What If Mexico Was Lobbing Rockets...

Tweet Update: another analogy on this theme --

Randall Kuhn is an assistant professor and Director of the Global Health Affairs Program at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He just returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank (and mentions in the article that he is Jewish).

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/14/when-israel-expelled-palestinians/

Think about what would happen if San Diego expelled most of its Hispanic, African American, Asian American, and Native American population, about 48 percent of the total, and forcibly relocated them to Tijuana? Not just immigrants, but even those who have lived in this country for many generations. Not just the unemployed or the criminals or the America haters, but the school teachers, the small business owners, the soldiers, even the baseball players.

What if we established government and faith-based agencies to help move white people into their former homes? And what if we razed hundreds of their homes in rural areas and, with the aid of charitable donations from people in the United States and abroad, planted forests on their former towns, creating nature preserves for whites to enjoy? Sounds pretty awful, huh? I may be called anti-Semitic for speaking this truth. Well, I'm Jewish and the scenario above is what many prominent Israeli scholars say happened when Israel expelled Palestinians from southern Israel and forced them into Gaza. But this analogy is just getting started.

What if the United Nations kept San Diego's discarded minorities in crowded, festering camps in Tijuana for 19 years? Then, the United States invaded Mexico, occupied Tijuana and began to build large housing developments in Tijuana where only whites could live.

And what if the United States built a network of highways connecting American citizens of Tijuana to the United States? And checkpoints, not just between Mexico and the United States but also around every neighborhood of Tijuana? What if we required every Tijuana resident, refugee or native, to show an ID card to the U.S. military on demand? What if thousands of Tijuana residents lost their homes, their jobs, their businesses, their children, their sense of self worth to this occupation? Would you be surprised to hear of a protest movement in Tijuana that sometimes became violent and hateful? Okay, now for the unbelievable part.

Think about what would happen if, after expelling all of the minorities from San Diego to Tijuana and subjecting them to 40 years of brutal military occupation, we just left Tijuana, removing all the white settlers and the soldiers? Only instead of giving them their freedom, we built a 20-foot tall electrified wall around Tijuana? Not just on the sides bordering San Diego, but on all the Mexico crossings as well. What if we set up 50-foot high watchtowers with machine gun batteries, and told them that if they stood within 100 yards of this wall we would shoot them dead on sight? And four out of every five days we kept every single one of those border crossings closed, not even allowing food, clothing, or medicine to arrive. And we patrolled their air space with our state-of-the-art fighter jets but didn't allow them so much as a crop duster. And we patrolled their waters with destroyers and submarines, but didn't even allow them to fish.

Would you be at all surprised to hear that these resistance groups in Tijuana, even after having been "freed" from their occupation but starved half to death, kept on firing rockets at the United States? Probably not. But you may be surprised to learn that the majority of people in Tijuana never picked up a rocket, or a gun, or a weapon of any kind.

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Portion of a press release from an activist in LA reporting on the takeover of the Israeli embassy there for 3 hours this week.

One last thing I want to respond to is the ridiculous metaphor I have heard over and over again saying that if Mexico were firing small rockets into the U.S. like have been fired from Gaza into the portion of Palestine which the state of Israel was established on the U.S. would be acting exactly like Israel. There's no doubt that there are similarities between the relationships, both the U.S. and Israel are European settler states established through a mix of ethnic cleansing and genocide of the indigenous population. And just as half of Mexico was conquered and stolen by the U.S. in 1848, 78% of Palestine was conquered and stolen by Israel in 1948 (with the rest of Palestine then being taken in 1967). But that's where the similarities end. The metaphor would make sense as used by supporters of Israel if:

-There was no Mexican State
-Mexico had no army, only paramilitary groups and police
-The U.S. contolled all Mexican ports and well as all land borders and completely controlled all of Mexican airspace
-The U.S. regularly assassinated Mexicans in mexico
-The U.S. regularly bombed Mexican cities and villiages
-The U.S. had a network of hundreds of military check points limiting Mexican freedom of movement even within Mexico
-The U.S. held thousands of Mexican political prisoners in jails in the U.S.
-The U.S. moved hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens into mexico where they took the best land and created U.S. settlements where no Mexcans were allowed
-The U.S. built a system of "american" only roads within Mexico that no Mexicans were allowed to be on
-The U.S. had demolished tens of thousands of Mexican homes and destroyed huge amounts of mexican farm land over the past few decades.

If all these things were true then maybe that metaphor would start to make sense. Please don't buy into these lies. The violence will stop when Palestinians are free and control their own destinies. And remember as bad as things are right now Palestinians have survived darker times and they, as a people will come through this just as they have come through so many other hardships. This is only the latest step in over 60 years of colonialism, ethnic cleansing, murder and destruction carried out by the State of Israel.

I know I've gone on and on and I know I'm not neccesarily the most eloquent writer. In some ways maybe this was more a way for me to get some of the feelings I'm having out but if you've taken the time to read this I hope you will do something, most particularly those of us in the U.S. need to do everything we can to stop U.S. aid to Israel, its this aid that makes everything the Israeli government does possible so as far as I'm concerned the U.S. is just as guilty as Israel. Feel free to hit me back if you want to chat about any of this.

With love and rage,

garrick ruiz
nursing student, social justice activist