I will never surrender my pride and dignity nor allow the system to ‘cut my tongue’ and I will always, without fear, speak out against these war crimes and crimes against humanity, no matter if I spend the rest of my life in a prison cage, and draw my last breath of air laying down in this steel bed surrounded by razor-wire fences and cages, and its prison policies that are designed to destroy one’s humanity…

– Alvaro Luna Hernandez, October 18, 2010, Hughes Unit Prison, Gatesville, Texas

Locked in solitary confinement in a tiny cage inside one of the most notorious control units in the Texas state prison system, Alvaro Luna Hernandez is immersed in a stack of old law texts, his eyes glancing back and forth between court transcripts and a thick legal book every few moments. The streaks of gray in his full, and otherwise dark, beard betray his age in spite of his healthy, powerful frame as he reaches towards the ledge of the sink for a lone Styrofoam cup to take a sip of the stale, lukewarm commissary-bought coffee he drinks every morning, when he can afford it.

Just fifteen months shy of 60 years old, Alvaro has a remarkable amount of energy and routinely gets more work done before noon than most attorneys do in an entire day. Today he’s putting together the documents to get a new trial on a writ of habeas corpus proceeding for another prisoner who is both indigent and illiterate and feels he has been wrongly imprisoned. After that, it’s on to the cases of two other inmates Alvaro is helping out who are each facing several decades behind bars if their appeals fall through before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin. Other prisoners know to go to Alvaro for legal help; he has a well-known reputation throughout the state—indeed nationwide, as highlighted in the recent book Jailhouse Lawyers (City Lights: 2009) by Mumia Abu-Jamal—as a tenacious and effective “jailhouse lawyer” who has filed and won no small number of civil rights suits over the past four decades.

Alvaro Luna Hernandez is a political prisoner of the State of Texas and the U.S. government. He is nearly 15 years into a 50 year prison sentence for an “aggravated assault” conviction stemming from a July 1996 incident in which he disarmed a Brewster County Sheriff attempting to shoot him. Alvaro vehemently denies the charge that he assaulted the Sheriff. To Mexican-Americans in the cities, slums, plains, deserts, and prison cages of the Southwest, he is a civil rights hero, a Chicano freedom fighter true to his barrio roots and eternally fearless in the face of injustice. For years, he has been internationally recognized by amnesty movements and human rights lawyers and experts as a U.S. political prisoner, yet inside the United States, the name Alvaro Luna Hernandez remains largely elusive on the lips of progressives and social justice advocates.

A high-school dropout with no formal education, Alvaro hasn’t always been such a capable, and indeed, brilliant, litigator. It was during the late 1970s that he transformed himself from a rebellious, zoot suit-wearing “pachuco” hustler in his youth into a prominent leader in the struggle for racial justice and human rights in the Southwest United States. While serving hard time for a crime he didn’t commit, Alvaro educated himself about Chicano history, the prison system, and revolutionary political theory. He founded and headed up prisoners’ study groups designed to rehabilitate and politicize other inmates.

With Alvaro in the lead, a powerful prison reform movement swept across Texas’ criminal justice system and through the state’s federal courthouses in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Alvaro diligently studied the law and used his newly found skills to file an impressive array of constitutional and civil rights lawsuits against Texas police, judges, and prison officials. He and other prisoners utilized hunger strikes, work stoppages, yard takeovers, and federal civil rights lawsuits in a concerted effort to compel the brutal Texas prison machine to respect the human rights of its exploding prison population, made up almost entirely of poor men of color. Along with a handful of other prisoner-plaintiffs, Alvaro won a landmark federal civil rights lawsuit against the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) after a trial that lasted 159 days in 1978 and ’79 (Ruiz v. Estelle). The court ruled, in a scathing denunciation of the widespread abuse of inmates by the prison system, that the practices of the TDC constituted “cruel and unusual punishment,” and ordered a number of substantial reforms.

“Unfortunately,” Alvaro says, “most of these ‘reforms’ were merely cosmetic…. Despite these ‘prisoner victories’ in reforming the system, the federal-nation-state will only go so far because in Texas, the super profits of the state policy of mass incarceration has replaced oil, cotton, and cattle [as the biggest industry in the state].”

Alvaro’s principled work to rehabilitate prisoners and enforce human rights standards in Texas prisons earned him the disdain and contempt of prison officials who locked him in administrative segregation, forcing Alvaro to spend almost the entire decade of the 1980s in solitary confinement as part of a campaign of repression aimed at political prisoners and jailhouse lawyers who threatened to expose abuses in U.S. prisons—including torture, killings, and beatings at the hands, or directions, of prison guards and administrators—and unite inmates under a banner of revolutionary change.

In March 1991, one year after he was moved out of solitary and back into the general prison population, Alvaro was freed from prison, having served over 15 years, after an investigative journalist for the Houston Post, Paul Harasim, uncovered a gross pattern of systematic prosecutorial misconduct and abuse (which included paying off the lead witness and suppressing physical evidence) in the murder case in which Alvaro was wrongfully convicted, narrowly escaping the electric chair. Certainly no bleeding heart liberal, Harasim nonetheless told readers that “What I learned about the prosecutorial behavior in the trial of Alvaro Hernandez in West Texas made my stomach turn…. I wonder if I can support state sanctioned executions any longer.”

Settling in Houston with his wife following his release, Alvaro wasted no time throwing himself into community organizing and political activism. He founded, and became National Executive Director of, the National Movement of La Raza, a civil and human rights group dedicated to empowering Mexican-Americans and struggling for social justice. Alvaro also helped organize and form committees to support the families of prisoners and bring about “truces” between Chicano street gangs in Pasadena, Texas following a number of tragic shootings. Spearheading the campaign to stop the execution of Mexican national, Ricardo Aldape Guerra, Alvaro founded and headed up Guerra’s defense committee. Following years of tireless campaigning and legal battles, his frame-up conviction for killing a Houston cop in 1982 was overturned and Guerra was freed from Texas’ Death Row in 1997.

Alvaro’s impassioned and successful activism in the Houston area earned him international recognition. In the spring of 1993, serving as a delegate for an NGO, Alvaro addressed the United Nations General Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, criticizing the U.S. government for its record of human rights abuses of political prisoners and Mexicans in the Southwest. Alvaro’s delegation was headed by Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her courageous human rights activism during the U.S.-backed genocide against Mayan peasants in Guatemala during the 1980s. Upon returning from Europe, Alvaro was invited to speak on national television in connection with the Ricardo Aldape Guerra defense case and began hosting Houston-area radio talk shows to spread a message of racial equality and Chicano empowerment. In the following years, Alvaro worked to inspire and educate young people across the United States, speaking not only at universities and conferences, but also at elementary and high schools, lecturing on an array of social and political issues ranging from human rights and grassroots activism, to American history, the criminal justice system, and the death penalty.

Following his divorce in August 1995, Alvaro moved back to his hometown of Alpine, Texas, located just 80 miles from the Mexican border. In spite of the fact that Alvaro had virtually zero interactions or confrontations with police in the five and a half years that he lived in Houston, almost immediately the local police forces in Alpine were all over him—arbitrary searches day and night, K-9 drug dogs, and frequent “traffic violation” vehicle stops resulting in no citations.

