Forget Biden’s ‘dignity’ — what about the Palestinians?

A lot of noise is being made over what happened recently in Israel when U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden went there to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

During Biden’s visit, which was supposed to promote the “peace process” and lead to a renewal of discussions between the Palestinian Authority and the Tel Aviv regime, the Interior Ministry announced that Israel was going ahead with building 1,600 new housing units for Zionists in East Jerusalem.

This was a slap in the face to the Palestinian people, who have had their lands systematically taken away by the settler regime ever since the founding of Israel in 1948. It was especially raw because Israel had agreed to suspend the settlements in the interest of dialogue with the Palestinian Authority.

The brouhaha in the imperialist media, however, is not over what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. It is over the affront to Biden’s dignity.

The right-wing media that openly champion Israel’s role as a U.S.-armed and -financed pit bull in the Middle East are telling the Obama administration to get over it. Despite the long anti-Semitic history of the far right in the U.S.,

they have for now embraced Israel as a great champion of “democracy” and a weapon against the struggling Arab and Muslim countries fighting neocolonial domination.

Of course, the democracy they mean leaves the majority of humankind chained to the imperialist countries that have robbed their rich resources and people for centuries.

The right wing also, bolder and bolder each day, attack the Obama administration as “soft on terrorism” and secretly allied with “enemies of the United States.”

The voices in the corporate media who answer this kind of nonsense hinge their arguments on what is the more effective way to achieve U.S. objectives in the Middle East — meaning imperialist objectives. For example, Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times says the announcement about building more settlements showed “how out of touch the Israeli religious right is with America’s strategic needs.” (March 13)

Some take up the question: Should Israel be unleashed to bomb Iran? No, they argue, because that would make it even harder for the U.S. to control the area.

They argue that breaking up the “peace process” would undermine the work Washington has done to promote conciliatory elements in the Palestinian Authority and make it more likely that Mahmoud Abbas and his party will be replaced by the more militant Hamas grouping.

That is what the whole debate in the imperialist media is about. There is not a word of respect for the Palestinians or recognition of their right to get their country back.

What is the ‘peace process’?

Since the Annapolis Conference in November 2007, the U.S. government has said it is committed to promoting a settlement in the Israel-Palestine conflict that would allow for a very small and fragmented Palestinian state — the so-called “two-state” solution. Beginning much earlier — in the 1970s — Washington positioned itself as the leader of a world effort to bring about a “peace process” in the Middle East. This process has been going on for some 35 years — with nothing to show for it.

Over this same period, the state of Israel has been militarily attacking Palestinians and other Arab peoples inside and outside its borders, expanding the territory under its control and creating unbearable conditions for the Palestinians living in Israel — like extending the “apartheid wall,” a serpentine barrier that cuts Palestinian villages in half and makes it impossible for the people to move freely, whether to work, school, shopping or medical facilities.

The Palestinian people, however, instead of letting themselves be driven out of their homeland by these outrageous conditions, have resisted heroically for generations. Their cause is deeply felt throughout the Middle East, not just because of ethnicity and religion but because the peoples there share a history of oppression.

This all has happened while the U.S. was bankrolling Israel and helping create its formidable military. All the world’s leading military authorities agree this includes a secret Israeli nuclear arsenal.

So why is Washington making such a huge deal out of Iran acquiring nuclear technology, when they say not a word about Israel’s bombs? Because Israel is an ally of Washington and Wall Street, while Iran in 1979 had a revolution to get out of the clutches of Shah Reza Pahlevi. The people rose up because the shah had brutally suppressed them and kept them in poverty, while allowing Western oil companies to walk away with billions in profits.

Since that revolution, the proceeds from oil sales have paid for impressive gains in the Iranian standard of living. All indices of progress, including literacy, life expectancy and lowered infant mortality, as well as vast improvement in the educational level of women, show how important the revolution was for the Iranian people.

The Palestinian people, too, need self-determination to be free to develop their great potential. It will come not from the maneuvers of either imperialist party in the United States but from the continued struggle of the people, aided by progressive humanity all over the world.

E-mail: [email protected]