S. Brian Willson » Middle East

History of Palestine and Green Line Israel

brian — Wed, 01 May 2002 23:35:25 +0000

Historical Introduction

The land that later came to be called Palestine was first inhabited as early as 9,000 years ago. The city of Jericho, a few miles north of the Dead Sea and west of the Jordan River, is reported to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Canaan (the Biblical name for Palestine) later became inhabited by Semitic tribes from the inner Arabian Peninsula. The Jebusites, one of the Canaanite tribes, built a settlement 5,000 to 6,000 years ago called Urusalin (Jerusalem), meaning “the city of peace.” Peace is still “salaam” in Arabic and “shalom” in Hebrew. Around 2000 BC, another Semitic people, the Hebrews, headed by Abraham, passed through Canaan on their way south. About 1300 BC Hebrew tribes under the leadership of Moses returned from Egypt and engaged in wars with the Canaanite tribes for possession of the land. The Philistines in the south, the Canaanites (Jebusites), Phoenicians, Amorites, and Hittites in the north resisted the Hebrew (Israelite) invasion. Four centuries later, the Israelites, under David, were successful in uniting the Hebrew nation, conquering and substantially absorbing the Canaanites. From this point, Israelites, Philistines, Hittites, and Canaanites mixed races and have subsequently been a racially mixed, Semitic people.

Note: Semitic designates a subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic family of languages including Arabic and Hebrew, among others.

Canaan, later to be named Palestine by the Romans, was at different times ruled by the Egyptian Pharaohs, the Hebrews, and Assyrians, the Chaldaeans, the Babylonians and Persians, Macedonians (Alexander the Great), the Egyptian Empire of the Ptolemies, and the Seleucids from Syria.

The first Jewish dispersion occurred in 586 BC under the rule of the Chaldaeans (Babylonia), with thousands forced into exile to Babylon until the reconstruction in Palestine of a new Jewish state after 538 BC. During the Babylonia captivity, the Jews developed ideas and institutions that were subsequently to form the foundation of Jewish political and social life after the second dispersion in 135 AD. In 67 BC, a rebellion headed by Judas Maccabeus restored the Jewish state. However, the invincible Roman Empire seized Jerusalem and subdued the Jewish tribes in 63. Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD and the Jews were expelled in 135 AD. All of Judea was destroyed, 985 towns and villages burned, and 50 fortresses razed to the ground.

The Romans had renamed Biblical Canaan, Palestine. Palestine was considered the land of the Philistines. In Arabic, Palestine is “Filastin.”

With the decline of Rome in 476 and Byzantine in 611, the Jews (descendants of Judah) began to migrate to Western Europe. The Muslim Arabs, also a Semitic people, conquered Palestine in 634 from the Persians. It was in Jerusalem that the prophet Muhammad reportedly rose to the heavens. Thus the city became holy land for the three great monotheistic religions. Palestine became predominantly Arab and Islamic by the end of the Seventh Century, and united the Semitic people with the exception of the Jews. The land was not even nominally Jewish after this point. With short intervals of partial domination by the Christian Crusaders and the Mongols in the 11th through 13th Centuries, Palestine was under Arab rule for approximately 1000 years and Islamic governments for 15 centuries. In 1516, Palestine came under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

The Jews over the same period were to experience, with some exceptions, a long history of rejections, repression, and pogroms. They were expelled from England in 1290, France in 1392, and from Spain the same year of Columbus’ voyage in 1492 looking for India. They were then expelled from Portugal in 1497. They attempted, with varying responses, to live throughout Europe, including Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Hungary, Turkey, Morocco, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

The Emergence of Zionism

After the Russian riots 1881, and passage of the notorious “May Laws,” tragically forcing the Jews from their farms into town ghettoes, an increased impetus was created for the large number of Jews in Russia to initially emigrate through the formation of Lovers of Zion (at Odessa, Ukraine, 1882). This effort succeeded to the extent that there were 25 Jewish colonies by 1898, and 43 by 1915 in Palestine (Zion). Zion is the name of a hill on which Jerusalem stands, and has come to be a synonym for Jerusalem itself, and by extension to the whole of Palestine.

In 1896, the Viennese journalist, Theodore Herzl, published The Jewish State, influenced by 19th century European nationalism. The vision: creation of a Jewish nation-state. In 1897, Herzl convened a Congress of Jews at Basel, Switzerland and founded the World Zionist Organization to restore the Jewish National Home in Palestine, which at that time was a remote Turkish colony, but inhabited by over a half million Arab Palestinians.

The political program adopted at this 1897 Congress, that continues to provide its basis, begins: “Zionism aims at establishing for the Jewish people a publicly recognized and legally secured home in Palestine.” Among the means identified for attainment of the objective: “Promotion of the settlement of Jewish agriculturalists, artisans and tradesmen in Palestine.” Zionism was envisioned as a “wall protecting Europe from Asia” and “an outpost of culture against barbarism.” It implied alliance with the great western capitalist powers and therefore was very Eurocentric. Thus it has always represented a western bias.

The federation of American Zionists was created in 1898 with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise as secretary. The first issue to split the Zionist movement was whether Palestine was essential to a Jewish state. A majority of delegates at the 1905 Congress agreed it was essential and rejected the British offer of a homeland in Uganda, at the time a British Protectorate in east-central Africa. Cypress had also been mentioned as a possible homeland.

World War I ended (temporarily) the influx of Jewish settlers into Palestine. Jewish population had reached 100,000 in 1914. By secret agreements, including the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, France and England were to share the remains of the Ottoman Empire following the War, even though at that time neither country held any power at all in the region. Lebanon and Syria would become French Protectorates, while England would hold a Mandate over Iraq, including the Kuwaiti District of Basrah, and Palestine within which present day Jordan was included (TransJordan).

