The Short Letter
Dear President Barack Obama,

You entered office with a call “for a new start to relations between the Muslim world and the West based on common interests and mutual understanding and respect.” We assumed your statement and dedication to social justice would orient your administration policies into halting Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and finding an equitable solution to the Middle East crisis.

During your eight years in the Executive office, the destruction of the Palestinian people continued unimpeded. In September 2016, less than two months before a national election and only several months before leaving office, you signed a military aid package of $38bn for the next 10 years for the Israeli oppressor.

Can you explain why your efforts did not match your rhetoric, why you allowed Israel to grind the Palestinians into desperation, and why you capped your term in office with a generous gift to the oppressive Israeli war machine? Your reply will assist in forming a strategy that defeats Israel’s oppressive tactics and counters the ineffectiveness of established leaders to prevent the calamities that the Palestinians suffer daily from occupation.

The Long Letter
Dear President Barack Obama,

Foreign forces have supported the destruction of the Palestinian people. Among these foreign forces have been American individuals, American groups, American society, and the American government. Never has this concentration of external forces contributed to the demise of a community. Reversing the deadly contributions of American society to the destruction of the Palestinian people is more than a moral imperative; it is the principle means for guaranteeing survival of the Palestine community. A brief incursion into the wayback machine of history highlights the role that the United States government and institutions played, and still play, in the destruction of the Palestinians.

U.S. Government role in Destruction of the Palestinians
Destruction of the Palestinian community started with U.S. agreement to the 1920 San Remo conference’s acceptance of the 1917 Balfour Agreement, which stated that the signatories were “in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” Why did the U.S. favor this agreement when relatively few Jews around the world were interested in leaving their present homes for the British Mandate and it was not a desirable area for Europeans and Americans to live? Why didn’t the U.S. government recommend a homeland for the Assyrians, who suffered mass killings and deportations by Ottoman forces during World War I in southeastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan. Direct descendants of a mighty civilization, Assyrians, who lived for millennia in the area and were continually subjected to persecution, would have welcomed a home of their own. The same question applies to the Armenians, who have probably endured more oppression in the last 2000 years than any other ethnicity. Those who carved up the Middle East could have easily found a safe abode for these ancient and continually persecuted peoples.

The U.S. might have made amends for its lapse in accepting the San Remo agreement by not casting its vote for UN Resolution 181, the partition of Palestine. A Safe Haven, Harry S, Truman and the Founding of Israel, by Allis Radosh and Ronald Radosh, explains President Truman’s arguments for approving UN Resolution 181. If these arguments are true, then President Truman showed ignorance and acquired blame for committing one of the worst injustices in history.

He had hoped that a simple announcement that the United States intended to vote for it would be enough. When it became obvious that it would not, he moved quickly and gave permission and encouragement for direct pressure to be applied to secure its passage. Partition, which had been sanctioned by the United Nations, was apparently the only answer for the Jews still in DP camps. American public opinion supported it, and so did his close advisors in the White House. He felt the pressure to act both politically and morally. And he realized if partition went down, there was one person who would be blamed for it; Harry S. Truman.

President Truman postured himself as motivated by a noble conviction; the displaced Jews who had survived the World War II Holocaust needed and deserved an immediate home. Why didn't President Truman consider that most, if not all, of the 150,000 displaced Jews wanted to go to the United States and not to Palestine and allow for that more desired alternative?

Did transferring war wary survivors of concentration camps to an unstable, insecure, and violent environment make sense? Although Truman could not entirely realize the situation, the placing of weapons in the hands of many of these displaced persons reinforced the Zionist military and aided the eventual displacement of 900,000 Palestinians. The European DP camps were temporary shelter for those who would soon find permanent homes and citizenship in countries around the world; the UNWRA refugee camps became permanent homes for magnitudes more Palestinian displaced persons, who still languish in camps with stateless identification.

Historical documents describe the pressure U.S. government officials applied to several nations, and how this pressure managed to change votes from “against” to “for” partition - 1948 by Benny Morris, Palestine and Great Powers by Michael J. Cohen, A Safe Haven, Harry S, Truman and the Founding of Israel by Allis Radosh and Ronald Radosh cover the subject. A brief summary of some of the observations from these books shows the Truman administration’s active participation in assuring UN Resolution 181’s ratification.

