AIDING AND ABETTING A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE

David Ignatius, who writes for The Washington Post, and whose column appeared today
in The Oregonian, wrote about the Middle East: "In this volatile part of the world, there's
just one area where I wish President Bush would take more risks --- and that's in
diplomatic efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. If you want to strike a blow
at Iran, Sunni insurgents and Shiite death squads all at once, that's the way to do it.
Secretary Rice made a start this week, but this is one poker game where we should be
adding more chips --- doubling down the American stake in peace."

Mr. Ignatius is right, of course. But he is too polite to explain that it is our continuing
to aid and abet Israel in its criminal activities in the West Bank and Gaza that is the
main cause of the burning (and increasing) hatred of us in the Muslim world. Jimmy
Carter has now written a frank and honest book that shows in detail from history how
and why Israel's brutal occupation and destruction in Palestine is, indeed, criminal.
Everything Carter says in PALESTINE PEACE OR APARTHEID is substantiated in
an earlier book by Tanya Reinhart: ISRAEL/PALESTINE - How To End the War of
1948. Reinhart is a professor at Tel Aviv U. and a regular columnist for Israel's
largest paper, so she cannot be called anti-Israel. Nor can Carter, who received
the Nobel Peace Price for his successful efforts to bring about a lasting treaty
between Israel and Egypt.

Jimmy Carter fits (as does Barak Obama) Confucius' definition of the truly
noble man: "He is universally minded, and no partisan."
(More on Obama later). Carter's book is based both on extensive research, and
long experience in the holy land. As, of course, is Reinhart's. The latter reports
accurately: "The Israeli land was obtained through ethnic cleansing of the indigenous
Palestinian inhabitants." It's a process still going on, as ever more Palestinian
homes are blown up or bull-dozed, their olive and citrus orchards deliberately cut
down, and their wells filled in with rocks. The Palestinians reported in 2001 that
112,000 olive trees had been uprooted, and over 10,000 homes demolished. This
is much more than vandalism, folks! This is gangsterism! And we are paying
for it and supporting it! Reinhart again: "The Israeli army that defends our
homeland behaves brutally, uses torture, fires upon innocent civilians. What
justifies the behaviour of this army? We call it self-defense but this is, I suggest,
only the surface of our justification. (We think) our historic suffering, as a people,
entitles us to the violence of our current behaviour."

More on this later. jgoodwin004@centurytel.net