The police hatred of Alvaro in West Texas, especially in Alpine, is fierce, both personal and political, and decades old. Alvaro has always refused to submit to police authority and abuse; sort of like a rebellious slave in the spirit of Fredrick Douglas, but more like a modern-day Gregorio Cortez. When he was 17 he smashed up some police squad cars as well as the personal vehicle of a racist Sheriff following a police confrontation, a stunt which landed him three years in prison. Years later, in 1976 following an escape from county jail—at which he was awaiting transfer to state prison for the wrongful murder conviction—and subsequent shootout with law enforcement, Alvaro was taken to a windowless “conference room” in the jail where he was beaten within an inch of his life by several on-duty police officers. The cops took turns beating and stomping their handcuffed captive, causing him to lose consciousness, his face, eyes, and lips swollen and bloodied beyond recognition, his scalp ripped open with blood pouring from his head onto the cold concrete floor. Once the police were finished, they dragged a bloodied and unconscious Alvaro across the jail and threw him in a cell, leaving him for dead. The near fatal beating meted out to Alvaro resulted in federal criminal civil rights indictments of Pecos County Chief Deputy Sheriff Mike Hill and Deputy Sheriff Bill Mabe, culminating in misdemeanor convictions and probation for the officers. For his part, Alvaro was awarded substantial monetary compensation for damages following a civil suit. The convictions of the officers, however mild, ultimately destroyed their careers as policemen, thus earning Alvaro a special animosity in local law enforcement circles for daring to fight back against police on their own terms, both in the streets and in the courts.

Alvaro’s persistent defiance against oppression has always stemmed from a deep-rooted thirst for the freedom so cruelly denied to him and millions of other Chicanos in the Southwest United States since the colonization and annexation of the Mexican territories north of the Rio Grande following what is commonly known as the U.S.-Mexico War (1846-1848). In a very real sense, the rural West Texas community of Alpine is like a microcosm of race-relations in the region. Like all of Alpine’s Chicano residents, Alvaro grew up on the south side of the Southern Pacific railroad tracks which served as the de facto racial dividing line between Mexican-Americans and whites. Much like the Jim Crow South at the time, the parallel social universe of rural West Texas manifested harsh economic and political means of control to ensure the subordinate position of Mexicans in an Anglo-dominated society. The town’s Mexican population was largely impoverished, locked into a near-permanent state of economic subservience to white business interests while the gross disparity in social services and infrastructure served as a very visible reminder of the prevailing racial hierarchy, not only in Alpine, but in the American Southwest in general.

The Alpine police and the Brewster County Sheriff’s office were, of course, all white and patrolled the Chicano barrio south of the tracks daily and nightly with a brutality usually reserved only for the town’s “meskins.”

“People were scared of them,” Alvaro writes in a letter from his prison cell, recalling how as a young boy he would go looking for his father or grandfather in the local bars, the Sheriff would often barge in, gun on his hip, to intimidate, arrest, and humiliate Chicano men and elders simply as a means of letting them know “who was boss.”

Whether at the pool hall or walking the streets, Chicano youth were routinely singled out for arbitrary beatings and harassment by the cops. Alvaro was a tough kid, a self-proclaimed “vato loco” and product of the “pachuco” subculture. He was often getting into trouble for drinking beer or fighting, and had many violent confrontations with police as a teenager. Once at a high school football game some policemen were trying to arrest another Mexican kid and started beating the young man; Alvaro intervened to stop the assault and the cops turned their attention, and rage, to him, beating and pistol whipping young Alvaro as a hostile crowd gathered around, throwing garbage at the officers. The police busted open his skull, requiring several stitches, but not before taking him to jail, charging Alvaro with “assault on a peace officer.” Alvaro’s run-ins with the police landed him, at the age of 15, in a juvenile prison run by the Texas Youth Council (TYC) for a year. The juvenile detention centers in Texas had reputations for being extremely brutal and abusive—so much so that the Texas Youth Council was ultimately shut down by federal courts in 1983 following over a decade of lawsuits.

Just months after getting released from the custody of the TYC, something happened that would change Alvaro’s life forever. It was June 12, 1968. Alvaro was hanging out with his best friend, Ervay Ramos. The two buddies were cruising around Alpine in Ervay’s brother’s car when red police lights started flashing in the rear view mirror. Ervay was, like Alvaro, 16 years old, but didn’t have a valid driver’s license. He sped off and the police car gave chase. Fishtailing through a back alley with the wail of the siren growing louder in the distance, Ervay quickly stopped and told Alvaro to jump out of the car. He drove off and struck a nearby fence next to the football practice fields and landed in a ditch. With the cop car getting closer, Ramos jumped out of the car and ran down the alleyway hoping to escape. Alvaro was just feet away and saw with his own eyes what transpired next.

“The police car, driven by Bud Powers, a well-known cop with a reputation in the barrio for being racist and brutal, pulled up and stopped [behind] the Ramos car,” Alvaro vividly recalls. “[Powers] stepped outside, pulled his revolver and shot the fleeing Ramos in the back with his .357 magnum pistol killing him instantly.”

The murder of Ervay Ramos was one of a number of similar killings of Chicano youth by police in the Southwest at the time. Officer Bud Powers received a proverbial slap on the wrist—five years’ probation—and never served a day in jail. The killing of Ervay Ramos was cited by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in their 1970 report to the President entitled “Mexican Americans and the Administration of Justice in the Southwest” as one of several examples of what the Commission referred to as a pattern of “serious police brutality” and “widespread discrimination” suffered by Mexican-Americans at the hands of law enforcement officers and the U.S. judicial system in the Southwest United States.

So when Alvaro moved back to Alpine in 1995 with political struggle and courtroom justice for his slain childhood friend on his mind, he was met with considerable police opposition. He was working as a freelance paralegal for attorneys throughout the state when Alpine community members began approaching him for help regarding police brutality and other injustices in town. They had seen Alvaro on television when he was in Houston, working against the death penalty and police oppression. They knew about his impressive record of civil rights activism and how he had litigated a number of successful federal and state civil rights lawsuits against Texas police, judges, and prison officials. Moreover, citizens sought out Alvaro for help because, in addition to being a prominent public critic of racial and social inequalities in Alpine, it was well known—both by the general public, as well as by law enforcement—that he was working on re-opening the 1968 Ervay Ramos murder case with the intention of bringing his killer, policeman Bud Powers, into federal court on murder charges.

The response of the Alpine police to all of this was to organize and carry out a sophisticated campaign, in the spirit of the F.B.I.’s “counter intelligence program” (COINTELPRO) of the 1960s and ’70s, of surveillance, harassment, and repression against Alvaro. They hired a local heroin addict, Mary Valencia, to work as a police informant, ransacking his legal files and personal belongings while working as a maid at the motel he was staying at. Police followed him around, subjecting him to unjustified searches and harassment.