In 1916, Zionist leaders met with British authorities asking for creation of an autonomous Jewish settlement in Palestine. British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, in November 1917, declared that the British supported establishment of land for a “national home” for the Jewish people. This became known as the Balfour Declaration, perhaps regarded by the British as a method for preserving and extending their dominion in the region that was becoming strategic because of the emerging era of oil. However, since the Arabs had greatly assisted the British in defeating the Turks during the War, the Declaration included language that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” over 90 percent of the population at the time. The dream of a united Arab nation or kingdom had been kindled during WW I, significantly by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), but was cruelly betrayed by the Treaty of Versailles (1919) which divided up the spoils among European powers Great Britain and France after the War. The Arabs claimed that the British had promised them an independent state as well. The ratio of Jewish settlers to Palestinian indigenous in 1918 was only one to ten.

The British Mandate

The British Mandate, originally an enunciation of the policy of Great Britain only (with the silent assent of France), was ratified by the allies at the 1920 Conference of San Remo (Italy). This conference ratified the decisions made at the May 1919 Paris Peace Conference, and June 1919 Versailles Treaty, at the conclusion of WW I. In effect the Mandate established a colonial government over the Palestinian people, while overseeing the immigration of Jews into Palestine. A special Jewish battalion was organized to assist in the re-conquest of the “Holy Land,” supported by the 1920 Zionist Congress in London.

Tensions had been mounting for years. The 1919 King-Crane Commission investigated Palestine and concluded: “Zionists look forward to a practically complete dispossession of the Palestinian people. It was increasingly clear at that time that Zionism meant both (1) the “return” of all Jews around the world to “Erzetz Yisrael” and their mass transfer to and settlement in Palestine, and (2) the exodus of indigenous Palestinian Arabs and their mass transfer from Palestine. In effect the situation was not that much different from the dispossession from the Americas of the Indigenous natives by the Europeans.

The first Arab anti-Zionist riots occurred in Palestine in 1920. Despite these problems, the League of Nations formally approved the British Mandate over Palestine in 1922. This Mandate by a foreign colonial power preempted self-government by the Palestinians, facilitated Jewish immigration, and oversaw the transfer of land to the settlers without the consent and against militant opposition of the indigenous Palestinians. Large tracts of land were purchased or “acquired” from the Arabs, massive electrification of the country was initiated, and a “model” town, Tel Aviv, inhabited completely by Jews was laid out, including construction of schools and other institutions.

Arab nationalism had been developing during the early part of the Twentieth Century in response to 4 centuries of Turkish/Ottoman rule. When the Turks were defeated in WW I, the Arabs were prepared to reclaim Palestine. The combination of Zionist colonization and the British Mandate necessarily provoked growing Arab nationalist sentiments even more. Jewish immigration and settlements continued under the Mandate, part of the function of the British charge. In 1929 there occurred serious Jewish-Arab violence at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

In 1930, Sir John Hope Simpson was dispatched by the British government to study the economic conditions in Palestine. He found that the Zionist land policy was displacing large numbers of Arab farmers while also causing neglect and deterioration of agricultural land. Throughout the 1930s, the Arabs conducted large-scale strikes and boycotts in protest. The Palestinian general strike in 1936 in protest of continued Jewish immigration, the latter spurred by Hitler’s persecutions, led to the creation of the British Peel Commission (1937). The Commission found British promises to Zionists and Arabs irreconcilable, declared its Mandate unworkable, and recommended partition of Palestine into Jewish, Arab, and British (largely the holy sited) states. The Zionists reluctantly accepted but the Arabs vehemently rejected the partition plan. Sporadic rebellion lasted until 1939, by when most Palestinian leaders had been killed, exiled or imprisoned, and the British dropped the plan. Instead, the British began strict controls over Jewish immigration for 5 years. In ten years a binational Palestine (one state) was to be established.

Shocked, the Zionists rejected the latest proposal. The Arabs demanded immediate creation of a secure Arab Palestine and prohibition of all further Jewish immigration. As World War II was unfolding, Zionists and most Arabs supported the British war efforts. The plan was scrapped but tensions inside Palestine continued to mount.

Intensification of Violence and Terrorism

As the Jewish community became better organized in defense of its immigration into and settlement of indigenous Palestinian land, the militant Zionists led by Vladimer Jabotinsky became more violent. At a World Congress in Prague, they declared that continued Arab resistance would be met by Jewish violence and that they (the Zionists) affirmed their right to establish a Jewish Majority on both sides of the Jordan River.

Haganah was a secret armed group organized by the Jewish Agency, the organization that officially worked with the Mandate. The Irgun, the most militant of all, and the Stern Gang also emerged as Jewish terrorist groups. Irgun, under the leadership of a Polish Jew, Menachen Begin, also announced in 1944 its war against the Mandate and specifically its goal to assassinate British officials because of their support for a limitation of Jewish immigration quotas. Virtually all current Israeli leaders were members or supporters of one or more of these terrorist organizations. Fifteen British officials had been murdered by October 1944. The terror campaign gathered momentum in 1945-46. The Kind David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed with many killed. Thousands of Europe’s Jews sought admission to Palestine following the end of the war but the British blocked the immigration attempts and detained the migrating Jews in Cypress and other locations. The Jewish terrorist groups responded to the blockade with the escalation of violence, including the blowing up a number of buildings, bridges, and railways, while targeting British soldiers.

