In fact it is as if there are two worlds out there. Two value systems, one crisis, but two separate prisms from which reality is viewed. As horrible as suicide bombing is, it does not seem to matter that it represents the ultimate act of desperation of a hopeless people, their backs to the wall, with the strongest nation on earth backing their oppressor. Israel invades one refugee camp after another, the same refugee camps created by its settlement policy when the state of Israel was set up in 1948, wrecks untold havoc and covers up its crimes against civilians by denying entry to international observers. Sounds to me like another holocaust , except that this time it’s the Jews who are the perpetrators and the Palestinians the victims. Unlike the German holocaust, however, we do not hear a collective voice of condemnation from men of moral standing. Except for Arabs in neighboring countries whose criticism is tuned off in America because of the preoccupation with the fight against terrorism, and to a lesser extent the Europeans who have been largely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, Israel, by and large, has been successful in its well orchestrated propaganda campaign to cast itself as the victim.

    Israel’s propaganda machinery is at least as efficient as its renowned intelligence unit, the Mossad, and its defense forces. The fact is, for the last fifty years, Jews have consistently overplayed the holocaust to garner world sympathy and to provide an enabling environment for them to oppress their Palestinian neighbors. This strategy of forcing the rest of the world to feel eternally guilty for what happened fifty years ago was in evidence last week as Prime Minister Sharon , true to form, declared that Israel’s existence was at stake. It baffles me to comprehend how in god’s name a country that is so militarily equipped with the instruments of modern warfare can deem its survival to be in jeopardy in face of a defenseless people.

    And of course, the mother of all propaganda assets is the American Jewish establishment. One need not be viewed as anti-Semitic to observe that a major part of the problem in the Middle East is the excessive, and I might add, the incestuous relationship between American Jews and the American political establishment. Jews have so thoroughly woven themselves into the political infrastructure of the United States that American policy in the Middle East is indistinguishable from Israeli policy. The unspoken fact about U.S. politics is that no politician can be taken seriously by the general population if he or she does not profess uncritical loyalty to the state of Israel. Money is the grease that lubricates the cogs of the political machinery and the Jews control most of it. When you add to this equation the fact that Jews control the mass media, you begin to understand the enormous influence Jews exert on politicians who would otherwise be more balanced and even handed in approaching the Arab Israeli conflict. The only prominent public figure in America who has spoken out against this obvious Jewish conspiracy was Louis Farrakan and lately he has been silent.

    What we have here is a shameful moral dilemma. A country that prides itself as a beacon of hope and refuge for the downtrodden and oppressed is itself facilitating an oppressor. When American planes, tanks and helicopters are used by Israelis to annihilate whole villages and international observers are kept out, you begin to wonder, as Martin Luther King did, whether this country is true to its creed.

    I was somewhat encouraged a few days ago to learn that Secretary of State Colin Powell would visit Arafat on his current mission, a position that was apparently not popular with the bush administration. After all, Vice President Cheney was in the region a short time ago and refused to meet with head of the Palestinian leader. Bush himself has not tried to disguise his loathing of Arafat. But alas, even Powell himself seems doubtful of the wisdom of meeting Arafat in part because of the attitude of the bush team, in part because of the continuing suicide bombings. In fact the current American position seems to underscore the view that the only motivation for involvement in the conflict is to pacify Arab interests in preparation for attacking Iraq. Perhaps we are being naïve in being surprised at the lack of morality in the foreign policy of the greatest nation on earth. There never has been, and the sad reality is, there will never be. It’s been a long time since Jimmy Carter was president of the United States and the issue of human rights was front and center in foreign policy debate. Nowadays concerns about strategic influence and preoccupation with the geopolitical political consequences of various policy options weigh considerably more than old fashion concepts of human rights. And the Palestinian issue is a human rights issue.