Worse yet, the police convinced the father-in-law of an Alpine Police Sergeant—a man who was known around Alpine as a local town drunk—to falsely accuse Alvaro of armed robbery—a ridiculous frame-up charge which Alvaro ultimately ended up getting dismissed in court while acting as his own attorney. In the meantime, however, Alvaro bonded out of jail by selling his car to the bail bondsman, but just weeks later the bondsman “withdrew” from the bond, unbeknownst to Alvaro at the time.

On July 18, 1996 Sheriff Jack McDaniel showed up on Alvaro’s doorstep looking to re-arrest him. Brewster County’s new sheriff was far from an anonymous cop just “doing his job.” McDaniel had been cited in a victorious civil rights lawsuit filed by Alvaro against then-Sheriff Jim Skinner a few years back. Moreover, it was no secret around town that Alvaro was investigating Sheriff McDaniel for corruption and embezzlement of funds from the county treasury—funds that Alvaro alleged were being used at McDaniel’s private ranch in West Alpine. Coupled with his work on re-opening the Ramos case and his long history of resistance to local police power, Alvaro argues that the prerogative of the cops was clear: “The police all knew what I was up to and they were determined to stop me at all costs.”

When questioned on the legality of the arrest—for which no warrant was presented—an enraged McDaniel pulled his gun on Alvaro. Fearing quite literally for his life, Alvaro disarmed the Sheriff in self-defense before he could shoot, told McDaniel to leave, and then fled the scene. Nobody was injured. For three days Alvaro was able to evade law enforcement in the rugged countryside of Brewster County during the course of what was one of the most massive manhunts in recent West Texas history. Following a shootout with police at his mother’s house, Alvaro was captured and charged with two counts of aggravated assault; one for allegedly pointing the gun at Sheriff McDaniel after disarming him, and another count for allegedly shooting an officer, Curtis Hines, in the hand during the shootout.

At the trial, witnesses testified that Alvaro never pointed the gun at McDaniel. McDaniel accused Alvaro of pointing the gun at his chest—threatening him with a deadly weapon—but Alvaro swears this is a lie. In a live interview on local television on July 18th following the confrontation at Alvaro’s house, McDaniel told viewers that Alvaro had only disarmed him and neither threatened nor shot him.

“Days later,” Alvaro explains, “when the Sheriff met with the District Attorney he changed his story to say that I had not only disarmed him but had pointed the gun at him—the difference between a minor misdemeanor and a first degree felony offense.” The videotape was ultimately kept out of court proceedings; Alvaro’s lawyer Tony Chavez is rumored to have potentially struck a backdoor deal with the prosecution. At the time, Chavez was under investigation himself for drug trafficking and was facing many years in prison under a plethora of forthcoming RICO charges. In fact, just months after Alvaro’s trial, Chavez immediately took a plea bargain and was sent to federal prison for 30 months and disbarred from the practice of law.

Throughout the trial numerous witnesses, including former law enforcement officers, also testified to the intense, longstanding police hatred of Alvaro. Alvaro was found not guilty on the second count of shooting Officer Hines in the hand (it was determined that Hines was hit by a ricocheting police bullet). Despite considerable public protest, however, the nearly-all-white jury found Alvaro guilty of “aggravated assault” for allegedly pointing the gun at McDaniel’s chest—an accusation which Alvaro vociferously and consistently denies to this day.

Alvaro Luna Hernandez was sentenced to 50 years in state prison in the summer of 1997. He will not be officially “eligible” for parole until 2021.

Though his appeals have all been exhausted, options still remain within the legal system to bring about Alvaro’s release. The KOSA TV videotape interview with McDaniel may still exist, and a full review of federal, state, and local files pertaining to Alvaro, and his ex-lawyer Chavez, is likely to shed light on Alvaro’s conviction and political imprisonment. Obtaining the pro bono assistance of one or more bright legal minds to help pursue other existing, and very promising, legal avenues to reenter the courts continues to be a top priority and a potential source of hope.

There is one thing, however, that remains clear and undisputed: absent a substantial popular mobilization and grassroots campaign pushing for his freedom, Alvaro faces a virtual life sentence of incarceration in the brutal control units of Texas’ state prisons. Yet in the meantime, although buried deep beneath the razor-wire fences, uncounted tons of cold steel, and the rows of soul-destroying concrete cages of Hughes Unit Prison, Alvaro Luna Hernandez remains among America’s most fearless political prisoners, incessantly struggling for freedom, locked up but never defeated.

But despite there being no dispute or debate about the U.S. responsibility in the attacks, the White house and Pentagon have refused to comment on them. Instead, they have been consistently leaking information to unnamed “senior U.S. officials” who relay the bipartisan party line to the outlets of mass media for regurgitation and reiteration.

I think that Washington’s political reaction to its own policies in Pakistan and Syria can be understood on the basis of six reasonable and coinciding points.

1) Elections: The power structure wanted to avoid any new debate over delicate issues of war and foreign policy on the eve of the presidential elections. Both Obama and McCain could’ve stood to drop in the polls or lose electoral support in the weeks before the election. Both candidates were obviously given gag orders by their respective parties—neither candidate ever spoke directly about the U.S. attacks on Pakistan and Syria.

It should be noted though that prior to the U.S. assaults on Pakistan, President-elect, Barak Obama, made it clear that he would support such unilateral strikes. Coupled with his unwillingness to denounce or even acknowledge the U.S. terrorist attack on Syria, it is reasonable to conclude that he supports these policies.

2) Opposition: Without a doubt, Washington wants to extend its wars into Syria and Pakistan. This being a touchy subject, Washington wanted to act, more or less, dictatorially. By refraining from issuing official statements from the Pentagon and White House and by not announcing or declaring what amounts to being a new policy of carrying out additional wars and aggression, they are able to avoid mobilized public opposition and objections from congress, who are more susceptible to pressure from their constituencies compared to the state department, which is largely unaccountable to the public.

3) Testing the waters: By leaking articulated propaganda and information regarding the U.S. strikes to the media through “unnamed” and “anonymous” U.S. officials, the state department, indeed the entire power structure is able to test the reactions of liberal educated opinion. If those educated and privileged enough to have some sort of voice and standing in our society can be counted on to support the terrorist actions of the state or at the very least, to not object, the future bodes well for an open and all out expansion of U.S. wars to several countries in the Middle East.

4) Denial is bad PR: It is obvious why the state department could not openly discuss or announce the U.S. attacks, but why then did they bother leaking information to the press? Aside from testing the attitudes of elite opinion, leaking information to the press was an important PR move. Several nations around the world have issued statements about the U.S. attacks on Pakistan and Syria. Everybody knew who was responsible for them. Totally ignoring these facts would appear to be an act of denial, signaling weakness and cowardice. More importantly, adopting a public relations policy akin to denial does not serve the greater purpose of the extracurricular attacks, which is to sow the seeds for much larger expansions and wars.

Better yet, the state department can count on the media to base its entire coverage of the respective events on its own testimony with its own justifications. From this standpoint, there was nothing to lose by leaking information to the mainstream media outlets.

