James M. Redwine

Zionists

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.

Souls In Jeopardy

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Societies of people, including nationalities, often have histories that help form a country’s culture. The members of a group may not realize their contemporary behaviors are a product of or are, at least, influenced by these shared histories. They also may fail to recognize similar Volksgeists in other societies.

American college students today may be puzzled by the reaction of their federal government to the wars between Israel and its neighbors. While Israel may have been created mainly by Great Britain and the United States in 1948, many Israelis and even certain fundamentalist religious Americans have been taught it was created by a Hebrew god just for Jews over two thousand years ago.

A great number of Americans of European ancestry believed their cultural god, Manifest Destiny, was offended by what was seen as a sinful sloth and fallowness by Native Americans. Therefore, it was morally justified to take and use the land the indigenous peoples had inhabited for thousands of years but failed to develop. Contemporary Jewish “settlers” use the same justification to squat on property owned by Palestinians.

For both Israel and the United States, the mantra was, “A land without people, for a people without land”. It is difficult for many Americans to fault Israel for taking Arab lands when we have generations of subliminal cultural evidence that we would not have the sweet lives we enjoy had our European ancestors not done the same thing. One might dream that the expiation of our national guilt could be somewhat assuaged by refusing to aid Israel to behave similarly. However, hope is a poor plan when it comes to seeing ourselves as others might. In today’s America we may not realize our conclusions and prejudices concerning conquest and settlement of Palestinian lands by Israelis are subconsciously determined by our own cultural history of genocidal actions towards Native Americans.

Another interesting phenomenon occurs when one culture not only does not learn from the ills cast upon it by another morally corrupt society but instead emulates and repeats it. Such is the juxtaposition of Zionist Israel and Nazi Germany. Reason calls for a culture that never forgets the Holocaust to be ever mindful of unfettered power coupled with unaware depravity. Thinking Israelis know the war in Gaza was not started by Hamas on October 07, 2023, but by Israel that began to eliminate Palestinians in 1948. This is much like thinking Germans in the 1930’s and 40’s knew Jewish people in post-WWI Germany were not responsible for the hardships suffered by their country regardless of what the Nazis preached as justification for a Jewish genocide.

To many Zionists in Israel, Hamas and even Palestinian civilians are an evil that should be destroyed even if countless innocents are slaughtered in the process. But to many Palestinians, Israel has been an occupying, oppressive evil throughout the past seventy-seven years. To the oppressed peoples of Gaza, October 07 was a desperate act of resistance. We should recognize the similarity between Palestinian resistance and that of Native Americans at the Little Big Horn and other acts of desperation that brought down the wrath of the United States against many other innocent Native Americans.

Israel may not see itself as a pariah among nations in its genocide against Palestinians any more than our European ancestors saw their desire to take Indian lands as genocide. After all, both Israel and America had their god on their side. However, America does have an opportunity to somewhat atone for our past sins and to help Israel put an end to their present ones. If gods truly are involved, we better do both for Israel’s salvation and our own.

Anti-WWIII

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To be anti-Nazi is to be neither anti-Teutonic nor anti-Germany any more than to be anti-Zionist is to be anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. The United States and our WWI allies, such as Great Britain, should have required Nazi Germany to abide by its 1919 Versailles Treaty obligations and perhaps there would not have been a WWII. While it is correct that the treaty ending WWI was needlessly vengeful towards Germany and woefully shortsighted by the victors, at least Hitler’s illegal re-occupation of the German Rhineland in 1936 should have alarmed us.

Instead, the world did nothing but dither while the Nazis invaded Poland (1939), Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and France (1940), then Yugoslavia and Greece in 1941. The United States did finally react in 1941, but that was because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and, as we declared war on Japan, Germany declared war on us.

But as the Nazis invaded its defenseless neighbors and even slaughtered its own citizens, the world’s democracies, mainly the U.S. and Britain, fiddled. Surely, we learned that the slippery slope from a self-described victim such as Germany to a genocidal invader such as the Nazis must not be appeased, or worse, enabled. Yet, the United States not only helped create Israel in 1948, we have since enabled the Zionists to bomb Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran.

Just as students did in the 1960’s and 1970’s when the United States bombed Viet Nam and Cambodia, today’s students at many colleges and universities are exercising their First Amendment rights to address their grievances to our government. Our government has responded by bombing Yemen, deporting scholars and further enabling the Zionists. The American people have a right, even a duty, to call anti-Zionism what it is and not be intimidated from calling out what it is not, anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism.

The Zionists want to prevent Iran or any other Middle Eastern country from being able to defend themselves as Israel already can, with nuclear weapons. As Hitler began his hegemony gradually, the Zionists are steadily invading and occupying Gaza, Yemen, Syria, the West Bank and Lebanon.

WWII may be what the world thought WWI was, the War to End All Wars. Unfortunately, about 50 million people died during WWII. If Israel, with our full knowledge and support, starts WWIII by bombing Iran, we will have once again failed to learn from history.

I suggest we own up to our myopic view of the Zionists, not the Jewish citizens of Israel, and that we not allow the shouted tropes of anti-Semitism to still our voices for fairness, understanding and peace. Hitler, unlike the Zionists, did not have nuclear weapons. If we want to prevent a true eve of destruction, as we discourage Iran from procuring nuclear weapons, we should dismantle Israel’s.