Capturing the moment

For my friends and family who live in Canada and keep up to date with current events, I'm curious to know what your opinions are on the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion? People's views seem to differ across the board and regardless of where you stand, the result of continuous protesting on Burnaby Mountain has shown that we might be on the verge of capturing a pivotal point in our history.
This is my opinion.
The silver-bullet argument seems to be job creation. I hear this constantly because it's important. Those who favor the pipeline support economic growth, are more patriotic, understand compromise and are genuinely more clued-in to how the world functions. This is nonsense! If you have a look at who the protesters are comprised of - it's scientists, university students and teachers. The stereotype of the lanky hippie hanging out in a tree-fort, adorned with poxy banners just props up the old straw-man argument of two radically different and albeit, fictional, groups of people. Those who love work and people who are too lazy to bother looking so they'd rather beat down progress like a mangy mule.
Most of us need jobs and want an economy that can provide work for the next generation as well. The question is, at what point does the quality of those jobs start occupying the forum? I've done my fair share of cellular work around the oil-patch and met many people who've lived in places like Fort McMurray. To leverage Canada's economy on fossil fuels is plowing us into a catastrophe, both short and long-term.
In the short, most of these industry workers are well paid, but they're isolated into shift-work for weeks at a time in joyless conditions resembling a minimum-security prison camp. This is disastrous for families! The data on divorce rates, domestic assault, suicide and drug addiction in these areas only proves it and it's even worse to hear company spokesman deny it completely. I think this is putting the carriage before the horse on economics over everything else. The focus should be on mental health and creating industries that are not just feasible, but promote stability for families without forcing people to work away from home just to pay the bills. Conservatives seem to view the tar-sands like cure-all bitumen that can fill all the pot-holes in a stagnating economy.
As an example, BC could easily move toward industrialized hemp production, tomorrow.
"Justin, you hypocritical swine". Yes, I'm writing this from a computer made with petrochemicals; the microchips were undoubtedly processed with industrial technology powered by oil, my breakfast traveled via diesel trucks from outside Vancouver and I'll drive a gas-powered car many more times in my life. I get it. To say this argument has credence is to say that a guy born onto a monopoly board, with his life unequivocally dictated by narrowly set rules of the game, woke up to find his consumer choices were either politicized, institutionalized or patented out of reach and he should just shut up and enjoy his freedom.
Okay, nobody's saying that we should dump oil completely and that false-dichotomy crap only muddles the debate. The fact is that the deeper we hinge our infrastructure on fossil fuels the more costly it'll be to build cleaner, sustaining industries to off-set it. And this is an inevitable decision, whether it's made by us now or the ecology that we depend upon, later. We need plans that span generations, not election cycles. Oil might be effective, but its necessity creates destabilizing wars to maintain a cost value; and it's so deeply embedded into Canadian politics that it's now become the pied-pipers tune that both the media and science need to calibrate their message to in order to maintain the narrative of progress. This is frightening.
The lack of response from our politicians, provincially and federally, has been embarrassing and this is another pressure valve where people have felt unrepresented for way too long. If I didn't know any better I'd think there respect only goes as far as how titillated we can be with meaningless choices; paper or plastic, window or aisle...etc etc. Many people are weary of being the Pac-Man, repetitively corralled around the consumer maze. The truest form of democracy is when we become outwardly disgruntled by this illusion of choice, only to be treated to a wall of silence, assuming that our needs are so petty we'll be onto something more banal in the next news cycle. And it'll back to business as usual.
Unfortunately for the incumbent parties, this issue won't be going away any time soon. It's likely this will be like the divine madman, descending into political hell and ready to peck the head of apathy like a carrion bird. This isn't just bringing to light people's frustration, but how oil has pervaded the legal and 'independent' bodies that are meant to look after us. This is a peek through the keyhole into a future where corporations make all the decisions and have the means to navigate the legal system, utilizing law enforcement and levering financially crippling injunctions against protesters for loss of profits, while we bear the cost of failure and environmental clean-up if something goes wrong. And for what we have to lose in this beautiful province, risk assessment is more like a gambler than a clairvoyant.
Legislation was clearly passed in advance of this pipeline being built; utilizing both public parks and land protected by native bylaws, this was never even legal to begin with. The proposal from Kinder Morgan was not only sold to the NEB with cursory information, but never even went through the boards proper oratory review. On top of this, the boundaries protected by the initial court-ordered Injunction were out by as much as 30m because of dodgy GPS coordinates. We export oil to China and import some of their democracy over here!
This might seem irrelevant to some people as long as the work flows from somewhere. But to blindly trust in an industry to float all ships because it creates jobs is no better than a religious fundamentalist suspending their objectivity to participate in someone else' version of morality.
For better or worse, I hope we maintain pressure in reshaping all aspects of our lives. We deserve that choice and it won't be handed to us without a fight.