• Presidential advisor Bernard Baruch informed France it would lose U.S. aid if it voted against partition. A hesitant France voted in favor of the UN Resolution.
• Liberia's Ambassador to the United States complained that the US delegation threatened aid cuts to several countries. White House executive assistant, David Niles, organized pressure on Liberia and rubber magnate, Harvey Firestone, pressured the Liberian officials. Liberia voted “yes.”
• Latin American delegates were told that, if they voted yes to the UN Resolution, the Pan-American highway project would more likely proceed.
• Haiti was promised economic aid if it would change its original vote opposing partition, which it did.
• Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, ten senators, and Truman domestic advisor Clark Clifford threatened to scuttle seven bills related to assisting the Philippines. At the last minute, the Philippines recalled its representative and changed its vote.

Population statistics in Report of UNSCOP: 3 September 1947: Chapter 4: A Commentary on Partition, show about 500,000 Jews and 1.1 million Arabs in the partitioned area. (International zone of Jerusalem is not included.) The indigenous Arab population had almost its entire population born in the British Mandate.

The figures of Jewish arrivals, between the years 1919 to 1945, give a clue to how many Jews were born in the British Mandate. The Jewish Virtual Library at https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-immigrantion-to-palestine-1919-1941(few arrivals between 1941 and 1945) sums that statistic to 379,734, of which about 250,000 came during the immediate pre-World War II period. Sources estimate about 30,000 returned to their native lands. Subtracting the remaining arrivals (380,000 - 30,000 = 350,000) from the total population (500,000) gives a rough estimate of about 150,000 Jews born in the British Mandate before 1945.

Because almost all Palestinians were born in the area at the time of UN Resolution 181, the indigenous Palestinians outnumbered the first generation Jews by about 7:1. A partitioned Palestine awarded a minor ethnic group of the total population, which had only two to three decades of time and energy invested in the area, more than 60% of the total land and split the native population, which had worked and cultivated the land for centuries, into two lands. This non-forcible UN Resolution occurred immediately after World War II, when followers of a revived Wilsonian democracy, under the previous leadership of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, pledged to dismantle colonialism and allow the native peoples to express self-determination.

Agreement with the San Remo conference and the partition plan started U.S. participation in the destruction of the Palestinians.

• The United States failed to halt Israel’s development of nuclear weapons.
  President Lyndon agreed to not pressure Israel into signing the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if Israel agreed to not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East and not do anything to make their existence public.”
• The United States assisted Israel in wars with its neighbors.
  During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty in international waters off Egypt, wounding 34 and killing 171 of the 294-crew members. By not countering Israel and allowing the violence against its own military, U.S. authorities clearly showed support for Israel in the war. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the U.S. rushed military aid to an exhausted Israel and enabled Israel to win the war. The Washington Post, In deaths of civilians in Gaza, U.S. weapons sales to Israel come under scrutiny, by Sudarsan Raghavan and Ruth Eglash, August 23, 2014, details weapon systems furnished by the U.S. to Israel and used to kill innocent Gazans Hellfire missiles, Mark 84 bombs, M-16 tanks, 155mm artillery shells, F-16 fighter jets, Apache helicopters. Similar and other U.S. weapons maintain the oppression of the West Bank Palestinians.
• United States Foreign Aid to Israel greatly exceeds aid given to any other nation.
  Congressional Research Service reports that, as of February 18, 2022, the United States provided Israel $150 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. As of that date, almost all U.S. bilateral aid to Israel was in the form of military assistance.
• The U. S. vetoed tens of UN Security Council resolutions that criticized Israel.
  Al Jazeera, reciting UN data, records at least 53 vetoes since 1972.
• The U. S. has played a vital role in ridding Israel of its declared adversaries.
  The 2003 invasion of Iraq had a proven false reason destroy Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. The hidden reason followed the American neocon arguments of destroying the one power that could become dominant in the Middle East and be able to contest Israel. Almost five thousand U.S. military died in the unnecessary conflict.
  NATO’s declared intervention in the 2011 Libyan Civil War was "to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack." France pushed for an opportunity to eliminate the Libyan dictator. The U.S. vacillated, but Israel friendly Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, urged President Obama to join NATO in removing Gaddafi. NATO eliminated Gaddafi, the U.S. gained nothing, and Israel had one less adversary.
• The U.S., on May 14, 2018, transferred its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  
  Despite the United Nations General Assembly previous 128-9 vote, which rejected the Trump administration's decision to recognize the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and knowing the move undermined Palestinian leverage in negotiations, the U.S. government moved the embassy.
• The U.S. recognizes Hamas as a terrorist organization.
  Other than Japan and Australia, only the U.S., together with western European nations, designates Hamas as a terrorist organization. Hamas has not committed any terrorist actions against the U.S., and the United Nations General Assembly rejected a U.S. resolution condemning Hamas as a terrorist organization. By pursuing this unnecessary policy, the U.S. makes it troublesome for U.S. organizations to raise funds and resources for assisting the deprived Gazans and gives Israel an acceptable rationale in its wanton slaughter of the dispossessed Gazan Palestinians.

