Laws do not apply to Israel

Governor McGreevey's accuser turned out to be a man named Golan Cipel, a citizen of Israel. Soon after taking office in January 2002, Governor McGreevey made Cipel, whose background was in public relations, his personal advisor on homeland security matters. As a citizen of a foreign nation, Israel, Mr. Cipel was not authorised to work in the US. How someone like Mr. Cipel, who is not an American citizen, was put in charge of the very sensitive position of homeland security for the state of New Jersey is mind-boggling. Mr. Cipel was later given a $110,000 a year job without specific responsibilities. What is all the more staggering is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans complained about Mr. McGreevey's breaking of US laws in hiring Mr. Cipel! Can anyone imagine the furore and outrage if an Arab, a Muslim or someone else from another nationality was similarly and illegally hired? As the present episode illustrates, it appears as though the Israelis are exempt from and are an exception to the laws of the United States!

Or from international laws, for that matter. Consider that one of the rationales for invading Iraq was Iraq's noncompliance with UN Security Council resolutions. As is well known, Israel remains the number one violator of UN Security Council resolutions. Instead of punitive UN sanctions, Israel receives over 5 billion dollars of US economic and military aid every year. Israel uses the US economic aid to steal more Palestinian lands and build illegal Jewish settlements on them. With the US military aid Israel kills Palestinian civilians and assassinates their leaders. Yet, while President Bush gives carte blanche to mass murderer Sharon, he refuses to even meet with the popularly elected President of the Palestinians, Yasser Arafat. Does anyone remember that for the last two and a half years Sharon has confined Yasser Arafat to a few rooms in his bombed out compound in Ramallah, most of which has been decimated by Israeli tank shells fired while Arafat was in the compound?

One would have thought that because of America's unquestioned support for Israel even when Israel commits crimes, a fact destroying America's credibility worldwide, Israel would be grateful. Anything but. In an article in The New York Times Magazine on August 15, James Bennet notes: "Three weeks after September 11 attacks, Sharon gave a speech warning that the United States risked appeasing terrorists at Israel's expense…

It was meant as a shot across Bush's bows…in March 2002, Sharon began Israel's largest offensive since Lebanon…Bush demanded an immediate halt, but the army kept going. It was Bush, not Sharon, who gave way." Remember President Bush's laughable "road map" for peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis? Sharon responded to it by building more illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands, as Mr. Bush busied himself criticising the Palestinians!

President Bush may not meet with the leader of the Palestinians, Yasser Arafat, but he has no qualms about transferring Palestinian lands and aspirations to the Israelis without consulting the Palestinians! Observes Bennet: "In a reversal of decades of policy in the Middle East, President Bush promised that in any eventual peace deal Israel would be able to keep its large West Bank settlement blocks…He (Bush) also said that the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war, and their descendants would never be able to live in what is now Israel." So here is President Bush, who has zero credibility among the Palestinians, and is certainly not considered a friend of the Palestinians, giving away the Palestinian store to the Israelis! And Mr. Bush thinks that such unauthorised, unilateral chicanery and larceny will have no long-term consequences for the US and will endear him to the Arab and Muslim world? Of course Mr. Bush knows that his contempt for the Arab and the Muslim world will only endear him to his Zionist supporters at home and enhance his reelection chances.

Every few weeks The New York Times writes editorials warning America about the danger of Iran's (Pakistan's, too) acquiring the nuclear bomb. President Bush has declared that a nation run by clerics, Iran, cannot be allowed to have the bomb. This is the parroting of the pro-Israeli neoconservative line that while we should become more and more powerful, we must not let our enemies acquire power. With America in Iraq at the behest of the pro-Israel neocons and Israel in possession of the nuclear bomb, and with Iraq teeming with Israeli Mossad agents scouring and scouting Iraq's border with Syria and Iran, this is not the time to say that Israel can have the bomb and Iran cannot. It is not Iran that is killing 5 to 7 Palestinian civilians everyday. It is not Iran that is stealing land belonging to the Palestinians.

And it is morally indefensible to say that certain nations can be trusted with the nuclear bomb and certain nations cannot be. Impoverished India and Pakistan have been pretty sensible about their nuclear bombs, as have been the communist nations, China and Russia. Only a western democracy, the US, has used the atomic bomb against human beings, and only Israel threatens to use it today. Just as Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear facilities in 1981 without declaring war, Israel threatens to do the same to Iran's nuclear facilities, confident that a US veto will protect it in the UN Security Council in the aftermath. In his The New York Times column on August 14 Nicholas Kristof writes: "Mr. Bush needs to display moral clarity about nuclear weapons….Unfortunately, Mr. Bush is pursuing a new generation of nuclear bunker-buster bombs." Mr. Bush cannot tell the world: "You cannot have the nuclear bomb, but I am free to perfect a new generation of nuclear bombs!" This contravenes the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

Experts in America worry that in the next ten years America could be the target of a 10-kiloton terrorist nuclear weapon that could kill 500,000 people. While the emphasis is on physical prevention, that American policies overseas may have anything to do with why America has to think in these cataclysmic terms, is almost never discussed. And the reason for that is, if free debate was allowed it would be clear that the US is earning the undying enmity of the Arab and Muslim world for its unquestioned support for the Israeli crimes. A poll conducted by Zogby International in the Arab world found that contrary to the Zionist propaganda that Arab displeasure at the US was based on "cultural differences" or "hatred of American values," the actual reason is America's unfair policies towards the Arabs. Arabs respect American values, the poll found -- but Arabs do not see American values reflected in American policies towards them. To the question, "What America should do to change its image in the Arab world?" the overwhelming response was: "Stop supporting Israel. Change your Middle East policy. Stop killing Arabs." Arabs also reject America's policy towards Iraq. Sooner or later America will have to come to terms with how much it is willing to suffer for supporting the criminal policies of Israel.

According to James Bennet, Sharon wants Israel to turn its back on the Arabs by literally and figuratively building a wall, on Palestinian land no less, between them and the Arabs, and become a part of the West. Physical location and culture notwithstanding, this is like Bangladesh aspiring to be a part of the Arab world! The bad news for Israel is that the West does not consider Israel -- founded on stolen Palestinian land and in existence and thriving through military, not moral force -- a part of the West. It is not because of European anti-Semitism, as the Zionists allege, but because of Israel's illegality, stealing of Palestinian lands and brutality towards the Palestinians that Israel is loathed in Europe.

My younger son's best friend is a wonderful Jewish boy. Last March, during his spring break my son visited his friend in Florida. The kid's mother is a teacher. Unknown to us, before my son went, she asked one of her Muslim students where she could buy Halal meat. During my son's one-week stay in their house, she cooked Halal meat for my son! I am beginning to wonder whether Sharon's Israel has anything in common with many American Jews, either!