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Why Rick Perry Gets it Very Wrong About Israel-Palestine
By Eileen Fleming
Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, September 19, 2011
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been to Israel more than
any other presidential candidate and he believes he’s on a mission from God.
In his 11 years in office he also wrested much power
away from that states Legislature.
This citizen of conscience for US
House of Representatives has been to Israel seven times since 2005, but I
spent my time in occupied Palestine, on my mission from God: seek truth and
report it!
When Perry led a delegation to Israel in 2009, he told
The Jerusalem Post, the alliance was a natural one, “When I was here for the
first time some 18 years ago and I was touring the country, the comparison
between Masada and the Alamo was not lost on me. I mean, we're talking about
two groups of people who were willing to give up their lives for freedom and
liberty." [1]
Denial is safe harbor for those who cannot bear
the light of truth, and only the blind miss the glaring similarities of what
European colonists did to the Native Americans and what Israel has done to
the indigenous Palestinians.
Perry’s recent opine piece for
The Jerusalem Post, “The Palestinians’ illegitimate UN gambit” follows with
my corrections to this presidential candidates misunderstandings.
PERRY: “Our nations have developed vital economic and security relationships
in an alliance based on shared democratic principles, deep cultural ties and
common strategic interests.” [2]
On May 28, 1993 Ariel Sharon
explained:
"The terms 'democracy' or 'democratic' are totally
absent from the Declaration of Independence. This is not an accident. The
intention of Zionism was not to bring democracy, needless to say. It was
solely motivated by the creation in Eretz-Isrel of a Jewish state belonging
to all the Jewish people and to the Jewish people alone. This is why any Jew
of the Diaspora has the right to immigrate to Israel and to become a citizen
of Israel."
Indeed America and Israel’s economies are both tied to
an Industrial Government Military SECURITY/Surveillance Complex and the poor
keep getting poorer while the merchants of war are kept fat and happy.
PERRY: “The Jewish state faces growing hostility from Turkey. Its
three decade-old peace with Egypt hangs by a thread. Iran pursues nuclear
weapons its leaders vow to use to annihilate Israel.”
It was
President Harry Truman who crossed out the word “Jewish state” on the draft
of the Establishment of Israel that was cabled him and substituted “State of
Israel” which he affirmed was contingent upon Israel upholding the UN
Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Read more...
Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, Yitzhak Levanon,
fled to Israel following protests that erupted after Israel failed to
apologize for murdering nine Turkish humanitarian activists and killings
five Egyptian Policemen. Some of Egypt’s political parties have also
called for changes to the country's 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
The planned demonstrations in Jordan at the Israeli embassy in Amman on
Thursday forced Israel to pull its ambassador and staff out as the people
called for ending the shameful "peace treaty".
In 2006, Virginia
Tilley, Professor of political science explained:
"In his October
2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word 'map' or the term 'wiped
off.' According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing
services like MEMRI, what he actually said was 'this regime that is
occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.'
"In this
speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being
prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line
in the 1980s-a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so
apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then.
"Mr. Ahmadinejad
had just reminded his audience that the Shah's regime, the Soviet Union, and
Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the
first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in
prison.
"So, too, the 'occupying regime' in Jerusalem would someday
be gone. His message was, in essence: 'This too shall pass.'"
PERRY: “And now, the Palestinian leadership is intent on trashing the
possibility of a negotiated settlement of the conflict with Israel in favor
of unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations. The
Palestinian plan…threatens Israel and insults the United States…They seem to
prefer theatrics in New York to the hard work of negotiation and compromise
that peace will require.”
What decades of negotiations and the
“peace process” have wrought is to disseminate the so-called holy land into
pieces!
What threatens Israel is being held accountable and
responsible for a 44-year military occupation; whereas under international
law occupations are to be temporary and occupiers are not to pilfer
resources, colonize or build a wall on land that belongs to the occupied.
"Financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile. The Israeli
wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical
services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive
groves which have been their families' sole livelihood for generations." [3]
PERRY: “It was a mistake to inject an Israeli construction freeze,
including in Jerusalem, as an unprecedented precondition for talks. Indeed,
the Palestinian leadership had been negotiating with Israel for years,
notwithstanding settlement activity. When the Obama administration demanded
a settlement freeze, it led to a freeze in Palestinian negotiations.”