 Without suitable weapons, it is difficult to oppress and destroy a large population. The U.S. supplies Israel with the weapons. With no skin in the game, token aid to the Palestinians to soothe the daily pain, and hypocritical words of sympathy for their plight, the U.S. government furnishes quiet acceptance and loud support for the destruction of the Palestinians.

U.S. Institutions Role in Destruction of the Palestinians
It is bewildering that a foreign government assists an oppressive government in the destruction of an indigenous community; it is shocking to observe institutions actively supporting the oppressor.

The New Christian Right, a variety of evangelical organizations that preach the word of God and perform the work of the devil, is the most prominent institution helping Israel carry out its oppression. Christians United for Israel (CUFI) statement of purpose is; "to provide a national association through which every pro-Israel church, parachurch organization, ministry, or individual in America can speak and act with one voice in support of Israel in matters related to Biblical issues."

These betrayers of Jesus Christ’s sermons are available 24/7 to make life miserable for the Palestinians. Volunteers bring Israeli immigrants clothing and items necessary for new homes on stolen property, serve in non-combative roles on an Israel Defense Force (IDF) base, permitting Israel’s soldiers to have more time to subdue Palestinians, and harvest grapes in vineyards of the Shilo settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which gives the settlers more opportunity to harass Palestinian grape harvesting.

Gary M. Burge Professor of New Testament and Dean of the Faculty, Calvin Theological Seminary, estimates that contributions to Israel from the evangelical community range between $175 and $200 million annually. Where does much of this money go? Here is one report.

American Christian Funding Flows to Jewish Settlers, June 12, 2009, heard on PBS program All Things Considered, by Sheera Frenkel

Sondra Oster Baras, director of Israel's branch of the Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, estimates that more than half of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank receive direct or indirect funding from Christian communities. Baras says donors can choose among several programs, including one called "adopt a settler," in which money goes toward the daily needs of the settlers: helping build new schools, health facilities and synagogues. "Our major donors are themselves organizations or ministries or churches. They themselves have raised those monies in small amounts — $5, $20 from a line of people — and put it together, so it's very much grass-roots."

A plethora of organizations, masquerading as representatives of American Jews, serves the Israel nation. These organizations are an insult to all Jews and all humanity. Their efforts provoke physical and moral backlashes against Jews, which they use to play victim and as a rationale for the existence of Israel - a safe retreat for Jews from a hostile world that they have created.

Why are American nationals and their organizations sending their children to Israel, allowing indoctrination by a foreign government, massaging the truth about oppressive Israel, convincing other Americans that Israel is a benign nation trying to defend itself, reshaping Americans in Israel’s image, and skewing election processes to favor Israel? What other nation has that type of devoted activity in the United States?

The answer is simple — Israel needs an army of followers in other nations to serve its cause and influence every man, woman and child that nationalist, militarist, oppressive, and apartheid Israel is a benevolent country. Existence of these dozens, or maybe hundreds, of willful organizations collaborating with Israel’s oppression, validates the charge of crimes against the Palestinians; if there were no crimes, there would be no reason for these organizations to exist and bend the truth of the situation. Their existence, manipulations, lies, deceit, and attacks on innocent persons indicate a cover-up and make them party to that cover-up.

This deceit is apparent from declarations by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue. His contrived Amplify Israel initiative “aims to ‘breathe new life into the principles we’ve been committed to for decades, with an array of programs aimed at bolstering support for Israel and aligning Zionism with liberal ideology.” In clearer words, “influence every man, woman and child that nationalist, militarist, oppressive, and apartheid Israel is a benevolent country.”

Who is Rabbi Hirsch? Ammiel Hirsch went to high school in Israel, served as a tank commander in the IDF, and was formerly the director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America, the Israeli arm of the North American Reform movement. In a response to a letter, in which 93 rabbinical and cantorial students harshly criticized Israeli actions in the hostilities between Israel and Hamas, Rabbi Hirsch wrote:

For the record, the Reform movement is a Zionist movement. Every single branch of our movement — the synagogue arm (Union for Reform Judaism), the rabbinic union (Central Conference of American Rabbis), and our seminary (HUC-JIR) — every organization separately, and all together, are Zionist and committed ideologically and theologically to Israel.

Was Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, after receiving training in Israel, eventually sent to the United States to guide the Reform movement and define it in Israel’s image?