5) Retaining the benefits of terror: Even more disastrous though than a short or long term PR blunder would be for the U.S. government and military to not be able to retain some of the most fruitful benefits of its terror and aggression. As the unnamed senior officials enlightened interested readers and journalists, the violent U.S. assault on Syria was meant to be a “warning” designed to “goad” Syria into adopting policies favorable to the US and its interests in the region. The strikes on Pakistan have been largely motivated by similar aspirations. The Pakistani government will continue to lose support from its population so long as it proves itself to be weak and easily violated by deadly American attacks.

Sending messages of violence aimed at coercing governments into adopting certain policies not only has the benefit of potentially terrorizing them into submission, but it also helps the United States establish and maintain its credibility as a lawless and ruthless thug in the international arena who won’t hesitate to kill children with impunity if that is what it takes to achieve certain political or ideological goals.

The mainstream American media coverage of the U.S. attacks has mostly consisted of quotes from the unnamed state department officials and military analysts. The reports have relied exclusively on information from U.S. officials while additional commentaries in the reports simply reinforce the ideological assertions and justifications handed down from government spokesmen. The media’s complicity in these crimes makes them significantly responsible for not only the recent U.S. reign of terror in Pakistan and Syria, but also partially responsible for the prospect of new American-led wars throughout the region.

What we can expect

The seeds are being sown at this very hour for more aggression and war in the Middle East. The elections are over. The waters of educated and articulate opinion have been successfully tested. The media has yet again proven itself to be properly subordinated to state power.

Washington has long wanted to be able to open its war theaters past the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan in order to crush resistance to its occupations and to destabilize and reconstruct the region for the purpose of expanding strategic U.S. control, dominating oil politics, and strengthening Israel’s aggressive military position.

The U.S. also wants to teach Iran, and other independent nations, an imperial lesson in international affairs: ‘Don’t challenge U.S. power because we will punish you. We don’t care about international law or your national sovereignty. You will be next if you insist on defying our orders.’

What we can do

The state department and military will surely continue their deadly and destructive policies in the Middle East if they are not met with mobilized and militant opposition from the public. Because the mainstream press has committed itself to the cause of the state, those of us in the alternative media have an increasingly important task in exposing the dangerous developments in U.S. unilateral strikes throughout the Middle East.

By the time Barak Obama takes office, we need to send his entire administration, along with congress, the clear and uncompromising message that we will not tolerate continued military aggression in violation of international law. We will not sit by idly while the architects of the empire scramble for the pieces of the Middle East while killing thousands or millions of human beings in their path.

Despite what the bipartisan power structure might have in mind, nothing is graven into stone just yet. What happens in the ensuing months will be largely dependent on what we do…or don’t do.

In fact, considering all of the variables surrounding the recent US attack, this single case could not be a more perfect example to evaluate for the sake of gaining a clear understanding not only of the rationale behind US foreign policy, but the ideological constraints that shackle our “free” press.

As most of the mainstream and establishment newspapers follow a reasonably similar framework of news reporting, there is no need to use excessive space critiquing all of them. In this brief examination, I will use the report and coverage put forth by the Washington Post on Tuesday, October 28th, entitled, “U.S. Calls Raid a Warning to Syria.”

On October 26th, four US helicopters flew from US-occupied Iraq into Syria. Upon landing, US ground troops attacked a civilian center, which was under construction, killing at least seven civilians and wounding several more. According to multiple sources, such as Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid al-Moualem, all those killed were civilians, including “a father, his three children, and wife.”

The reasons provided for the US military strike in Syria were very explicit, as told to the Washington Post by several official US military sources.¹ The justifications cited for the attack are as follows:

   1) The attack was orchestrated and intended to “send a warning to the Syrian government.”

   2) The attack was intended to kill an “insurgent” who is allegedly responsible for the presence of “hundreds of foreign fighters” stationed in Iraq, who have killed “thousands of Iraqis.”

   3) The attack was intended to pressure Syrian officials to “clean up the global threat in [their] backyard,” and if they do not “clean up” their “backyard” to the satisfaction of the US, then the US will “be left with no choice but to take these matters into [its] own hands.”

   4) The attack, according to US officials, has the advantage and purpose of “goading such countries into action.” US military analyst, Anthony Cordesman, added that such strikes and “operations” like the US killings in Syria are “the only way you can deal with” countries like Syria.

   5) The attack was also hinted at potentially falling under the recent US claims of “self-defense” in its unprovoked military strikes in Pakistan which have killed many children and other civilians.

All of these justifications were given to Washington Post journalists and were simply restated for the readership without a hint of criticism. The report in the Washington Post for all intensive purposes served most literally as a government statement issued by the Ministry of Truth.² If the reasons for the attack, as noted above, truly deserved any further investigation, commentary, or thought, the Washington Post report presumably would have covered it. Therefore, the proper conclusion readers are supposed to reach is that the talking heads of the State department are reasonable, within their rights, and unchallenged in their assertions and cause.

If the Washington Post had any commitment to serious journalism or the principle of universality, meaning that moral and legal norms apply equally to everyone, the justifications given by the US State department spokesmen for the attack on Syria would have been treated with ridicule, assuming that readers have a basic respect for human rights and international law.

To put the US attack and the respective justifications for the attack into a universal context, we should judge the situation using official US laws and standards of conduct. According to Section 2331 under Title 18 of the US Code,

“Violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that…appear to be intended…to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or by [using force] or violence to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” constitute “international terrorism.”³

Because the US military strike, as proclaimed by its orchestrators, was explicitly intended to “goad” or “coerce” Syria’s government into “action” and serve as a “warning” to “intimidate” the government and population, the US assault was a textbook case of “international terrorism” by its own standards. The violent US action, clearly not only “dangerous to human life,” but indeed, intended to destroy human life, was by definition a terrorist attack.

We might pause to ask had the attackers been an part of an occupying army in Mexico and the target had been a civilian center in California, if the Washington Post and its friends in the State department would’ve then called it a “terrorist attack.”

One might then inquire about the “foreign fighters” crossing the Syrian border into Iraq—a topic which the Washington Post dedicated substantial space to in their de facto government statement release. Whether this is true, or significant, is a matter that could be discussed in academic circles. Incidentally, it has absolutely no bearing on the moral or legal status of the US military assault in Syria. Based on the accepted understanding of terrorism under US law (similar to most states and the UN) the US attack can not be described as anything other than terrorism, or perhaps even worse, aggression.

This brings us to yet another interesting ideological constraint present in the Washington Post’s coverage. The authors of the report continually quoted at length, terrorism experts, analysts, and senior officials talking about the horror of “hundreds of foreign fighters” being “smuggled” into Iraq and killing “thousands of Iraqis” without so much as a bat of the eye. A pertinent response to such hypocritical lamenting would be to ask what one would call over 130,000 US troops and tens of thousands of privately contracted US mercenary troops? Are they foreign? Were they “smuggled” into Iraq?

