Published on Wednesday,
April 3, 2002 by Common Dreams |
Stop the Killing Now! |
by Tom Turnipseed |
|
It
is time to declare a cease-fire and end the killing in the Middle East. The
martial madness is lurching out-of-control and threatens to involve more
countries and more innocent people. Jerusalem is a holy city of the great
prophets of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and it is once again being torn
apart by an endless, mindless cycle of vengeful killing that has continued in
the area for 4,000 years. Millions of people have been died and these three
religious faiths have been used as reasons to kill. The great medieval
Crusades of the Christians slaughtered Jews as they marched across Europe
down to the Holy Land to kill Arabs and drive them from Jerusalem. The
interminable bloody conflict over Palestine and Jerusalem between Jewish
Israelis and Islamic Arabs continues the senseless slaughter and madness of
mortal combat. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all descend from Abraham, and
their principal prophets preached peace, justice and love. The United States
should convene a peace conference in Jerusalem. President George W. Bush
must take a bold and imaginative step for peace in spite of the corporate
interests who appear to control his administration. As a person who professes
his love of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, Mr. Bush must stand up to the
weapons, energy, media and entertainment industries who profit most from war
and violence. Only three days after the disastrous attack on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, I made a similar request of Mr. Bush to go Jerusalem
and make peace rather than make war in an essay entitled "An Eye for An Eye".
It was published in various papers and on web-sites and I addressed the war
profit motives of corporate interests. On September 14, 2001, I
wrote, "Billions of U.S. tax dollars supply the sophisticated weaponry
of the Israelis and the armed forces of Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and
Egypt while the U. S. defense industry makes big profits. The U.S. dominated
energy cartel uses Middle-Eastern conflict as an excuse to charge exorbitant
prices to an energy dependent world and increase their revenues. If the U.S.
declares war and attacks oil-producing Arabic countries in retaliation for
the "Attack on America," the weapons industry will rake in even
more profits, the energy industry will have an excuse to charge more for
their products and the big media conglomerate's ratings and profits will soar
over the coverage of the violence and carnage of war." We have not yet directly
attacked an oil-producing Arabic country like Iraq, but the Bush
administration has been furiously beating the war drums to do so. Our failure
to make necessary peace initiatives in the escalating conflict between the
Israelis and Palestinians has rallied every member of the Arab League to
oppose our proposed war against Iraq. The Arab nations want the United States
to give its full support to the Saudi-proposed peace plan that establishes a
separate Palestinian state. The Arab states also expressed their resentment
of the United States and Israel calling Arab suicide bombers
"terrorists" instead of referring to them as "martyrs".
The escalating war in the Middle-East has furnished an excuse to raise the
price of oil, benefitting U.S. oil companies along with oil-producing
nations. The war against Afghanistan also has big oil implications. The war against
Afghanistan has enabled the Bush administration to install an interim
government in Afghanistan headed by Hamid Karzai, a former consultant for the
UNOCAL oil company. Another UNOCAL oil consultant, Zalmay Khalizad, was
nominated by Bush as a special envoy to the Afghan government. UNOCAL and the
U.S. government worked for several years prior to September 11, 2001 to
secure a deal with the Afghan government to construct a major pipeline from
the petroleum-rich Caspian sea basin through Afghanistan. Leaders of the
Taliban government were brought to Houston, Texas in 1997 as part of that
effort. Coincidentally, the Afghan war-inspired coalition with the previously
"unfriendly" regime in Pakistan also helps insure that the pipeline
can be built on down through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. With all the talk of
never-ending-war against terrorism and the mythical "axis of evil,"
the makers of killing tools in the U.S. weapons industry are set to make even
more enormous profits. Dan Rather is now coming
to us live from Jerusalem as the media moves more of its war coverage to the
Middle-East. Recent reports from Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem showed
Israeli soldiers firing in the direction of non-violent peace protestors from
Europe and the United States, a Boston Globe reporter shot and wounded by
Israeli soldiers, and frightened families among the some 10,000 U.S. citizens
of Palestinian ancestry living in the Ramallah area north of Jerusalem. U.S.
reporters told of being forced to leave the area by Israeli soldiers at
gunpoint and big Israeli tanks rumbling through the town of Bethlehem,
reeking destruction. The United States is on
the sidelines in peace efforts as weapons supplied by U.S. taxpayers are used
in an all out war against many innocent Palestinians. The war is to avenge
the acts of those the Israelis and the United States calls
"terrorists" but the Arabs call "martyrs". Retributive killing has
always been the human species ultimate evil-doing, causing human suffering
that far surpasses the misery inflicted on us by disease, pestilence, and so-called
"natural causes." Murder is the greatest taboo in all cultures, but
state sanctioned killing for revenge is hyped as a "just war" by
the talking heads on the evening news and is approved by most U.S.
politicians. War sells. The mass murder of war is romanticized and glamorized
by war profiteering corporate interests, from the weapons industry to the
violence-peddling entertainment and media industry. I wrote last September,
".. why doesn't President Bush convene a peace conference in Jerusalem
with all the leaders of the nations and religions involved. He could declare
the biblical "New Jerusalem" and gather at the Temple Mount with
these powerful leaders who always seem to call on the poor people to fight
and die in the madness of mortal combat. We need to work harder than ever
before for peace. We must convince our fellow human beings that there is no
difference among people anywhere worth killing one more person over." Tom Turnipseed is an
attorney, writer and civil rights activist in Columbia, South Carolina. www.turnipseed.net |