‘Collective punishment’

A week ago, my mailbox had a surprising letter addressed to my wife and me by a David Trone, who only provided a post office number and the name of a nearby neighbourhood for his address.

The opening line was addressed to “dear neighbour”; the message was that he was running for Congress since our congressman, Chris Van Hollen, is now running for the US Senate.

What was amazing, actually shocking, was his declaration that he was a “strong supporter of Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East”.

This came in the second paragraph after his introduction into his family and their membership in a Jewish temple, and his co-ownership of a wine business, “the nation’s largest independent wine retailer”.

He went on: “As our most important ally in the [Mideast] region, Israel’s safety and security is critical to the interests of the United States and crucial for Jewish families throughout the world… . The establishment of the modern state of Israel in the historic homeland of the Jewish people fulfilled an important promise to Jews who fled persecution in Europe and Russia and survived the concentration camps during the holocaust. Today, it continues to be a safe haven for the Jewish people.”

His last line in this paragraph on his commitment to Israel read: “As your member of Congress, I will work vigorously to ensure Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region and to ensure that Israel maintains the economic, political and military support it needs to remain a beacon of freedom and democracy in the Middle East.”

In an attempt at even-handedness, he stressed that “we need a two-state solution to protect the long-term safety and security of Israel and the stability of the Middle East”, but he failed to provide any suggestion for Israel and the United States how to achieve a fair Palestinian-Israeli peaceful settlement, in view of the fact that the region has been unstable since the founding of Israel in 1948.

None of the Jewish members of the US Congress and Senate, most of them Democrats, initiated any effort in this respect.

More alarming has been the news that 48 per cent of Israeli Jews, according to the respectable American Pew Research Centre, favour the expulsion or transferring of all the Arab Palestinians, about 2 million people, from Israel.

In another ugly development, Isaac Herzog, the leader of the Israeli opposition, wants to divide Jerusalem with more high walls and checkpoints, according to The Washington Post, “effectively banishing 200,000 Palestinian residents” from 28 Arab neighbourhoods from the eastern side of the Holy City where the Jewish side has lately expanded.

The Herzog plans would reduce the Muslim population from more than a third of the city to about 10 per cent.

Palestinians complain, the Post added, that the Herzog plan “is impractical, radical and racist — that it amounts to the ‘collective punishment’ of hundreds of thousands of Arabs for the actions of a few dozen assailants and would separate lifelong residents from Jerusalem, both Muslims and Christians, from their jobs, schools, hospitals and holy places”.

In response to all this Israeli scheming, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stressed at a press conference with Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Secretary General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Iyad Madani, at a summit meeting last Tuesday in Jakarta, that “Jerusalem is the heart of Palestine and a future Palestinian state will have only Jerusalem as its capital”.

On March 18, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, will be holding their annual conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, to weigh in on “Israel’s Influence: Good or Bad for America?”

The speakers will include Gideon Levy, Rula Jebreal, Phil Weiss, Susan Abulhawa, Lawrence Wilkerson and Justin Raimondo.

The bottom line remains the frustration in the Arab world over continued failure of the Obama administration to twist Israel’s arms to work out a peaceful and decent settlement with Palestinians, despite the US’ generosity to Israel.

“Since the end of World War II,” The Washington Post reported, Israel has received more foreign aid from the United States than any other nation — $121 billion.

After all, the paper added, “the US pays about 20 per cent of Israel’s total military budget”.

The writer is a Washington-based columnist.