The Washington Post cited the US Treasury in noting that al-Mazidih, (an alleged “target” of the US raid) was a “key facilitator of the transfer of money, weapons, and fighters into Iraq” by implication, making him a legitimate target for assassination. Is Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates or even the Democratic-led US senate “key facilitators” of these crimes of carrying out extensive violence against the Iraqi people? Are they legitimate assassination targets for Iraqis, Syrians, Pakistanis or Afghans?

Clearly, fighters are only “foreign” if they do not serve US power. The assumption therefore teaches us that American soldiers cannot be considered foreign in a land that belongs to America, a land that has been subject to American conquest. The “facilitators” of war money, weapons, and fighters from America are not subject to the same standards either, for the same reasons mentioned above.

By entertaining these assertions handed down by the lords of state power and propaganda, the Washington Post is, by presupposition, giving the discredited and utterly illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq, a stamp of legitimacy. This sort of ratification of illegal and immoral state terror and aggression is a serious barrier to peace. It reinforces deeply entrenched imperial beliefs and assumptions that guarantee the continued suffering of millions of victims of US crimes, not only in the Middle East, but worldwide.

Speaking of the world, “senior US officials” seem to have an interesting conception of what is “global.” Again, restated in the Washington Post unremarkably and without question, US officials pointed to the “global threat” in Syria’s “backyard,” (a reference to “foreign fighters” crossing Syrian/Iraqi border) as one of its justifications for the assault.

Coincidentally, the leading global polls consistently show that a majority of the world sees American involvement in Iraq, not Syrian, as the leading source of instability in the world. Even in Europe, the area of the world most sympathetic to the US, the US was cited as the greatest threat to peace and stability.⁴ To allow such a blatantly misleading and false statement go unchallenged and unchecked is simply more evidence of the Washington Post’s role as a platform for state propaganda glorifying and rationalizing US global domination through force and violence.

US terror such as the recent attack on Syria is regrettably, not an unfamiliar scene, but more so, the official US policy for decades. The dismal and propagandistic coverage and reporting of such events in mainstream newspapers such as the Washington Post is also an old and powerful institution in American life.

However, the casual extension of US terror and aggression in the region to two additional sovereign nations in less than a month, (Syria and Pakistan) signal, even by Washington’s grim standards, a new sort of bold, reckless, and systematic disregard for global and national conventions such as US law, international law, (binding) UN resolutions, and human rights accords. The open declarations of US terrorism as reported respectably and unchallenged in mainstream publications are telling as to the boundless nature of the US crusade for global domination and the lengths that media outlets will stretch themselves to in order to conform to the dictates of elite interest and state power.

So long as the American mind is held hostage by a system of thought control which adheres to the doctrine that textbook international terrorism is “the only way [the US] can deal with” independent and sovereign nations, the power structure will continue to do as it pleases no matter how many people it slaughters along the way.⁵

1. Military sources include an unnamed “senior US official,” US military analyst, Anthony Cordesman, the “Combating Terrorism Center” at West Point Military Academy, and other unidentified “US officers” or “officials.”
2. The term “Ministry of Truth” is originally from George Orwell’s novel on totalitarianism, 1984. In the novel, “The Ministry of Truth” was a sector of the government in charge of spreading lies and propaganda to glorify the state.
3. The US Code consists of “laws made by the United States Congress, which is legislation that passes both the Senate and the House of Representatives.” The entire US code can be accessed here.
4. A 2007 survey conducted by Harris Research for the Financial Times showed that Europeans saw America as the greatest threat to global stability. The 2006 Pew Research Center Poll, which surveyed 15 different countries, showed that the presence of the US in Iraq was understood to be the greatest danger to world peace.
5. The quoted words are those of military analyst, Anthony Cordesman, as quoted in the Washington Post, advocating state terror as a reasonable way of “dealing” with nations not subservient enough to the US.

Democracy, in any meaningful sense, is a system that allows people to have a say in decisions to the degree that they are affected. Do we have that? With popular support for the Bush administration continually hovering at around 20% and support for the mostly Democratic congress struggling to maintain double digits, you can decide whether we have a democratic system or not for yourself.

They tell us to vote if we care about the economy. Vote for whom? Obama could not reiterate enough times in the “debate” how much he “agreed” with McCain on the issue of the near trillion dollar Wall Street bailout, despite overwhelming public opposition to it. The message to the public was clear: “We don’t care what you think. Our job is to protect the wealth of those who own the country, not those who built it.”

They tell us to vote if we care about war, foreign policy, and the horrendous image of the US around the world. Vote for Obama or McCain, both who vow to enact a “surge” of US occupying forces into Afghanistan, in spite of the sharp rise in US-NATO bombings of civilians, most notably the massacre of 90 innocent people in late August, two thirds of which were under the age of 15.

We can vote on Iraq, but our choice is not between war and peace. The choice is between two war strategies. One continues the Bush-Cheney-Rice plan, and the other entails significant US troops, privately contracted mercenaries, and the maintenance of extravagant foreign (US) military bases, not to mention potential US operations in the future in Iraq. Both plans continue the aggressive war against the wishes of the Iraqi public, the American public, and the international community.

Not to be outdone by the Maverick’s burning passion for imperial violence, liberal Obama has declared that he strongly supports military strikes in Pakistan, further threatening the already trembling stability of the region by violating sovereign territory with killings and assaults.

Should we vote if we care about peace in Israel-Palestine, a conflict with global implications? Unlike the slight deviations of policy mentioned above between those who wish to rule over us, we have a truly bipartisan commitment to continue blocking a peaceful settlement through providing the overwhelming military, economic, and diplomatic support for the US-Israeli illegal military occupation of Palestinian land, illegal colonial settlement expansion, and the starvation and imprisonment of the 1.5 million human beings trying to stay alive in the Gaza Strip.

Either way we vote, we give money to kill Palestinians, support Israeli terror, and avoid peace based on international law and human rights. That has been US policy for decades.

Turning to the health care crisis, both candidates refuse to recognize what has been the population’s wish for decades: the abolition of for-profit healthcare. Thousands of insured Americans are going to die in the next four years because both candidates refuse to support preexisting legislation that guarantees all necessary medical treatment to everyone.¹

America has the most prisoners of any country in the world. Our corporate built prisons are a reflection and symbol of a violently unequal and racist society where black men are incarcerated at a rate of nearly 400% more than whites. Black men in America are locked up at a rate nearly six times that of Black men under the notorious South African Apartheid regime in the early 90s.²

Our prisons are filled with the poor and disenfranchised: social conditions that transcend race in American dungeons. This socioeconomic/human rights issue is off the debating table. Neither exclusively Democratic nor Republican, this is an American policy.

Let us not forget either, that a vote for either presidential hopeful is a clear declaration of support for the continued Bush-Cheney anti-constitution program of illegal spying and wiretapping of American citizens. Are we really willing to accept this as a permanent American policy?

Elections in the US are nothing more than ratifications of illegitimate power and approval of concentrated wealth. So long as we continue to rationalize our vote by selecting the “lesser of two evils” vying for Chief Terrorist Commander and Upholder of Elite Interests, we will be giving our tacit approval to and consent of the continued human rights violations committed by the bipartisan power structure.

