Things I learned about Israel recently (2/2)
14) Israel is among the top 10 exporters of weapons in the world. This is all the more remarkable considering it is a very small country that competes with much larger countries like the UK and China in terms arms sales. One of the main selling points of Israeli weapons is that they are marketed as being “combat proven”. This means the weapons have been successfully tested on Palestinians. Israel is involved in the sales of weapons to 190 countries (there are only 193 countries in the world!). This means that many regimes that appear to be enemies of Israel on the surface are actually its customers behind the scenes.
15) Israel sold weapons to Rwanda and Serbia while these countries were in the midst of horrific genocidal campaigns. In other words, the state of Israel, which condemns the horrors of the Holocaust when Nazis committed genocide against the Jews, has absolutely no problem selling weapons to groups who are committing genocide against another people. It follows that for Israel it’s only genocide when Jews are the victims. When someone else is the victim it’s just a business opportunity.
16) The West Bank and Gaza are laboratories for the testing of weapons and population control techniques. Palestinians are the guinea pigs. The end users are people around the world whose police forces are trained by Israel and whose prisons are supplied by Israeli technology. This includes many western countries among which is Canada, by virtue of the Canada-Israel “Public Security” Agreement signed in 2008. When the police of a country is “Israelized”, it follows that its people are “Palestinianized”. The state of Israel is effectively becoming a template and ideal for state control and domination around the world, ranging from authoritarian China to the current far right Canadian government under Stephen Harper who is a notorious zionist extremist. The Palestinians are also becoming a template and ideal of subjugation and pacification to be gradually imposed on people around the world. The success of Apartheid Israel’s system of oppression and domination is a threat to the entire global populations who will find themselves increasingly “Palestinianized” as their governments adopt “proven" Israeli strategies and techniques of pacification and subjugation.
17) Many military and police officials from various countries including the US and China visit Israel to learn Israeli crowd control techniques, propaganda and warfare strategies. A Chinese general recently visited Israel to learn how the IDF framed and executed the massacre in Gaza. The Maryland police department among many others is trained by the Israeli police and military. Israel is also responsible for supplying weapons to various police departments around the world. These weapons are designed for crowd control and urban warfare and include armed drones, urban warfare vehicles and potent tear gas canisters all tested on Palestinians and sold to countries like Brazil and Singapore among others.
18) During Israel’s short existence since 1948, Israeli military experts have provided support to the following regimes:
Keep this list in mind next time someone tells you Israel supports democracy.
19) Israel has nuclear and ballistic missiles capable of reaching as far as Europe in addition to German made Dolphin-class submarines capable of delivering cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. It also has 10 satellites in orbit spying on various parts of the world and the Middle East in particular.
20) Israeli soldiers are cowards who specialize in bullying unarmed civilians and mostly target women and children with rubber-coated bullets. They have a deliberate strategy of maiming children by targeting their eyes and kneecaps. They routinely kill peaceful Palestinian protestors by shooting them in the head during demonstrations. They carefully monitor the number of such casualties to ensure it remains just shy of what would cause international public outrage.
21) The so called “peace process” involving a “two state solution” has been a sham from the very beginning and was always intended as a decoy to buy time for Israeli to steal more land, build more settlements and create more facts on the ground under the cover of a vague interminable peace process that never went anywhere.
22) The two state solution is officially dead and buried after the failure of the Kerry initiative. Israel has fully assimilated the west Bank to the extent that trying to get it back in one piece for the establishment of a Palestinian state is the equivalent of trying to get your sandwich back after someone has swallowed it. The electricity, water and road infrastructures are unified across Israel and the occupied territories. Furthermore Israel never had the slightest intention of implementing a fair and just “two state solution” since it always refused to accept a fully sovereign Palestinian state with an army and sovereignty over its borders and air space. In other words the “two state solution” is just an empty formula used by Israel and its allies to describe a hypothetical future Palestinian ghetto under Israel domination, which is no different from the present situation in the occupied territories.
23) It follows that those who keep talking about the "two state solution” are either very naive or trying to mislead people by appearing to have the interests of the Palestinians at heart while actually attempting to salvage the idea of a supremacist Jewish state in Palestine by reinforcing the erroneous idea that peace will come from further segregating Jews and Palestinians, when in fact segregation is the root of the problem rather than its solution. Before the arrival of the zionists, Jews, Christians and Muslims in Palestine lived together harmoniously in a land that has always been a mixing place at the crossroads of continents and civilizations.
24) The only viable alternative to the current Israel regime of occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing is a binational democratic state similar to Switzerland and Belgium. Such a state would guarantee equality for all and the right of Palestinians to return to their rightful homes anywhere in Palestine. A two state solution would not guarantee this fundamental right. If people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds can get along in countries like Canada and the US there is no reason why Jews and Palestinians can’t get along in a binational democratic state in Palestine. What stands in the way of peace is not Iran, ISIS, Islam or any other scapegoat that Israel is always so keen to distract the world with. The real and only obstacle is Zionist Jewish supremacism which is a vile ideology no different from white supremacism or Nazism. Slavery ended, segregation ended, Nazism ended, South African apartheid ended and Zionist apartheid and occupation must inevitably end too. Israel is on the wrong side of history, fighting a battle it can never win.
25) The condition for putting hatred behind and turning a new page is the acknowledgement by Israel of the historic injustice it committed against the Palestinians and reparations for the crimes perpetrated. This will be the beginning of a healing process that will allow Palestinians and Jews to live together peacefully as equals.