Blowing Up Homes

By Roy D. Follendore III

August 05, 2002

Israel has decided to reinstate their policy of blowing up the family homes of suicide bombers. Since we all are in a so called war on terrorism, on our part let's consider this idea for the United States. From now on, perhaps our United States military should send tanks to the family homes of those who commit hate crimes and blow them up with explosives! In this way we will get back at the families of the perpetrators. Maybe this punishment of the families of criminals should come next. Murderers would think twice. Robbers would halt in their tracks. Drug pushers would be afraid of what their Mothers and Fathers might do. Of course, rapists and child molesters would never want their families property to be destroyed. What absurdity. Our criminal and insane do not consult with their families before doing their deed. Why should Arab suicide bombers? The fact is that they don't because if they did, more of them would be stopped from doing their deed. We do not consider doing this because it is against the American concept of law to harm innocent people. Israel should not either. Human rights experts report that the practice constitutes collective punishment and violates international law. This policy is an international crime, not a deterrent. When governments make military policies on people without rights, that have no context, there can be no justice.

The current Government of Israel once again appears to have gone crazy because it is acting from Jewish anger. They have chosen this path away from justice and law. Is this yet another instance of why real democracy, the fair and equal rule of law with a doctrine of separation of church and state should be implemented within the region? Over the years of the existence of Israel, Palestinians have been systematically ostracized from being Israeli citizens. Yes, of course there is a minority Arab vote some say. Most of these are Arab Jews some say. It is their religion as well as their race and culture that prevents them from access to their right to vote they say.

But the truth is that Israel has elected their government in the same way as the old south did before reconstruction. The laws have systematically prohibited Muslim Arabs from becoming Israeli citizens and therefore preventing the majority of Arabs from voting. This is the key to modern American sensibility. Arab people are being treated like the Negro of our Old American South. But Arabs should have the right to vote and without it they have no human or civil rights. America knows that they have been treated as second class beings and we have ignored the facts. But we know that they are treated less then human and we know the reasons why they respond in kind. None of the news in Israel or Palestine should surprise us. This is not a doctrine brought on by God, but by simply greed and corruption of those in power. The Israeli people elected these men to dictate over others and they are the ones that must come to terms with the flaws in their ancient religious concept of civilized law.

To have let this situation continue in refugee camps conquered by the Israeli military so many years ago has been the accumulation of wrongs. All of those years of negotiation during the past decade were wasted because of those who have have not shared opportunities and demonstrated honest values. It was greed for more money, more land, and more power that provoked all of this. The government of Israel have manufactured the raw material of the human bombs that assault their citizens by using rhetoric and tactics of warfare to force their way. Israeli policies use economic subsidies so that Israelis who move to the West Bank get a 7 percent income-tax reduction, cheaper houses and better services from their Government. They know that this inflames the problems. The fact is that Israeli law discriminates to protect Israeli Jewish citizens. These are the tactics of a 30's Nazi Germany regime. Just as the discrimination of Jews was wrong in Germany then, the discrimination of Arabs in lands controlled by the Israelis is wrong now. It seems incredible to the rest of the world that the sons and daughters of those who were holocaust victims would use the same tactics as their old enemy. It seems incredible that the leadership of the Palestinians would allow themselves to be tricked into their current existence.

There have recently been old men in their 80's who were tried for murders and atrocities resulting from Nazi retaliation to "terrorists." The Nazi military had the exact same policy of blowing up the homes of people who were accused of being terrorists. Just as the people who have recently lost their children and their homes, there was no trial back then. The people who tried to exist were acted upon, were given no rights. Today there also is no hearing or attempt to understand the context of the situation of the Palestinian families who suffer. The destruction of homes is simply another cold policy, another human atrocity that this time is being perpetrated by Jews on Arabs. Tomorrow it will be the turn of some young Palestinian to ignore the plight of some poor Israeli family who's child is riding on a bus.

If our American Federal Government were to have bombed the family homes of the Blacks who rioted in L.A., it would have been immoral and constitutional injustice. If the Government of the United States were to act in this way on the innocent families of those who have committed grievous crimes, it would be just as wrong. Peace is never really "negotiated" nor "created" nor can it be sustained through governmental policies of injustice, discrimination or atrocities. Peace is simply accepted for what it is. Peace is an opportunity to build, to trust, and to embrace and enjoy the others character in spite of the others faults. Peace is a time to be educated, enlightened and to evolve. Peace starts now, at this moment, not at some distant click of the clock in the future.

A war on terror must start with hearts and souls. It is time for Israel to fight terrorism with democracy, civil and human rights and food for Palestinian men, women and children. For Israel it is time for peace because the only thing that exists past the force of arms are the surprising horrors of genocide. Palestinians have nothing left but anger, fear and despair but they too have learned something from the Germans. When the people of Palestine survive their holocaust, who then will their hated outcast enemy be? For Arabs it is time for peace because otherwise they too must model themselves after the Nazi failures of the past as well.

And so terror will continue through them as well.

Israelis and Palestinians can come together to stop this horror now, but only if peace, justice, democracy and the brotherhood of man is accepted in ways that can not be overwhelmed by religious zealots.

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