This business of selecting indentured servants of existing power is more symbolic as a means of conquest of the popular will rather than that of democracy. Perhaps we were never taught that the wonderful advancements our country has made over the years came as a result of popular struggle, not electoral politics.³

When we place our political energy into elections, power and privilege always win while our movements die. In our country, voting is the opium of the masses.

When we cast our ballots for the McCains and Obamas of this country, blood continues to be shed on the battlefields of justice, not only around the world as the US continues its imperial crusade to protect the world from the threat of democracy, but at home as well in America’s prisons, hospitals, factories, courts, ghettos, working neighborhoods—in essence, on America’s “main street.”

We cannot be, in good moral conscience, participants in this deceitful and superficial process legitimizing crimes of the powerful and an economic system erected for the wealthy. “After all, is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded?”⁴

Yes, let us make a choice in November, a choice to stop “tinkering with the machinery” of the Washington-Wall Street establishment of exploitation and violence and commit ourselves to taking matters into our own hands to bring about self-determination and justice for our countrymen/women and our fellow human beings around the world.⁵

1. House Resolution (H.R.) 676 is the bill introduced in February of 2005 by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) which guarantees single payer, not for profit, healthcare to every American. In addition to its obvious humane benefits, it will save the US several billion dollars annually, according to The Citizens Alliance for National Health Insurance.
2. According to the organization, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, (LEAP), under South African Apartheid in 1993, Black men were incarcerated at a rate of 841 per 100,000. In the US in 2004, Black men were incarcerated at a rate of 4,400 per 100,000.
3. For a further discussion on social change, elections, and popular struggle in American history, please see Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States. Using impeccable sources and research, Zinn illustrates to the reader how when mass movements in the US attempted to press their demands through the electoral process, the movements fizzled out with little or no results.
4. Quoted words are pulled from Henry David Thoreau’s 1849 essay, “Resistance to Civil Government” or also known as “Civil Disobedience.”
5. The quoted words, “tinkering with the machinery,” are the words of the late US Supreme Court Justice, Harry Blackmun, who famously noted that he would “no longer tinker with the machinery of death.” Blackmun was referring to the institution of the death penalty as a form of criminal punishment.

Although the Palestinian right to return is guaranteed under Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as in United Nations Security Council Resolution 194, which also affirms their right to compensation, the right to return has been thrown off the negotiation table by Israel at every opportunity. Mahmoud Abbas now joins Zionist tyrants of past and present in disregarding perhaps the most crucial Palestinian issue.

Thanks to US/Israeli/Zionist propaganda, there are currently many misconceptions, racist assumptions, and blatant lies floating around that distort a very simple reality. Using uncontroversial sources and facts, we can easily form an morally and legally irrefutable justification for the return of Palestinian refugees.

Before outlining these historical and moral truisms in an effort to articulate a just resolution to the Palestinian refugee problem, we must first examine certain ideological conceptions of history and justice that have over the years prevailed in substantial sectors of thought in the West and in Israel.

According to the Zionist doctrinal historical record, the UN, in accordance with international law partitioned the country of Palestine fairly, giving land to peace loving Jewish settlers to form their democratic country, and land to the ‘Arabs’ to form a nation of their own. The Arabs, (calling them Palestinians would signify some kind of natural right to Palestine, which of course should be avoided) consistent with their inherent irrationality stemming from an unexplainable predisposition to anti-Semitism, of course rejected this benevolent and just proposal in favor of driving the Jews into the sea.

The Zionist settlers on the other hand, who of course accepted this proposal and only wished to coexist peacefully with their neighbors, were left with no choice but to fight off several crazed Arab armies who, despite their differences, all united under the banner of finishing Hitler’s final solution. Miraculously, with God watching over in approval, hopelessly outnumbered, “tiny Israel” succeeded in driving the Arab Nazi forces out and declared independence in May 1948.

In an act of pure altruism, the newly formed state of Israel welcomed the Arabs who happened to be residing in the new Jewish state by awarding them full equal rights and citizenship. Of course, some Arabs did voluntarily leave the land that became Israel, as they followed strict orders from their belligerent Arab commanders who instructed them to vacate the land. By 1949, the green line was established leaving Israel with nearly 80% of Palestine while generously conceding the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem to the Arab savages.

After all, God promised the land to the European Jewish settlers, and the Arabs shouldn’t have been squatting there. The terrorist Arabs who chose to leave Israel before its official establishment of course cannot simply come and go as they please. Israel has to consider the security of its citizens and make sure that its immigration policies reflect that priority.

Also, perhaps most importantly, Israel has a divine and natural right to protect its sacred Jewish character, to ensure that Israel remains the state “for the Jewish people” which includes Jews in every corner of the globe. That being said, an overwhelming Jewish majority must be made permanent and cannot be jeopardized by unscrupulous Arab ‘immigration’ and the anti-Semitic propaganda advocated by the United Nations, Amnesty International, Israeli human rights groups and scholars, most of the world, and other self-hating Jews.

In the real world, free from the ideological constraints of Zionist fantasy, the UN 1947 partition was rejected by both Palestinians and Zionists. The difference is that the UN Special Committee On Palestine (UNSCOP) was comprised of 11 members, none of which were from Arab nations, none of which had specific background knowledge in the Middle East, and none of which was a native of the country being partitioned. As author and human rights activist, Mazin Qumsiyeh notes in his book, Sharing the Land of Canaan, the committee was privy to well organized and “significant lobbying by Zionist and US [leaders and organizations]” which included David Ben-Gurion, a open advocate of Palestinian ethnic cleansing. The committee “spent considerable time interviewing European Jews” but did not consult one native Palestinian.

According to the UN Charter, the UN is officially committed to “developing friendly relations among nations based on respect for…self determination of peoples.” As Qumsiyeh points out, the partition was fundamentally illegal as it marked the first instance in the history of the United Nations of “the people of the land being partitioned not being afforded self-determination.”

Consistent with the proclamations of every early Zionist leader, the Zionists rejected the majority of the 1947 partition proposal’s content, despite the fact that the partition granted the Jewish minority the majority of the country, including its most arable land. Nevertheless, they dismissed the prohibition of the removal of the native population, the internationalization of Jerusalem, and the proposed borders among other things.

It is at this point in history, in regards to the subsequent events following the UN partition proposal, that the ideological constraints of Zionist propaganda have reached perhaps a peak of shamelessness. Based on uncontroversial facts documented by mainstream and respected Israeli historians such as Benny Morris, during the time between November 29th, 1947 and Israel’s declaration of “independence” on May 15th, 1948, 213 Palestinian villages and towns were cleansed by Jewish-Zionist militias, making refugees out of 413,794 Palestinians.

These pre-1948 independence war ‘land clearing’ operations, which accounted for 52% of Palestinian refugees, were all carried out, well before any outside Arab force entered Palestine, and as Qumsiyeh notes, “under the ‘protection’ of the British mandate.” After the mandate expired, another 339,272 Palestinians were driven out of Palestine, constituting a cleansing of 264 additional native villages or towns, and accounting for 42% of the refugees.

