P.M. Netanyahu

On October 3, 2001, then Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon said

to Shimon Peres: "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."

Last week the present Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin

Netanyahu, spoke, perhaps illegally, to the U.S. Congress. His speech

was a flagrant, derisive and insulting interference in United States

foreign policy. This past Sunday, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr. Avigdor

Lieberman, said: "Anyone's who's against us (Israel), there's nothing to do --

we should raise an axe and cut off his head." The comparisons to ISIL terrorism

are obvious and too easy to claim. Some of us who often oppose Israeli

policies like the occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza

could also shudder in fear and righteous anger over what we could see as

a personal threat. But I am much more concerned with the violent words

of a Foreign Minister from the so-called "democracy" of Israel, supported

with billions of U.S. tax dollars, aimed at the Palestinian citizens

of the occupied territories and, especially, the 1.5 million

Palestinians who are nominal citizens of Israel, citizens with a vote, all of whom

face a frightening escalation of legal and social discrimination. It is a continuation

of the ethnic cleansing, the Nakba ("catastrophe" in Arabic) of 1948 with the

goal of starving the Palestinians in Gaza to death and annexing all of Palestine, from

the Jordan River, west to the Mediterranean Sea. And the words we hear from

the Israeli leadership are not mere rhetoric, just ask the survivors of the seven

week slaughter last summer of the Palestinians of Gaza. It is hard to negotiate

for peace with an axe coming down on your neck.