Perhaps no single issue illustrates the unbridgeable gap between mainstream Americans, even bleeding out a bit on either side of that broad stripe than the bright star of “US Israel policy.”

Perhaps no single issue illustrates the unbridgeable gap between mainstream Americans, even bleeding out a bit on either side of that broad stripe than the bright star of “US Israel policy.”

And perhaps no single issue illustrates the unbridgeable gap between east and west, this third rail of American politics, this single issue that for literally billions of people all over the world, defines US foreign policy, even more than its activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, even more than - well, anything else.
A while back, when someone on someblog expressed some displeasure with non-Americans making comments critical of US policies, and someone took issue with that, and zog zog zog, I attempted to soothe ruffled feathers by pointing out that under the circumstances, some circling of wagons would be inevitable.

As I mentioned in a diary here not too long ago, I am increasingly taken to task by some in the east for my folly in participating on American forums. An old and dear offline friend took it a bit further. “You are crazy,” he said, after reading a particularly virulent hurl of Ductape-directed cyber-invective. “What do you expect?” he wanted to know. “They believe you are the Enemy they are being protected from.”

At that time, he merely shook his head at my mule-headed foolishness, but in recent days, his concerns became more serious, and have been echoed by others, and I have had to reluctantly acknowledge that their arguments are not without merit, not being substantively different from ones I have made myself.

Any US politician, regardless of party affliliation, regardless of whether he is considered by his devotees to be “left” or “right,” “conservative,” or “liberal,” who dares to express any view other than unconditional support for Israel has effectively announced a career change.

It was with interest that I listened last night to a FoxNews commentator describing with a breathless awe and undisguised admiration and glee, a weapon designed to “clear the area of all living things” that had been provided to Israel by the US, now currently being deployed against the people (and animals, and plants) of Lebanon.

How did human beings get to this low point in our history?

Who started this “Middle East Conflict” that now hurtles along a long-carved path inexorably toward its long-planned (but possibly, hopefully, with some wild cards and surprises) end?

In recent days, as wagons circle ever tighter, I have seen a lot of comments about this, and almost all of them go back to this or that phony “agreement” or other, based on some premise made up by people who do not live in refugee camps in Lebanon or the huddled warrens of Gaza. I have commented on the perfidy of Arafat, whose near genius as a warrior was trumped only by his subsequent love affair with swimmin’ pools and movie stars, and for which love he forsook and forgot his erstwhile love of his people.
Thus, I, too have been guilty over the years of getting caught up in discussions of accords and borders, when all this is irrelevant, and I knew it even as I got caught up in it.

But eventually, it is a function of ancient-ness, I think, that one tends to cut backward to the chase, so to speak, no longer being fooled by those tempting mirages of “well here is what happened in MY lifetime, or the lifetime of my father or my grandfather, who talked about it all the time, so clearly everything began at that point.”

Just as the current discussions on the subject of “immigration” in the US are nothing but the inevitable and predictable consequence of Europeans having invaded such a large and populous land mass that even the most assiduous and continuing attempts at genocide of the indigenous population have been unsuccessful, and never really had a chance, coupled with the different methods employed by the English and Spanish.

The former went for a more straightforward “kill em all” model, and in fact did achieve a greater degree of success with the tribes in the northern areas than the Spanish, who actually received a letter from the Pope in that time encouraging them to rape Indian women, and thereby create a holy race, and it is that holy race, steeped for centuries in a religion which forbids contraception, which is now predictably and inevitably reclaiming the continent, much to the disgruntlement of the descendants of the invaders, who had supposed that their ancestors had thoughtfully reduced the primitive natives to a handful of alcoholics languishing in the squalor of their “reservations” waiting for cirrhosis and malnutrition to do the work of the smallpox blankets of yesteryear.

So it is with the Middle East. One cannot talk about anything that has happened there since the days of Lawrence and Gertrude without the finger pointing back to Lawrence and Gertrude :)

One cannot talk about 1948, and the UN resolution that “created Israel” without both pointing out that the UN is an organization that was created by the US for the purposes of acting as a sort of international public relations office for US neo-colonialism, or without going back to Sykes-Picot, and thus, back to Lawrence and Gertrude, back to the US-UK colonialist adventurism that set in motion events in the region for decades to come, events that would impact the lives of people in countries far away, people whose grandfathers were not yet born.

And the same is true with “Iraq.” One cannot discuss that without pointing out that Iraq, like many “countries” in the region, are the result of western map-carving to suit neo-colonialist business interests. Rich men, then as now, wanted more money.

It is kind of like the absurdity of the TV reports giving the opinion of this or that Middle Eastern nation, when what they are giving is the press release of the native overseer of one of these western-created territories, which has nothing to do with what the people who live there think, those people who suppposedly hate freedom, but who have been so carefully kept from the tiniest crumb of it for generations now.

Thus when people in the east say that they wish to get rid of “Israel,” they are not saying they wish to get rid of a peaceful little country where Judaism is the state religion and a lot of people who live there are Jews, they are saying they wish to get rid of a glorified US weapons dump populated by a large number of US proxy gunmen who regularly engage in committing crimes against humanity on the neighbors, and even some of its own population (over 25% of Israeli children go to bed hungry every night), and kept stuffed with dollars to maintain it as the fat little guard dog of what the US considers its oil in the region, essentially just another client state, not unlike the one the speaker or writer saying he wishes to get rid of Israel lives in, just with more weapons and more dollars, and the permission to commit atrocities on more people, whereas in his own land, the gunmen are allowed to commit the atrocities only on locals who oppose the US-installed emir or prince or sultan.