A 1947 London conference of British, Arabs and Zionists produced no agreement. The British then turned the Palestine problem over to the United Nations in February 1947. At this time there were about 1,100,000 Muslim Arabs, 615,000 Jews, and 145,000 Christian Arabs in Palestine. In April 1947, the UN General Assembly established a Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). In August the UNSCOP proposed partition into separate Arab and Jewish states, and an internationally administered zone including Jerusalem and the holy sites. This was similar to the plan proposed by the British in 1937 (Peel Commission). The UN plan was adopted on November 29, 1947. Great Britain abstained. The Arab representatives left the General Assembly session declaring they would resist the plan. Armed Zionist organizations began forcefully expelling Palestinians from their homes, claiming an attack by Arab armies was imminent.

On April 9, 1948, the Irgun terrorist organization, commanded by Menachen Begin, as a part of an increased campaign of violence, attacked the village of Deir Yasin, killing 254 Palestinian men, women and children. The intention was to terrify the Palestinians into leaving their land. Ten thousand Palestinians did leave the country in fear of their lives. Begin later declared: “There would have been no State of Israel without Deir Yasin.”

The Mandate Ends: Creation of State of Israel (without borders)

At midnight, May 14, 1948, the British High Commissioner for Palestine departed the country. (I bet he said, “Phew”!) At 4 p.m. that same day, the Jews held a ceremony in Tel Aviv at which time they read their Declaration of Independence of the Jewish State in Palestine, for the Jewish people (wherever they might be living at the time), to be called Israel. The new state had no boundaries and, to this day, more than five decades later, Israel is the only country in the world, the only member of the UN that refuses to accept any identified boundaries. It is worthy of note that Israel was established as a state for the “Jewish People,” and not as the state of its citizens. The UN partition plan, however, did identify the boundaries on a map, generally described as (1) a narrow strip of coast, including the ports of Haifa and Tel Aviv, but leaving Jaffa and Acre to the Palestinians, (2) most of the Negeb, a large arid sector in the south, and (3) eastern Galilee around Lake Tiberias (Sea of Galilee). Israel, without its borders, received immediate recognition by the United States and Russia.

The Arab states of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq invaded the new state of Israel on May 14, 1948. But the Jews had been preparing for war for many months. They had acquired many arms with soldiers to carry and fire them, had planted many land mines, and possessed abundant ammunition. Many of their weapons were Soviet made but purchased through Czechoslovakia. Nicaraguan dictator Somoza, created and protected by the United States, had also participated in a variety of schemes whereby arms were smuggled through the Central American country to the Zionists in various military training locations as early as 1939-40. Nearly 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and villages almost immediately from areas that were part of Israel’s partition. One hundred twenty thousand managed to remain living within this early version of Israel. This mass expelling became known to the world community as the first wave of Palestinian refugees, most living in wretched camps. They now number more than 2 million.

Of course this forced exodus exacerbated strong anti-British as well as anti-Jewish sentiment. In effect, Palestine was dismembered in May 1948. Hundreds of entire villages were destroyed.

An Armistice was signed in January 1949, ending the first Arab-Israeli War, by which Israel increased by over 40% the size of its partitioned territory. This came to be known as Green Line Israel, the pre 1967-borders. In January 1949 Israel conducted elections for its parliament, the Knesset (”assembly” in Hebrew), and its government was formed. On May 11, 1949 Israel was admitted to the UN. Within a year, 40 nations recognized the borderless state.

The Palestinian Diaspora

A much different, tragic situation was in store for the Palestinians. More than half had abandoned their homes. Most lived as refugees on the West Bank (of the Jordan River), a territory that was then annexed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (from “Haslim,” family of Muhammad, claiming to be a direct descendent of the Prophet). The Gaza Strip came under Egyptian administration. Palestine ceased to exist as a political and administrative entity. In the eyes of the UN, and therefore international law, the Palestinians were, and are, stateless without any citizenship. Hardly a people. They are officially refugees, a “problem” awaiting resolution.

Palestinians who continued to live in Mandate Palestine on the day of the 1949 census, acquired, through Israeli decrees, a new legal designation, “Israeli Arabs” (or Arab Israelis). Those physically present in the territory incorporated by Israel, but who were not in their homes at the moment of the 1949 Israeli census, became known as “absentee-present” persons. Palestinians living on the West Bank were naturalized according to Jordanian law, as well as those who sought refuge on the east bank of the Jordan River. Those remaining in Gaza, or who sought refuge in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt, remained stateless but subject to the control of the countries in which they resided. Over a million presently are in this explicit stateless status.

As a result of this fragmentation and dispersion, a plight familiar to the Jews, the Palestinians have ceased to possess any real authority to live a national or self-determinative life.

Loss of All Historical Palestine and Post-1967 Israel

With U.S. weapons instead of Soviet ones, Israel blitzed, during 6 days in early June 1967, and seized all of the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. At this moment the whole of historical Palestine came under the military control of Israel.

There continue to be other tragic consequences of the 1967 blitz war. Israel’s policy of building colonial settlements on the West Bank and in Gaza has meant shameless confiscation of Palestinian lands, annexation of Jerusalem, the annexation of the Golan Heights, and the settling of over 100,000 Jews within annexed Jerusalem. Israel has confiscated precious water resources of the West Bank for its settlements, while prohibiting Palestinians from seeking desperately needed new water sources. Severe drought exists in Arab villages, compelling further exodus of Palestinian farmers. The occupation has caused serious economic dislocation and large-scale unemployment, while forcing the remainder to work for minimum wages in harsh conditions. And Israel found a captive market in the West Bank and Gaza for its manufactured goods, these areas becoming in effect “trading partners” of Israel.

The 1967 War led to the October War of 1973, the Camp David Agreements in 1979, and the Israeli invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982.

