At the Intersection of Immigration and Israel
A catastrophic collision of cultural proportion draws near
As we watch the murdering mayhem in Gaza, with children and parents and aid workers being blown to bits daily, it is a challenge to think past today’s bloodshed to the future.
But we must.
In the United States, as we inch closer to another presidential election, the spin doctors on the internet and mainstream media try to convince us of the impending doom from the hoards of immigrants at the southern border. Those coming here — around 10,000 a day now crossing into the United States — represent those trying to escape terror in their homelands: horrific crime syndicates, crushing poverty, and a total lack of economic opportunity. They come here to survive.
While the Pro-Life crowd fights to impose a nationwide abortion ban to protect human life, at the border you’ll find none of these people: the lives of brown-skinned immigrants have meaning to them only through vitriolic rants about the mess ‘Joe Biden has created’ at the border. In spite of attempts to pass tough immigration reform — ultimately quashed by Trump and his GOP allies in the House — anger over the unresolved crisis at the border will continue to be one of the main topics this election year.
As will Palestine, with Israel continually killing thousands of civilians in a ridiculously callous effort to exact revenge on Hamas for their attack on October 7. For Israel, their strategy this time — driven by chief madman Benjamin Netanyahu — is to kill every single Palestinian. PERIOD.
Even those driving humanitarian aid workers.
Someday, this all will end: certainly there will be Palestinians who live to see peace. When that day arrives, those who remain will instantly find there is nothing left in Gaza but rubble: in other words, like those who flee Central America and Haiti and pass through our border seeking a better life, the Palestinians will be a people without a country. Staying in Gaza may no longer be viable.
Without billions in immediate aid to clean up the war-torn nation, Gaza will be uninhabitable, perhaps exactly what Israel is working towards. As Jared Kushner pointed out in his speech at Harvard a few weeks ago, Israel may find Gaza’s waterfront property very lucrative — if it were cleaned up.
“I think Israel’s gone way more out of their way than a lot of other countries would to try to protect civilians from casualties.” Jared Kushner, speaking at Harvard University on the Israel-Palestine conflict
Really, Jared?
And if Gaza is uninhabitable, what becomes of all those left after the killing ends?
Gaza will be full of refugees in their own land, and it won’t take long for them to figure out they can’t remain in Gaza. Certainly the Palestinian people are determined: they have remained in Palestine for 75 years since the Nakba. They have resisted every challenge to be pushed out of their homeland — to surrender it to the colonizers. They have been fenced in, starved, maimed, and murdered.
And left with nothing but a bombed-out wasteland.
While thousands flee their homeland every year to try to come to America, thousands in Gaza may decide, once again, to stay. Perhaps by the time we get to the end of this killing spree, the world will be ready to ensure both Israel and Palestine have their own nation-state.
But don’t be surprised if many of them opt to leave, to flee the endless killing fields, to leave behind the memories of massacre.
Who could blame them?
When World War II ended, and the world finally saw how the Nazis had systematically worked to exterminate the Jews, people all over believed the Jewish people deserved a home of their own — a place to be safe. Unfortunately, that home turned out to be the home of the Palestinian people, actively living in Palestine. When the U.N. declared Israel a legal entity with a right to exist there, it mandated more than half of Palestine to the new state of Israel in spite of the objections of Arab nations. War began with that U.N. resolution, and has never ceased.
Israel went from being the persecuted to the colonizer; they went from being murdered to being the murderer.
Today, Israel indiscriminately kills Palestinians in the same way Nazis killed Jews during the war: murder is murder, and it is always wrong.
When the killing is over, when the dust has settled, Palestinians will determine for themselves if they can stay: they alone should be the arbiters of their future. Not Israel, not the United States.
My hope is that they can and will stay on their land, and the nations, like the United States, that believe in “democracy” will support them in rebuilding their world.
Our president, has reminded us that the upcoming election is about the “fight for democracy itself.” He may be right, but his words will fall hollow if he does not use his leverage now to end Israel’s murder of innocent Palestinian civilians.
And preserve Palestinian’s right to democracy too.
Palestinian rights have been violated for a lifetime. Today, that lifetime is being cut short. Israel is working to ensure Palestinians never have a home in Palestine again, turning them out of their own land for good.
And if we permit that, where will they go: what nation will accept them as immigrants? The U.S.?
The key to slowing the flow of immigration is to help those people stay in their own nations; to help them create viable economies, to help them stop endless wars. The United States has an immigration problem because for decades we have failed to support our neighbors to the south with these very ideas. While Americans love to consume the drugs produced there, that only enriches the drug kingpins, not the people in those countries.
Soon, if we don’t insist on an end to the bloodshed in Gaza, we may have more immigrants pouring into our land, leading to more crazed Republicans claiming our ‘blood is being poisoned.’
Written by Hitler; repeated by Trump.
We can see a future that works for all of us and work towards that end, or we can work for one that helps evil only.
Helping Gaza now, and after the shooting stops, helps America.
Israel creates more anger — and perhaps many more Palestinians who will attack them in the future — with every Palestinian they kill. What Israel does now cements them in a future of constant war. Or they can end this hatefulness, this genocide of the Palestinian people, and begin to work towards peace.
The Republican Party and it’s presidential nominee offer no solutions to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict: they don’t want a solution. What they want is control: control of our government, control over women, and control over people of color — immigrants and Palestinians. Trust me on this: elect Donald Trump and every Palestinian will be forced to leave Gaza or be killed.
If we are to have peace, we must re-elect Joe Biden. If Biden wants to be re-elected, he must force Israel to end the senseless killing of Palestinian civilians right now. Gaza could become to Biden what Vietnam was to LBJ.
American Democrats have watched too many innocent civilians be slaughtered in Gaza to vote for Joe again — even at the risk of our own stability. The killing must end now; Biden alone can fix it.
Before democracy there and democracy here ends.
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