I wished President Bush and Senator Kerry could join me for a few evenings
of walking through the suks--the traditional bazaars--of Syria, Jordan,
Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or Oman and engaging ordinary Arabs in frank talk
about America and Americans. Certainly before our invasion of Iraq I
never felt constrained or afraid doing just that.
Bush and Kerry would quickly learn that few Arabs hate us for what we
are, as some people assert. Many Arabs, however, are livid with anger
about what they believe we have done to them. They suffered 400 years
of Turkish and 100 years of British and French colonialism. And now
we Americans come from 6000 miles away to impose our "colonialism"
upon them. Arabs generally love to talk and trade with us. Yet, some
of them, a distinct minority, do want to fight to free themselves from
all foreign controls. Neither Bush nor Kerry, nor most Congressmen seem
to understand, or perhaps do not want to understand, that we have no
right to impose our will upon other societies, just as we will not tolerate
others to impose themselves on us.
Arabs and Muslims are united in their condemnation of the U.S. government's
unquestioning support for Israel's 37-year occupation. They find us
condoning Israel's oppressive military controls, its assassinations
of Palestinian resistance members, its bulldozing of homes and olive
groves, the worsening economic deprivations of Palestinians, and, last
not least, the continuing expropriation of land for Israeli settlements
inside Palestinian territory. Most of all, they find us denouncing those
who fight back as terrorists. Surely, the suicide bombers are brutal
terrorists, but to Arabs just as brutal as Sharon's killers, all of
them deliberately ignoring the harm done to the uninvolved.
Most people in the Middle East and Europe will tell you that they see
America's one-sided moral, financial, military, and diplomatic support
of Israel's hawks as the chief motivation for the growing violence against
Americans since 1967. Our blatant disregard for the rights of Palestinians
is the earliest and strongest root of Muslim terrorism. Its source has
always been political rage, far more than religious bigotry.
If Bush and Kerry wanted to reduce Muslim anger and hostility, they
urgently need to tell us how they will compel the Israeli government
to end the occupation of Palestinian lands and live in peace with their
neighbors. That question, however, neither Bush, nor Kerry, nor Congress
want to answer, much less subject to a national debate.
They routinely tell us that Israel is America's closest ally because
Likud's lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),
pays them handily for saying that. Between 1978 and 2004, 1,906 Congressional
candidates received a total of almost $40 million for voicing pro-Likud
propaganda and voting taxpayer dollars to make Israel the biggest military
power and the only producer of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons
in the Middle East.
Yet, the bribes our politicians accept from Sharon's agents will never
bring Israel peaceful co-existence with the Muslim world. There is in
fact a strong opposition in Israel itself to the Likud intransigence.
There is also among Jews and non-Jews around the world a growing opposition
to the unwillingness of America's political leaders to help Israel to
a comprehensive U.S.-guaranteed peace settlement, even if the government
in power does not want to end the agony. Bush and Kerry and Congress
do not promote peace for Israel. They only help Israel's land-grabbing
chauvinists.
The reign of terror that Sharon and his fellow Likudniks have been imposing
upon the Palestinians profoundly contradicts the moral teachings of
the Torah and the great rabbis. And the American Christians who cheer
Sharon's misdeeds badly need to study what Jesus asks of them in his
Sermon on the Mound.
For Sharon and his neoconservative friends, the U.S. invasion of Iraq
was a dream come true. Now he and Mr. Bush can jointly shape the Middle
East in Likud's image.
Just as useful for Sharon was the President's phony "road map to
peace." Like a mirage, it led to nowhere, yet it helped Israeli
settlers continue expropriating Palestinians land.
Amazingly, neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Kerry, nor any other recipient of
AIPAC money ever considered that if Israel ended its occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza, and if we pulled our terror-defying soldiers out
of the Middle East, the terrorists would lose major incentives, and
much of the acquiescence of the Arab masses would dissipate.
Let us not vote, therefore, for any politician who cannot tell us how
he will bring peace to the Middle East in general and to our Israeli
friends in particular.