Both Republican and Democratic politicians often state that Israel “shares our values.” A few recent events have certainly shown that to be true. Unfortunately, the values we share with them are some of the worst possible.
First, it’s becoming more clear each day that Israel’s objective in their ongoing destruction of Gaza and the increasing settler violence in the West Bank is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. America was created with the same policy of killing and removing the indigenous population that stood in its way. Both countries used or are using religion to justify their actions. Our justification was “manifest destiny.” Theirs is “greater Israel.” Both countries demonize the existing population resisting their expansionist plans. Since Native Americans were “savages” and Palestinians are “human animals” it’s easy to justify horrendous crimes against them, such as destroying their living spaces, torture and collective punishment.
Another of our shared values is a complete lack of regard for world opinion.
U.S. leaders talk about the need for countries to follow a “rules-based order,” labeling nations that don’t follow those rules “rogue nations.” Yet both our government and the Israeli government ignore international judicial bodies and human rights organizations that have condemned Israel’s actions as constituting war crimes.
Calls for a ceasefire are ignored. Israel continues the bombings and the U.S. keeps on supplying the bombs.
A recently held U.N. vote highlighted this shared practice of ignoring world opinion. The vote was held to end the sanctions against Cuba. Decades of sanctions haven’t resulted in the removal of Cuba’s leaders, but they have resulted in undue suffering of everyday Cuban citizens. 181 countries recognized this injustice and voted for removing the sanctions. Only two countries voted for keeping the sanctions in place. Those two were the U.S. and Israel.
U.S. government spokespeople announced that there would be no change to the sanction policies and they would remain in place. This certainly looks like the behavior of a couple of rogue nations. Maybe it’s time for America to examine its own values and choose better ones. Perhaps choosing better partners to share those values with would be a good idea as well.
Jim Astin, Salt Lake City
