At last a significant portion of white America seems to be awakening to the massive injustices imposed on African Americans by a racist police system whose roots can be traced back to 19th century slave patrols.
Turning points
We seem to be approaching a turning point that will either produce positive reforms that will invigorate democracy and lift up the humanity of all people, or take us down the road to a full-fledged police state.
Israel and Palestine are also at a turning point, but with no positive outcome in sight. Zionism’s drive to expand across the land of ‘Greater Israel’ will receive a decisive boost when Prime Minister Netanyahu puts his plan to annex West Bank land before the Knesset, possibly on July 1.
Netanyahu refers to annexation as ‘another glorious chapter in the history of Zionism’ without specifying how much land his administration intends to annex and whether the process of turning Israel’s de facto control on the ground into de jure sovereignty will take place in stages or one giant step gobbling up the 30% of the West Bank mapped out in the Trump plan.
The push back from settlers
Some settler leaders of the Yesha Council are not happy. They want the entire West Bank, and fear that if Netanyahu follows the blueprint of the Trump plan, scattered reservation-like ‘enclaves’ where Palestinian are forced to live might one day be declared a Palestinian ‘state.’
They are not mollified by the assurance that these fragmented mini-bantustans would each be entirely encircled by Israel’s walls and surveillance devices, and that annexation would ensure Israel’s sovereignty over the whole of the West Bank’s rich water resources, including in the Jordan Valley, which are so essential to the settler project.
The complicity of the US Congress
For much too long Members of Congress, especially Democrats, have been giving lip service to a negotiated ‘two states’ solution, while turning a blind eye to Israel’s relentless settlement expansion and ongoing appropriation of Palestinian land that has destroyed the possibility of a sovereign Palestinian state being established alongside Israel.
For much too long the US has annually bestowed on Israel billions of our tax dollars, despite provisions of the US Foreign Assistance Act and the US Arms Export Control Act that prohibit assistance to any country that engages in the pattern of human rights violations documented over the years by UN bodies, civil society organizations and the US State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
For much too long international efforts to induce Israel to end its Occupation and abide by international law have been thwarted by US diplomacy, with no fewer than 43 UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel vetoed by the US since 1972.
Is Israel to be above the law and exempt from principles of international legitimacy simply because of the power of its benefactor, the United States? Are fundamentals of international legality, such as the prohibition of the acquisition of territory by force, to become no more than ink on paper?
The latest Congressional outrage
On June 3, with Israel poised to become a de jure Apartheid state, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee endorsed a version of S.3176, the US-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2020, without first making its text public. The bill mandates that before 2026 Congress is barred from giving Israel less than $3.8 billion a year – but it can give it MORE of our tax dollars.
This is outrageous – not least because Congress appears to have no compunction about subsidizing Israel’s wrongdoing at a time when those funds would be much better used at home to deal with the impact of the pandemic.
We must raise our voices!
So what can we do? We must demand that our Members of Congress go beyond expressing “grave concern” at Israel’s proposed annexation, and be prepared to sanction its conduct. It is high time to end US complicity in Israel’s war crimes and to stop treating the massive amount of aid that Congress gives Israel a sacred cow that can’t be touched. Why reward Israel for a colossal breach of international law?
Please tell your Senators to OPPOSE S.3176, the US-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2020, when it comes to the Senate floor for a vote. And tell your Representative that if Israel moves to annex Palestinian land, there should be an immediate suspension of US military aid.
In the words of protestors denouncing the police murder of George Floyd and countless other African Americans: Enough is enough!
Nancy Murray
The Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
