Reply #7: McKinney Loss=Morale Boost for AIPAC, Israeli Hawks, Cheney, and Bush [View All]

[IndianaGreen]

McKinney Loss=Morale Boost for AIPAC, Israeli Hawks, Cheney, and Bush

by Andrew Silver

http://www.opednews.com

In 2002, large out-of-state contributions to their primary opponents led to the defeats of the two sharpest critics of US policies in the Middle East,African-American Congressmembers Earl Hilliard of Alabama and Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. During this period when the US is giving unqualified support to Israel's massive military strikes in Gaza and Lebanon with weapons accumulated from about $3 billion annually in US military aid, our attention should be given to Cynthia McKinney's current primary run-off election on August 8. A Jewish newspaper has reported that again the pro-Israel lobby is supporting her opponent. Similar news is given in Black Commentator. .

Before unsheathing the reflex accusations of anti-Semitism, note that I am Jewish and an Israeli citizen and that I served in Israel Defense Forces. I have dozens of cousins in Israel, the oldest generation of whom are survivors of the holocaust from a Polish shtetl, almost all of whose inhabitants perished in Treblinka. Information that most out of state contributors to Hilliard's and McKinney's opponents in 2002 were organized by AIPAC, the Jewish lobbying organization, was carried in a 2002 article in HaAretz, Israel's leading newspaper, quoted here

I believe that Israel's colonization of Palestinian territories and its policies of ruling over the inhabitants with extreme brutality doom Israel to perpetual conflict and insecurity. It has been my opinion, since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 war, that the Palestinians, our neighbors, should be our friends, and that they certainly would be if Israel had not built Jews-only settlements on lands taken from them, had supported their economic and political advancement, and had recognized Palestinians as human beings with rights to life and property equal to those of Jews. I have supported changes in US foreign policy as advocated by Cynthia McKinney because of my conviction that such changes constitute the only hope of influencing Israel to abandon the suicidal madness of war and occupation, and to allow a chance for peace and security in the Mideast.

I also believe that all who truly support peace based on justice and human rights for all peoples ought to support Cynthia McKinney now, for she is the Congressmember who most consistently advocates those goals. Her defeat again by outside interests' supporting her primary opponent would give an unprecedented morale boost to Bush, Cheney, and their entire neoconservative coterie. Cynthia McKinney's website is www.cynthiaforcongress.com/

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_andrew_s_060801_mckinney_loss_3dmorale.htm