As the U.S.
celebrates its independence and its birthday, it is right to remember a
people who wish to celebrate their own independence, but the prospect
of that happening is very remote and the U.S. has much responsibility
for their occupation and oppression.
They are the Palestinans, and they have been living in refugee camps,
living in other countries, and in what has been described as the
biggest open-air prison in the world, the Gaza Strip. Often, on this
day, you may read the words of Frederick Douglass about the condition
of black Americans, slave or free, in the “land of the free.” His words
could stand today for those who remain unfree, at home and around the
world.
Speaking on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall, Rochester, N.Y., he gave
a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, “What
to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” He spoke respectfully of
the founders of the nation and their declaration of equality of all
“men.” He declared:
“But
such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the
disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious
anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable
distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice,
are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty,
prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by
you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you,
has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not
mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn...”
The
evil that was perpetrated during the centuries of slavery, during
Reconstruction, through the years of Jim Crow, remains with the
nation today. The same can be said of the plight of the Palestinans
in that they have seen their hopes for a nation dashed, day by day,
over a half-century. They are a people under brutal occupation, with
their every move monitored and controlled by the Israeli government
and its Israel Defense Forces. In addition to their subjugation,
they have lost most of the land they historically occupied in the
land of Palestine. When some 750,000 were ethnically cleansed at the
creation of the State of Israel, they were told that they would have
the right of return to their homes and villages. They never made it
back.
A
look at a small series of the map of Israel-Palestine from 1946 to
the current decade shows the inexorable disappearance of
Palestinian-owned land and the increase of Jewish-occupied land.
There is little left on the map for any Palestinan state, except for
small spots here and there that resemble the bantustans of South
Africa within which black South Africans were supposed live.
Oppressed South Africans refused to accept what was offered and that
was the beginning of the end of apartheid. The so-called settlements
of Israel have taken more and more of what would have been a
Palestinan state over several years. There is little contiguous land
left in the West Bank for a Palestinan state and the Gaza Strip is
considered around the globe as the world's biggest open-air prison.
There
is little prospect of a one-state solution, because Israeli leaders
are sure that the Palestinians would overwhelm their population in
short order and there would not be a Jewish state. Israel apparently
has expanded itself right out of the possibility of a two-state
solution by settling more and more land, especially under the
leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Another huge
problem is that, in exile in their own land and elsewhere,
Palestinians have increased their numbers from the 750,000 who were
coerced and forced out of their homes and villages in the late 1940s,
to the millions who are waiting for their right of return.
Now,
however, Israel has said that the right of return only applies to
those 750,000 original inhabitants who were forced into refugee camps
and the Gaza Strip. If this rule were allowed to take effect, there
would be few Palestinans left, because so many are very elderly or
have died waiting. Problem solved, except for the Palestinian
millions waiting to return.
Israel
and its supporters in the U.S. have asked why Israel is being “picked
on,” when there are so many other nations that deserve
criticism for their own human rights violations. Israel is often
described as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” but
American-born Israeli Jeff Halper noted in a talk in Troy, N.Y., a
few years ago that such an opinion is true, but only if you are a Jew
living in Israel. Halper, an anthropologist, is co-founder and
director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, which
for decades has opposed and tried to prevent the demolition of
Palestinan houses. Such actions by the Israeli government have paved
the way for Jewish settlements, as the available land for a
Palestinan state has diminished, year by year.
The
State of Israel can function internally and in the region (including
possibly hundreds of nuclear weapons) only because it has the backing
of the money from the U.S. and the U.S. military forces and power.
For that reason, Americans have a responsibility to make Israeli
governments live up to their claim to be a full democracy. U.S.
“exceptionalism” makes it responsible to lead in human
rights struggles around the world, but its efforts in that are
woefully inadequate. At home and abroad, it needs to fulfill the
promise of the founders that “all men (and women) are created
equal.”
As
the Jewish Voice for Peace has stated, the goal is to bring freedom
and peace to everyone in Israel and in the Middle East and see that
no one is oppressed or occupied by a superior military or financial
power.
On
this day of independence celebration, it might be well to remember
the words of some of the great leaders, such as Douglass and Eugene
V. Debs, the great labor leader: (Paraphrasing) “When one
person is not free, I am not free; if one person is in prison, I am
in prison.” Good words to heed, on the Fourth of July or any
other day of the year.
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