NPR’s All things Considered glorifies zionist radicalization, clarifies US foreign policy

In NPR’s obtuse series on “Why People Change Their Minds”, All Things Considered host Emily Harris introduces us to “an Israeli woman (who) talks about the surprising journey her life took after being raised in a secular, mainstream Jewish family.”

Only later do we learn of her Jewish radicalization - a process that changed her “worldview” from that of an unassuming secular Israeli Jew to a full fledged Israeli Zionist armed with a “God given right” to the lands set aside by world powers for a never-to-be negotiated Palestinian state.

Shamed at a holiday gathering in which she realized her liberal upbringing - colored by the international consensus on “a two state” solution - had deprived her of her Jewish heritage, traditions and most importantly, “God-given” right to the land.

Through her study of Jewish history, and deeper relationship with her Orthodox friends she made the decision.

Her epiphany: God gave ALL the land to the Jewish people, from the Jordan to the sea. It is then, Harris tells us, she “crossed a line”.

That’s when the Tel Aviv suburbanite decided to do her part for the zionist cause and continue the process of “displacement and dispossession” of the Palestinian people from the land to which they too have a deep historical connection.

She went from despising settlers to becoming one.

Something NPR leaves out: Our heroine has just broken international law.

Israeli settlement expansion into the West Bank - aka Judea and Samaria (named after Jewish Kingdoms conquored some 3,000 years ago) - is uncontroversially illegal. Dozens of Israeli UN Security Council Violations attest to as much.

An NPR profile from Aug. 28, 2002 makes that clear in the opening:

JACKI LYDEN, host:
Since the beginning of the latest Palestinian uprising, Jewish settlers have established dozens of illegal outposts in the occupied territories. Despite repeated promises by Israel's defense minister to shut them down, almost no action has been taken against this illegal seizure of Palestinian land. NPR's Anne Garrels reports. 

Is the fact these settlements are still "illegal" left  out today because NPR has no comfortable explanation for the continued settlement expansion which has in fact accelerated since that 2002 feature?

There is an explanation, but it's not fit for broadcast.

Israeli intransigence is a hard sell today, in a right wing militant environment where to state the facts of the matter openly and clearly using words like "illegal" and "occupied" is considered radical and confrontational. Like the United States' actions oversees over the same time span, the occupation and theft of Palestinian land by Israel, we are to believe, is one of those "necessary evils"that are above international law.

Israel has and will continue to do as Israel likes. And so long as it proves its worth to the United States in the region, the US will not object. When it does, the settlements will stop, no sooner. The real horror is to accept, like Israel's overt and tolerated development of "facts on the ground", that International Law is not internationally applicable. It applies to the rest of the world, not the US or it's allies.

But if we let these violent repressions, occupations and indefinite incarcerations continue among the allies, how can we expect better of those we seek to "liberate"? What credibility is left in our "human rights" game at home or abroad?

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Leaving her naive belief that striking a land-sharing peace between the two peoples behind, our late blooming Zionist adopts a more militant tone.

Peace will come, settlers believe, when Israel permanently annexes the West Bank.

While NPR is quick to parrot the official outrage toward ISIS expansion; expanding the "Jewish State" by occupation, violence and ethnic-religious cleansing passes without criticism.

Her belief is a popular one in Israel as most recently outlined by Knesset leaders this summer.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, a member of the ultra-nationalist, pro-settlement Jewish Home party, established a special committee to legalize the facts on the ground.

There are many areas in Judea and Samaria where the status is unregulated," she said, referring to the West Bank. "The time has come to dispel the legal fog and to enable the residents of Judea and Samaria—most of them in settlements set up by generations of Israeli governments—to stop worrying about the constant threat to the very ownership of their homes.

Coincidentally, and perhaps awkwardly for US and UN Officials - spring-loaded with “strongly worded” public reprimands of the settlements  which have quadrupled since 1993 - what our awakened Zionist proclaims in public is essentially the vision the US has effectively supported since the beginning.

Israel receives some $3.7 billion per year in US military aid and is looking for a raise. With this allowance, Israel turns around and purchases armaments from Lockheed Martin, Boeing and other defense contractors who picnic on this taxpayer funded buffet.

These weapons are primarily used against the occupied Palestinians as in the 2014 Massacre of Gaza which again, left significant evidence of war crimes as determined by noted human rights NGOs including the Israeli organization, B'tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Israeli settlements receive an additional $1.7 billion per year in tax-free contributions from the non-profits that comprise what has been called the American Jewish Charity Industry. And all or most goes to finance aspects of the military expansion, Israeli demolition of Palestinian communities and illegal settlements.

The result?  Half a million heavily armed and guarded Jewish settlers in the West Bank - often including violent Zionist extremists - in what was to be the heart of a “future Palestinian State” but has become instead the heart of Israeli apartheid.

The settlement expansion and land expropriations are the primary source of “tension” and “terror” of the past 20 years in Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

Though there are no longer settlements in Gaza, both the West Bank and Gaza are two parts of one Palestine.

So even if Hamas' wasn't subjected to night raids, invasions, mass incarceration without charge, drone strikes, attacks on fishermen and farmers to name a few, the Gaza Strip government could just as easily be launching rockets for what they see as the systematic slo-theft by violence of one half of what's left of the their self-determined Palestine.

VIDEO: Street Execution in Hebron where 1,000 Jewish settlers live among 200,000 Arab Palestinians.

Some 200 Palestinians and 30 Israeli’s have been killed in confrontations, Palestinian knife attacks and Israeli army street executions over the past 6 months.

Palestinians are not strangers to settler terrorism. In fact, the number of settler attacks against Palestinians rose by about 150 percent every year between 2008 and 2012. Settler terrorism has intensified not only in volume but also in the nature and viciousness of its attacks. For example, in 2014 Israeli settlers kidnapped 16-year-old Palestinian Jerusalemite Mohammad Abu Khdair—and burned him alive.

But it wouldn’t due for NPR to mention these things.

Might sour this sweet story of "why people change their minds" and decide to support ethnic cleansing.

Unobserved by Harris is that our awakened Zionist, her Jewish State and the US State Department that allows, supports and finances the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, are not only in contravention of international law but are inciting and escalating the very Palestinian violence all parties say sabotages the "peace effort" performance.

While the newly converted colonialist notes that her spiritual advisor tells her "we must see the Palestinians...we must care for them," she does not explain, nor does Harris pry, as to how continued land expropriation, displacement and dispossession of the Palestinians conforms to "caring for" the Palestinian people whose lands you are stealing.

The arrangement of providing a tax haven to finance the condemned illegal activities of an occupying power accused of significant war crimes has drawn a whisper of disdain from US Officials but not enough for any action to be taken.

The settlements and their jurisdictions currently capture some 42 percent of the “to be negotiated” West Bank, occupying and effectively annexing it sans the Palestinians. They  are not afforded Israeli citizenship, much less human rights.

“The UN Human Rights Council's call for sanctions against Israel is crucial because it clearly expresses the idea that the settlement enterprise leads to "ethnic cleansing" in the West Bank." - International Fact-Finding Mission on Israeli Settlements

But alas who can be bothered with things an ally's ethnic cleansing, never mind US tolerance, support and financing of it. No such luck here. These trifles fade in what Harris jubilantly describes as the the "stunning view from her home, high on a hill in the central West Bank."

Contact NPR's All Things Considered and tell them to stop whitewashing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.