Ice Cream for Justice

The Jewish students who call for Ben & Jerry’s to evacuate ‘illegally occupied’ Vermont land are making the case for Ben and Jerry.

The students are claiming that Ben & Jerry’s headquarters in Vermont is occupying the land lawfully belonging to the Abenaki Indians.

This was done in response to Ben & Jerry’s not permitting ice cream to be sold in the West Bank in protest of Israel’s landgrab in the West Bank.

The students have an interesting point, but in a strange way they make the case against Israel’s land grab in the West Bank.

Both Ben and Jerry and the state of Israel are involved in land grabbing.

This is not unusual. Land grabbing is something that we human beings have done since the beginning of time.

What may be different in the two land grabs is that Native Americans were given reservations that were their own sovereign nations. The Palestinians have not been accorded such. Well, they were given their own inviolable areas, but that pact was violated.

Additionally, Native Americans were not restricted from joining the larger American society. Many did so.

In contrast, Palestinians are restricted from joining the larger Israeli society.

There is a difference.

Palestinians have been harassed and subjected to second class status by the state of Israel. This has occurred both in the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

The students are young and tragically uninformed about the history of Israel. They are also tragically uninformed about the history of Palestine.

There were Palestinians living in what is now Israel for thousands of years. The land now known as Israel was called Palestine.

The Palestinians did not suddenly rush into the various territories after the state of Israel was created.

They were already there.

The United States and Great Britain seeking a beachhead to control the oil and gas reserves in the Middle East, the Suez canal, and the eastern Mediterranean created the state of Israel to do just that.

To that end, the western powers helped populate Palestine with Jews from around the world.

It was always a one-sided agreement against the Palestinians with the United States and Great Britain falsely posing as neutral powerbrokers.

And that is how the state of Israel came to be.

It takes much money and organization to relocate people. Only government money can provide that.

No one lifted a hand to help the Jews for 1875 years. There was no serious movement of Jews into Palestine for 1875 years.

After Edwin Drake piped oil out of the ground in 1858, and after the energy efficiency of oil was realized, it was only a matter of time before other areas of the world were explored for oil.

First was western Pennsylvania in the late 1800s; second was Spindletop in Texas in 1902; third was the discovery of oil in Iran in 1908.

Very quickly geologists became aware of the vast oil reserves in the Middle East.

That is why the state of Israel was created. The Jews were used to colonize the Middle East for the powers that be.

That is why it was necessary to take the land away from the Palestinians.

That’s reality.

No amount of wishing can make it go away.

To date both the state of Israel and its chief benefactor, the United States of America, have chosen not to give the Palestinians a fair stake in the game.

Consequently, the landgrab continues. The harassment of Palestinians continues.

Ben & Jerry’s was making a statement.

What is that statement?

In short, what goes around comes around. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Truth is truth.

The young students, no doubt pumped into a frothing frenzy by the ultra-conservative Likud party, strike back against Ben and Jerry’s by comparing their land grab in the Middle East with the land grab by European settlers of native American lands.

Well, they’re right.

They are absolutely right.

Sincerely,

Archer Crosley

Copyright 2022 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved

Sugarcoating Lies

I don’t even know why I’m wasting my time writing this out.

Everybody already has their opinions anyway.

Israel was not created for the Jews.

The Jews were used to colonize Palestine by the elites in order to control the eastern Mediterranean and the vital assets in that area, those being the Suez Canal and the vast oil and gas fields.

What’s going on there is colonial imperialism.

The Palestinians were in the way.

Much effort is spent by Jews and Christians in justifying Israel’s existence there. Some people say that God sanctioned Israel for the Jews.

God did no such thing.

God doesn’t sanction land for people.

Our Old Testament was invented and written by the Jews. That’s hardly an objective source.

I’m sure there were prehistoric men who lived in the area 15 to 20,000 years ago who had gods also, and I’ll be willing to bet that they felt that their God had sanctioned the land for them.

They were wrong.

Additionally, those people are dead, and the dead have no rights.

Other people say that there was no formal country called Palestine. That is used to do delegitimize the rights of Palestinians.

There is no moral right to say that people are not entitled to land because they don’t have a formal government and formal legal documents designating such.

That is our western value system speaking.

Still others claim that were no Palestinians living there. That is simply not the case. Muslims were in the majority for over 800 years in what is now Israel from 1200 to now. The Christians were in the majority from the year 500 to the year 1200. The Jews only had two centuries where they were in the majority.

Another argument promoted is that the area was renamed Syria-Palestinia by the Romans when they conquered the land and killed the Jews. The name Palestinian comes from Philistine and was according to some used intentionally to insult the Jews.

So what? That means nothing.

Who cares who named the area? Or why?

An attendant argument is that there’s no connection between modern-day Palestinians and the Philistines from the Bible.

I don’t know about that. Where did the Palestinians come from? If the Romans killed the Jews, who was left in the area?

Some supporters of Israel would like you to believe that the Palestinians rushed in to confront the Jews in 1948 much as the Los Angeles Lakers would show up in San Antonio to play the Spurs.

The numbers and the facts don’t support that.

The Palestinians were there. They came from there. They had to come from somewhere.

Probably they came from the same stock of people as the Jews.

If we go back far enough we see that there was a tremendous mixing of religions back in the early years. People were borrowing from different religions and experimenting.

When Islam moved into the area, it seems reasonable that many Jews might convert to Islam.

Just as we have people switching religions today, we have peoples switching religions back then.

People are always searching for the meaning of life. Our biology has not changed much in thousands of years. Indeed, we are trapped within our biology.

The attempts to delegitimize the Palestinian people are arguments put out by the Empire to justify its immoral actions.

The Palestinians were colonized and are being colonized just as the Native Americans were colonized.

They are being pushed off their lands.

That doesn’t negate the state of Israel.

Israel certainly can exist.

It can exist because this is the way man is. This is the way man has always been.

Man has always moved across borders, set up shop and taken over the joint.

It’s the right of Palestinians to resist.

We should admire that resistance because we would do the same thing.

Would the Jews not push back if someone was taking their land?

They already are. That’s why they’re pounding the Gaza Strip with bombs.

This is the nobility of man, of which there is very little.

Let’s not sugarcoat it with lies.

Sincerely,

Archer Crosley

Copyright 2021 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved