Trump and Palestine

For decades, much of the world seemed to believe the fairy tale that the United States was a neutral broker, working for a solution to the issues plaguing Palestine and Israel. The U.S. sponsored endless rounds of negotiations, ostensibly looking for an end to these issues.

Before this writer points out the nonsense of that belief, allow him to state two, self-evident (one would think) truths:

(1) No broker is needed. All that is required is for Israel to adhere to international law. This means removing all the illegal settlers, ending the blockade of the Gaza Strip, allowing all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and stopping the theft of Palestinian natural resources (such as water).

(2) Negotiations, even if they were required, which they certainly are not, can only be successful when each side has something the other side wants, that can only be obtained by surrendering something it has. Israel takes whatever it wants from Palestine with complete impunity; there can be no negotiations between those two parties.

Now, back to the fantasy of the U.S. as a neutral broker.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s record in this area is hardly laudable. First, he moved the U.S. embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in violation of international law. This move was condemned by most of the global community in a United Nations General Assembly session shortly after it was made. Palestinians see Jerusalem as the site of their future capital, as does most of the rest of the world.

Second, he put in charge of creating the so-called ‘deal of the century’ his incompetent, Zionist son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is a personal friend of Israeli Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu, and who has investments in illegal settlements. Neutrality, anyone?

Third, Trump cut of all funding to U.N. agencies that assist Palestinian refugees.

Fourth, he closed the PLO office in Washington, D.C.

All this plays well to his fundamental Christian base, which believes that the Bible should be a guide for governments to operate and, most bizarrely, that God determines who should live where. They also seem to believe that Deity overlooks one group of people treating another abominably; isn’t there something in the Ten Commandments (you remember those old things) about loving one’s neighbor as oneself? The cruel barbarity with which Israelis treat Palestinians doesn’t seem to meet that standard.

Trump’s goal seems to be to make things so difficult for the Palestinians that they will accept any deal, no matter how bad for them, and how one-sided for Israel. By cutting off all funds that in any way assist Palestinians, he will bring them close to starvation. He believes (erroneously) that his determination that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel makes it so.

Yet he is, incredibly, unaware of the resiliency of the Palestinian people. They have undergone over 70 years of oppression by Israel and internationally-sanctioned injustice, and yet the resist. They are deprived of weapons other than stones, but still they stand up for their rights. They bury loved ones, murdered by Israelis; they mourn them, and then return to the streets to resist. They suffer the horror of having homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and media centers bombed, all in violation of international law, and yet they continue to attend school, marry, rear children and resist.

Perhaps Trump’s blatant bias against the Palestinians will induce the rest of the world to act. His overt hostility toward the Palestinians and their basic human rights is on clear display for the entire world to see. Even U.N. Secretary General António Guterres has suggested an armed force as one possibility to protect the Palestinians from Israel. This move, unfortunately, would require U.N. Security Council approval, and the U.S., for reasons that can’t even be imagined, would veto such a resolution. Trump and his cohorts in government would prefer to watch Palestinian blood flow, rather than do anything to stop Israel from spilling it.

There have been some good signs. Paraguay, which followed the U.S.’s illegal lead in moving its embassy to Israel to Jerusalem in May has a new president, who is moving it back to Tel Aviv. In response to the U.S. defunding the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, eleven countries (Germany, Russia, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland) will send their donations early. Germany has promised to significantly increase its funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). All this, coupled with the vote in the U.N. General Assembly that declared Trump’s naming of Jerusalem ‘null and void’ (128 in favor of the resolution; 9 opposed; the remainder either abstaining or absent) indicates that Palestine has not been forgotten.

But this is not enough; the Palestinian people are suffering from decades of oppression, and it is long past time for the international community to invoke international law, name Israel an apartheid nation and isolate it, as was done to South Africa a generation ago. This isolation is being done unofficially, and with increasing success, by individuals through the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement. The nations that still do not officially recognize Palestine must do so; some of them, including Ireland and England, have passed non-binding resolutions to do so. This must now be made into law.

If left to the United States, Palestine will soon be only a note in history books, while Palestinians suffer as second-class citizens in an Israel that doesn’t welcome or accept Arabs or people of African descent. Tolerating this blatant injustice is typical for the United States, which installs brutal dictators to replace democratically-elected, leftist governments, and where citizens of African descent are routinely killed by mainly white police officers. But it isn’t typical of all other nations, and those that work to support equality and human rights at home and abroad must stand up for the Palestinians. History will already judge generations harshly for allowing this brutality, but it can record that, eventually, justice was served.

Originally published on 2018-09-14

Author: Robert Fantina

Source: Counter Punch

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!

Donate to Support Us

We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

[wpedon id=”4696″ align=”left”]

READ MORE!

Аbout a Greater Serbia

The Western-backed myth of a Greater SerbiaMuch space, time and efforts have been devoted in the recent history of West Balkans, and in particular in the latest political upheavals, about the alleged project of a Greater Serbia especially by the Western authors either academic scholars or journalists.[1] The issue must be, however, considered together with its counterparts from Croatia (a Greater Croatia) and Albania (a Greater Albania). There are two focal questions that arose here:Were all these projects serious and what was the origin of this maximalist concept of forming the national states in the otherwise ethnically mixed area?Whose exact ...

