End It

Recently, Bernie Sanders released a statement on the war against Gaza followed by an expanded version as a New York Times op-ed a few days later.

On the whole, it was surprisingly good coming from a US politician, even one so avowedly progressive, as it
- included justice for Palestinians an explicit goal,
- called for future aid to Israel to be conditioned on behavior, and
- expressed a commitment to a two-state solution.

I could have wished for a direct and overt call for an immediate end to all military assistance to Israel until an actual agreement is reached, but I'll take what I can get.

While I'm sure there are other area of emphasis or even disagreement I could find by going over the statement in detail, I did see two shortcomings I wanted to note.

First, I was quite disappointed in the parts about how Hamas "must be" removed from power and "new Palestinian leadership will be required," which together endorse the Israeli war while claiming to be calling for an end to it. More to the point, it raises a question which demands an answer: If there is a free election in Gaza (which I assume is how such "new leadership" is to be chosen) and Hamas wins, would Israel and the US accept that? Or would they use that as an excuse to do nothing toward justice for Palestinians "so long as the terrorists remain in power?"

Don't ignore the question. It's based in history. After Yassir Arafat died in November 2004, the US and Israel demanded elections among Palestinians for "new leadership." Those came in January 2006 and resulted in Hamas winning seats, leading to months of conflict between Hamas and Fatah and finally, in early 2007, a painfully worked-out coalition government between the two factions - upon which Israel and the US flatly refused to deal with this "terrorist government." That is, they demanded elections but when they didn't like the result, they rejected them even though they knew, they had to know, the outcome would be continued conflict.

Their rejection resulted in the coalition fracturing and renewed civil war, leading in short order to the present situation where Hamas controls Gaza and Fatah controls the West Bank.

So the question stands: Will the US and Israel pledge to support the outcome of any elections for "new leadership" even if they don't like the outcome? Any answer other than "Yes" translates to "You will choose the government we tell you to" and marks such "new leadership" as a mask for continued oppression.

The second shortcoming was a matter of let's call it incomplete comparisons. Sanders writes that Hamas killed about 1200 Israelis, adding that "On a per-capita basis, if Israel had the same population as the United States, that attack would have been the equivalent of nearly 40,000 deaths, more than 10 times the fatalities that we suffered on 9/11."

Which is absolutely true.

However, while he notes the estimate of 12,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military, he fails to make the same comparison as before. So let's do that here:

Population of Israel: 9,812,480.
Israelis killed: 1200
That is .012% of the population.

Population of Gaza: 2,375,259
Palestinians killed: 12,000
That is .50% of the population.

Population of US: 334,233,854
.012% of US population: 40,110
.50% of US population: 1,671,000

So by the per capita basis Sanders used, the Israeli military has killed FORTY-TWO TIMES as many Palestinians as Palestinian militants killed Israelis.

Forty. Two. Times.

We can properly call what what Hamas did  "slaughter." But then what description can we apply to 42 times as many killed by those who have sworn to continue killing more? Who forced half the population of Gaza to abandon their homes, demanded they run to the south, and then began bombing the very area to which they told them to flee?

End all aid to Israel. Now. Immediately and totally. Because while it can be argued that we may not be able to stay the hangman's hand, we can damn well stop paying for the rope.