I ask all Americans to do some real soul-searching.  Why do you, who otherwise have a fair moral sense and have often intervened around the world to protect victimized groups, continue to tolerate any and all Israeli crimes against Palestinians, and then blame the Palestinians for fighting back?  Why do you consider Palestinians undeserving of basic human rights?  Why don't you condemn Zionism as a form of bigotry and ethnic discrimination?  Why did you support the UN Resolutions to aid Muslims in Kosovo, including the bombing of Serbian civilian society, yet continue to aid and abet the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in contradiction to all UN Resolutions and accepted norms?  Why don't you realize that it is not in your own long-term interest to support and carry out a racist war against the non-Jewish people of the Middle East?  Why won’t you admit that your blind support for Israel puts you in a state of war against all Israel’s victims?

Having been raised in a typical protestant American family, I believe I know why you are so blind.  I was once there myself.  It took me years of living in the Middle East and studying its history to begin to understand what is going on here.  It’s a matter of many factors working together, reinforcing each other.  I hope that by exposing them, I can reduce their power:

1. Physical Isolation -- Americans live on a continent on the other side of the Earth.  Most Americans never travel to the Middle East.  Most don't even know any Jews or Palestinians, least of all Palestinians.  Americans are not close enough to the people or the conflict to receive any unbiased, unfiltered information.  They must rely on the American media for information.

2. Media Bias -- The American media and political establishment is rabidly pro-Israeli for a variety of reasons, some listed below.  Many, perhaps most, newspapers and media giants are owned by Zionist-sympathizing Jews or Christians.  Most journalists and commentators are rabid Zionists, whether Jewish or Christian.  In addition, the Israeli propaganda machine is sophisticated and powerful, practically guaranteeing that Americans receive nothing but pro-Israeli propaganda.  Any one who attempts to criticize Israel's actions is shouted down with the all-purpose charge of "anti-Semitism".  Any attempt to present a "neutral" journalistic view of current events in the Middle East plays into Israel's hand, as such a treatment ignores the historical and moral context that has produced the current violence.  Violence against Israelis gets full coverage and condemnation; violence against Palestinians, including the crime of occupation, is ignored or downplayed.  The movie Exodus, seen by millions of Americans, presented the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 non-Jews from Palestine as a beautiful thing.

3. Jewish manipulation of the American Political system -- Politicians are afraid of the Zionist/Jewish lobby.  The power of AIPAC is well known.  It has destroyed the careers of many politicians who dared question Israel or America’s support for Israel.  Books have been written about this.  Enough said.

4. No comprehension of suffering – White Americans generally have grown up comfortably in a stable country that was never seriously threatened.  They have no idea what life is like for people who are victims of racism, who live under occupation, who suffer the trauma of 9/11 everyday.  They can easily suppress any identification with the Palestinians even though they know that they see their relatives killed, are displaced from their homes, live under the power of a hostile racist army, have to watch their own homes being bulldozed, and depend on their overlord’s whims even to earn enough money to eat.  Americans suppress the obvious, so they cannot understand why the Palestinians hate the Israelis so much that they will take up stones against soldiers firing bullets and kill themselves in order to take revenge against a few Jews.  Let any American live with some Palestinians in the West Bank for a few days and his views would be transformed.  They would soon realize that occupation is the worst crime against humanity.  (See Occupation and Terrorism)

5. Shared Racism and Genocide -- America, like Israel, was created by Europeans through genocide.  White settlers drove the native Americans off the land they had occupied for thousands of years.  If they fought, they were killed.  Indians were confined to a few reservations.  No thought was given to their rights as human beings.  Whites, like the Hebrew tribes of the Bible, told themselves that God wanted them to have the land and believed that God approved of the slaughter of the evil inhabitants.  Until recent years, the Indian Genocide was celebrated in Western movies and never criticized in schools.  Just as Indians were considered uncivilized heathens not deserving basic rights; so are the Palestinians.  The parallels between the establishment of the American and Israeli states are many.  The American’s enslavement of African people and its multigenerational traumatic effects have likewise has been insufficiently recognized, criticized, or corrected.  Unacknowledged racism persists at a subconscious level in many white Americans' minds.  Many Jews still consider themselves the “Chosen People” deserving of special treatment and rights.  The religious bigotry and tribalism inherent in that idea require no comment.

6. The Bible -- Having no ancient history of their own, and being descended largely adherents of various Christian sects, most Americans have grown up in Sunday schools being taught stories from the Bible about the Jews—their suffering in Egypt, their march through the desert, their wars, their kings, their prophets, their heroes and heroines, etc.  The other world history that Americans are taught in public schools is comparatively dry and meaningless.  The only meaningful ancient history for most Americans is Jewish history.  From the Old Testament, American kids learn that the Hebrews’ attack upon, conquest of, and slaughter of the Canaanites, Philistines, and other indigenous peoples of Palestine was good and right; ordained by God himself!  Imagine the effect of such ideas on little children!  The Old Testament makes it very clear:  Hebrews-Good :: Canaanites-Bad.  Now of course, the formula is Israelis-Good :: Palestinians-Bad.  If Mommy, Daddy, and the pastor say it’s so, it must be true!  Is it any surprise that when they grow up, Americans think that it's perfectly all right for Israeli Jews to kill and displace non-Jewish Palestinians?  Isn't God on the side of the Jews?  Shouldn't they be allowed to reconquer the land that God gave them?  Aren't the Palestinians evil to resist this Holy Crusade?  Furthermore, the New Testament is interpreted by most Protestants, not all, as prophesying that Christ's Second Coming to Earth will be preceded by the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel.  All the more reason for Protestants to help establish Israel and remain its “friend”.  The state of Israel does not fail to take advantage of this Christian prejudice.