The repression required to “successfully” occupy the Palestinian people in their indigenous country is nothing short of a comprehensive and systematic effort to destroy the Palestinian people. In continuing their policies of occupation and regional aggression, Israel has defied dozens of separate United Nations Resolutions since 1967.

Conclusion

This tragedy of two peoples gripped in a seemingly hopeless struggle over the same territory, with the U.S. politically and financially sustaining the occupation of one people by another, forms the continuing context for much of the political dynamics effecting the Middle East. Of course, without the presence of the vast quantities of oil in the Middle East region upon which most of the “developed” world is totally dependent upon, the U.S. and other Western nations would not have been supporting Israel at the expense of Palestinian and other Arab peoples.

Sources Consulted

Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia. Chicago: F.E. Compton & Co., 1951 Edition.

Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Encyclopedia. New York & London: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1931.

The New Columbia Encyclopedia. Edited by William H. Harris and Judith S. Levey. NY: Columbia Univ. Press, 1975.

The above sources were utilized for the following subjects: Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Jews, Zionism, WW I, Versailles Treaty, San Remo Conference, British Mandate.

Cockburn, Andrew and Leslie. Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship. NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.

Said, Edward, and Hitchens, Christopher. Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. London & NY: Verso, 1988. (Introduction, pp. 1-19; Ch. 5, pp. 97-147; Ch. 11, pp. 235-296.)

Third World Guide. Grove Press, 1986. (Sections on Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt.)

In addition, much information was gathered from several personal trips to Palestine/Israel, especially in April 1989 and September-October 1991.

U.S. Aggression Against Iraq: Historical and Political Context

brian — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 21:23:33 +0000

"We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait."

–U.S. State Department, July 24, 1990

"We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait….We have many Americans who would like to see the price go above $25 because they come from oil-producing states."

–April Glaspie, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq officially conversing
with Saddam Hussein, Baghdad, Iraq, July 25, 1990

When U.S. President Bill Clinton unilaterally chose to launch weapons of mass destruction into Iraq on December 16, 1998, his decision was simply a continuation our country’s historical pattern of grotesque criminal and lawless foreign interventions. The U.S. has exhibited extraordinary opportunism in how and when it chooses to either abide by, or defy, the United Nations Charter, other international laws, and its own Constitution. By far, the U.S. has become the worst offender in the world for committing lawless aggression and interventionism. It is now an unprecedented global empire.

U.S. Presidents have chosen to overtly intervene with U.S. armed forces on more than 400 occasions since 1798, violating the sovereignty of over 100 nations. Since World War II, as the Cold War unfolded, the U.S. constructed a global network of several thousand military bases and "listening" installations which have supported more than 200 U.S.-led interventions, virtually all in the "Third World" [Joseph Gerson and Bruce Birchard (Eds.), The Sun Never Sets: Confronting the Network of Foreign U.S. Military Bases (Boston: South End Press, 1991), p. 12]. The U.S. is the only nation to have used nuclear and atomic weapons, causing the deaths and maimings of millions. In addition, U.S. Presidents have directed more than 6,000 major and minor covert actions since 1947, destabilizing and overthrowing governments and justice movements, and assassinating political leaders throughout the world. More than 20 million people have been murdered, many more maimed for life. All of these overt and covert interventions have been illegal and unconscionable under the United Nations Charter, international law, and, as well, under U.S. Constitutional law.

During the impeachment proceedings against U.S. President Clinton, many U.S. Congresspersons declared that their Constitutional duty to consider impeachment was equal in gravity to their duty to consider a declaration of war. It is one of the tragedies of our so-called constitutionally-based civilization that while the House of Representatives was preoccupied with impeaching a President for lying about consensual sex, the same political body didn’t even blink when the President chose punish the people of Iraq, whether with cruise missiles or sanctions.

The economic sanctions imposed against Iraq, enforced by international blockade, have reportedly led to premature deaths of over one million children under the age of 5–in effect, a weapon of mass destruction. The insensitivity of U.S. political leaders is revealed by remarks made by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on CBS "60 Minutes," May 12, 1996. Leslie Stall commented, "We have heard that half a million children died; that’s more children than died in Hiroshima." Then Stall asked, "Is the price worth it?" Madeleine Albright responded, "We think the price is worth it," and did not deny the fact that a massive number of children had died.

It is difficult to comprehend the arrogance of our governmental leaders. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, in addressing military combat troops on the USS George Washington aircraft carrier in the Gulf poised to attack Iraq, declared, "You are the steel in the sword of freedom. You are the tip of the sword" (Associated Press story, Feb. 12, 1998). Whose freedom? Whose sword? And who has thought about the justice, fairness, and long-term wisdom of the sword?

The tragedy and sickness continue: We think and act as if we are worth more than others; that others are worth far less than us.

Congress has declared war on only five occasions in the history of our Republic, the last vote being in 1941, authorizing our participation in WWII. Since WWII, as noted above, the U.S. Presidents have initiated over 200 overt military and 6,000 covert interventions. None of these interventions, nor the Presidents who ordered them, have been the object of serious discussions in Congress about impeachable offenses, and none of these aggressions have received serious debate, if any, about the need for declaring war as required under our Constitutional system of government.

Recent major examples of U.S.-led or supported aggression include the bombing of Libya in 1986, the invasion of Grenada in 1983, the invasion of Panama in 1990, and the "contra" wars against the people of Mozambique (at least 900,000 murdered), Angola (at least 500,000 murdered), and Nicaragua (at least 50,000 murdered and maimed).