Breaking the cycle

“I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.”

Ernest Hemingway was dishing out some of those tough-to-swallow pills. It’s 11 years post-Iraq and once again the Frankenstein of a looming existential enemy has been defibrillated out of a trench, donned up with a backyard iron-lung, ready to shamelessly gatecrash another decent party. Through the aperture of the media it seems that every new conflict bears with it a kind of accepted amnesia that cherry-picks which part of a long and sordid story of middle eastern conflict we should begin to color in the black and white saga of heroes and villains. The message from politicians and news anchors alike thrives on momentum; loosely conflating domestic threats with shiny new foreign ones in rapid fire. And as viewers we’re treated like children, getting briskly dragged by the arm through a house of horrors on some oddly propped skit, denied the time to even point and ask questions. While the pay-off at the end is getting to justify our indignation because something made us feel afraid. 

Nothing about this seems satisfying and I’m getting a little jaded by the usual patriot porn and Pavlovian terror warnings conscripting us to blindly lend our support to one of the most incompetent and opportunistic leaders Australia might’ve ever seen. It’s not that I don’t find ISIS appalling either, I’m just wondering if the well hasn’t run completely toxic on the type of warfare where America arms to the tits, proxy groups of thugs, to overthrow a regime that’s no longer malleable to its interest - followed by a recourse of the usual bellicose language and interventionist bombing things get out of hand. 

Appearing almost by surprise, these new enemies seem to pop up every year like spring douches. I remember watching a video 8 months ago of what we referred to as ‘Syrian Rebels’, performing an execution of captured government soldiers: beginning with almost orderly point blank rounds to the heads of the first few captives - hands tied behind their backs with heads in the dirt, spouting blood like a geyser - the rebels quickly encircled the remainder like piranhas in a pool of chum, blasting shots indiscriminately into living and dead flesh, in a kind of herd mania, right before the camera switched off. It was like looking into the abyss and seeing something that dishevels you to the soul where all you want to do afterward is pull the covers over your face. But beyond that you realize that there’s absolutely no positive outcome because these rebels weren’t painted as our enemy, but rather they were a small fraction of the men who were morally charged and facilitated by the west with overthrowing a government we were told without a solid reason not to like. Russia’s 11th-hour call for disarmament stymied a possible US invasion and what became of the rebels and their capturing of assets in Iraq in the months afterward, snowballed into our new nemesis, ISIS.

This sounds all too familiar. In my opinion we need to figure out how to isolate and starve the beast of its credence rather than validating the conditions to get bogged down in something that will inevitably kill civilians, feeding the vicious cycle of discontentment. This is where ISIS has the unique advantage in recruiting, is that they’re not only immune to the bounds of citizenry and visas like a regular army, but they might’ve figured out exactly how to bugle from abroad to the cracks of our own societies, reaching out to the marginalized who dwell between the hypocritically fueled ideas of Exceptionalism and the false promises of advertising, seeing no valuable place for themselves. And ironically our own media is giving them the free air time to do it. When fearful, our governments hubris invariably tells it to respond with war, while the news, in its drooling deference, never seems to resist the urge in ratcheting up its necessity. Whether it be polemics against dole bludgers or Arabs behaving badly - paper targets are always plucked from the outskirts to fit whatever agenda seems to be the most urgent. It’s always been more convenient to preserve powerful milieu’s to keep the system chugging along, rather than admitting that capitalism just isn’t working for everyone. The arc of this story is almost a clash of civilizations between the new and the archaic. And perhaps its that repeated imagery or watching too many Christopher Hitchens debates but part of me is wary of what effect Islam will have on Australia’s culture. That part sees Muslim’s as potentially volatile in larger numbers with a knack for bending our tolerance to insulate themselves from criticism. And as much as I think the burka is oppressive and the notion that women need to be emasculated as absurd, I’m beginning to doubt in almost all cases whether Islam has the potential to simply radicalize on its own. I’ve met too many different people to believe that we’re not wired the same way. 

