SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) --
“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
(Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
After U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday unveiled
his long-awaited "peace deal" for the Israel-Palestine conflict, Sen.
Bernie Sanders condemned the proposal as "unacceptable" and called for
an end to Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories.
Sanders (I-Vt.), a top candidate in the Democratic Party's 2020
presidential primary race, responded to Trump's plan in pair of tweets,
envisioning a U.S. policy that promotes "a just and durable agreement."
The tweets aligned closely with a statement from the senator's
office, in which Sanders said any acceptable deal "must end the Israeli
occupation that began in 1967 and enable Palestinian self-determination
in an independent, democratic, economically viable state of their own
alongside a secure and democratic state of Israel."
Sanders, who would be the first Jewish president, added that "Trump's
so-called 'peace deal' doesn't come close, and will only perpetuate the
conflict, and undermine the security interests of Americans, Israelis,
and Palestinians."
The White House hopeful's comments Tuesday were not the first time
Sanders has spoken out in recent months for the Palestinian people. In
October 2019, the senator suggested
using the billions of dollars in military aid that the United States
supplies to Israel each year to pressure Netanyahu's government to end
its horrific treatment of Palestinians.
The following month, Sanders was praised
by progressives for saying during the Democratic presidential debate
that "we must treat the Palestinian people with the respect and dignity
they deserve."
Sanders was far from the only lawmaker to decry Trump's new plan, which was drafted under the direction of Jared Kushner—the president's son-in-law and senior adviser—and unveiled at the White House with Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of Sanders' rivals in the primary race, tweeted Tuesday that "Trump's 'peace plan' is a rubber stamp for annexation and offers no chance for a real Palestinian state."
"Releasing a plan without negotiating with Palestinians isn't
diplomacy, it's a sham," Warren added. "I will oppose unilateral
annexation in any form—and reverse any policy that supports it."
As Warren noted, Palestinian leaders have not been involved with
crafting Trump's deal. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said
in a televised address Tuesday: "I say to Trump and Netanyahu:
Jerusalem is not for sale, all our rights are not for sale and are not
for bargain. And your deal, the conspiracy, will not pass."
Santa Fe prides itself on the city’s reputation as an art mecca and
home to vibrant Native cultures. Why then should a Native installed art
exhibit on a stucco wall along the Santa Fe Trail cause such
controversy? Because it illuminates a truth that many people do not want
to face? It offends people? It is anti-Semitic?
The truth is sometimes painful. One hundred years ago, in what is now
known as the “Middle East,” Europeans drew lines on paper and called
them borders. America has enforced those borders with military aid in
the form of troops, weapons and obscene amounts of money.
In 1916, the French and British signed the Sykes-Picot agreement that
carved up the “Middle East” for their respective countries. This
agreement was quickly superseded by another, which established a mandate
system of French and British control and was sanctioned by the newly
formed League of Nations.
The Balfour Declaration and the British mandate over Palestine were
approved by the League of Nations in 1922. Most Arabs opposed the
Balfour Declaration, over concerns that a Jewish homeland would mean the
subjugation of Arab Palestinians. They were correct.
The British controlled Palestine until Israel, in the years following
the end of World War II, was made an independent state in 1947.
The Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), occurred when more than 700,000
Palestinian Arabs — about half of Palestine’s pre-WWII Arab population —
were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 war with Israel. Now
these 700,000 and their descendants live in refugee camps spread
throughout the region, while their occupiers, the settler-colonists,
live in shining cities funded by US tax dollars.
Today, Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign
assistance since World War II. To date, the United States has given
Israel $142.3 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense
funding. Almost all U.S. bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of
military assistance, although from 1971 to 2007 Israel also received
significant economic assistance.
In 2016, the U.S. and Israeli governments signed a new ten-year
memorandum of understanding (MOU) on military aid, covering FY2019 to
FY2028. Under the terms of the MOU, the United States pledges to provide
$38 billion in military aid ($33 billion in Foreign Military Financing
grants plus $5 billion in missile defense appropriations) to Israel.
This MOU replaced a previous $30 billion ten-year agreement, which ran
through fiscal year 2018.
Each year approximately 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young
as 12 years old, are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military
court system. The most common charge is stone throwing. It is
unconscionable that “liberal” Americans can be so justifiably enraged
that immigrant children are kept in cages at the US border, but stay
silent at Palestinian children being prosecuted and imprisoned in their
own homelands.
Five centuries ago, in what is now known as the Americas, Europeans
drew lines on paper and called them borders. America has enforced those
borders — all the while forgetting their responsibilities to the
original peoples of this land and the enslaved peoples who were brought
here to build the infrastructure of this nation, a nation founded on
genocide.
These are truths. The images on that stucco wall show the truth of
settler colonialism and the effects it has on Indigenous people. They
were put there to show solidarity with our Palestinian relatives in the
face of brutal occupation; to illuminate injustice and shed light on
this nation’s complicity in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
This is a wake-up call. This is NATIVE LAND.
To those who defaced those murals – You are settlers on stolen land — here and in Palestine. Remember that.
Welcome to this special series of “Live On The Fly” with Randy Credico, Julian Assange: Countdown to Freedom.
Interviews on the approaching extradition trial of Julian Assange in London
In the wake of the recent U.S. illegal drone strike and assassination
of Qasem Soleimani, it has become all the more timely to expose the
illegal activities of the U.S. government. Julian Assange did
just that, and he is now facing extradition to the U.S. and a lifetime
sentence behind the bars of a U.S. maximum security penitentiary. As his
health declines, not only does he deserve our support at this critical
moment, the right to publish and inform the public is at stake.
Supporters of Julian Assange, and fans of Randy Credico, will be happy to know that the popular and controversial radio program Live on the Fly is back as an exclusive, all-new podcast series here at CovertAction Magazine.
The series is called Julian Assange: Countdown to Freedom and is your first stop for late-breaking updates on the approaching extradition trial of Julian Assange in London.
In this first podcast, hear compelling clips from William Kunstler and John Pilger on extra-judicial and arbitrary detention as well as interviews with Coleen Rowley, retired FBI Special Agent and whistleblower, expert on criminal procedure constitutional law, Nathan Fuller, director of the Courage Foundation which supports whistle blowers, and Anthony Papa, artist/activist and the author of 15 to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom, and This Side of Freedom: Life after Clemency.
