in full swing upon the unarmed Palestinians by the brutal Israeli cops. US's Trump, who is mostly known for his bulling decision since grabbed power, is to be blamed for the recent massacre and the history will try him best and his America as well.

The American public's long time sympathy for Israel against Palestine is also not new, because they are mostly kept in misinformation what is happening and going on against Palestinians.

The Congressional Research Service, known as Congress's think tank, which is a public policy research arm of the United States Congress, summarized a recent research report this way:

In January 2018, the Pew Research Center has released a poll results about the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. Among other findings, Pew reported that "46% of Americans say they sympathize more with the Israelis, 16% say they sympathize more with the Palestinians and about four-in-ten (38%) either volunteer that their sympathies are with both (5%), neither (14%) or that they do not know (19%)." Pew also highlighted a widening partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats over their support for Israel, noting that 79% of Republicans sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians, compared with 27% of Democrats.

If we think about the solution to the conflict, it is complicated to resolve the crisis. We have some questions- What are the issues between Israel and Palestine? What do the Palestinians want? What does the Israel want? What are the real obstacles in resolving the crisis?



Palestinians, in fine, want Israeli to withdraw to pre-1967 borders and establish independent Palestine state in West Bank and Gaza Strip. They also want East Jerusalem (Jerusalem is situated between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea bordering between Israel and the West Bank. It's home to some of the holiest sites in both Judaism and Islam, and so both Israel and Palestine want to make it their capital) as the capital of Independent Palestine state while Israel wants the sovereignty over Jerusalem and the recognition of Israel as a Jewish State.

Solutions? It's far away from the reality. Israel wanted to be recognized as the Jewish State but they are continuously building illegal settlements, which the Palestinians and the international community see as an obstacle to a two-state solution. The majority of Palestinians, on the other hand, can't recognize Israel as a Jewish State when many Israelis and Palestinians support a two-state solution with different conceptions. But both Israel and Palestine can't believe each other and both of them believe that the other does not want peace. It's lack of trust. So unexpectedly the bloodshed will continue between them for long.

For Palestinians, I think, their dream won't come true anymore. They have to recognize the Israel as a Jewish State by any means, because the Israel has already established the strong statehood with the help of Jewish, American and European supports there when Palestine failed to attract the International community only because of their internal conflict. Israel has gradually been developing their country with all means of development while the Palestinians are lagging behind. Israel now advances with education, science and technology with new invention and discovery when a major part of Palestinian is remaining with illiteracy. The Israel is united with their national ideology and all-out interest while Palestinians are divided into many groups.



It will be so inflexible to go for a solution to the crisis between Israel and Palestine because there are two infighting groups in the Palestine one is Hamas and the other is Fatah. Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni-Islamist fundamentalist organization while Fatah's political ideology is Centre-left to left-wing. The two major political groups are in loggerhead. In 2006 parliamentary election in Palestine, Fatah lost its majority to Hamas and the Hamas victory led to a conflict between Fatah and Hamas.

The two major political groups ideologically divided in resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict. Hamas only accepts the formation of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, without recognizing the statehood of Israel while Fatah calls for building a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders (West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza), recognizing the state of Israel. The two groups had worked towards the same goal of building a Palestinian state but now they had been separated with different ideologies lasting the conflict for long.

To me too, the best solution is a "two-state solution" that would establish Palestine as an independent state and also the sovereign State of Israel with certain area and that is the mainstream approach in resolving the crisis. Bangladesh also reinstated its supports the "two-state solution for long.

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. But it was the wrong and motivated decision on behalf of Israel influenced by the propagandists by which the bloodshed accelerated. But now Palestinians have nothing to do but recognize the State of Israel to stopover conflict because they have already been established.



Hamas and Fatah have to make inevitable compromises among them. Erasing their ideological and political gaps between Hamas and Fatah, Palestinians have to do two things now- recognizing the State of Israel and ending the illegal Israeli settlements soon- They have to earn more international attractions, curbing the US powers and influence to the Israel. By attracting attentions and receiving help from the Arab countries and international communities, they now have to halt illegal Israeli settlement otherwise their differences would make them annihilated.

The global powers should impose sanctions over US and resist them helping the Israeli butchers in killing the unarmed Palestinians. The Palestinian leaders of course can sit and negotiate with the international communities to draw an actual border between the two states and the State of Israel has to leave off their nails and claws towards Palestine.

Footnotes:

• Sand, Shlomo; Verso, "The Invention of the land of Israel"
• Masalha, Nur: Zed, Bible and Zionism
• The Palestine Chronicle (Obama and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict)
• Wagner E. Donald and Davis T. Walter: Zionism and the Quest for Justice in the Holy Land
• "The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict" by Jews for Justice in the Middle East, published in Berkeley, CA, 2001)
• The Congressional Research Service
• U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants (Greenbook) and the U.S. State Department.
• Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research
• The Jewish State, Chapter 6.
• Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs of the United States Department of State

The writer is a journalist at the daily Kalerkantho and he can be reached at [email protected]

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of risingbd.com.

risingbd/Dhaka/June 27, 2018/A K Azad