US should lead way toward Palestinian freedom, independence

 US should lead way toward Palestinian freedom, independence

It’s time for America to end its 76 years of enabling Israeli destruction of the Palestinian people.

During that time Israel has exerted an Apartheid form of colonial rule that keeps 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza locked up in the world’s largest open air prison. An Israeli blockade keeps out much food, water and health care that puts Gazans near starvation and inflicts devastated health. Gazans are frozen in place, allowed neither in nor out.

Inevitably, such abominable domination will produce blowback in the form of armed resistance such as we witnessed this past weekend. If Palestinians cannot choose the way to live…they can choose the way to die.

Even the UN General Assembly (UNGA)recognizes the right of people so oppressed to engage in armed struggle against such destructive rule.

• UNGA Resolution 3314 (1974) affirmed the right of self-determination, freedom, and independence for all “peoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination,” and affirmed the “right of these peoples to struggle to that end and to seek and receive support

• UNGA Resolution 37/43 (1982) reaffirmed the “inalienable right” of the Palestinian people “and all peoples under foreign and colonial domination” to self-determination. It also reaffirmed the legitimacy of “the struggle of peoples for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”

Under the justification of R2P (Responsible to Protect), the US bombed Serbia for 46 days, killing over 1,000, to separate Kosovo from Serbia. The US led NATO forces in bombing Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan forces for 7 months to prevent an imagined slaughter by Gaddafi of his own people, a charge wholly fabricated to proceed with regime change against Gaddafi.

But there is no Responsibly to Protect for the Palestinian people. Just the opposite, total erasure of the Palestinian people as suffering likely the worst, life destroying colonial rule worldwide.

The US should take the lead in first, preventing an all out Israeli invasion of Gaza. Then we must exert our moral leadership to bring Israeli to the court of world public opinion to both lift the Gaza blockade to bring to fruition a free and independent Palestinian state.

Anything less is a continued 76 year betrayal of every principle of human freedom and dignity that America was created to advance.