The recent U.S. interventions against Iraq include "Desert Storm" in 1991 (perhaps 300,000 murdered), bombing of missile sites and a nuclear facility near Baghdad in January 1993, and bombing in 1996 ostensibly to punish Iraq for venturing into Kurdish "safe havens." Additionally, President Clinton sent 40 Tomahawk Cruise missiles into downtown Baghdad in June 1993 in an effort to punish Saddam Hussein for a supposed plot to assassinate ex-President George Bush when he was visiting Kuwait during Spring 1993. Seymour Hersch wrote a New Yorker article about this incident in which he could find no credible evidence for the plot. Furthermore, 16 of the 40 missiles missed their target, killing eight people, one of whom was a famous Iraqi painter.

When President George Herbert Walker Bush quickly ordered U.S. ground and naval forces to Saudi Arabia on August 7, 1990, in response to Iraq’s August 2nd "naked aggression" against the Sheikdom of Kuwait, many knew that was not the real issue. There have been numerous "naked aggressions" committed by one country against another in the Middle East, as well as elsewhere, including Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980, and Israel’s numerous "naked aggressions" against Arab people–Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, and Egyptians–over three decades. These include Israel’s 1981 bold and criminal bombing of Iraq’s nuclear power plant, and Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon where over 20,000 people were killed. Though all of Israel’s aggressions have received harsh condemnation from the United Nations, never have sanctions been imposed or bombs launched against Israel by the U.S. It is significant to note that we have always either overtly supported these aggressions or abstained from voting in the U.N. Rarely, if ever, has the U.S. condemned Israel’s aggression.

The U.S. has consistently provided Israel $3-4 billion of aid each year, despite the fact that Israel is a nuclear state which has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and U.S. law prohibits furnishing aid to any country that has not signed this treaty. In a similar situation, the U.S. ceased aid to Pakistan in 1988 when her nuclear weapons program was discovered.

So the immediate response by the Bush administration to Iraq’s 1990 actions–when the U.S. has ignored, voted against, and/or defied 42 U.N. resolutions during the previous 23 years condemning Israel’s aggression against four sovereign nations as well as her occupation of Palestine–demonstrates an incredible double standard that infuriates people of conscience everywhere. This double standard promotes a seething bitterness among many of its victims, and revolutionary activity among those who refuse to be silent or complacent. It creates shame for conscientious citizens of the United States and demands their nonviolent revolutionary resistance and affirmation of an alternative vision. The behavior of the U.S. Government shows total contempt for international law and reveals, for anyone and everyone who wishes to face basic empirical truth, what a shameless international outlaw our nation-state really is.

Though President Bush declared Iraq’s invasion and occupation of the Sheikdom of Kuwait as an arbitrary and egregious aggression, Kuwait in fact had been a historic district of Iraq under the Ottoman empire up to WWI. During the breakup of Middle East lands after the war, Great Britain created tiny Kuwait as a separate territory, cutting off much of oil-rich Iraq’s convenient access to the Persian Gulf. Subsequently, to this day, Iraqi governments have never accepted Kuwait as a separate sovereign nation.

On July 25, 1990, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie personally told Saddam Hussein, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait" (New York Times, 9/23/90). This conversation has led some analysts to suggest that Saddam Hussein had clear reason to believe that the U.S. would not respond to Iraqi aggression against Kuwait over border and oil well location disputes.

Furthermore it is important to note that the U.S. and Western European countries were major suppliers of chemical and biological weapons to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. A report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs declared that 9 out of 10 biological materials used in Iraq’s weapon systems were bought from U.S. companies. Furthermore, the U.S. supplied satellite intelligence to Iraq when they used U.S.-supplied chemical weapons against Iran in 1988 (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 1998).

U.S. double standards were again revealed when a 1997 Senate Bill allowed the President to deny international inspections of U.S. weapons sites "on grounds of national security," which violated the global treaty mandating the dismantling of chemical weapons (Associated Press, Feb. 27, 1998). The U.S./U.N. sanctions imposed against Iraq are a gross violation of the Geneva Protocol 1, Article 54, prohibiting starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.

Furthermore, the U.S. government and U.S. companies sell billions of dollars of weapons of mass destruction to other Gulf states and Israel. It is believed that fundamentalist Iran has a nuclear weapons program. In effect, Iraq has its own legitimate defense considerations in that its adversaries, Israel and Iran, each are believed to have numerous weapons of mass destruction in addition to nuclear weapons. Thus Iraq has every reason to believe it is being unfairly singled out for unprecedented punishment. This discrimination is bound to breed deep resentment against the U.S. for generations to come. Resentment is further deepened by knowledge that President Clinton ordered the CIA to plan and carry out a major program of sabotage, subversion, and organization of armed resistance groups inside Iraq designed to overthrow Saddam Hussein (New York Times, Feb. 26, 1998)–another example of arrogant, outlaw behavior by the U.S. Government.

Following World War II, Pax Americana launched into full swing. The 1947 National Security Act set in motion the intense covert as well as overt activities mentioned above to assure that "Manifest Destiny" would become globally successful. Many of the veterans who have become active against war, for peace through justice, have directly participated in these covert and overt interventions during their military service. For this reason, veterans bring an important infusion of insight and passion to various efforts by people of conscience to end this continuation of the Columbus Enterprise.

In March 1990 the White House issued its National Security Strategy of the United States, reminding its readers that the U.S. has "…always sought to protect the safety of the nation…and its way of life," requiring efforts aimed at "contributing to an international environment…within which our democracy–and other free nations–can flourish." The report states that these goals have guided "American" policy "throughout the life of the Republic," being the "driving force behind President Jefferson’s decision to send the American Navy against the Pasha of Tripoli in 1804 as they were when President Reagan directed American naval and air forces to return to that area in 1986." Tripoli, of course, is today’s Libya, and 1801-1805 was the period of the First Barbary or Tripolitan War.

