In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
With the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas last year, and the ongoing war in response, let us look back half-a-centyry ago when William F. Buckley, Jr. with Fayez A. (Fayez Abdullah) Sayegh, William Orbach, Lynn Greenberg, and Salah Almazani discussed, just as we are doing now, the question of where do we go from here in the Middle East?
Until next Friday.
Israel is a European colonial project, the last and the last remaining. Colonization was common throughout history from the early Neolithic up to the 20th Century. During much of that time, the world was empty, and colonies filled the empty spaces. But for the last 5,000 years or so, the world has filled up, and colonizing settlers displace native peoples. The US is a good example. During the 20th Century, colonization no longer was practical, and old colonies shut down, and the settlers went home.
Israel was established with the connivance of Britain and the nascent UN. But neither Britain nor the UN had the authority to give the land of one people to another. So, for almost 80 years (100 if you count Balfour), European Ashkenazi Jews have been ethnically cleansing and murdering native Palestinians, including both Muslims and Christians. The Zionist goal, clearly stated, is to expel ALL non Jews from the whole region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The recent and ongoing wanton killing and mass destruction of infrastructure in Gaza is an egregious example, and its goal is the extermination of the Palestinians there. Some 35,000 Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, and almost entirely civilians, more than half of whom are women and childres, have been killed outright, and another 70,000 or so have been injured, many crippled for life.
And the war has expanded. The Houthis in Yemen have successfully closed the Red Sea and Suez to US, UK, and Israeli shipping. Despite a substantial naval and air commitment, the US/NATO has been unable to reopen the seaway. And overnight, Iran successfully attacked Israeli airbases, this in response to the wanton criminal attack on Iran’s embassy in Damascus. The US was fully involved in the defense against the Iranian attack.
The horrors inflicted on older Ashkenazis by the Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Romanians and other European fascists do not give today’s Ashkenazis license to ethnically cleanse or murder Palestinians on their own, Palestinian, land. The only possible solution to the problem is the dismantling of the Israeli state, its replacement by a Palestinian state, and the removal of the Ashkenazi back to their European and North American homelands.