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What is Palestine to the U.S.

A Palestinian woman reacts as she carries a toddler, while Jewish settlers move out the belongings of a Palestinian family from a house in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009. In an unrest Tuesday, a Jewish family took over a house in an Arab neighborhood of east Jerusalem, sparking a protest by rock-throwing Palestinians and a few Israeli and foreign activists who joined them, police said. One of the family members was lightly injured in the head when a protester hit him with a metal bar, and police arrested five people. Both sides claim ownership of the building. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

A Palestinian woman reacts as she carries a toddler, while Jewish settlers move out the belongings of a Palestinian family from a house in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009. In an unrest Tuesday, a Jewish family took over a house in an Arab neighborhood of east Jerusalem, sparking a protest by rock-throwing Palestinians and a few Israeli and foreign activists who joined them, police said. One of the family members was lightly injured in the head when a protester hit him with a metal bar, and police arrested five people. Both sides claim ownership of the building. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

For some, this may come as a surprise, for it seems illogical, but the U.S. doesn’t hate Palestine.

It arms and finances its nemesis, Israel – yes.

It votes consistently with Israel in the United Nations (UN) – even against the majority of the world’s nations -yes.

It quietly and surreptitiously allowed Israel to become a nuclear power – yes.

All this is true; but the U.S. doesn’t hate Palestine. The truth is something far worse, for dismissal is more damning than hatred.

Palestine, its people, its history, its culture, its art, its poetry, its very land, is dismissed as a mere trifle by the U.S. Empire, not dissimilar to the response of the old British Empire, which dispatched the lands, hopes and dreams of the Palestinians, with cold, imperial aplomb.

For empire is ever an exercise of global violence, for domination is but utter violation: the very root of violence.

It violates the human soul, which yearns for freedom.

Palestine was relegated to the misery of a warren of Middle Eastern ghettoes for one reason — and one reason only:

To allow the erection of a colonial outpost from which Britain (and later the U.S.) could exercise power in a region that held the greatest prize in world history: petroleum.

That outpost? Fortress Israel.

Petroleum lit the lampposts of London, and fueled the factories of America, leading to its Industrial Age.

It needed a sentry to protect this precious resource.

It needed a watchdog in this neighborhood.

Enter Fortress Israel.

Palestine is a minor after thought to the U.S. Empire and its imperialist apologists. Her pain, her sufferings, her gross humiliations don’t bother the empire one whit.

Yet, to millions of people, throughout Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas, their unjust and cruel treatment at the hands of the Zionist finds purchase in hearts worldwide.

From their epic losses spring the fruits of solidarity that binds us, human to human; oppressed to oppressed.

As the cruelties of imperialism mount, giving rise to anger and distaste, the forces of solidarity grow too, encapsulating the majority of the people of the Earth.


More from this Writer

“To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them; that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to them too, that there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

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