A recent study by Political scientist Robert Papp concluded beyond question that every suicide bombing since 1980 has been motivated by politics rather than fundamentalism. In Sri Lanka this technique was pioneered by the Tamil Tigers to great effect before it was adopted by groups like the Taliban. Every bomber seemed to be characterized by the same pathology of being poor, uneducated and often preyed on for their desire to receive recognition. From almost the beginning of the 20th century western interventionism has been meddling in affairs of the middle east - mapping out new countries, drilling holes and inadvertently drawing battle lines that are periodically coming back to haunt us. So if history’s proving anything now, it’s that institutions and belief systems alike turn poisonous and sometimes fanatically inward at the assimilation of an external threat. When we see a fully kitted out burka on the street it strikes the minor chord of a cultural hijacking and the louder that sentiment gets, often the more proportionate the resolve to solidify the opposing belief can become. Not unlike a tree, sinking its roots deeper into the soil in the thick of a drought; a burka might seem almost antagonistic. But it might also be the galvanizing of an identity for someone who lacks the mobility and education to find one in a society that promotes tolerance ambivalently. Until we fully grasp this recurring fate and find a way to peacefully communicate our way out of it, we won’t have a hope in hell of fixing the problem. And I’m not talking about making concessions, I’m talking about moderating everything from Islam to the jingoism that ferments it’s extremity. The ‘fit in or fuck off' crowd will only make it worse no matter how loudly they scream about carrying our sovereignty on their shields.

And because reading this will make some people bristle, I’ll say for the record that I love Australia. It’s one of the best countries in the world. The irony is that we figure out ways to solve our internal problems peacefully without losing our cultural freedoms. This is part of the reason why I’ve always found remembrance days so trite. Not because these achievements were mediocre - but because they were so lofty should be transcended altogether. No matter the reverence that nostalgia might promote in honoring those who fought under calamity and died in the most retched places, patriotism will arrogantly muscle aside good grace to tell me that I have a stake in the glory because I happened to have been born here. When I look at the old photo’s of diggers on the Kokoda Trail, I see innocence and cockiness, brooding the melted in familiarity of friends I was lucky enough to serve with. And my younger, crazier self might’ve idealized about being right there in the thick of all that shit. But it wasn’t me and I can lay no more claim to it than inventing the guitar because I learned the chords to a Bob Dylan song. If we have one duty today as citizens it should be to diligently promote the same values overseas as we expect and promote here. Remember war, but only to the realization of a certain point so we stop canonizing the narrative that’s it’s essential to preserving the lifestyle we have now. Politicians and the media alike, exploiting our fear, have pushed this idea to its bitter edges, ramming through security legislation that slowly erodes the rights we worry so much about losing while we're looking the other way. And you can be damn sure that Tony Abbott will do the same. If history adorns us heroically for acting in good conscience, it won’t be in the books written by ourselves, but meted out in the ones written by the countries we chose not to invade because it was simply the right thing to do. Agree or disagree? I’m curious to hear anyone’s thoughts on this.

