James M. Redwine

Trail of Tears

Ever Again

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Maybe it is because I was born and grew up on an Indian reservation and had many Native American friends, including my Osage Sunday School teacher, but there are things involved in the Gaza Peace Plan claimed by President Trump that remind me of the treaties between the United States government and numerous American Indian peoples. In general, those treaties put Indians out of sight and white people in possession of Indian lands. Although many of those peace plans did contain magnanimous conditions and gratuitous language such as, “As long as the rivers flow, etc.” It turned out those were a secret code that meant, until gold, silver or whatever thing the dominate culture wanted was discovered, say Riviera type real estate along the Mediterranean Sea or lush farmland along the West Bank of the Jordan River or holy sites in East Jerusalem.

While the Zionists of Israel assert the destruction and occupation of Gaza was a response to an attack by Hamas, Palestinians believe the initiation of the current invasion by Israel began in 1917, resulting in a Nakba (a catastrophe) in 1948 and became a full-blown Israeli occupation in 1967 that was exacerbated in 1973 and continues to today. For many Palestinians, October 7, 2023 was an act of resistance to Zionist occupation and oppression.

Many Jewish people feel a deep connection to that part of the world called Palestine. The reasons are historical and cultural and, for most, do not require a genocide of the original inhabitants. However, as with many non-Native Americans in the United States from 1492 until contemporary times who believed Indians were an impediment to Manifest Destiny, many Zionists see Palestinians the same way.

Peace negotiations in such an atmosphere may bring a momentary pause, but the conflict will never resolve until all Palestinians are eliminated or they have their own, fully functioning and self-governing state. It is a moral imperative upon all of us to recognize this reality and guarantee Palestine’s establishment. President Trump’s Peace Plan is a poorly disguised effort to accomplish only Israel’s objectives. A true, lasting peace in the Middle East must start by the U.S.A. recognizing the autonomous, independent, self-governing and self-securing State of Palestine along the borders set forth in 1948. If President Trump makes such a declaration, a real peace process can succeed. If not, the current peace plan is a chimera designed to accomplish Israel’s dreams of a country “from the river to the sea” without any Palestinians but one in eternal turmoil with its neighbors.

As our American Founders discovered, being some other country’s colonies leads to permanent second-class status and “taxation without representation”. America, better than most of the 157 countries that have already officially recognized the State of Palestine, should recognize President Trump’s peace plan “… is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing…” but more endless conflict. It is like ice cream on a hot day, momentarily sweet and cool, but soon melted into a faint memory and maybe a sop to the forgotten “noble savages” whose aspiration for freedom and independence have gone the way of the Little Big Horn and the Trail of Tears. Or for Palestinians, the Nakba and genocide.

 

Another Trail of Tears

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Israel’s actions in Palestine’s designated future capital, East Jerusalem, and in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, are a conundrum to many Americans. How can a country that arose from the ashes of the Jewish holocaust of World War II inflict similar atrocities on its neighbors? A related mystery is why the United States enables and abets Israel’s actions? In a country born out of occupation and oppression from our closely aligned cultural “First Cousins”, we yearned to breathe free. This is much as the Jews and their first cousins, the Arabs, are embroiled today.

Jews, Arabs and Muslims are intertwined by history, genetics, geography and religion. Hebrews look to the Torah, much of which is reflected in the Arab and Muslim culture and beliefs via the Quran. Religion is visceral to many Jews and Muslims who call themselves People of the Book. We Americans were similarly bound together with Great Britain. Christian religious beliefs were and are integral to each people’s psyche and Volksgeist. America’s Colonists and Revolutionaries as well as the people of Great Britain found inspiration and justification for their actions from The Book. The Book still provides much of the reason many Israelis want to expand their territory. And The Book provides much of the reason given by many Americans for supporting Israel’s actions.

Manifest Destiny divined from the Bible and Zionism with reference to the Torah have numerous similarities with one another and with the tenants of the Quran. There are countless distinctions in the Torah, the New Testament and the Quran. However, the adherents of all three see themselves as believing in the same god but with different rituals for each faith and with dizzying variations of beliefs within each faith.

Christians, Jews and Muslims all profess a belief in justice, equality and a version of the Golden Rule. It has been demonstrated countless times that members of each group turn to their faith to support their actions that are sometimes diametrically opposed to their professed faith. This phenomenon has occurred repeatedly over many years. In America, many people of European descent drew upon their god for divining guidance each time they saw Native Americans as obstacles to territorial expansion. Manifest Destiny was often a deeply ingrained belief that justified the desires of the powerful; the Trail of Tears was one of many such divine tragedies.

