Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2007, page 23
What They Said
Statement to the June 10, 2007 Rally to End the 40-Year Occupation of Palestine
By Ralph Nader
YOU ARE GATHERED today before the Congress, often called Capitol Hill, but on the issue of Palestinian freedom it has behaved as Withering Heights.
Gaze, will you, at the Congress, which marches to the drumbeat of the Israeli government’s policies with far less dissent over the decades than there is in the Israeli Knesset.
Not to mention the incomparably more reportorial honesty in the pages of Israel’s leading newspaper, Haaretz,and bysuch courageous columnists as Gideon Levy, in contrast to the mainstream U.S. media.
Let us speak about the courageous Israelis who are never invited to a congressional hearing or are never invited to meet with members of Congress lest they taint the reflexive obedience that is standard operating procedure there.
Why hasn’t the great Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem been accorded some hearing time in the Congress? Its accurate reports of Israeli state terrorism and other human rights abuses are closed out of the Congress, which sends so much American taxpayers’ money to the Israeli government for military domination of Palestine.
Why hasn’t anyone in Congress invited the representatives of the hundreds of reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces who have signed the magnificent declaration of conscience whereby they refuse, in their exact words, “to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people”?
Send their entire declaration—available at <www.seruv.org.il>—to your member of Congress.
But they are not alone, although they are out front. Israeli mayors, academics, former cabinet members, generals, colonels, fighter pilots, and former national security and intelligence officials have demonstrated or held news conferences demanding an energetic peace process resulting in a two-state solution—a viable Palestinian country that can provide a peaceful livelihood to millions of impoverished, oppressed Palestinians.
A two-state solution is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians.
A central question regarding the U.S. government’s role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is why do successive administrations and Congress refuse to support these very significant forces of peace and legality?
Why do these branches of government continue year after year to give blanket backing to the Israeli government’s illegal military occupation of Palestine, the seizure and confiscation of remaining Palestinian lands, the colonization, the exclusive highways, the pushing out of yet more Palestinians from their homes, the taking of the West Bank’s precious water, the incarceration of innocent Palestinians, including youngsters, to be held as hostages, the construction of the illegal wall that tears apart communities and takes yet more Palestinian land?
Why is the U.S. government, if it wants a two-state peaceful solution, ignoring the violations of various United Nations resolutions by Israel and the far larger destruction of innocent Palestinian civilians, including children, that the Palestinians have inflicted against innocent Israelis?
In the past few months alone, the ratio of civilian fatalities, including children, is over 80 to 1—80 Palestinians to every one Israeli.
Peace movements stop violence movements. Years ago, the Palestinian authorities conceded 78 percent of Palestine to the Israelis. The Palestinian people are willing to settle for the remaining 22 percent. Arab nations, led by Saudi Arabia, have offered for more than five years a complete regional peace settlement, including full recognition, which includes going back to the pre-1967 border and a viable Palestinian state in control of its borders, its land, water and air.
Why haven’t the Israeli and U.S. governments taken this offer seriously?
Doesn’t Washington know that continuation of the Palestinian gulag will only worsen the situation and America’s national interest in the region?
Support the peace movements in Israel and Palestine. Support the national security and interests of the United States. End this congressional bigotry against the Palestinian Arabs—this other anti-Semitism against these dispossessed and oppressed Arabs.
This statement was read on behalf of consumer activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, whose latest book, The Seventeen Traditions, is available from the AET Book Club.