'No' is the new revolution

When I was 19, I remember the brief news-cycle of an Australian Republic vote perishing quicker than a forgotten beer on the shelf, till it was less than a blip and the banter of any referendum became relegated to the periphery of non-events. Arguments and debates might've gotten heated over a bbq, mainly to save-face and not much more, because deep-down, even if most Aussies wanted Independence and knew it to be right, we didn't really feel it deep in our bones. We'd have less access to International Cricket games, possibly a tougher time getting a work visa in the commonwealth and of course the obvious affront to centuries of steeped tradition. When it comes to institutions it's that T word that I rarely support, because it's almost always a justification for the most powerfully corrupt and superstitious to corral the herd into violence and oppression of the weakest through fear. This was about mediocrity. We were more bored than fearful, and our tradition was something capable of being casually disposed of. A thriving economy wasn't dependent on unity and our sovereignty is being able to call someone a wanker without them getting offended. In spite of the lack of risk, that 'Yes' or 'No' vote never came to fruition, perhaps because there was no plausible trump-card the media could use to leverage the public into maintaining the status quo.
Scotland seemingly had everything to lose yesterday, but could've gained back the world - or at least their small chunk of it. Retirement funds would no longer be denominated in the mighty pound and transnational corporations were threatening to hightail back to England as the sky's crashed into apocalypse. But where was the optimism - the brains behind the emerging cryptocurrencies and its green energy innovation? Yesterday's prevailing 'No' vote will surely set the tone for fresh and interesting jobs worldwide though; media consulting, think tanks and anyone well-versed in proliferating despair to those most vulnerable to it. Sadder than the Independence vote itself was what it represented, as a coup for disinformation and certifiable proof that those in-charge can have their cake and eat it! At it's heart, this was genuine democracy - something that was killed and died for and smugly rebuffed through centuries before it was peacefully voted on.  The conversation was comfortably nestled in the mainstream of news and chit-chat, but it would never part with the tools to help its participants make an informed decision. In a similar vein to Vladimir Putin's 'Nashi's' or the billionaire-funded Tea Party in America, the modern day revolution looks a bit like moshing out to government approved Rock n' Roll. The powerful have figured out the chords and learned to play to the disenfranchised to emulate grass-roots movements, where instead of protesting injustice we turn inward to patriotism and fervently rally against our better interests. Change is the perceived enemy in the crosshairs and the necessary breakdown of the establishments that imperil us and strive for nothing more than their own survival are the better-devils we know. At the least, a precedential message has been set for more governments and dictatorships to follow around the world; give em' a little fear and let them fight freely to defend it.


 