Kosovo’s Political Murders: Unpunished but Not Forgotten

The first thing you hear is the slow-moving clatter of a wheelchair. Then comes his voice. Fetah Rudi survived an attempted assassination which left him paralysed for life, and has spent more than 17 years suffering the consequences.Kosovo Liberation Army - A Balkan Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization a la HezbollahIn June 1999, Rudi was one of the Kosovo Albanians who was detained and tortured in a Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA prison.A few months later in December 2000, Rudi - a member of the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, which at the time was President Ibrahim Rugova’s party - became a ...

The Trump Administration: “Ship of Fools”

The reaction to the Syrian gassing incident shows that the U.S. ship-of-state is being piloted by fools. Fool-in-Chief is President Donald Trump, who has duly followed the Neocon script by leaping to the conclusion that President al-Assad’s Syrian government is responsible when in fact there is no evidence of an intentional attack. Even if Syrian planes hit a munitions warehouse, the gas had been stored there by anti-government rebels /terrorists. It would be impossible and contrary to common sense that the Syrian government could have done this on purpose, if they did it at all. Fool-at-the-Podium is Sean Spicer, helplessly trying to ...

The U.S. Wars and Hostile Actions around the Globe: A Preliminary List

There is a reason that most countries polled in December 2013 by Gallup called the United States the greatest threat to peace in the world, and why Pew found that viewpoint increased in 2017.But it is a reason that eludes that strain of U.S. academia that first defines war as something that nations and groups other than the United States do, and then concludes that war has nearly vanished from the earth.Since World War II, during a supposed golden age of peace, the United States military has killed or helped kill some 20 million people, overthrown at least 36 governments, ...

This is Croatia: A Book of Basic Info about the Country (PDF)

Zagreb, 1941Become familiar with the basic info about one of the most beautiful countries in the world - Croatia. Photos, data & recommendations where to stay in order to enjoy this Adriatic pearl. If you are not the Serb.Split, Dalmatia, Croatia, 2019: "Kill the Serb" on the car with the plates from SerbiaOrigins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to ...

Ukraine: Zbig’s Grand Chessboard – How the West was Checkmated

A quick review of Ukraine, Zbig’s Grand Chessboard – How the West Was Checkmated is simple – this amazing work should be in everyone’s reading library. Anyone who cares to understand the situation of what has happened, and is happening in Ukraine needs to read this book. It covers the history of the dissolution of the USSR, the resulting creation of Ukraine, and the history of the U.S.’ attempts through various government and non-government organizations (e.g. Soros) towards the first failed colour revolution (Orange, 2004), then on towards the second attempt resulting in the successful installation of the noenazi puppet ...

NATO’s “Drang Nach Suden”

During the final years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the US reached a verbal agreement whereby Moscow would allow for the reunification of Germany in exchange for the US agreeing to never expand NATO further East. As history attests, the US shamelessly reneged on its guarantee the moment the Soviet Union collapsed and was powerless to effectively stop it, swallowing up almost the entirety of Eastern Europe (save for Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine) and all the Baltic States by 2004. What’s less studied by observers is NATO’s “Drang Nach Suden” (Drive to the South), which represents one ...

Albanian Highlanders and Kosovo

South-East Serbia's province of Kosovo-Metochia (KosMet) is an autochthonous Slavic, in particular Serb, land. Now, the focal question became how this province became “disputed land”, and, in particular, what it has to do with ethnic-Albanians? In the following text, this issue is going to be considered in more details, from the geographical, (pre)historic, anthropologic, religious, and political points of view. We start with the geography, in particular, the physical geography of West Balkans.Kosovo Liberation Army, August 1998, Klechka village, KosMetThe region of Dinaric Alps It is known that physical and mental structures of a particular population are determined by many ...

Why is Kosovo’s Rebellion Our War?

“What we are really talking about is a humanitarian disaster precipitated by the cold political calculus of an autocratic leader who has pursued a political strategy against his own citizens,” said U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, supreme allied commander in Europe.Gen. Clark’s target was Slobodan Milosevic. Yet his words might have been used by another American general named Robert E. Lee, about another “autocratic leader” named Abraham Lincoln.The day Clark made his statement bolstering the case for air strikes in Kosovo, the fall issue of Independent Review arrived. In a piece on Lincoln, “micromanager of the war effort,” scholar Thomas DiLorenzo ...

Why can Hillary Clinton not be US president?

Like in Israel, US ruling elites plan for the future strategies and choose presidents to suit the needs. After using a Black President Obama to attack North Africans and Arab nations for their energy resources in order to ensure energy security of the superpower, now the US leaders seem to think of using a female President in the name of Hillary to advance US interests globally.Former US state secretary Hillary Clinton and associates are being pampered by those who are scared of any possible change in US foreign policy towards a possible thaw and neutrality in world affairs, notwithstanding what ...