7. The Crusades -- After Jewish history and Cowboy history, Americans know Crusader history.  Castles and knights fascinate us, how much more the Holy Quest to take back the Holy Land from the Muslims!  What could be more wonderful than to see the evil Saracens finally vanquished?  How much better if the Jewish people can also recreate Israel in their Biblical home?  In fact, history will look back on the establishment of the state of Israel as the Ninth Crusade of Western Christendom to control the Holy Land.  The history books will relate how the collapse of the Ottoman Empire allowed the Christian West to retake the Holy Land and re-enact Biblical history with no risk and little expense—using a small proxy army of Zionist volunteers. 

8. The Holocaust -- Americans fought the Germans and liberated many Jews from the concentration camps.  The mass-murder and atrocities committed by the Nazis rightly filled Americans with pity.  This prompted Americans to support the establishment of the state of Israel against all democratic and moral principles.  The Zionists have continued to shamelessly play on this pity for their own advantage.  Their leaders never fail to mention it as a justification for whatever atrocity they commit.  One is reminded frequently of the psychological phenomena of identifying with the aggressor.  The Isrealis have externalized their anger and attempted to undo their own victimization by repeating the Nazi's crimes—the victim this time being the unfortunate Palestinians.  This kind of social/psychological pathology should be contained, diagnosed and treated, not given free rein.

9. Islam -- Judaism is familiar through the Old Testament, which is included in every American's Bible.  For American Christians, Judaism is not the right religion, but it is a precursor to their own and is no threat.  They are unfamiliar with the racism and double standard found in the Talmud and in Jewish legal writings.  They know only that God chose the Jews for the first covenant with man, but supplanted that choice with a second covenant with man through Jesus Christ.  So to Christians, Judaism is tribalistic and anachronistic, but is a part of their own religion that poses no threat to Christianity.  Islam is a completely different matter.  It is a universal religion that is built upon Judaism and Christianity and claims superiority over them.  It is not confined to a single tribe or race.  It is growing and presents a threat to Christianity.  Christians know that Islam reduces Christ to a prophet, so they see it as a heretical distortion of their own religion—which is much worse.  Americans fear and loath Islam all the more because they've encountered it primarily in the context of the current Israeli Crusade.  Unfortunately, Americans generally don't actually know any Muslims so that they might realize that they're humans also.

10. “Terrorism” -- Americans have been assaulted for years by images of Arab groups committing small scale attacks against Israelis and their American supporters.  Ignorant of the history of the region, they fail to understand that small-scale Arab terrorism has been a reaction to systematic, large-scale Israeli terrorism—its ethnic cleansing of Palestine, its slaughter of civilians, and its brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  There were no Arab terrorist attacks against Westerners before the Zionists began to implement their plan of conquering Palestine.  The impotent Arab reaction to Israeli terrorism supports the West’s anti-Arab bias.  With the help of non-stop pro-Israeli propaganda, Americans conclude that Arabs are the root of the problem and are  inherently violent and untrustworthy.  They have mistaken a symptom of a moral disorder for the cause.  In fact, Arabs are not violent people in general.  By any measure, there is far less violence in their societies than in America.  They particularly like and admire Americans who come to live among them.  What they hate are the actions and policies of the Israelis and the American government.  The Palestinians have suffered invasion, occupation, and racism.  They have suffered much, much more at the hands of the Israelis than the American colonists ever did from the British, yet Americans celebrate their violent struggle against the occupying British.  They have suffered much more than Americans did when America decided to kill 100,000 Japanese civilians to end WWII.  The Palestinians' desperate acts against the occupying Israelis and Israeli citizens are in fact a morally justified response to Israel’s ethnic cleansing and occupation.  Under altered circumstances, Americans would support the Palestinians as freedom fighters and understand that they are driven to suicidal violence by the criminal actions of the Israeli state.  Morally, most persons believe that violence is justified in order to end violent oppression.  This is the case in Palestine.  Consider this:  If, during the Holocaust, a few Jews had been able to bomb concentrations of German citizens and thereby bring the world’s attention to the plight of Jews under Hitler, would Americans or Jews now condemn them as terrorists, or celebrate them as freedom fighters?  In addition, we must realize that psychologically, people who are violated and oppressed will strike back in any way they can, especially when they have nothing more to lose.  The Palestinians have no hope of ever being free of Israeli occupation and control.  They believe they have no future.  They will therefore do anything to change the situation, if only to take revenge.  They have no military power, they cannot take on the Israeli war machine, so they attack any Israeli or supporter of Israel that they can reach.  Israel has amply demonstrated that it will not withdraw from the West Bank until forced to do so.  This is asymmetric warfare and the occupation is the root cause.  Who is controlling and denying the basic rights of millions of non-Jews?  The Israeli Army.  From whom does the army take its orders?  The elected government.  Who elects the government?  The citizens of Israel.  Since Israel is a Jewish democracy, every citizen of Israel bears responsibility for the government’s criminal actions.  No citizen is innocent.  This is the unfortunate fact.  Let us be frank, the great problem in human society is violence, whether committed by the state or by groups or by individuals.  Occupation is the worst form of violence.  Every person has the right to use violence to stop violence against themselves.  “Terrorism” is just the pejorative term that the dominant military power uses against those who violently oppose its actions.  The greatest acts of violence against civilians have been, and still are the work of governments, not of small bands of rebels like the Palestinians or Al-Qaeda.  Israel has killed over 100,000 non-Jews and driven over a million from their homes.  The United States has killed, or supported the killing of millions of “innocent civilians” in the last century—in places like Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, El-Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile, Panama, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, and now Afghanistan.  What perverse games politicians and their sycophantic media play with our precious language!