I’m all for living in safety. Right now I’d hate to live in Isreal or Palestine because you never know when your trip to the hair salon is going to turn into you getting a new anus blown into your body from a suicide bomber. And I do appreciate the gravity of the situation in the middle-east. In a tiny nutshell, they are fighting over holy ground and who it should be holy for.
But now the Jewish World Review is calling for America to come over and pound on all the terrorists. In an article called, Why won’t the US government close down terrorist groups on these shores!?, the authors pretty much blame the US for the August 9th bombing at a busy intersection. The authors, Daniel Pipes & Steven Emerson, even use subtle language such as, “Deliberately positioning himself among the children and babies, he detonated an explosive pack full of nails and ball bearings, shredding to death himself and 16 Israelis, as well as mutilating more than 100 others.”
I’m not doubting the horror of the situation, but what I resent is the intonation that the US is somehow ultimately responsible for the terrorism there. As the authors state:
The U.S. government, for its part, should stop repeating the old mantra about going back to the bargaining table (as Colin Powell just did in response to the Jerusalem suicide bombing). Instead, it should give Israel a green light to protect its citizens, encouraging it to take steps against terrorist savagery.
I’ll tell you why the United States has been saying over and over to sit down and start talking. Because the prevailing world view is that most of the violence is all retaliatory. Revenge based strikes that beget more revenge based strikes, and the circle continues on into its vicious loop.
The US has never been for “terrorist savagery.” Colin Powell has repeatedly stated that both sides need a complete and total stop to all violence. And the US has been very slow to renounce any military action taken by Israel in response to suicide bombers, despite our calls for an end to all violence.
So why do the authors think the US needs to give a green light to Israel to fight terrorism? Does Israel need our permission to fight terrorism? With the last round of military action, in which tanks and bulldozers moved into a West Bank town, I’d say no.
The United States gives Israel $4 billion a year for the purpose of support and protection. That’s a big ass green light. That’s 4 billion green lights. Nearly every piece of hardware the Israeli military has comes from the US. What more permission do they need?
But to answer the authors question: Why won’t the US government close down terrorist groups on these shores!? Why? Because it’s not our fucking responsibility to do so. It’s just that, your shores. After the US’s $4 billion, complete military hardware from the US, now we also have to come and fight suicide bombers in your land? I’d even be willing to bet agencies inside the US, like the CIA and NSA among others, are giving Israel information or are helping on the intelligence front. Now we’re suppose to come over there with our 101st Airborn and fight your war? It’s our responsibility to close down terrorist camps? Maybe I’m dumb, but I don’t get it.
We don’t expect Israel to come to America and fix our drug problem, despite the fact that drugs in American kill more people per year than the Israel-Palestine conflict does.
Also, I can even tell you why Yassir Arafat isn’t speaking out against the Hamas. He doesn’t have the balls. Yes, I said it. Arafat doesn’t have the balls to speak out against Palestinian terrorist. He won’t speak out against them because he doesn’t have the power to stop them, and if he does speak out, they’ll kill him too. That’s the war Hamas is fighting. They are fighting a terrorist war, not a country-to-country one. Arafat doesn’t have the balls because he’s afraid of being assassinated.
The very existence of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad is largely attributable to organizing and funding from individuals living in the U.S.
The authors proof of this is that an Islamic terrorist group, and the Hamas, maintain Web sites that are hosted on servers located in the US. I’m not going to list the URL’s (but you can get them from the authors story, linked above), but one is registered and hosted by a company in Houston, TX, and another in Florida.
That’s the bitch about democracy. We protect people, even the people who are trying to destroy it. Point in case, the KKK. The KKK maintains a Web site, hosted right here on server in the US of A. Does that mean the US is a country that believes in and promotes racism? No, it means that there are some companies that care more about money than dignity, so they’ll host trash like that. But it’s not against the law, like it or not. That’s the nature of the internet, it’s not under the control of any country. It’s a shame, but a having a Web site does not mean the US is supportive of Hamas or any other site on any server in the US. Fuck, look at this poor excuse for a site. It’s hosted in Tennessee, so obviously Tennessee supports and promotes poor humor, right?
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an emotion-filled and complex issue. I personally don’t see it resolving itself for many years, and it will probably result in a larger scale war. But the United States is not the World’s Police. And the United States does openly support Israel, as we should. But trying to lay the ultimate blame and the responsibility for fixing middle-east terrorism at our feet is idiotic at best.