    August 20, 2005

    Gaza Evacuation Should Be Americans' Last Straw

    by Charley Reese

    As I watched the extensive, plainly sympathetic coverage of Jewish
    settlers being evicted from their Gaza homes, I couldn't help but take
    note once again of the striking double standard applied by American news
    media as well as the U.S. government.

    I cannot recall any sympathetic coverage of Palestinians being evicted
    from their homes. No interviews with weeping mothers or fathers. No
    discussions of whether the evictions were right or wrong. This is
    obviously a deliberate policy on the part of America's television
    networks, for after all, they had 4,170 opportunities to report on
    Palestinian evictions since September 2000. That's how many homes were
    destroyed, and, of course, doesn't count the orchards and olive trees
    bulldozed by the Israeli army or Israeli settlers.

    Of course, Palestinians were not evicted by sympathetic soldiers or
    promised huge amounts of money to relocate. No, they were brutally told
    to get out of their houses, which were then blown up or bulldozed into
    rubble by decidedly unsympathetic Israeli soldiers. What little they had
    was destroyed, and they were offered nothing except verbal abuse by the
    Israelis and invisibility by the American media.

    One idealistic American girl who tried to stop an Israeli bulldozer from
    destroying a Palestinian home was crushed to death by the bulldozer.
    Naturally, the United States government did nothing, and the American
    media obediently either ignored her death or accepted the Israeli excuse
    that the driver couldn't see her, which is bull. She was killed in
    broad, sunny daylight while wearing a blaze-orange jacket and standing
    atop a pile of dirt.

    As an American consumer of commercial news, you should protest. You are
    being denied the balanced coverage of this conflict that would allow you
    to form an intelligent opinion. You are, in effect, being fed Israeli
    propaganda, and if all you know is what you read in most newspapers and
    see on television, then you would surely think the Palestinians are a
    faceless mob of howling savages. Actually, they are among the most
    highly educated and industrious people in the Middle East. A
    considerable number of them are Christians.

    I'm sure you are aware of the Israeli children who have been killed in
    this current intifada, which started Sept. 29, 2000. There were 122. But
    are you aware of the 686 Palestinian children who have died? About 1,000
    Israeli adults have been killed, while 3,653 Palestinian adults have
    been killed. About 7,000 Israelis have been wounded; 29,014 Palestinians
    have been wounded. The Palestinians have nothing with which to resist
    the occupation of their land except rifles, pistols, homemade bombs and
    small rockets. Israel, of course, is ranked fifth in the world as a
    military power and has all the modern weaponry America can supply.

    The West Bank and Gaza are not "disputed territory," which is the latest
    Israeli propaganda term adopted by the American lickspittle politicians.
    Under international law, the West Bank and Gaza are illegally occupied
    by the Israeli military. They were seized in 1967 in Israel's blitzkrieg
    war. The Palestinians, who even then had no government and no army, did
    not provoke the war.

    The tragic truth is that the Palestinian majority that wants peace has
    not been allowed to have a functioning government and is therefore
    helpless to stop independent groups from carrying out attacks against
    the Israeli occupiers. The Palestinian Authority was denied the tools
    necessary to govern from the get-go.

    I will say this about the Israelis: They have chutzpah. Evacuating a
    minuscule number of settlers from Palestinian land, they tell the
    Palestinians it is now up to them to live peacefully. Of course, Gaza
    will be a fenced-off prison. That's the equivalent of the Nazis telling
    the Poles after the German invasion that it was up to them to live
    peacefully if they didn't want to be murdered and imprisoned.

    The illegal settlements in Gaza were put there despite America's
    opposition and in disregard of international law. Now, of course, the
    Israelis want the American taxpayers to pay $2.2 billion to correct
    their mistake made in defiance of U.S. policy. They expect us to pay for
    the transfer of the Israeli settlers.

    If the U.S. government goes along with this outrageous request, that
    ought to be the last straw for every patriotic American