The Consumer

The term 'consumer' is so overdue for a diaper change that if I had a dollar for every time it was bandied around, I'd surely have blown that money on something forgettable. After all, what else am I here for? Despite our vast cultural and innate differences, a single word can ostensibly shrink-wrap all human beings into an exclusive category through the commonality of purchasing goods and services. Just like animals, people share the biological trait of converting oxygen into Co2, yet the term 'mouth breathers' would probably seem offensive, because I'm actually way above that - I'm a consumer. I live with the assumption that a stable and healthy society can be tuned to the frequency of jobs and products so comfortably charged in to the collective psyche, that I should probably never feel any conflict of interest buying anything at all. I'm not just talking about material trinkets, knick-knacks, gimmicks or one of those crappy house-cleaning robots to stub your toe on, but anecdotes, witty memes, haikus's, inspiring quotes, jokes, sayings and any video with cats regurgitating hairballs to house music. I'm a self-gratifying machine, absorbing indiscriminately. I can be serenaded by the news, ingesting micro-verses of car accidents, genocide, gossip and bridged to ads for anti-depressants in the same breath - impulsively plugged into the consumer chorus, ready to recoil those urges in a store somewhere, anywhere.
At the cusp of my imagination and hard-work I might create something that could be praised, or conversely critiqued into confetti, and in lieu of it all, there's no possibility of it being as second-rate compared to what I do with my wallet, daily. However selfishly or carelessly I buy, there's zero chance of any awkward conversation or a surprise intervention surrounded by concerned friends and family, even if those khaki pyjamas I bought were sewn at gunpoint by starving lepers.
Speaking of points and guns, it sucks to be a trade unionist in Columbia. I found this out in detail about 4 years ago after listening to a guy speak through a translator about his experience representing Sinaltrainal; a company that produces bottles for Coca Cola. Since the early-eighties and the dictum of Chicago-school economics, aggressive free-market policies have been rammed down South America's throat like a duck on a Foie Gras farm - allowing US corporations to not only skirt pesky environmental and wage legislation they might be encumbered with at home, but also to bypass any democratic interference. South America has a strong history of socialism, so the rise of unions fighting for livable incomes is seen as an affront to multi-nationals. Around 2,500 trade-unionists have been killed there in the last 20 years according to Amnesty; more than the rest of the worlds countries combined. That's not even mentioning thousands more who've been arrested, tortured or incarcerated as 'political prisoners'. At the vanguard is Coca Cola who've not only been accused of environmental malfeasance in there production standards, but of violently quashing grass-roots labor movements through the use of paramilitaries and death-squads. Whether this is being arranged through corrupt back-channels of the govt hasn't been proven, but an honest job description for any TU may as well read something like "Union Rep needed for indefinite amount of time to help raise wages to subsistence. Efficacy may also come with abrupt job termination via surprise bullet in the face standing at mailbox, or front door or outside your local bar" - any volunteers? Canada has its share of political refugees, displaced or green-lit into asylum for rocking the boat in how we titillate our taste-buds or clothe our bodies. It's no surprise that this isn't an anomaly by one culprit, in one country - but a corporate philosophy spread across the ether, immune to patriotism and borders - where profit is enforced by any means, even bloodshed, and resisted in the dirt by people we'll likely never meet or read about. In the first world, national identity isn't sprinkled from history books any more, but through advertising's ability to mimic culture, while relentless imagery reflects back like a mirror, telling me 'I'm a good person, who deserves to feel pleasure and it's ok to look the other way, not that there's anything you need to look away from' *wink. Needless to say, I boycott Coke and a handful of other companies, so I convince myself I'm also capable of getting in the trenches every now and then, because bettering the world is how I roll. But that's pretty much bullshit! I stroll the gamut of cognitive dissonance, where convenience is the boss and deep-down, my conditioning dictates that I'd rather gargle broken glass than scrutinize every brand for ethics.
And there's a hell of lot of brands! In any chain supermarket, one might find about 50 choices of cereal, 37 different bottles of water, 72 types of dog-food, 43 options of crisps and at the risk of sounding like a communist, I've never felt personally validated by a bag of maple-flavoured oats with berries. It looked sexy as hell on TV, but it's just me sitting in my underpants half-dead at 4:30am with pillow-hair, trying to stomach this goop without convulsing. The free market is a mirage, and just like free-speech, it's manipulated into a manageable part of the spectrum. My 60 flavours of herbal tea runs parallel to that one choice of fuel to keep an internal combustion engine running, one source of energy to power my home, one interest rate moulding me into into a spender or a saver and two lame political parties to vote for every few years. Would you like the centrist or the other guy 23 feet to the right? Voting conscientiously with our wallets might be one thing that could alter the tide, but it's advocated as an activity for frivolity and repetition only, 'especially if we have any hope of keeping this damn economy alive, folks!' Spend, my minions, spend! Meaningless customer choices are so abundant it's overwhelming, while real fiscal alternatives that might change the chefs and not just the background music are eliminated by govt intervention and institutionalism.
For all it's potential, Australia's most recent election was shamelessly dominated by the halo-effect - with the middle-class maximizing their banality across voting booths so $30 extra spending money could go in their pocket every month - give or take. The previous govt had initiated a Carbon Tax, which was a fairly benign cost for the majority who could afford it and beside the extra revenue raised, it was at least an acknowledgement that for 22 million people, yes, the world is warming up and we burn farms of fossil fuels for such a small population! And what an uproar it caused. Traditionally, conservatives in a resource-based economy like Australia's (and Canada's) aren't exactly imaginative when it comes to job creation. Their tendency to be heavily lobbied by mining and power companies means that maintaining a false dichotomy between honest jobs and environmental care is in their better interest, which usually means you can't have your lake and fish in it too or whatever, so let's go and merrily dig some holes in the ground! Most voters don't really care if you dredge the Great Barrier Reef as long as it boosts the economy. Just keep those illegal refugees out and some bonus cash in my wallet for participation. Time and again we'll get two mediocre candidates with moderate policy differences, using the media platform and jostling for narratable sound-bytes on patriotism, values and self-reliance between commercial jingles. Even 'democracy' has become as trivial as small-talk and consumable as Toaster Strudle, because somewhere along the line lies became palatable and we got to comfortable to fight for more! Oh how the WW2 vets would roll in their graves.
So what should we do about it? I think making something of our own would be a decent place to begin. Who says it has to be high-art either? Start a conversation, learn the trumpet, build a tree-house, fashion a Rob Ford tribute statue out of chewed bubble-gum - it doesn't matter. Either we're creating idea's and experiences that are ours or most likely we're destined to consume uninspired echoes of someone else's, and this is the legacy that'll resonate to the next generation. If I do have children, should I tell them you can be anything in this life, just maintain the status quo when it effects you? Window or aisle, caff or decaf, Liberal or Democrat and paper or plastic. If we can't make ourselves important, then we can be sure as hell that no politician or marketing expert ever will. We're creators, not consumers, and only when we begin to recapture the terminology, maybe then we can start actualizing words into greatness.

