Once again, with the full knowledge and complicity of the White House, the Israeli military machine has engaged in an illegal act of terrorism consistent with its long standing genocidal aims against the Palestinians. This time the Israeli’s heinous crime took the form of piracy and murder on the high seas directed at an unarmed flotilla of ships loaded with food and medicine bound for besieged Palestinians in Gaza.
Although the international outcry against Israel was loud and clear, the pro-Israeli American media response was muted and short-lived, easily trumped by the hype surrounding veteran pundit Helen Thomas’s admonition to Israel to “get the hell out of Palestine.” No one seemed to care about the merits of her assertion. She had to be taken out, and along with her went the story of the Gaza bound flotilla.
But what, if anything, does this have to do with Vermont? Why should independence-minded Vermonters care what’s happening in Israel? We should care because the U.S.-Israeli relationship gets right to the very essence of what the American Empire is all about. The United States and Israel are the two foremost technofascist nations in the world. That’s why there is such a close symbiotic relationship between the two war mongering nations. The answer to the question, “Who controls whom?” remains in doubt.
The so-called Middle East peace process supported by all American presidents since Israel’s inception in 1948 is a complete sham. The only way to stop Israeli terrorism is for the U.S. to discontinue all economic and military aid to Israel. Only then will the fighting stop. But this will never happen so long as the Empire remains intact.
Well-known Vermont liberals such as Ben Cohen, Bill McKibben, Anthony Pollina, Bernie Sanders, and Shay Totten have maintained their usual position of stony silence in response to the recent Israeli atrocities. Criticism of Israel is not considered to be politically correct behavior in Vermont. Neither is support for the downtrodden Palestinians.
Neither Republican Brian Dubie nor any of the Democratic candidates for governor in Vermont have uttered a peep about the flotilla incident. Only Vermont Independenista candidate Dennis Steele has expressed any concern whatsoever for the plight of the Palestinians.
Duplicitous Vermont taxpayers who remain loyal to the American Empire cannot escape the fact that they too are accomplices to the Israeli acts of genocide.
The Israeli Mafia will remain in charge of American foreign policy until either the American Empire collapses or peaceably dissolves.
Under the leadership of Dennis Steele, Vermont Independenistas will carve out their own foreign policy independent of Washington and Tel Aviv.
Imagine: Free Vermont
THOMAS H. NAYLOR is a professor emeritus of economics at Duke University. He is the co-author of Downsizing the U.S.A. and The Abandoned Generation: Rethinking Higher Education and co-founder of the Middlebury Institute.
