
Map of Israel in 1948
"Let's be very clear where the onus lies." That was the statement made by State Department spokesman Mark Toner on who instigated the Israeli air assault that began Wednesday over Gaza and is continuing and escalating as this is being written.
Not that Toner's remarks are anything unexpected coming from this administration or any other U.S. administration for that matter whether it is Democrat or Republican. The "onus" is always placed on the Palestinians who "provoke" the Israeli's to overreact hyper aggressively militarily, beyond any measure considered a "reciprocal response, whenever the Palestinian's take offense and exact revenge against Israel's illegitimate occupation, embargo and apartheid policies.
As I wrote yesterday on the Israeli assault, the idea of Hamas in Gaza somehow a threat to Israel is ludicrous not while the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has the most modern and sophisticated weaponry in the air and the ground that is unmatched in the entire Middle East.
But in the U.S., the MSM (from now on to be referred as the corporate media) portrays the Palestinian's and Hamas, with no army, no air force or navy and no sophisticated weapons beyond conventional short range rockets, RPG's and hand held small arms as the aggressor against all powerful Israel.
The severely oppressed, besieged and occupied Palestinian's, like all other such peoples in history, under similar conditions and circumstances, just do not rise to a level that constitutes a threat to Israel.
Yet this is the propaganda we in the U.S. are constantly fed by our government and the corporate media as if it was the gospel.
When South Africa was ruled by the white apartheid government, our government and the corporate media sided with the oppressed black majority. That oppressed majority often committed acts of violence and rebellion against their oppressive government and its supporters but such acts weren't condemned in the U.S. They were considered the rightful response against a wrongful government and its apartheid policies.
It is no different for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. They are illegally occupied people ruled over by the apartheid policies of the Israeli government.
All the world, except the U.S., recognizes Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinians and the lands it seized as the victor in the 1967 war. The legal borders of Israel determined by the U.N. when it established the Israeli state in 1948 are the only legal boundaries of the country. All the other territory it now occupies was seized as the spoils of the 67' war and is held illegally.
Israel continues its acts of aggression with impunity only because of U.S. support.
That's where the true "onus" lies.


