Those who read this blog probably know I'm not a big fan of Israel or its propaganda (hasbara). I despise the settlements and the apartheid regime in the West Bank. I dislike that Palestinians are treated like second class citizens even within the Green Line. And I loathe how Israel and its supporters tried to sucker us into an unnecessary war with Iran by doing everything they could to sabotage the nuclear deal.
Read this very important article in Al-Monitor explaining that the two-state solution is dead and Israel is on the brink of a civil war.
Ben Carson has admitted he has a violent past. On NBC's Meet the Press he said,
As a teenager, I would go after people with rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers. And, of course, many people know the story when I was 14 and I tried to stab someone.
Israel and the U.S. are at odds over two issues--how to deal with Iran's nuclear program and Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Below are key events that every American should know in order to understand how we got here. Of course, this list is incomplete--one could write a several hundred page book on these topics. And Israel's defenders will no doubt come up with a list just as long defending Israel's actions and highlighting the evil deeds of Iranians and Palestinians.
Dear Secretary Kerry:
Israel has just announced that it is grabbing 988 acres of land from five Palestinian villages in the West Bank to build a new settlement named Gvaot. They claim that this is in response to kidnapping and murder of three teenagers earlier this summer. The U.S. government has responded by saying that this is counterproductive to negotiating a two-state solution and meekly urging Israel to reverse its decision.
Could the U.S. one day find itself called upon in desperation by Israel to help it put down an uprising in the illegally occupied West Bank? The question seems preposterous. Israel is a military juggernaut. Neither the First nor the Second Intifada posed a serious military threat to Israel. And Israel has crushed Gaza repeatedly. The Palestinians are weak, and no matter what they do, they will never pose a real military threat to Israel.
Israel provoked the latest round of rocket attacks from Gaza when it overreacted to the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens by a rogue element of Hamas. The moral responsibility for provoking a war that has led to nearly 650 deaths in Gaza rests mainly with Israel. Hamas does indeed share some responsibility for the war.
The Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act was introduced in the Senate on December 20, 2013. It gained steam rapidly and by January 14 the bill had 59 co-sponsors--43 Republicans and 16 Democrats. Then something funny happened. Outsiders actually read the bill and it became apparent that the bill was "designed to torpedo the Nov. 24 first step nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1".
There is a very special form of bullying used to attack those who question Israel's right to exist as a "Jewish State", or its policies in the West Bank, or AIPAC's role in getting U.S. legislators to unquestioningly support Israel, even if doing so jeopardizes American security interests. These bullies roll all these criticisms into one category and accuse Israel's critics of being Anti-Semitic.