We should also note the nature of these cleansings, which not surprisingly, hardly resemble the claims Zionists have made for decades in attempting to offer an explanation for the enormous Palestinian refugee population. As cited by Qumsiyeh, pulling directly from Morris’ research, as well as other Israeli historians (whose research consists of declassified Israeli government and military sources) 122 Palestinian localities (towns, communities, or villages) were cleansed by “expulsion by Zionist/Jewish forces.” 270 localities were cleansed by “military assault” by Zionist militias. This amounts to 88% percent of the Palestinian refugees being forcibly “expelled” or driven out by “military assault” by Zionist militias.

Palestinians fled from at least 12 known localities because of “fear of a Zionist attack.” Of the 33 documented massacres of Palestinian civilians in 1948 alone, the massacre of Deir Yassin is the mostly widely known today, where at least 254 Palestinians civilians were slaughtered by Zionist forces. Like hundreds of other villages Deir Yassin was literally wiped off the map, as if it never existed. Qumsiyeh notes that during the massacre, “more than 20 villagers were taken to a nearby Jewish settlement, paraded, and then killed to incite panic among the local Palestinians.”

After the fact, Prime Minister to be, Menachem Begin, explained the benefits of the massacre:

Deir Yassin helped us in the conquest of Haifa…Arabs began fleeing in panic, shouting ‘Deir Yassin’…

In all, less than 1.5% of the inhabitants of the Palestinian localities evacuated due to orders from outside Arab leaders. (It is noteworthy though, that even if the Palestinian refugees had left by their own free will, independent of Zionist coercion, international law still guarantees, under the Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”)

Of course, none of this should come as a surprise to anyone interested in the origins of Zionism and the theories and philosophies put forth by every major Zionist leader, from Vladimir Jabotinsky, Yitzhak Rabin, David Ben-Gurion, Joseph Weitz, and countless others.

By the time Israel’s borders reached the Armistice green line, the Zionist forces had succeeded in removing 80% of the native population from the newly established state of Israel. Without massacring thousands and driving out nearly one million native Palestinians, the Jewish state of Israel could never have been established. Indeed, it was established primarily on extreme aggression and terror, creating a the largest refugee population in the post WWII world.

Within a month of its independence, the Israeli Cabinet issued a law banning the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland. Israeli leaders then proceeded to pass laws regarding “Absentee Property” referring to the legalization of confiscating millions of dunams of Arab land, thousands of truck loads of stolen goods, thousands of Arab businesses, and thousands of Arab homes.

We should also be aware that 300,000 more Palestinians were made refugees during the 1967 war as they were driven out of the West Bank of Palestine. In all, Palestinian refugees and their descendants, the biggest refugee population in the world, number upwards of five million people today, many of whom live in atrocious conditions in refugee camps in unfathomable poverty, oppression, and desperation.

Because the vast majority of Palestinians have consistently made clear that any peaceful resolution to the Israel/Palestine conflict must include the Palestinian right to return, and because their right to return is uncontroversially articulated under international law, and reaffirmed by UN member states year after year, this issue should have been solved a long time ago.

What is standing in the way of justice and compensation for the refugees is Israel’s claim to its “right” to maintain a “Jewish majority” in the “Jewish state.” The self proclaimed Jewish state, within its armistice borders, artificially maintains a roughly 70% Jewish majority. Israel is a state only for the Jewish population, as its Palestinian-Arab citizens (often referred to as ‘Arab-Israelis’) are subject to several racially discriminatory laws.

Arab communities are deliberately prevented from developing or expanding, while municipality policies are erected to clear space for Jews, despite the horrendous housing crisis Israeli Arabs are currently facing. Israeli-Arabs are virtually without political representation as government social services are severely disproportionately allocated to Jews, and scarcely even attempt to address the needs of its Arab citizens. These are the 2nd class Arab citizens of Israel. We already know how Palestinians are treated who live in the occupied territories. (The Association for Civil Rights in Israel: “The State of Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories” 2005)

The idea of artificially maintaining a demographic Jewish majority should, as noted by Palestinian journalist, Khalid Amayreh, “constitute a brazen moral insult to every human being that values justice and honesty.” Furthermore, to test this argument on the grounds of universal morality, we might ask how Jews in the US would react to an American policy that denied future Jewish immigration to the states on the basis that the United States of America needs to retain its “Christian character.” What if British lawmakers stated that no more Black Africans would be allowed to immigrate to Great Britain because they felt it necessary to maintain a “white majority?”

As repulsive as these hypothetical situations would be, they do not even begin to approach the racist moral cowardice of Israeli-Zionist policy which guarantees citizenship to any Jewish person in the world including religious converts, but systematically denies the human right of return to the indigenous Palestinian human beings that it forcibly removed from the country it took over.

Israel should be held to the same standards as any other state that seeks democracy and justice, and therefore cannot in good conscience be a state for one religious demographic, while banning millions of rightful citizens from returning and while undermining the very existence of the minority Arab population that escaped expulsion and death in the nascent hours of Israel’s establishment. Simply put, racist and exclusive assertions cannot be accepted as a justification for the continued illegal denial of human rights to millions of people.

The only just solution for the question of Israel/Palestine will be a resolution that recognizes human rights, international law, and one that transcends racist ideology, providing equality for both Jews and Arabs. For all those concerned with justice and universal moral principles, this is non-negotiable.

The agreement, which went into effect shortly after an Israeli air strike killed six Palestinians in Gaza, “is designed to halt Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip, and to stop missiles being fired from Gaza into southern Israel,” as reported by the BBC. The truce also requires Israel to ease its economic strangulation of the Gaza Strip, to allow certain goods inside at first, and to gradually end the siege. Israel is also obliged to open the desperately needed Rafah crossing that connects Gaza into Egypt.

Up to this point Hamas has kept its end of the deal as it has halted all of its rocket attacks, and has arrested other militants involved in firing rockets. Some Qassam rockets have been fired into southern Israel since the truce by other non related fringe resistance groups, such as Islamic Jihad which describes their acts as retaliatory, for Israel’s killing of several Palestinian fighters in the West Bank, where the cease fire does not apply.

The Hamas mufti has condemned anyone who fires a rocket at this time, a ‘criminal.’ We should also remember that in regards to the ability of Hamas to govern the Gaza Strip and control other militants during a time of cease fire, that Israel has placed insurmountable obstacles in its way, first undermining the democratically elected Hamas government, and then isolating it in Gaza, driving it out of the West Bank by supporting a puppet regime and refusing negotiations for peace.

Had Hamas been able to operate without extreme economic strangulation, massive military intervention, and the withholding of hundreds of millions of desperately needed Palestinian paid taxes, all aimed at its destruction, perhaps we would not be discussing the role of fringe groups during a cease-fire.

Israel, during the cease-fire has blatantly violated every aspect of the agreement. Israel has refused to open the Rafah crossing into Egypt. Israel has also refused to ease the near 15 month siege of the Gaza Strip and its 1.5 million inhabitants. The siege of Gaza was initiated in June 2007 by Israel as a means to isolate and apply “pressure” to Hamas and “weaken” the legitimate government of the Palestinians, an ongoing act which was condemned by the United Nations and countless human rights agencies as “collective punishment of the Gaza population” in violation of the Geneva conventions or international law, constituting a war crime.

