by Stephen Lendman

Judge Israel solely as a political entity - by its policies, the harm it causes millions regionally and beyond. Ignore the right of Jews to statehood.

What about Palestinians, Kurds, Roma, nomadic Bedouin tribes, Rohingyas, Nubians and millions of other stateless people. Are they less deserving? Are Jews special, but not them?

In November 1945, Harry Truman said “I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.” On May 15, 1945, minutes after midnight, Truman became the first world leader to recognize the new Israeli state - created by mass slaughtering and forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their own land in their own country, never allowed to return.

Former US General George Marshall/then Secretary of State and later Secretary of Defense was appalled at Truman’s decision - along with almost the entire US foreign policy establishment.

Truman faced reelection in November. Polls showed him trailing Republican Tom Dewey. Marshall wrote a secret memo now known saying “if the President were to follow (wrongheaded) advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President.”

Truman’s first secretary of defense, James Forrestal, agreed with Marshall and many other recognition opponents saying “(t)here are 30 million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other.”

He told Truman aide Clark Clifford: “Why don’t you face up to the realities!” It was a done deal weeks earlier. In March 1948, Truman met secretly with future Israeli president Chaim Weizmann. They struck a deal.

The late Israel Shahak said Jewish groups bribed Truman with $2 million for his presidential campaign. Jack Kennedy later told Gore Vidal: “That’s why our recognition was rushed through so fast” - moments after David Ben-Gurion declared a new Jewish state on 78% of historic Palestine.

In June 1967, Israel took the rest, including East Jerusalem - an international city under a UN mandate. Seven earlier Security Council resolutions condemned Israel’s annexation. They world community did nothing to reverse it.

Systematically it’s being entirely Judaized. denying Palestinians their rightful capital. Throughout Israel’s sordid history, it’s waged genocidal war on Palestine - blaming victims for its crimes.

Palestinians continue enduring the longest illegal occupation in modern memory - living in limbo, terrorized, denied self-determination, having no control over their daily lives, living in constant fear, denied freedom of expression and movement, economically strangled, collectively punished, especially Gazans under suffocating blockade.

Every day is Kristallnacht in Palestine. Fundamental human and civil rights are denied. Genocidal high crimes repeat without redress. Wanting to live free from occupation harshness is called terrorism.

Punitive taxes are imposed. Few services are provided. Fishermen are attacked at sea. Farmers working their land are shot. Trying at the wrong time risks arrest, injury or death. Crops and orchards are destroyed. Settlers commit regular attacks with impunity.

Justifiable resistance is prohibited. Protesters for democratic rights are beaten, tear gassed, arrested, and at times murdered in cold blood.

Thousands of political prisoners languish in Israel’s gulag - including elected Palestinian officials for belonging to the wrong political parties. Hundreds are in prison uncharged and untried - thousands of others on fabricated charges.

Multiple times daily, Israeli soldiers, police and other security forces terrorize, brutalize, injure, arrest and at times murder Palestinians in cold blood - with near certain immunity for their crimes. Accountability is rare - never for military or regime officials most responsible.

Institutionalized racism defines Israeli policy. Young children are brainwashed to hate Arabs before they’re old enough to understand, taught to believe their existential threats.

Indoctrinated to be warriors, told military service is “noble and worthy,” mandatory for male and female youths. Soldiers participate in classroom discussions.

Teachers are retired military officers, especially principals. Photos of fallen heroes adorn school walls. Field trips for all ages visit military memorials on former battlefields.

Textbooks and classroom instruction teach militarism. High schools have mandatory "preparation for the IDF" programs - including training and indoctrination to be warriors.

Military heroes and imperial conquests are glorified. Arabs are vilified. Genocidal wars are considered natural - military service a right of passage preparing for adulthood.

An entire population is brainwashed to fight. Arabs are called natural enemies. Brutalizing them is considered OK.

Defending Israel against nonexistent threats alone matters. Israeli culture reflects blind patriotism, militarism, belligerence, vilifying Arabs and indifference to their suffering.

A never-ending readiness for war persists. Its perniciousness affects all aspects of Israeli society and culture - worse than ever today under its most extremist regime in history, run by fascists, racists and religious zealots, indifferent to rule of law principles, a police state masquerading as democratic.

When lunatics run the asylum, the worst of things follow. Greater regional war is virtually certain - maybe next time Israel using its nuclear trump card, incinerating an entire population it attacks.

A society conditioned to brutalize, kill and destroy stops at nothing to achieve its objectives. A US/Israeli alliance threatens world peace.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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