Middle East - Israel

Come on. All the militancy, fanaticism and terrorism in the Middle East will have no purpose if it was not for Israel. More specifically: if Israel gave back occupied land to the Palestinians and started to treat them as equal citizens, it would remove most of the sting from the Middle East. The state of Israel is not under threat - it is their discriminatory policies and their stubborn belief that they can do no wrong, that is under threat. The US is the biggest culprit in sustaining this fallible belief, being the largest single contributor worldwide to the Israeli Government and military. The US contributes to the fact that Israel holds the record for breaking UN resolutions (quite a lot more than Iraq), openly develops weapons of mass destruction, assassinates political opponents, and blatantly follows a policy of discriminatory segregation against a group of people defined by their ethnicity.

Zionist conspiracy theories have long been used as propaganda tools by Arab nations, but where it was well recognised as rubbish before, it is now starting to sound uncomfortably real. Why else would the US be prepared to suffer unprecedented terrorist attacks on its own citizens and within its own borders, have its soldiers killed in foreign lands and basically alienate most of its former allies? All for the sake of a bunch of racist and obstinate Jewish settlers living on Palestinian land (of which a good few are American Jewish). The US can effect change in Israel at the drop of a hat, it can force Israel to tap dance, if it wanted to. It can genuinely contribute to World Peace without spending billions on military solutions. Is it a coincidence that the security advisor who persuaded Bush to attack Iraq has relatives in Israel and carries the surname Wolfowitz?

The following statistics are dated (by about a year) but it is still very relevant:

898 Israelis and 2,602 Palestinians have been killed since
September 29, 2000.

6,020 Israelis and 24,099 Palestinians have been injured
since September 29, 2000.

The U.S. gives $15,139,178 per day to the Israeli
government and military and $568,744 to Palestinian NGO's.

60+ new Jewish-only settlements have been built on
confiscated Palestinian land between March 2001 and July
11, 2003. There have been 0 cases of Palestinians
confiscating Israeli land and building settlements.

The Israeli unemployment rate is 10.4%, while the
Palestinian unemployment is estimated at 37-67%.

1 Israeli school has been fired upon by Palestinians and
185 Palestinian schools have been shelled or fired upon by
Israelis since September 29, 2000.

1 Israeli home has been destroyed by Palestinians and
2,202 Palestinian homes have been completely destroyed
(14,436 partially destroyed) since September 29, 2000.

[Reference: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/]

Between September 28, 2000 and March 5, 2002 there were 1125 Palestinian deaths including 103 assassinations (which is a war crime, according to the Hague Convention of 1907). Of those killed, 24% were younger than 18 and 84% were civilians.

[Reference: Health Development Information, and Policy Institute http://www.hdip.org]