[I will have to cut this back for Biden, the newspaper, and other recipients. But here is the full version.]
The present catastrophes in Israel and Palestine were provoked by deliberate terror from Israeli extremists performing extrajudicial (and probable delayed illegal "legal") evictions, extreme crackdowns on Palestinian movement and protest, and ultimately a police attack within the Al Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest places in Islam and on one of the holiest days, with projectiles and tear gas. Is it coincidental that Israel has been unable to form a new government after many elections, with Netanyahu looking like a loser on top of being criminal, that he might want to instigate another Palestinian crushing war to boost his image? Such possibilities are the reason the US Founding Fathers required Congress to declare war.
The rocket response from Gaza was in fact legal under international law. An occupied people, as Gazans still are because of the blockade and other Israeli controls, they have the right to self defense by any means available to them, including missiles that kill civilians of the Occupying Power. And Gazans were also fighting in support of their fellow occupied non-Israeli-Citizen Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Israeli Palestinians who are "legally" discriminated against.
As an Occupying Power, Israelis do not have the Right of Self Defense. They have the right to pack their backs and abandon their Occupation of another country. Only after they are no longer occupying another country do they have the right of self defense. I have heard this authoritatively many times, including in a recent video by one of the world's leading scholars on Israel, Norman Finkelstein.
Under international law, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza together form Palestine, and Israel would have to withdraw completely from all 3 areas, to then have the right of Self Defense from Palestinians. This, and not blocking the Right of Return for Palestinian Refugees, would represent the real Two State Solution, as recognized in current international law.
Or, Israel could decide to abandon the Apartheid State nightmare, and become a legal state including all Palestinians including Refugees as full and equal citizens with no discrimination. This is what most people today call the One State Solution.
It seems many if not most Palestinians and the global left has come together believing this One State Solution is the only possible and reasonable one anymore that would be consistent with international law and human rights. For example, the BDS movement, which I support, has always promoted this. A key promoter of BDS would have stood a chance of defeating the current Palestinian Authority president Abbas had the Palestinian Elections not been delayed. Abbas was afraid of losing because of the issues of East Jerusalem coming to a head. The "Two State solution" is visibly dead. Unless East Jerusalem can be included in the Palestinian State, few Palestinians will accept it.
This consensus for the One State Solution includes virtually all left Jews around the world. There have been massive protests for Palestinian rights within this framework around the world, always including left Jews. Openly anti-Zionist leftist Jewish groups include JVP and IfNotNow, and left Jews are also affiliated with many other anti-Zionist groups. Many Orthodox Jewish groups around the world are also openly anti-Zionist, including Neturei Karta, who feel that the State of Israel is oppositional to fundamental principles of the Jewish religion. I believe they are correct.
The old "liberal Zionist" tradition including a "2 state solution" has now virtually disappeared. Nobody believes in it anymore, only establishment politicians use it as a cover for maintaining the status quo which is only getting worse for Palestinians, as the occupation takes more and more away from a possible future second state. Meanwhile, many Zionist Jews in Israel and elsewhere openly dream of completing the Palestinian genocide, wiping them out of the area of greater Israel from the river to the sea, including masses of right wing Israelis chanting "May their names be erased" during a fire in the Al Aqsa compound.
By supporting Israel with $3.8 billion in arms every year, and diplomatically through the UN, Security Council, and other organizations. we in the United States have wrongly chosen to support a perpetrator of a 73 year ongoing war crime (not a "democracy") that started with the dispossession and displacement of 800,000 Palestinians, and has continued in that direction ever since. We have supported the crushing of Palestinian lives and rights. We have built a (crumbling) coalition supporting these heinous acts, and subverted principled opposition by other countries, like Iran and Syria, making them our "enemies" for no good reason.
We must bring all possible pressure to bear in bringing this situation to justice and peace. Though given our proven role as a dishonest broker and champion of apartheid, it might be better if we simply pulled back all our support and did nothing more for Israel ever at all.
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