Translated into simple terms, Israel is holding 1.5 million Palestinians (half of which are children) hostage in an open air prison in an attempt to undermine the internationally recognized and legitimate government of the Palestinians because Israel doesn’t like them.

The U.S. Army Code definition of terrorism includes “acts that are dangerous to human life that appear to be intended to coerce or intimidate a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction.”

But we cannot use this clear and simple definition of terrorism when Israel proclaims that they must continue to “pressure” Hamas in order to “put an end to the organization’s control over the territory” as proclaimed by Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister, Haim Ramon, which in the matter, Israel has apparently, “no choice.” If we apply minimal moral and legal standards to ourselves and Israel, as we apply to others, the ideological constraints no longer exist and Israel and the U.S. become leading terrorists states, by definition.

Furthermore, through Deputy PM Ramon, Israel made clear that “a truce will not prevent a military operation” in Gaza, despite the fact that the truce was partially centered around preventing a military operation in Gaza. Clearly, Israel is stating, again in laymen terms, that they reserve the right to violate the cease fire agreement by using “force and violence to achieve political and ideological goals” (terrorism definition again).

In perhaps the most callous and arrogant violation of the cease-fire agreement, the Israeli Army, according to a Hamas statement, on the very first day of the truce, “opened fire towards the city of Khan Younis in Southern Gaza.” Hamas has also reported, as has the nonviolent Palestine based International Solidarity Movement, an organization made up of international peace activists, that Israel has been routinely firing at unarmed Palestinian fishermen off the Gaza coast.

In ISM’s most recent report dated September 1st, the opening day of the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, “two Gazan fishermen were injured when Israeli naval vessels fired on Palestinian fishing boats,” one of which is in “serious condition,” as he was hit in the head with shrapnel. ISM has also listed detailed reports on its website of IDF gunmen firing on Gazan fishing boats after being informed of the presence of international volunteers.

The Gaza fishermen that have been subjected to Israeli violence during the cease-fire period have also kept in accordance with previous agreements as their boats were within the “fishing boundaries” signed and agreed upon by Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Oslo 1996.

Perhaps we can imagine the reactions in Israel, and indeed the U.S., if Hamas soldiers routinely fired at unarmed Israeli fishermen off the coast of Israeli territory, resulting in death or injury to Israeli Jews during this fragile cease-fire agreement.

Meanwhile, during the respective period of time of the truce, Israel has been carrying out and continuing its usual violence, subjugation and terror in the Occupied West Bank, which is internationally recognized Palestinian territory as well. Several Palestinian people have been shot, injured, and in multiple cases, even killed during this cease-fire period in the West Bank, including ten year old Ahmad Moussa, who was shot in the forehead by an IDF soldier in Nilin in late July. According to paramedics, Ahmad died instantly.

Moussa’s murder came amidst peaceful protests of Palestinians and international volunteers regarding the illegal confiscation of Palestinian land to make way for the ongoing construction of Israel’s “separation fence” which de facto annexes 50% of the West Bank, to secure control over Palestinian water resources and most importantly, to permanently absorb into “Greater Israel” Israel’s colonial Jewish-only settlements.

Under the 49th article of the 4th Geneva convention, which Israel is a signatory, the settlements are illegal, as the occupying power is prohibited from “transferring parts of its civilian population into occupied territory.”

Israel’s “separation fence,” which began construction in 2002, was ruled illegal as well, in a near unanimous decision by the World Court in 2004.

In Nilin, as it has been all over the occupied West Bank, throughout the cease-fire period, Palestinian civilian populations have been subjected to the same degradation, humiliation, and violence as they have been since 1967. What is odd though, is that the cease-fire agreement does not apply to the majority of Palestinian territory: the West Bank.

This recent cease-fire agreement, which is supposed to be promoting, at least, temporary peace, and a cessation of hostilities between the Palestinian and Israeli governments, leaves Israel full reign to continue carrying out human rights violations and atrocities in the majority of Palestinian territory.

No large media outlet seemed to find this odd, but let us consider a cease-fire agreement that ordered Hamas to cease its attacks on Sderot, but was clear that, for example, Tel Aviv did not apply to the truce, and Hamas took advantage of its ratified right to shoot at and violate at will, countless human rights of Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv. Of course this would be absurd. But, why then is it not unreasonable when applied to Palestinians?

This leads us to a better understanding of the ideological purpose of Israel’s 2005 so-called “Disengagement” of Gaza. Israel, by superficially absolving itself of responsibility for the Gaza population which it occupied, moved immediately to expand settlements, wall construction, land confiscation, and militarization in the West Bank. Israel is now using the same ideological weapon in creating an artificial separation of the Gazan Palestinians and the Palestinians in the West Bank, to imply that they are two separate nations and people. It requires little speculation to conclude that Israel wishes simply remove the legitimate Hamas government, stationed in Gaza, and the Gazan population from the immediate political conflict.

Israel though, of course, is still occupying the Gaza Strip as it controls everything going in and out, its borders, its waters and its airspace. It also reserves the right for itself to send troops and conduct air raids on the population and the government when it chooses. By definition occupation is one nation exerting effective control over a territory that does not belong to it. The Gaza Strip is still occupied.

Israel, by its own ideology, can afford to remove the people of Gaza and the democratically elected Hamas from the political conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, no matter how ludicrous it is, because it has ensured the relative stability of its puppet government in the West Bank, led by Mahmoud Abbas. Gaza makes no difference to Israel because they have put into power an illegitimate government subservient to U.S. and Israeli demands.

In fact, the ideological grip of U.S.-Israeli propaganda is so strong that Ehud Olmert’s comments during this cease-fire period, announcing to the BBC that the so called “peace talks” with the PA were “going well” failed to illicit any sort of response in any of the mainstream news outlets in the US or Britain, and presumably Israel.

The idea that Israel could be “seeking peace” and actually making progress with the Palestinians while simultaneously undermining and, by its own admission, seeking to overthrow the democratically elected, legitimate government of the Palestinians is fascinating.

While Israel is “seeking peace” they are by definition, continuing a terrorist policy towards the 1.5 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, which by denial of allowing medical patients access out of Gaza, has alone killed 200 human beings, not to speak of the inflicted mass poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity.

While boasting of the benefits of their “peace talks” with the illegitimate puppet Fatah government, Israel is, at this very hour, firing upon civilians and peaceful demonstrators, demolishing homes, continuing settlement expansion, continuing the construction of the illegal wall, and maintaining two sets of laws for Jews and Arabs respectively, in the Occupied territories. Only Israel, according to the official western doctrinal systems, can “pursue peace” while maintaining an apartheid system, violating a cease-fire agreement, continuing a 41 year occupation, and conducting terror daily through the means described.

It is for these reasons that if we are to play a meaningful role in bringing about justice for the people living in Israel/Palestine, that we must learn to see things as they are, and not how those in power want us to see them.