Europe Calls the US "Big Israel"

This past week at least 15 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF, and most of them were civilians. Where are the front page headlines? If it were Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, you know it would be on the front page news. Also the curfews are still dragging on, and every day at least one Palestinian home or apartment building is destroyed by the IDF leaving scores of Palestinans homeless. It's business as usual, in this time of "quiet" (for the Israelis only). The Israeli government has issued "apologies" and promise to "investigate." Yeah, right. This is the usual total hypocrisy that personifies everything about Israel and Zionists.

We Americans don't hear about what is really happening on a daily and ongoing basis to the Palestinians on the news much, and we certainly don't see it. Of course, if there is a suicide bombing, and even one Israeli is killed, the footage is played over and over, back to back on the US media and it makes the front pages of the newspapers.

At least in the Chronicle, they have written several articles over the last few weeks pointing out how Palestinians are slowly starving to death, thanks to the Israeli Defense Force. The majority of Palestinians are living on under $2 a day! You will find this news in today's Chronicle many pages back from the front page. It's as if it were an afterthought. Can you imagine if the tables were turned, and the Israelis were being starved, 15 killed in one week, and under curfew? First of all it couldn't happen, because the Palestinians are essentially defenseless, and secondly, even if someone just so much as criticizes Israel, the accusing screams of anti-Semitism would abound!

At any rate, this blind support of Israel by the US has caused our allies in Europe to nickname the US "Big Israel". Only the US backs Israel. Israel is the pariah of the world, and the US is not far behind it in being veiwed as an aggressive, self-centered bully. Not only this, but the US is perceived as just plain dumb, because Israel is using America to achieve it's purposes, which is ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians to achieve its goal of a Greater Israel, which in the eyes of the rest of the world is immoral. The US is the only one who backs Israel in the UN. The US is the only country that has refused to publicly condemn Israel's continuing aggression against the Palestinians. The US is looked at as somehow duped by Israel.

The news in Europe is far more balanced than the news in the US. Therefore Europeans have a much truer sense of what exactly is happening in Palestine-Israel.

Even the newspapers in Israel itself give a far more balanced and accurate picture of what is happening. Amira Hass, an Israeli reporter who lives in Palestinian Territories, yet writes for the respected Israeli newspaper called Ha'aretz Daily, is quite remarkable in chronicling the Palestinians experience. She actually serves as more of a witness than a reporter, to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Many people here in the US have tried to get US papers to carry her stories, but to no avail.

However, they do have an on-line version, as do some excellent English newspapers. To find out what you're missing by just reading US papers, please check out:

http://www.haaretzdaily.com
http://www.independent.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Another excellent source for accurate news about Palestine-Israel is the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a magazine you can buy at Cody's, Barnes & Noble, and Borders to name a few. There is also an on-line version: http://www.wrmea.com

An informed public is the best antidote to a bad government!