​There’s only one solution to the Arab-Israel conflict: Russian-American led dialogue

​

The above videos, from Al-Jazeera, teach the history of the Nakba. Ca min 3:27:35, Episode 3: Wakeem Wakkeem, Palestinian NGO:
"..After the Haganah [predecessor of today's Israeli army] entered the village, they took 4 boys and girls aged 14 or 15 from inside the church and killed them. The remainder were expelled."
Theodor Katz, Jewish Israeli historian: "It happened many times that the Israeli soldiers took 10 of the youngsters in the middle of the village, shot them just to kill them so that all the others would see and run away."
Senator Ted Cruz proudly says "I stand with Israel."


 
Vince Dhimos
 
Many Westerners and Israelis have the mistaken belief that Jews cannot behave like Nazis because in their myopic view, a Nazi is automatically a non-Jew. But that is not the case. Nazism can be virulent nationalism of any state aimed against any minority, like the Nazi sympathy in US-backed Ukraine that targets the Russians, the Hungarians, the Roma and the Poles – and also the Jews. An unbiased person who studies the history of the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe) can easily see that the tactics used by the first Jewish settlers in the territory that we now call Israel caused enormous pain to the then-inhabitants of that land. These settlers also ignored and trampled the human rights of these Arabs in the steadfast quasi-religious belief that the land belonged exclusively to the Jews. It is important to note that the Nakba is ongoing and never ended. The IDF still has orders to shoot unarmed protesters to kill and Israelis are still settling illegally on Arab land in Palestine. The Palestinians and their millions of sympathizers consider the Nakba a mini-Holocaust.
 
The belief that land once belonging to a group or country must be reverted to that group or county is called irredentism. A long list of irredentist countries and territories can be found here.  A recent addition is Japan, which is trying to recover the Kuril Islands won by Russia in WW II. The notion that today's Israel is exclusively for the Jews is based on an irredentist claim to land that, for about 2000 years, was not occupied exclusively by Jews. In other words, it was a very cold claim. Further, continuous Israeli occupation of the territory was not as long as claimed. Israel first emerged as a major power in the 10th century BC and was first conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC, giving it a lifespan of no more than 400 years before partial disintegration. However, at various times thereafter, it was restored and then depopulated again when the Hebrews were dispersed, but the duration of unbroken settlement exclusively by Jews is not nearly the several millennia that are claimed by Zionists. The case is unique in that no other territory has ever remained unclaimed by an irredentist minority for such a long duration of non-occupation before a claim emerged. The claim by the Jews would be tantamount to the Native Americans reclaiming their territory from the US or the Celts reclaiming Britain, France and Galicia. The world would never recognize such claims. So how is it that such a blatant exception was made for the Jews?
 
The two main reasons the world community ceded the rights to this mostly Arab-occupied land to the Jews, at variance with accepted international law and practice, were:
 
1—Compassion for the Holocaust sufferers and at the same time, a lack of compassion for the Arabs originally residing in that territory, thanks to an almost total ignorance of their plight, and
 
2—A complete misreading, by European and American Christians, of Ezekiel 37, which prophesies the resurrection of Israel. I say misreading because verse 24 of this chapter says that David would be king of this nation and it would be obedient to God's commandments. A recent WIN/Gallup poll shows that 65% of modern Israel's population self-describe as irreligious, so they obviously do not obey the commands of the God of Abraham. The most likely explanation is that the Israel prophesied by Ezekiel is a spiritual Israel, not really a place. Thus "Christian" Zionism is a gigantic hoax not supported by a single recorded word of Jesus and not supported by the Old Testament, and it is creating a monstrous crisis in the Middle East and elsewhere. In the US, 80% of Evangelicals subscribe to "Christian" Zionism and, tragically, their influence on foreign policy is enormous in a country where the concept of separation of church and state is otherwise sacred -- but Israel is a glaring exception, standing out like a black eye in the body politic.                           

Neither of these reasons are supported by international law and precedent and the consequent lack of resolution is why the discussion is still ongoing now a century after the British Mandate was established in the area. The US and Israel insist that the issue is settled and have staked their hopes on the whole issue just blowing away, but the Arabs who have lost their homes and their descendants are not happy and neither are the countries to which the thousands of displaced have fled and live frozen in time in refugee camps. Israel and some Jewish groups are stifling, even outlawing, the conversation surrounding the legitimacy of Israel while some witless and vociferous anti-Semites are making it look bad for reasonable people to question it. Both extremes are impeding the debate in their own way.
 
A bill has been introduced in Congress that would silence criticism of Israel.
 
QUOTE from article linked above:
 
“Members of Congress last month introduced the ‘Anti-Semitism Awareness Act.’ The bill purports to address a real problem: According to the FBI, incidents of hate crimes motivated by anti-Jewish bias have significantly increased in recent years. [This bias is simply the recognition that Israel is trampling on the rights of Palestinians.  Banning the discussion of it will only forestall the consequences, not prevent them – Vince]
But anti-Semitic harassment is already illegal under federal law. The new bill does not change that fact, but its overbreadth makes it likely that it will instead silence criticism of Israel that is protected by the First Amendment.”
 
Further:
 
“The bill is part of a disturbing surge of government-led attempts to suppress the speech of people on only one side of the Israel-Palestine debate. The trend manifests on college campuses, in state contracts, and even in bills to change federal criminal law, but the impact is the same: Those who seek to protest, boycott, or otherwise criticize the Israeli government are being silenced.
On college campuses, a growing number of students and teachers have been disciplined or threatened with discipline for engaging in actions in support of Palestinian rights or in opposition to Israeli policies.” [NSS had previously written here on this form of censorship]
 

 
While the standard Israeli and “Christian” Zionist dogma is that there can never be a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the argument behind this is that the Arabs are just too pig headed to come to terms with the Jews. But if you understand the history of how Israel became recognized as a state, you can easily understand why the Arabs would find it unacceptable that at least 700,000 of them were violently displaced to settle newcomers in their land who had lived mostly in Europe and Russia all their lives and had never even been to the Middle East before.

The only possible solution to the Arab-Israel conflict would be for the US (once it becomes enlightened) and Russia to encourage and lead the dialogue between the Arabs and the Jews in the Middle East. This would almost certainly eventually solve the problem to the satisfaction of the vast majority, but the Neocons, Neoliberals and Zionists are busy creating the false impression that Russia is an enemy, precisely because they actually fear a possible solution to the conflict. This is one of the main reasons for the Russophobia that pervades the Western political culture.
 
Thus, the Israeli-Palestinian conferences have traditionally been led by various US presidents for years, always with the bias inherent in “Christian” Zionism. No wonder Israel-Palestine relations are a complete failure.
 
However, the situation in the Middle East is like a flood that threatens to burst the dam at any moment. The US had blindly supported the Israeli side for decades, regardless of the facts. But when Russia went into Syria and started defeating the “moderate” terrorists that the US was cultivating to overcome Assad, whose government did not recognize Israel, the pressure on Israel started to build. Things have reached a crescendo now, with Israel desperately – and illegally – bombing positions in Syria that it claims are military threats. But Syria may eventually succeed in retaliating with its newly acquired very effective Russian air defence weapons. And if negotiations between Lebanon and Russia proceed further, the Lebanese, with Russian help, may succeed in forcing Israeli fighter jets out of their air space, making it impossible to continue with the dangerous and illegal bombing.
 
At any rate, the situation is untenable. Something has to give. And as in the case of all stresses, warps and unbalances in nature, the equilibrium will eventually be restored.