Destruction of the Palestinians
The physical existence of millions of Palestinians weakens using the word “genocide” as a characterization of Israel’s policies; Palestinians have not been physically killed en masse. Why mention it when oppression, apartheid, and community destruction are sufficient to reveal the crimes and gather adherents to the Palestinian rightful cause? The diabolical manner by which genocide is being achieved demands its mention.

Israel, knowing it cannot physically eliminate the Palestinians, has adopted a covert and sinister method of genocide — attack the Palestinians’ psyches so they lose the will to live. By posing constant dangers to Palestinian existence, constant impediments to their daily life, constant seizures of their land and resources, constant reminders that they are dominated, Israel creates anxiety, fear, despair, and hopelessness that diminish the Palestinian spirit, immune system, ability to function, ability to think properly, and ability to reproduce. Broken bones lead to broken parents, lead to broken supervision, lead to broken homes, and end in broken communities. Those Palestinians who can still lift their heads will want to leave. The indomitable Palestinians have not permitted this to happen.

Israel’s greatest crime is the denial of ontological security, the latter being a stable mental state derived from a sense of continuity of events in one's life. The severe Israeli repression terrorizes communities, isolates individuals, produces anxiety, disables breadwinners, and hinders satisfactory child/parent relationships by humiliating the parents and subjecting them to brutal and senseless beatings. Add purposeful denial of agriculture, water rights, and fishing rights, willful ruin of cherished olive and orange groves, interference in acquiring livelihood and employment, and the absence of ontological security accelerates the deterioration of the Palestinian community. Without laws and leaders to protect them, the Palestinians are victims of genocide.

As of April 2022, 138 of the United Nations' 193 members recognize the State of Palestine. Almost all South American, Asian, African, and East European countries have given recognition, while the major nations of North America and western Europe, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy — the liberal democracies that pursue social justice and follow the United States doctrine of a “new world order” —  deny the Palestinians ontological security by not recognizing the State of Palestine.

These nations lead NATO, whose principle guide is the United States. As mentioned earlier, NATO declared it intervened in the 2011 Libyan Civil War as a duty to The Responsibility to Protect, an international norm that seeks to ensure that the international community never again fails to halt genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. All of these nouns apply in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. Well, what are you waiting for, U.S. led NATO do your stuff and fulfill your duty to The Responsibility to Protect. Need to defend the Libyans was conjecture; need to defend the Palestinians is a verifiable fact

This type of U.S. hypocrisy has turned societies against democracy and fostered extreme rightist positions that model themselves after Israel’s nationalism, militarism, and racism. By supporting Israel, the U.S. encourages the divisions and polarization that are slowly tearing it apart. To much of the world, America has lost its elevated moral position, declined in prestige, and is drifting into abandonment.

Israel will never change its oppressive polices; those firmly dedicated to the Palestinian cause — Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, and some Arab nations — don’t have the military or political power to modify the situation; and those who sympathize with the Palestinians will not challenge the combined powers of Israel and its benefactor, the United States. Palestinian salvation is dependent on America reversing the course in its Middle East policies. That is the rub. America’s salvation as a dominant world power is dependent on the United States assuring the salvation of the Palestinians.

Pundits confuse support for Israel with support for this Israel. The United States, for military and geopolitical reasons, can support Israel, as it does Columbia, but there is no reason to support and assist this Israel in the destruction of the Palestinians. The Washington establishment and foreign policy makers have incorrectly calculated the tradeoffs between supporting this Israel in its denial of Palestinian rights and ontological security and satisfying the Palestinian cause..

In addition to the moral elevation, which should be sufficient when considering U.S. complicity in the forecasted genocide, by reversing policies that aid repression of the Palestinians, the U.S. will gain a multitude of benefits and will enable Washington to regain its leading role in the global community:

• Muslim nations and their 1.2 billion people will look more favorably at the United States.
• Iran and Hezbollah will lose a principal appeal to followers.
• Terrorism against western nationals will lessen.
• Nations that now recognize the Palestinian state will be friendlier with the U.S.
• The UN Security Council will be able to act in concert on Middle East Resolutions.

Just for money and votes, U.S. politicians sell out their commitment to the American people, follow the dictates of a foreign nation, and make Americans party to the destruction of innocent people. TREASON!!

Hopefully, more people will meet the challenge, gather the resources, form the organizations, confront the oppressors, shout much louder, push much stronger, and succeed in changing American attitudes that have been a principle contribution to Israel’s deliberate destruction of the Palestinian community.

alternative insight
october 15, 2022

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