Democracy of Tyranny--Part One

Democracy is a noun to which Americans are expected, metaphorically, to genuflect when they read or hear the word.  It is an "elastic" noun , one which means many things to different people.  It is especially bruited about whenever an administration requires support for a domestic or foreign policy.  Generally speaking, it is a noun which evokes a positive response: it is a form of government which represents the will of the people;  it is worth defending;  it is desirable for countries where democratic institutions do not exist.  As Christians in earlier centuries spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, so the United States has an urgent need to spread the gospel of Democracy.

After World War II, European Jews, having suffered alienation, exclusion, and finally the deaths of six million of their own people, forced themselves upon the Palestinians in search of a permanent homeland.  In 1948 the United Nations created the sovereign state of Israel.  It awarded 55 per cent of its land towards a Jewish state, and 45 per cent to the Palestinians.  Israel now controls 77 per cent and the Palestinians 22 per cent on which to build a state.  Israel fought several wars against Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon to hold on to territory, and in the War of 1967 Israel took control of Gaza and the West Bank for forty years.  Although Israel had, under the leadership of Arik Sharon, disengaged itself from Gaza, Israel maintains military check points over the movements of its population, making it difficult for them to go to hospitals, schools, markets, or to Jerusalem itself.

This strangulation against the freedom of Palestinians continues.  The Israel newspaper Haaretz reported on June 1 that "Israel plans to build more than 800 new homes in the eastern parts of the Jerusalem municipality, despite U.S. and Palestinian calls to halt settlement expansion."  Israel insists on defying international law and the 2000 road map peace agreement not to resume building settlements on Palestinian lands.  Although Israel is America's client state, the former has found it useful and successful to ignore the latter's objections because, historically, the United States has seldom required Israel to heel.

As an occupying nation, Israel has expropriated land, assassinated Palestinian leaders, permitted settlements to mushroom, all despite international condemnation. Exceedingly high unemployment in Gaza, school disruptions, declining health problems, the burning and destruction of Palestinian orchards, blackouts of electric power by Israel, its diversion of aquifers of the West Bank to serve settlements and Israel, and an enclosure in the form of a wall have contributed to the resistance by Hamas, labeled by the U.S. and Israel a terrorist organization.

While America  has rightfully raised questions about our lack of response to the genocide of Rwanda and Darfur;  and where we now rise to the defense of the Tibetan people at the hands of China, Americans remain silent on the subjugation of the Palestinians people.  This year the United States honored the Occupier's 60 years of statehood, but not its victims.  So be it.