Foreword to Ralph Nader's latest analysis of the Israel - Palestinian conflict

For anybody interested in knowing more about just how insanely lopsided the Israeli-Palestinian 'conflict' actually is, it's worth reading this short run-down by Ralph Nader, who sums up why Israel looks less like a country and more like some expanding US military base with a severe god-complex on it's shoulder. 
We should also understand that this has nothing to do with equally opposing struggles between vastly different nationalities, but one group of people espousing abject misery onto another under the guise of sovereignty, to insulate some quaint notion of bible-thumping entitlement. Conversely, Jews and Palestinians actually share genetic lineage proving their differences are about as significant as someone with brown eyes and another who's eyes are blue. This is the 21st century and we don't wave chickens above our heads to expel our sins. No humane, rational person respects the right to kill someone because their kings have a conflict, or because their tribe lives on a different side of a river, or because some patch of dirt has been cosmically pre-ordained by a really old book few people use a moral compass or even give a fuck about anyway. Once these ideas are lined up and given equal treatment to be relegated to the vestiges of history, maybe the people who execute these ideas to an entire nations peril will bitterly follow into the same abyss, no matter how loudly they want to hang on to the past. Now it's time to wreck it Ralph!

"An already troubling humanitarian crisis has intensified with the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, an area about twice the size of the District of Columbia that has about three times as many residents (1.8 million). Israel has been using its highly touted precise missiles to hit numerous targets. This collective punishment, a war crime per se, wreaks havoc on civilians and their life-sustaining infrastructure.

With over 1,700 explosive strikes so far, the Israeli military has pounded homes, schools, mosques, electric and water facilities, municipal buildings, health clinics, moving vehicles, a home for the seriously disabled and even tiny agriculture areas. As a result of these attacks, over two hundred and thirty Gazans have died and over seventeen hundred have been injured so far, about eighty percent are civilians, a majority of whom are women and children, according to UN observers.

That is only part of the continuing war against Gaza. For years, Israel has maintained a siege/blockade, restricting the importation of adequate food, medicine, water, electricity, construction materials and other necessities needed by the refugees in the world’s largest open-air prison. These daily deprivations have taken a deadly toll. Fatalities, sicknesses, untreated cancers have resulted. Half of the children are seriously malnourished due to the dire poverty associated with the Israeli air, land and sea encirclement. (There are even harsh restrictions on Gazan fishermen.)

Israel’s complex association with Hamas, the elected governors of Gaza, is rarely reported or discussed. First, the Israelis, with U.S. support, helped start Hamas over thirty years ago to counteract the influence of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) under Yasser Arafat. More recently, Israeli officials have been in regular communication with Hamas over the administrative details of the selective siege, custom duties and transfers of tax revenues by Israeli to pay for Hamas’ 40,000 public employees.