Obama’s mistake was backing down and negotiations must be done between
equal players; but these two sides have never been equal players and the US
has never been an honest broker for justice that will lead to peace.
PERRY: “In refusing to deal with the recognition of Israel as a Jewish
state, and taking this destabilizing action in the UN, the Palestinians are
signaling that they have no interest in a two-state solution. The
Palestinian leadership’s insistence on the so-called ‘right of return’ of
descendants of Palestinian refugees to Israel’s sovereign territory, thereby
making Jews an ethnic minority in their own state, is a disturbing sign that
the ultimate Palestinian ‘solution’ remains the destruction of the Jewish
state.”
Refusing to recognize the rights of the indigenous
people of the so-called holy land is what has destabilized the Middle East.
And as Israel’s nuclear whistle-blower, Mordechai Vanunu said, “Israel
is not a democracy unless you are a Jew.” [4]
The “so called right
of return” is what Zionists claim for any Jew without any historical
connection to that land to come and colonize upon legally owned Palestinian
property.
The establishment of the State of Israel was
contingent upon upholding the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, which
enshrines:
Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of
movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2)
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to
return to his country.
PERRY: “The circumvention of serious
negotiations by PA President Mahmoud Abbas demonstrates a basic failure of
leadership and a betrayal of the true interests of the Palestinian people.”
The Palestinian Civil Society Calls for:
(1) Ending the
occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall.
(2) Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of
Israel to full equality.
(3) Respecting, protecting, and promoting
the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties
as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
PERRY: “Since the Oslo Accords
were signed in 1993, the US has provided more than $4 billion in aid to the
Palestinian Authority. This year alone the Obama administration is seeking
to secure $550 million in funding for Palestinians.”
By all accounts
the United States has given more money to Israel than to any other country.
The Congressional Research Service’s conservative estimate of total
cumulative US aid to Israel (not adjusted for inflation) from 1949 through
2010 is $109.001 billion.
Daily U.S. Military
Aid to Israel and the Palestinians
Fiscal Year 2011
During Fiscal
Year 2011, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least
$8.2 million
per day in military aid and
$0 in military
aid to the Palestinians. (View
Sources & More Information)
PERRY: “The United States must
not condone and legitimize through our assistance a regime whose actions are
in direct opposition to a peace agreement with our ally Israel, and in
direct opposition to our own vital interests.”
Our vital interests
should be what is best for all Americans first and the “special
relationship” with Israel has become a liability for US!
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad involvement in the terror upon America, “By his own
account stemmed from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy
favoring Israel.” [5]
Abdulmutallab’s attempt to blow up a plane on
Christmas Day in 2009, was fueled by “his sympathies toward the Palestinians
and anger over Israel’s actions in Gaza.” [Ibid]
Of the 193 UN
members, 122 already recognize Palestinian statehood. Israel has diplomatic
relations with 156 states.
The Palestinians have rightly lost faith
in the leaders of the West to be honest brokers for justice that could bring
peace, and the showdown on 20 September at the UN-the body that partitioned
the land and thus is very responsible for the ongoing disaster is the very
body that must intervene.
Recognition of a Palestinian state in
the UN will not end the military occupation, but it will gain virtual
citizenship, a passport and sovereignty, legal protection against violence
by Israeli settlers, the right to fight back in self-defense if attacked and
potential backing for their claims from international tribunals such as the
International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.
"The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The
nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership. A leadership of
intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to
human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition.
The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of
compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of
empathy and understanding between cultures." –William Fulbright
This
Citizen of CONSCIENCE for House of Representatives 2012 is in solidarity
with that!
Come
September:
Notes:
1. http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=233871
2. http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=238144
3. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Page 43, Jan/Feb. 2007
4. BEYOND
NUCLEAR:
Mordechai Vanunu's FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker:
2005-2010
5. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March
2010, page 35
Eileen Fleming,
Citizen of CONSCIENCE for House of Representatives 2012
Founder of
WeAreWideAwake.org
Staff Member
of Salem-news.com, A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com and Columnist
for Veteranstoday.com
Producer
"30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
Author of "Keep
Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied
Territory" and
BEYOND NUCLEAR:
Mordechai Vanunu's FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker:
2005-2010
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