Article in Saudi Daily: U.S. Planned, Carried Out 9/11 Attacks – But Blames Others for Them

On the eve of President Obama's April 2016 visit to Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Congress began debating the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), that would, inter alia, allow the families of victims of the September 11 attacks to sue the Saudi government for damages. Also in April 2016, the New York Times published that a 2002 congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks had found that Saudi officials living in the United States at the time had a hand in the plot. The commission's conclusions, said the paper, were specified in a report that has not been released publicly.[1] ...

What Should We Expect from the Talks on Syria in Astana?

At the beginning of March 2017, it will be exactly six years since the beginning of the conflict in Syria. Some journalists even make unfavorable forecasts wondering about the very possibility of reconciliation. Complicated by the foreign intervention on the part of Israel war in Lebanon, for example, had been for about 15 years. But even a six-year term it is too long. That is why we may hope that the meeting in Astana scheduled on January 23 will eventually lead to a positive result. And then there will be an occasion to consolidate the success of the negotiations in Geneva ...

Kosovo and Metohija is an Integral Part of Serbia

The real question is not whether the status of Kosovo and Metohija should be negotiated; the actual questions to be asked are: On which basis? About what? Whom with?The sole legitimate basis is that Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of Serbia currently placed under UN mandate, pending a Security Council decision ending it. In other words, this is mandate cannot be terminated either by the EU, or NATO, the USA, Germany, or France and, should this idea ever occurred to anyone, Serbia cannot end it, either.International law (the UN Charter, the OSCE Final Act) and the Constitution of ...

The Banana Republic of America: Democracy be Damned

We are witnessing a presidential election of epic farce. The Republican Party nominates the caricature of a tinpot dictator. The Democratic National Committee is a caricature too, of comic opera: exposed in collusion with a favored candidate it anoints a felon, shown to be such but unindicted.We are witnessing the collapse of democratic presidential politics. It is a derelict process, complex, absurdly long, insanely expensive, tedious, inconsistent and now chaotic.Professional football is a public extravaganza, its six-month season culminating in the tangible climax of the Superbowl. It is dwarfed in spectacle however by the same suspense and dramatic finale of ...

U.S. Bombs Dropped in 2016

How incredible is this... The United States is technically not at war with any country right now but dropped more than 26,000 bombs in just 2016 and this under an "anti-war" President. We have an entire generation of Americans who have lived only under a system of "perpetual war". The time is long overdue to redefine these issues. Map of the US bombed states in 2016 with the number of dropped bombs Originally published on 2017-01-06 Author: Ben Swann Source: Ben Swann FB Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest. Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement! Donate to Support Us We would like to ask you to consider ...

How the War in Ukraine Started

Clear and convincing evidence will be presented here that, under U.S. President Barack Obama, the U.S. Government had a detailed plan, which was already active in June 2013, to take over Russia's main naval base, which is in Sevastopol in Crimea, and to turn it into a U.S. naval base. There can now be no question that the war in Ukraine started, and resulted from, the U.S. Government's plan to take over all of Ukraine, and especially to take over that Russian naval base, in Crimea, which then was in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine didn't start at the time when ...

Ukraine’s Cult of Stepan Bandera: Not a Detail, but a Cornerstone

During the recent years of the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, there has been one issue where the Western mainstream press simply cannot fully ignore or reject the Russian arguments. This issue concerns the life and actions of Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) and his followers from what is known as the “Banderite” faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN, a far-right organization that took terrorist actions against Polish and Soviet officials from the 1920s to the 1950s and which is now legally protected from any criticism in Ukraine).THE “WRONG” AND “RIGHT” VICTIMSBecause Bandera was born on January 1, 1909, celebrations ...

The Russian World and European Civilization

In recent years, both the Western as well as the liberal Russian press have had a lot to say about Russian “barbarianism,” as if to contrast it with European “civilization.” But a closer inspection – through the prism of the heroic pages of Russian history – of the two groups’ moral ideals and actual lives presents us with quite a different picture.For example, in pagan times, ancient Russians never worshipped a god of war, although their contemporaries in Europe were transfixed by their own martial deity, constructing an entire epic narrative around the concepts of war and conquest.After defeating the ...

The 2004 “March Pogrom” in Kosovo by Muslim Albanians

The 2004 “March Pogrom” in Kosovo: A book of photo evidence! (Making ISIL of a Greater Muslim Albania). Such books you will not find at any kind of the Western mass-media or university teaching programme's reading list.Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]Save

President of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) Ramush Haradinaj, a Kosovo Albanian former guerilla commander who served briefly as prime minister, speaks during an interview with Reuters at the AAK headquarters in Pristina December 4, 2012. REUTERS/Hazir Reka

Greater Albania and the Balkans

The Balkans has always been cursed by a recurring theme: that each entity within it can, at some point, become greater and more consuming in territory than the next neighbour. Each nation has, and in some instances continues, to nurse dreams of enlargement, pecking away at borders and assuming that few will notice. Strategies of expansion tend to have one problem: they are hard to evaluate in the way of conventional agreement, contract or conspiracy. For decades, historians of various shades would attribute to Imperial Germany a conscious, global goal of conquest, mistaking the plans of contingent invasion with actual policy. In ...