TEN REASONS TO OPPOSE UNCONDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT

1. Because a small but vibrant Israeli peace movement wants and needs my support.
   27 courageous Israeli airforce pilots who refuse to serve in the occupied territories have declared: "We, who were raised to love the state of Israel and contribute to the Zionist enterprise, refuse to take part in Air Force attacks on civilian population centers. We, for whom the Israel Defense Forces and the Air Force are an inalienable part of ourselves, refuse to continue to harm innocent civilians: "These actions are illegal and immoral, and are a direct result of the ongoing occupation which is corrupting all of Israeli society. Perpetuation of the occupation is fatally harming the security of the state of Israel and its moral strength." These pilots join the more than 1,000 Israeli officers and reservists who have publicly refused to serve in the occupied territories, many of whom have been imprisoned for speaking out.
2. Because I support a strong United Nations! Israel has not complied with more than 60 U.N. Resolutions, including Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. Not to mention Resolutions that have been vetoed by the USA, including the most recent one demanding that Israel not assassinate the elected leader of the Palestinians. How hypocritical of the George Bush government to wage war against Iraq because of U.N. Resolutions that may not have been complied with, and then reward Israel for not complying with more significant Resolutions.
3. Because supporting Israel does not mean supporting a prime minister who is right-wing fanatic and who has been doing everything in his power to sabotage all peace proposals. Most recently, the former Palestinian prime minister, Abu Mazen, got a cease-fire, but, Sharon simply continued to assassinate Palestinian leaders until he finally provoked the bus bombing. Follow the chronology; every lull in the violence has been interrupted by Sharon's targeted assassinations and attacks on refugee camps, provoking the ugly responses that disgust us all. Why does Sharon seem to DESIRE this conflict? Two decades ago, an Israeli commision had found Ariel Sharon indirectly responsible for the gruesome massacres of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Sabra and Shatila. Today his Likud party stands for a "Greater Israel" which means doing everything possible to make life so unbearable that the Palestinians will "want" to leave their land.
4. Because Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories are illegal and I cannot accept colonialism in the 21st century. The 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on the wartime treatment of civilians forbids an occupying power to resettle its own civilians on territory under its military control. However, from Oslo to the Road Map, from Barak to Sharon, Israel has continued to expand the illegal settlements in Palestinian territory even when agreed upon peace processes required putting a freeze on new settlements. The Israeli government has only recently asked for bids to build over 500 new housing units in the illegal colonies. The Palestinian Authority has already signed away 78% of its historic territory to Israel. The fanatic settlers movement believes that the remaining 22% of Palestine belongs to Israel. No peace process can be taken seriously while these religious fundamentalists dictate policy, while they are subsidized by Israeli tax revenue (and indirectly by American tax dollars).
5. Because I did not like Apartheid in South Africa and the Israeli government wants to establish it in the occupied territories. According to Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper: "There is a very definite political plan - apartheid". Sharon calls this plan cantonization: a Palestinian state on about 42% of the West Bank in three or four islands, all controlled and surrounded by Israel. The plan involves making the Palestinians submit by getting a weak Palestinian leadership that will sign off on this Bantustan, this cantonization. It involves getting rid of the Palestinian middle class that would oppose it by what we call 'quiet transfer' - forcing them out of the country with bad housing, bad education and no economic life, in order to create a very malleable Palestinian mass ..."
6. Because I don't like walls, choking East Berlin or choking Palestine The Israeli wall of shame is annexing, de facto, so much Palestinian territory that even Bush and Powell have complained. The Berlin wall was 155 kilometres long, Israel's wall is planned to be at least 650 kilometres long. It violates the freedom of movement of tens of thousands of Palestinians, endangering their access to food, water, education, and medical services. West Bank residents become separated from their lands, crops, services, water, and jobs.
7. Because I believe in disarmament and Israeli governments, both the Likud and Labor, have been arming the worst of the world's dictators. As Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper notes: "Israel is the subcontractor for American arms to the 'Third World.' There is no terrible regime - Columbia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile during the time of the colonels, Burma, Taiwan, Zaire, Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leone - there is not one that does not have a major military connection to Israel." The totally disproportionate amount of U.S. aid to Israel not only saps resources from education and health in the USA, but it also subsidizes the voracious U.S. military-industrial complex.
8. Because I would like to stop Israel from self-destructing before it is too late. Avraham Burg, former Israeli Knesset president has written: "It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers ... The countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun. Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture. They spill their own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites, because they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated". Burg calls on the Israeli prime minister to "present the choices forthrightly: Jewish racialism or democracy. Settlements or hope for both peoples. False visions of barbed wire, roadblocks and suicide bombers, or a recognized international border between two states and a shared capital in Jerusalem."
9. Because violence begets violence. The young woman who recently became a suicide bomber made this grave decision because two of her family members had been killed by the Israelis. It is not a mystery that if you take people's land, kill their parents and children, destroy their houses and humiliate them on a daily basis, you will be fertilizing the soil that grows terrorism.
10. Because no government in any land deserves unconditional support. Why should Israel be the exception?