The report continues by declaring our "pivotal responsibility for ensuring the stability of the international balance," and it identifies the Middle East as a region in which "even as East-West tensions diminish, American strategic concerns remain," identifying threats to, for example, the "security of Israel" and the "free flow of oil." Israel is strategic for assuring U.S. hegemony even beyond the Middle East.

The interest in oil is made very clear: "Secure supplies of energy are essential to our prosperity and security. The concentration of 65 percent of the world’s known oil reserves in the Persian Gulf means we must continue to ensure reliable access to competitively priced oil and a prompt, adequate response to any major oil supply disruption." Of course this policy is not surprising, nor is it new. It is simply worth noting again that the American Way Of Life (AWOL) leaves us little choice but to continue our addiction to oil and other fossil fuels.

It is interesting to note that a post-Korean War major intervention of U.S. troops occurred in 1958 in Lebanon as British paratroopers landed in Jordan. This military action was in response to the perceived threat to the unstable Lebanese government created by the summer 1958 military coup that overthrew the feudal, Western-friendly monarchy in Iraq. The coup in Iraq was considered a shocking setback for the U.S. Our access to cheap oil was thought to be at stake. Gamal Abdel Nasser, head of the newly created United Arab Republic, in February 1958, advocated Pan-Arab nationalism which was considered extremely threatening to Western oil interests. Citing the Eisenhower Doctrine, first espoused in 1957 to protect friendly Middle East countries, President Eisenhower, in a message to Congress, declared Lebanon’s territorial integrity and independence as "vital to U.S. interests" and concluded the likelihood of "indirect aggression from without" [Richard B. Morris and Jeffrey B. Morris (Eds.), Encyclopedia Of American History (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 488]. With 15,000 military forces present in Lebanon, Eisenhower, joined by Britain, warned Iraq’s new revolutionary government to respect Western oil interests. Kuwait and its oil was one of the major concerns in 1958, especially as Iraq was actively seeking to resolve the long problem of incorporating Kuwait which, in Iraq’s mind, had been unfairly taken from its territory by the British in 1922.

Since OPEC’s spectacular achievement in 1973 when it took control of oil away from the private companies that had historically possessed control of the industry, the United States has been desirous of military intervention in the Middle East. President Ford threatened to use military force in 1974 if necessary to "break an embargo or fashion reasonable prices" (Gerson and Birchard, op. cit., p. 284). Since the mid-1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with private U.S. contractors, has built an extensive network of military bases in Saudi Arabia, according to U.S. specifications and under U.S. supervision, but owned by the Saudis. These installations, more elaborate than needed by the Saudi Arabian military, have been over-built specifically for use by U.S. military forces.

The early 1979 Iranian revolution that toppled the Western-friendly Shah, the hostage crisis that followed, and the Soviet December invasion of Afghanistan, all contributed to catalyze open domestic support for escalated U.S. military buildup in the Middle East. President Carter responded with the "Carter Doctrine," in which he warned that the "United States would use any means necessary, including military forces," to protect its vital interests in the Gulf (Gerson and Birchard, op. cit., p. 283). This went further than the Eisenhower Doctrine espoused in 1957.

When the U.S. was robbed of its closest ally in the Gulf region with the deposition of the Shah in 1979, the newly selected President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, became a (temporary) replacement, of sorts. The U.S. gave tacit approval and support for Iraq’s September 1980 invasion of the hostile (as perceived by Iraq and other nations in the Middle East), revolutionary Islamic Iran. When the war turned for the worse against Iraq in 1982, the Reagan administration provided loans and credit guarantees despite continuing allegations of human rights violations by the Iraqi government. Iraq’s working relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon became ever closer.

In 1986 and 1987 when Iranian troops occupied the city of Fao, the Shatt al-Arab Waterway, and other Gulf port areas of Iraq adjacent to Kuwait, the U.S. became even more alarmed. The U.S. reflagged Kuwaiti tankers for protection and introduced a 42-warship armada to the Gulf, in effect openly aligning itself with Iraq to deter shelling of oil tankers by Iran. A cease-fire was finally signed by Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein on August 20, 1988. After 8 years of war, Iraq suffered 750,000 dead and wounded, a ravaged economy and huge foreign debts, the majority owed to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Hussein had always claimed that the war against Iran was fought in the name of the "Arab nation" and that Iraq had acted as an "Arab shield" against Khomeini’s provocative, fundamentalist Iran.

Before President Carter left office, the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) was developed, initially as a force that could seize oil facilities. It has grown to comprise one quarter of all active duty Army and Marine divisions, Navy carrier groups, and Air Force tactical fighter wings. On January 1, 1983, the RDF was officially transformed into the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) with responsibility for all U.S. military activities in the Middle East region, stretching between Egypt, Kenya and Pakistan. CENTCOM’s strategy for intervention in the Middle East was, and continues to be, based on (a) improvement of military bases in Middle East countries in exchange for U.S. access rights, (b) increased stockpiling of U.S. weapons and supplies in the region, (c) expansion of sealift and airlift capabilities, and (d) development of highly mobile and heavily armed "special operations" forces and "light infantry" divisions. President Reagan described the latter units as "power projection" forces designed for quick in and out intervention in the "Third" world. The "New World Order" was well prepared for the change from a bipolar to unipolar world, ruled by Pax Americana, i.e., peace, U.S. style.