In her book When the Wolf Came, Mary Jane Warde cites the account from a survivor of the forced removal from the Native Americans’ homes and traditional lands in the eastern states to Indian Territory. Sallie Forney, who was a member of the Muskogee-Creek tribe, described her experience:

“The command for a removal came unexpectedly upon most of us. There was the time that we noticed that several overloaded wagons were passing our home, yet we did not grasp the meaning. However, it was not long until we found out the reason. Wagons stopped at our homes and the men in charge commanded us to gather what few belongings could be crowded into the wagon. We were to be taken away and leave our homes never to return This was just the beginning of much weeping and heartaches.

…

Many fell by the wayside, too faint with hunger or too weak to keep up with the rest. The aged, feeble, and sick were left to perish by the wayside.”

One of the four carvings of U.S. presidents on Mount Rushmore is of Theodore Roosevelt who is quoted by writer Alysa Landry as having said in a January 1886 speech in New York City:

“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are. And I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”

Such a cavalier attitude by an American President towards Native Americans sounds remarkedly similar to the Zionists’ view and actions toward Palestinians today. One might wonder if much of America’s support for Israel’s actions arises from a subconscious conflation of Native Americans and Palestinians with America’s faith in Manifest Destiny being morphed out of a Chosen People cultural myth.

It is difficult for us to do the right thing in Palestine when we built our empire using the same tactics the Zionists are using. However, we owe it to “ourselves and our posterity” to not aid and abet another Trail of Tears in Palestine. We certainly sinned ourselves, but we can partially atone by helping to alleviate the great Nakba being wrought by Israel’s Zionists today.

The Crusade Charade

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The Crusades were the outgrowth of many factors but they are generally categorized as a series of wars between European Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims occurring from 1096 to 1291 AD involving competing claims over the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem. The catalyst for the first Crusade was a call to Christians made by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in France in November 1095. Urban declared that God had willed Christians to oust Muslims from the sacred sites. Urban promised remission of sins for any Christian who died in this vital service of Christ. Thousands of English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and others “took up the cross.”

Later in the New World, priests, clerics and politicians and plain Americans have spent from the 15th century to 2024 spreading the gospel at home and continuing to attempt to control the beliefs and behaviors of Middle Easterners. Manifest Destiny was based on the premise that the god of Christians had ordained that America must eliminate paganism and not commit the sin of omitting to develop the land. Such “crusades” as the Trail of Tears were the outgrowth of European immigrants and their descendants’ beliefs that their god had ordained that America was the Promised Land for Caucasian Christians and that Native Americans had to be evicted, killed or converted to Christianity. This ingrained racial memory from 1492 until today may influence the justification for our invasions into the Muslim Middle East. Just as Native Americans had to be destroyed to save them, Muslims are still the enemies of Christ who must be saved from their misguided faith.

Most recently the United States has continued the tradition of the Crusades by invading Iraq twice and belligerently engaging Iran and such groups as ISIS, Hamas, Taliban, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and others. America designates these groups as terrorists but they claim to be part of a resistance movement. These organizations are generally Islamic in their religion as were the native Arabs and Persians during the original Crusades. There were Jewish populations in the Holy Land during the time Christian Europeans were seeking to take over the Middle East, but they were a small minority and could not mount an effective resistance to the Crusades.

Today, due to the world’s post-holocaust revulsion of the Nazi atrocities and the beliefs of many American fundamentalist Christians, such as dreamers in the Rapture, the United States is defending Israel’s aggression and is allied with the Zionists against Muslims, especially Iranians. Many of our politicians and much of the national media are on a crusade to support the hegemony of Israel under the guise of its self-defense. Israel has nuclear weapons it developed by spying on the United States and has an extremely modern and powerful military. It has nothing to fear from the rag-tag Muslim militias even if they are backed by countries such as Iran, China and Russia. Israel does not need our military support. And its current aggression in Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere, to say nothing, as most media does, about Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, clearly proves Israel does not deserve our support.

Israel is conducting its own crusade against Muslim countries in the Holy Land. If the United States cannot find the moral courage to confront this decades long injustice, we should, at least, not supply it with weapons and diplomatic immunity. It is long past the time America atoned for its own sins against our native population and that we not repeat those sins in the Middle East. To do so, all we need is to be guided by those principles of our Constitution and the philosophy of that Christian faith many Americans profess. Perhaps, if we make a good faith effort to act in the Middle East as the country we claim to be, we will not be misled by the Zionists among the Israelis into the same type of disaster those holier than thou European Crusaders had to endure a thousand years ago.