Israel is Training Militias in the West Bank

As the the Palestinian Authorities apply for statehood in the UN this September, a measure which will certainly get vetoed by the U.S. and therefore denied, Israel plans to arm the Israeli settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank to repel the Palestinian protests that will inevitably follow. For a brief history: since the creation of Israel in 1948 on Palestinian land that was previously colonized by the British, the UN has promised the Palestinians their own nation, but due to constant war, they have been forced to live as refugees without a nation. Some Palestinians deserve part of the blame because their terrorist attacks on Israel have given Israel the excuse to refuse to make peace, return any of the land gained from the War of 1967, or recognize the Palestinian state. I also believe that the other Muslim governments in the Middle East have not done many favors for the Palestinian people by failing to grant the refugees in their countries citizenship or equal rights, while also inciting tension with Israel by using hate speech. For instance, Iran continually threatening to destroy the state of Israel gives Israel another excuse not to make peace with the Palestinians because they fear — or at least can claim to fear — an attack from a Palestinian nation with the support of neighboring Muslim nations. Nevertheless, the longer Israel holds out and deprives the Palestinians of a statehood, the more hatred towards Israel will rise, and the longer it will take and more difficult it will be for there to be peace in the Middle East.

Israel knows the UN will not recognize the Palestinian nation, even though Palestine will easily get the majority of votes, simply because the U.S. will veto, and as a member of the security council, the U.S. can prevent it. This is nothing new for Israel; the U.S. has vetoed many international bills condemning Israel. As a result, Palestinians will protest Israel’s refusal to recognize their nationhood, which is understandable, but instead of Israel simply policing the area and having soldiers on guard to prevent the Palestinians from hurting anyone, Israel has made it clear it will retaliate against protests with violence, even if it means training their own militia in the West Banks. This is truly a disturbing development. I understand Israelis may fear for their safety and worry about Palestinians entering the Israeli settlements, but — despite the fact the settlements are illegal anyway — placing weapons in the hands of people to use at their own discretion against the Palestinians could potentially have dire consequences. How exactly will this be enforced? As of yet, Israel has not created clear boundaries where the Palestinians cannot cross, and it has yet known how the lines will be made clear for the protesters, but the plan is to have two lines: one “warning” line, where Israeli settlers will use crowd dispersing weapons such as tear gas, and a second “red line” where, if Palestinians cross, the Israelis have permission to open fire at the legs of Palestinians. What happens if the armed Israelis open fire or use weapons against the Palestinians before they cross any boundaries? Many of the Israelis living in the West Bank are Jewish fundamentalists, leading one to believe they will be more willing to use force against the Palestinians. Will Israel punish settlers who use too much force? Based on Israel’s human rights record towards the Palestinians, one has to assume the Israeli settlers will be given immunity no matter how much force they use. There have been reports in the past that Israelis in the settlements receive special legal treatment as well.

The Palestinians have a right to protest peacefully to let their voices be heard, and Israeli settlers should not be given the power and arms to deny the Palestinians. Israel essentially creating militias to target Palestinian protesters could potentially create major problems that will lead to the death of many Palestinians and further angering Palestinians and neighboring Muslim nations if they do not use extreme caution and make it very clear where the protesters cannot go. The Israeli military is likely strong enough that it can protect its land from unarmed protesters anyway, and if it is not, then it should not set up illegal settlements on the land in the first place.

This is yet another predicament in the long struggle for justice between the Israeli and Palestinian people. Israel has a right to exist, and Muslim nations must accept it, but Israel needs to co-exist equally with the Palestinians. There are various solutions to the problem, none of which are easy, but they truly begin with Israel accepting that Palestinians have a right to nationhood, whether in a one-state or two-state solution, and the crisis will only continue to grow until Israel agrees to compromise.

Rick Perry and the Return to the Gilded Age

If the George W. Bush administration was neo-conservative, are the Tea Party “Gilded Age” retro-conservatives? That’s the way it seems. It was only a few years ago that the neo-conservatives of the Republican Party who, unlike traditional conservatives, made the government bigger and increased spending, while also pushing for an aggressive military strategy. With the election of Barack Obama, the neo-conservative movement seemed to be replaced by the Tea Party movement, which decided to attack Obama for everything possible, from questioning his birth certificate, his religion, his radicalism, and blamed him for the economic collapse that happened under Bush’s regime. The Tea Party decided anything the government does is bad, and while I oppose the government getting involved in every minute detail of our lives, the unfortunate reality is that the government is needed in a capitalist society to protect the people from the power of corporations. Traditionally, conservatives are reactionary: they want to protect the status quo; the neo-conservatives were unusual in that they wanted to change the status quo, but without progression; the Tea Party conservatives are simply bizarre in that they seem to want to return to the laissez-faire capitalism of the late nineteenth century (known as the “Gilded Age”).