As the "East-West" conflict dwindles, the longstanding "North-South," or rich-poor conflict comes into sharper focus. However, in effect, the rich-poor, or North-South conflict has been operating under the cover of the "Cold War" for 45 years. In 1948, George Kennan, a major architect of the post-WW II containment policy in President Truman’s State Department, wrote:

"We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population…we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our task…is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity…we should cease to talk about…unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization…we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts."

If only our political leaders today were this honest.

The first major military crisis in the post-Cold War period warns us all of the nature of the New World Order: rich countries, especially as defined by income and consumption patterns, are united under the violent military enforcement power of the United States against local and regional "Third" world, i.e. generally poor, countries to acquire necessary global resources and the profits derived from them. The U.S.-led intervention into the Middle East in 1990-1991, with "the heaviest sustained bombing in history" (New York Times, Feb. 3, 1991), Iraq being the unfortunate victim, was a defense of the hegemonic Western economic system. The Kuwaiti Sheikdom, the other Gulf Sheikdoms, and the Saudi royal family were being defended because of their allegiance to the consumer addicted, waste unconscious, profit for the minority, Western Way of Life as managed by the American Way of Life (AWOL). As one commentator put it, "It is a perfect marriage of a bank without a country [the Sheikdoms] with a country without a bank [the U.S.]."

The U.S. military intervention in the Middle East in 1990-1991 was the first time in 45 years that such action could not be rationalized as defense of "democracy" in response to the Soviet/"Communist" threat. Although about much more than oil, this intervention assured control over the region’s oil by maintaining Saudi and the Gulf Sheikdom’s power in serving as convenient banks for the West. The issue is not so much energy, though that is extremely important in the long run, but the incredible economic and consequently political power deriving from control of energy resources and profits. Petrodollars invested in the Western economies by the Gulf Sheikdoms amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. Such massive intervention and destruction as occurred in Iraq is an ominous warning to all people who get in the way of Pax Americana. Watch out poor people, you are the threat to AWOL, you are the threat to the "New World Order."

The March 1990 White House National Security Strategy, discussed above, declared the presence of "lower order threats" and that "poverty and the lack of political freedoms contribute to the instability that breeds such conflict." It identified regions of concern: East Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and South Asia, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. I guess Western and Eastern Europe, the USSR, and Antarctica are safe for now. By the end of the 1990s it was clear that Eastern Europe was also not safe in the region of former Yugoslavia.

A few months before the Gulf War of 1990-1991, General A.M. Gray, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, stated the problem very clearly:

"The underdeveloped world’s growing dissatisfaction over the gap between rich and poor nations will create a fertile breeding ground for insurgencies which have the potential to jeopardize regional stability and our access to vital economic and military resources. This situation will become more critical as our nation and allies, as well as potential adversaries, become more dependent on these strategic resources.

"If we are to have stability in these regions, maintain access to their resources, protect our citizens abroad, defend our vital installations, and deter conflict, we must maintain within our active force structure a credible military power projection capability with the flexibility to respond to conflict across the spectrum of violence throughout the globe" (Marine Corps Gazette, May 1990)

Gray is fairly blunt, with shades of the honesty displayed by George Kennan 42 years earlier. The New World Order means that new pretexts for intervention have to be articulated to continue rationalizing intervention ("narcoguerillas," "terrorists," "madmen"); globalization of the Banana Republics, to include Eastern Europe and the USSR, as well as the remainder of the "Third" world; and the unlimited "freedom" of the U.S. to use whatever military force it thinks is necessary to maintain its hegemony and the American Way of Life (AWOL). This is why I and many others, veterans and non-veterans alike, opposed the 1990-1991 U.S. military operations in the Gulf and the continued bombings and sanctions against the people of Iraq, and later, the bombings in Kosovo and Serbia. Who is next? You? Me? The New World Order is dangerous!

This is the context, historically and politically, for the 1991 Veterans Peace Delegation that traveled to the Middle East to expose the diabolical nature of Pax Americana. We found Armageddon in Megiddo, Green Line Israel; later we explored Babylon in Iraq. But in our hearts we know we are facing Armageddon and Babylon within ourselves, within our culture and society, within our nation-state, within AWOL. We know that the change that really must happen, the transformation that is awaiting, is within us. It is not the poor, of course, who are the threat to the world (order). Our greed blinds us to the kind of injustices that AWOL inevitably, and necessarily, imposes on Mother Earth and her inhabitants. It is only a matter of time before it will catch up with us as well. I hope that we wake up and become willing to endure the painful, but ultimately joyous, process of liberation to the new man, the new woman, i.e. homo amicus. We need you, now!

A Dialogue with the Great Spirit

brian — Tue, 01 Jan 1991 21:21:43 +0000

O Great Spirit
Thank you for guiding our superior country,
the United States,
to conduct with nearly 2,000 military aircraft
2,000 bombing missions a day
or 85 every hour
for days on end
to "crush, clobber and devastate"
the country of Iraq
and Sheikdom of Kuwait
with so few casualties of our own.

Thank you for endowing us with the fine resources
and technical brilliance
to arm each bomber with three million dollars in ordnance
possessing amazing accuracy and guidance.

Thank you for aiding us in dropping 36 million pounds of bombs
every three hours,
the most incredible bombing performance
in the history of the world.

Thank you for enabling us to identify President Saddam Hussein as
a Hitler-like dictator
rather than a human being
so that we can murder, maim and devastate without feeling any pain.
In fact, we can feel satisfied and pleased,
and enjoy "euphoria," as Wall Street did
on the morning after the bombing of Iraq was initiated.

Thank you for enabling us
to continually live by a double standard
whereby we can ignore and defy U.N. resolutions
condemning and ordering the cessation of Israel’s occupation
of nearly two million Palestinians while insisting that Iraq
withdraw from the Sheikdom called Kuwait
or be bombed into the Stone Age.