Indeed, one can even find people whose idea of “Jews” is as warped as some westerners ideas are of “Arabs” or “Muslims,” the former defining “Jews” not as people who worship God according to Version 1 of the Abrahamic OS, or even an ethnic group, but people who subscribe to a particular ideology which like “American” means someone whose beliefs include the extermination of the speaker, where his western counterpart is likely to view “Arabs"/"Muslims" as evildoers who hate freedom and therefore want to kill Americans because they worship an idol called Mecca who wrote a book telling them to do so.

And even among the educated people of both east and west, one finds just plain sloppiness, with people using the terms “Jews,” “Zionists,” even “Americans” to denote a political and economic global view, with blithe disregard for the actual meaning of either term, and of course, homologous behavior and word usage by educated westerners.

Of course all are the product of policies and propaganda carefully crafted over the generations by rich men who want more money, and have been quite successful in pre-empting any danger that any democracy might accidentally break out among the people of either west or east, therefore thwarting the generation of revenue.

So the sloppiness, both of vocabulary and of argument, is encouraged by those rich men who want more money, their henchmen, representatives and afflilates.

It was Voltaire, I think, who pointed out that “he who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,” forgive me if I don’t have the quote exact, but his point is very relevant today, as any thinking person watching American TV the last week will be obliged to concede, albeit reluctantly.

“The Money Trail!” exclaims a talking head, pimping an in-depth report about what Americans will be told about Resistance funding, as the screen fades back in to bombs exploding over a city, bombs purchased with American tax dollars.

For the east, investigating the Money Trail of the Enemy does not require so many reporters.

We sometimes tend to forget, in all the discussions of this and that, that every time one human being fails to shoot another, whether with a pistol, a rifle, helicopter gunship or “bunker buster,” revenue for a rich man decreases.

And we also tend to forget how easily we let go of reality, of those mundane unsexy facts, preferring the dewy-eyed myth, the lie repeated so often that it becomes the only truth.

And just as easily we forget that this circling of wagons is in our nature. Not too long ago, someone on a message board expressed the view that people should go out of their way to purchase treats and chat up US gunmen if they saw them in airports. I replied that in my opinion, the most courteous (and prudent) thing those strongly opposed to the activities of those gunmen could do was conclude their business and become elsewhere located as swiftly and unobtrusively as possible.

I stand by that view, especially in the case of non-US nationals, and most especially in the case of non-US nationals of certain ethnic and religious groups, though I learned a great deal from the outrage my comment unleashed, about the width of the cultural divide, and how deeply held is the doctrine of American Exceptionalism.

It helped me to accept a hard truth, that no matter how modern we think we are, in the final analysis, under the current circumstances, I am the Enemy from whom many Americans sincerely believe they are being defended from, even some who may be to one degree or another opposed to how US policies are implemented.

And, I suppose, when all is boiled down to the basics, they are right. I am opposed to US policies, such as invasion, occupation, torture, and the lot, and I am not able to socialize with those who have agreed to participate in the implementation of those policies. For me to do so would be not only hypocritical and the basest kind of false-hearted, but under the circumstances, might be imprudent to the point of irresponsibility, as would accosting the operatives and sharing with them my unsolicited opinion of their activities.

Circumstances that are now unfolding will, of necessity boil us all down to basics, both for those of us for whom age makes it impossible not to cut backwards to that chase, and for those in whose youthful hearts burns a zeal of a brightness the heart owner may not have known was there, and surprised at the ferocity of the flame, finds himself circling his own wagon away from places where he may have very recently purchased a ticket for long-term parking.

This may be more evident, especially in these swiftly passing moments of the opening act, to non-US nationals, as well as to Americans in high-risk groups, but as the play races inexorably on to its conclusion, there will be conflict between many who considered themselves allies, as one or both discover that he or she is, indeed, the Enemy, but there will also be for some, an internal peace that passeth all understanding, (props to the Christian Bible) as they discover, perhaps to their surprise, that now that the time has come, they are in fact, earth residents, human beings first and foremost, and if they must fight, whether that fight be with sword, or pen, or marching feet or any of the weapons of death and life that human beings can get their hands on, the banner they raise high will be neither the “black flags of Khurassan” nor those broad stripes and bright stars, not even that unreachable star of blue on white, nor the uberbanner of greed, but the banner of humanity.

That particular banner has been scarce enough throughout the history of our species, and its scarcity has been quite pointed in the ancient lands, since those days of Lawrence and Gertrude, those days of the sowing of the seeds, the blooming in the desert of the deadly flower of supergreed, its vines designed to choke the life from “all living things.”

Thus, that peaceful little country, that homeland for Jews, never had a chance, it was never intended by the west that such a thing should exist, and ironically, it would have been the people of the east who would not really have minded having it, and once the US is removed, assuming enough humans survive to make such a thing still a question, it is my most fervent prayer, and my dearest belief, that at last there will be a homeland for Jews in Palestine, and that whether we kneel toward Mecca, fold hands and call the name of Mary, mother of Jesus, or davin toward the Wailing Wall, we will all pray together in Jerusalem.

NOTE: portions of this excessively long and rambling rant were previously posted in other places.