We saw what unrestricted capitalism did during the Gilded Age: with the rise of industrial capitalism, the few who owned the means of production gained an extreme amount of wealth by exploiting laborers, forcing them to work excessive hours in unsanitary and dangerous working conditions, paying them below the necessary amount to survive, and refusing to recognize or negotiate with any labor union that tried to protect the workers; meanwhile, the capitalist elite then used their wealth to influence politics and essentially gain control of the government as the majority of Americans and the working class suffered at the hands of it. The latest poll that I saw among Republican presidential candidates has Rick Perry leading all candidates, and Perry is someone who criticized all the government reforms of the twentieth century that attempted to curb the power of the capitalist elite over the American majority.

The Republican Party in the late nineteenth century, like the Republican Party today, favored big business, and the Republicans won almost every presidency in the late nineteenth century. The Party practiced a laissez-faire attitude that allowed businesses to run rampant, leading to large amounts of corruption and bribery. In essence, the capitalist elite — including millionaires such as John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie — were left unchecked, and when laborers organized unions to protect themselves and earn better rights, the government continually took the side of the capitalists against the unions, which often led to violence as the government forcefully broke up strikes. It was not until the Progressive Era that the government decided to limit the powers of corrupt corporations. Republican president Theodore Roosevelt broke his party-line in the early twentieth century and was the first president to realize that unchecked capitalism provided: unsanitary conditions and unfair labor practices for workers; that food and drugs went un-inspected and had no standards to them — making them unhealthy and dangerous; that as corporations grew they became monopolies that swallowed up all competition; that corporations had no concern for the survival of the environment; and that the rich did not equally share in the burden of taxes. As a result, the government under Roosevelt began to break up monopolies (“trustbusters”), regulate large businesses, protect the environment, extend rights to workers and unions, create the Meat Inspection Acts and the Pure Food and Drug Acts, and Roosevelt first introduced the idea of federal income tax and inheritance tax, which both targeted the rich, although they did not pass until after his presidency. Roosevelt had plenty of faults during his presidency, especially in his foreign policy, but he was the first president to recognize the inherent problems that come from the excesses of capitalism and the need to regulate them. His cousin, Franklin Roosevelt, would go further regulating capitalism during the New Deal, but it was during the Progressive Era that Americans finally saw reforms in capitalism.

Now Rick Perry wants to overturn everything the Progressive Era and the New Deal accomplished, essentially letting corporations go unchecked and return to the practices of the late nineteenth century. According to Perry’s book, as detailed here, Perry believes “Ever since the dawn of the so-called Progressive movement over a century ago, liberals have used every tool at their disposal — including notably the Supreme Court — to wage a gradual war on the Constitution and the American way of life.” As a result, Perry calls into question the Constitutionality of: Social Security, Medicare, federal laws on food safety, ban on child labor, minimum wages, and environmental protection laws (again from the story linked above). Perry literally wants to return to the laws of the Gilded Age with a “hands off” government that does nothing but serve as a military. Oh, and I assume provide us morality too, since he’s a Christian fundamentalist; he claims gay marriage should be decided by the state and there should be a federal amendment banning it. Way to be consistent, Perry. Anyway, capitalism is too corrupt to not have a government regulate it; Perry wants to revoke over a century worth’s of reforms that have tried — and only with limited success, but better than before — to protect the American people from the power of corporations. If the government cannot enforce a minimum wage or safe working conditions, what is the motive for corporations to enact them on their own? They won’t because it costs them extra money. If the government cannot prevent corporations from dumping toxic wastes into the ocean, do you trust that corporations will properly dispose of it out of their own good will? Perhaps the scariest thing is that corporations continue to have a major influence on American elections, and someone like Perry will appear very attractive to corporations because of his hope to remove the government from the economy altogether. America, we tried that before, and it failed. Let us not go down that road again. It’s not in anyone’s best interest to vote for this guy; revisiting the Gilded Age would only benefit about 1% of Americans, and harm the other 99%.

I never thought I’d say this before, but Texas, I almost kind of liked your previous governor better. Did I really just say that? This is depressing — I need a drink.