Thank you for enabling us to ignore entirely
any historical understanding of the earlier colonial
interventions into the Middle East
whereby arbitrary boundaries were created by Western powers
dividing historical cultures and lands into pieces to ensure
Western control of oil.

Thank you for enabling us to ignore completely
any of Iraq’s allegations of long-standing border disputes,
infractions in oil well locations and oil policies,
and questions over the legitimate sovereignty of Kuwait itself.

Thank you for enabling us
to self-righteously champion peace without justice,
when justice is the only way to peace.
And thank you for enabling us
to have the audacity to actively ignore U.N. resolutions
condemning the United States government for our bombing of Libya,
our terrorizing of Nicaragua for ten years
and our invasions of Panama and Grenada.

Thank you for helping us forget that our civilization was
and continues to be
built on a foundation of genocide, genocide and more genocide
of the Native Americans,
the U.S. government violating each of nearly 400 treaties
signed with the natives,
and help us to forget that our civilization was constructed with
slavery of black people
forcefully kidnapped from their native lands
and with subsequent exploitation and terrorizing of blacks
as well as European, Latin and Asian immigrants.

Thank you for enabling us to forget about our own
violent past and present
dominated by continual racist attitudes here and abroad
whereby our government over the decades has assaulted and
murdered
countless citizens in the labor, peace and justice movements.

Thank you for giving us the wisdom to spend $1 trillion
in the 1980s
on high-tech "conventional" weaponry
so that we can actually use it as an alternative to the more
politically difficult
nuclear weapons.

Thank you for enabling us to have become so
militarily superior
that no nation or group of nations could ever match us
and that every nation is subject to being devastated by us
if they defy our national interests.

Thank you for guiding us to these accomplishments
while enabling us to ignore our own economic decline,
our increasing poverty and homelessness,
especially among single mothers and their children,
our own lack of quality health care for all our citizens,
our drug and crime problems;
to ignore the increasing ecological destruction of our planet
that threatens to extinguish our species
and to ignore the increased poverty of 75% of the world’s
population,
a poverty
that breeds revolutionary fervor.

In fact, we are very appreciative that we are able to be
in deep denial
about so many realities in our own country and around the globe.
Otherwise we could not continue our way of life.

Thank you for having anointed us as the morally superior people
of the world,
enabling us to decide for so many others
how they should live and conduct their lives.

Thank you for helping us to squander and exploit
half of the world’s resources
but with five percent of the world’s population
and to be deluded into believing that the oil under Arab land
in the Middle East
is really our oil
to fuel the American way of life at the expense of others.

Thank you for guiding us to spend $5 billion last year
on weight reduction diets
while 40,000 children died every day in the world
for lack of food and nutrition.
Let us forget that those children die not for lack of food
on the planet
but for lack of ability to buy food from the sellers.

Thank you, Great Spirit,
for having so richly blessed us with material comforts
and for enabling us to forcefully intervene around the globe
with military, covert, economic and political devices
to assure our access to cheap resources,
cheap labor
and lucrative markets.

Thank you for granting us the capacity to possess
historical amnesia,
current delusions,
and psychological denial
so that we won’t feel conflict and knots in our stomachs
about these injustices.

But oh! Great Spirit
we need help to maintain our denial,
our ignorance,
our arrogance.
Please help us to maintain our double standard,
our American Way of Life (AWOL)
no matter what the cost to other human beings,
other nations,
other species,
and to the sacred and indispensable ecology of Mother Earth.
Please, Great Spirit, please,
I plead with you,
help us to avoid any risks,
pain, adversity,
or major changes.
Help us to avoid taking personal responsibility for our lives
and for my life.
Please, I hope you don’t call upon me to speak
the truth of my heart,
to make the kind of radical changes that some suggest
are inevitable
in our lifestyle, global attitudes and consumption patterns.

Please, Great Spirit,
help me to remain in your good graces
without having to make any big changes.
Can’t I live, think, and feel
"business as usual"?
Do I have to learn about unconditional love?
I don’t like a lot of people and what they do.
I don’t really want to take personal responsibility for my life
and the action and policies of my government.

But it seems
that you are speaking to me.
Are you saying that it would be good to listen
to the inner voice
that is suggesting that my understandings and wishes are
backward?
Are you calling me to make
radical changes
in community with other kindred souls,
to take what seems like crazy stands,
to speak the truth of only what I believe in my heart to be true?

Are you asking me to willingly consider the need for
continual transformation,
even to participate in nonviolent revolutionary change?
If that is the case, please help me find others to discuss this with.
Please give me strength and clarity and vision
and the courage to stand up and express with my life
my heart-felt truth,
even if it conflicts with my government
and its spokespersons
and majority opinion.

If what my government is doing seems to
be utterly
insane and barbaric
but the majority support it as
necessary and patriotic,
should I still stand up and take all the risks involved
in advocating justice for all people,
including Arabs and blacks
and Hispanics and women and natives?

That seems so hard, so difficult
when the society seems
so entrenched in its destructive ways
and continually talks in double-speak.
You say you still urge me to say it
the way I see it?
To express it the way I feel it?
And to have faith that I’ll find the strength to do it?
You’re saying I’m not alone?
Oh!
I guess there are others.
I guess they’re right here.

Shall we begin today?
Please help me.
I will commit to helping you.
We really need each other now for the long haul.
For radical change.
So we can survive with dignity
on the planet with millions of other humans.

We are all equal.
We need to evolve
from Homo hostilis to Homo amicus.

Thank you for speaking to me and encouraging me to share
this dialogue with you.