Even when open hostilities commence, the two adversaries remain in close communication to sense how far each can go, given their own internal political struggles, in the ensuing “lopsided battle,” as the New York Times calls it. Hamas and other splinter groups, comprising the complex dynamics of competing Palestinian factions, have launched some 1,000 feeble rockets to demonstrate that it can resist the hyper-powerful Israeli domination. The rockets obviously frighten Israelis, most of whom have access to secure shelters and are defended by the Israeli anti-missile system (which is called the Iron Dome and is funded largely by U.S. taxpayers). The Israeli military is knocking down 90% of the Palestinian rockets they target. These crude Palestinian rockets are so inaccurate that they largely fall on barren ground, including several right back on Gaza. Recently, one rocket claimed an Israeli life very close to the border where Israeli tanks lie waiting for the outright ground invasion.

Without any army, air force or navy, the Gazans have very limited military options. The Israelis have unlimited military options. The military invasion of the Palestinian enclave may unleash forces that may be uncontrollable and move Israel into a civilian catastrophe starting with no drinkable water and other human disasters.

In recent years, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have suffered at least four hundred times more civilian causalities – both fatalities and injuries—than Hamas has inflicted on the Israelis whose immensely powerful forces occupy, colonize, brutalize, and loot the land, water and people of the remaining 22% of Palestine that has not already been taken by Israel.

No one said it more candidly than David Ben-Gurion, the father of modern Israel, who years ago, was asked why Palestinians were still resisting. He summed up Palestinian grievances by saying “They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” No one has said it more eloquently than fifteen hundred reservists, combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces who pledged: “We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders [the Palestinian territories] in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.” And no one has better framed the challenge to Israeli leaders than several former retired heads of the Shin Bet (the Israeli FBI) and Mossad (the Israeli CIA) who publically have stated why Israel, as the supreme power can and should lead to a two-state solution already supported by a majority of both the Israeli and Palestinian people.

Listening to their public statements, interviews and reading their writings, along with those regularly put forth by the courageous Israeli human rights groups, such as B’Tselem, and newspaper columnists, such as Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, one can cut through the official propaganda used by the Israeli government that wages perpetual war instead of peace, affecting the whole Middle East and the national security budgets of the U.S. The following are two takeaways from these groups that promote peace and a two-state solution.

1. The Palestinian National Authority (PA) has long recognized the existence of Israel as an independent, secular state. So have numerous Arab and Islamic nations, belonging to the Arab league, whose comprehensive peace proposal was dismissed by Israel twelve years ago.
2. Palestinians, as oppressed people, engage in no more verbal incitement than do the Israeli oppressors from a position of political and military power. Wagers of peace on both sides know how prejudicial some Israelis can be toward the Arabs, as well as vice versa.

Besides demanding ethnic cleansing, driving all Palestinians into the desert for the goal of a “Greater Israel” covering all of Palestine, some extremists have called for annihilation. Recently, on June 30th, a leader of the Jewish Home Party, part of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s ruling coalition posted a call for the destruction of the Palestinian people including “its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure,” adding that Israel should also not exclude Palestinian mothers because they give birth to “little snakes.” Thousands of viewers responded favorably.

Where are the more numerous, rational Israelis who can reverse this perilous drift toward what the Israeli historical scholar Professor Ilan Pappe calls “incremental genocide?” After centuries of persecution, the Jewish people in Israel hold a towering power position from a secure state. Israel should accept the Arab League’s invitation for peace and normalized relations through a two-state solution.

Where is the Obama Administration, which like previous Administrations avoids its responsibility for peace and provides annually billions of dollars in unconditional military and economic support to the Israeli government? There are direct American strategic and security interests that oblige President Obama, in spite of the Washington puppet show in Congress, to do more than parrot the AIPAC lobby’s party line.

Just about all knowledgeable people believe the status quo will continue to favor the Israeli government’s political, economic and military interests while oppressing those of Palestine, unless the U.S. weighs in with strong influence over its ally, Israel."