"Meanwhile, back at the progressive-pundit ranch, even outspoken critics of the neoconservative status quo refuse to acknowledge the most pressing foreign policy issue of our time-Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank. Al Franken and the rest of the voices on Air America were outraged when Bush and company suspended habeas corpus through the Military Commissions Act. None of them seem to have noticed Israel's long-time policy of detaining Palestinians without trial or charge under its cleverly titled program of "Administrative Detention." They decry George Bush's policy of preemptive war while in the same breath parroting the Israel lobby's talking points about Israel's right to defend itself against those who would dare to resist the brutal invasions and occupations that are part and parcel of the Zionist tragedy unfolding for the last sixty years in "The Promised Land."
"The idea of a Christian state is out of the question. An Islamic state-what, have you lost your mind? But progressives believe a Jewish state is to be promoted and defended at all costs. Apartheid was morally unacceptable in South Africa. But Israel's Apartheid Wall which imprisons Palestinians in bantustans throughout the West Bank is considered absolutely essential in order to provide 'security' for Israel's colonization of Palestine. The cluster bombs Israel dropped on civilian neighborhoods in the last days of their recent barbaric destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon aren't a topic of conversation on Air America Radio. Neither is the collective punishment and systematic starvation of one and half million civilians in the Gaza Strip. But what the heck, Al Franken is planning to run for the Senate in '08, and we're looking to put a Democrat in the White House next time around. Those AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) lobbyists and their deep pockets are going to be indispensable.
"It's time to snap out of our collective state of "liberal" denial and take to the streets, loudly and insistently, in numbers too large to be shot, arrested or ignored. No more platitudes about peace. No more lesser of two evils. No more staking out the middle ground. No more handshakes with war criminals. No more walls or weapons or wars of imperialist aggression. We need to declare our independence from the stultification of corporate hegemony. Though our forebears may not have been the most egalitarian crowd they at least had the courage and tenacity to take a stand against colonial tyranny and exploitation by the British East India Company. There's that familiar corporate element again. Funny how history repeats itself.
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