Pro-Israel lobby dictates U.S. policy, study charges (FCN, 04-05-2006)
The tragedy unfolding in Lebanon in the Middle East is a reminder of the Katrina disaster in America. The Bush White House suffered from brain paralysis, while thousands of mainly Black and poor people of New Orleans suffered and died. Why would the American administration stand by and watch what she knows is a humanitarian crisis, and do nothing?
Casualties are now nearing 500 people in Lebanon. Most of them are civilians. Among the civilians are women, children and the elderly. When Israeli officials are asked why they are bombing the city of Beirut in Lebanon while women and children are being killed and displaced, their answer is that “these people in southern Beirut may have rockets in their homes under their beds.”
›The world knows that not one rocket has been fired from the city of Beirut into Israel. Why won’t the Israelis just bomb the areas where the rockets are coming from? Instead, they have chosen to destroy the infrastructure of an entire nation. In the process, they have killed innocent men, women and children.
The one person who could stop the killing today is President George Bush. He could pick up the telephone and tell the leaders of Israel that enough is enough. You have proven your point. He could say that, if you don’t stop, you will not get the nearly $10 billion in aid that the American people give you each year. For the nearly 25,000 Americans caught up in the crossfire in Lebanon, they have a chance to get a sense of how the thousands of people in New Orleans felt when they hopelessly sat in that dome, wondering why the government had not moved faster to save lives. These same 25,000-plus Americans are the families who contribute to give Israel what it needs in order to destroy a people and country. This is in the form of taxes that they pay each year to the American government.
America has been quick to throw around the word ‘genocide’ in describing what is taking place in Darfur, Sudan. Let’s look at the definition of genocide and see if it defines what the Israelis are doing, with America’s backing, to the Palestinian and Lebannese people.
At the Geneva Convention of 1948, Article II states that the definition of genocide is (a) the killing of members of a group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. You can take it from there.
The African nations, as well as the 1.6 billion Muslims of the world, see the behavior of Israel, with the backing of America, as unacceptable. Ghana recently lost a soldier and his family in the Israeli bombing in Lebanon. I would hope that the president of Ghana would send a letter of protest to the Israeli embassy and ask them to reconsider their wreckless behavior in trying to destroy an entire people and nation.
Since the accusation is that Syria and Iran are backing Hezbollah and has even given approval to kidnap the two Israeli soldiers, then why don’t America and Israel continue their rampage and bomb Syria and Iran? Israel has decided to fight with the weakest nation rather than attack a larger power, i.e. Syria and Iran.
The world did not stand and protest when the Israelis arrested members of the Palestinian Authorities who represent the legitimate government of the Palestinian people. Pres. Bush did not say a word when the Israeli government cut off the power, water and food to the people of Gaza.
Does America think that the imams, religious leaders and members of over 2,000 mosques in America will praise the actions of Israel? Will the imams who are unafraid condemn the killing occurring in Lebanon and condemn America which has given Isreal more time to finish their business–the business of killing? Will America stand by while Israel creates its own killing fields?
The Israelis should be the first ones to share their experience with their American partners. The Palestinian and Lebannese peoples will produce new generations that will not only hate and seek to destroy the state of Israel, but now the same hatred will be directed towards America. America stood by its number one Middle East ally in its unacceptable behavior before the entire civilized world.
(Minister Akbar Muhammad is the International Representative to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Comments may be emailed to [email protected].)
