The U.S. policy of unconditional support for Israel has failed to bring about a just peace for Israelis and Palestinians.
Our government’s one-sided “ironclad” support for Israel has emboldened racist-nationalist-supremacists governing Israel intent on annexing and colonizing all of Palestine and forever preventing a Palestinian state.
Rather than achieving a just peace, the current U.S. policy contributes to cycles of ever-greater violence reaching genocidal proportions, evidenced by the tragic events leading up to and following Oct. 7. As citizens committed to peace, freedom, justice, and equality, Palestinian rights demonstrators, student activists, and a growing Democrat base recognize a pressing need for a different approach. Such new policy must acknowledge the conditions between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and compliance with international law.
In recent years, international and Israeli human rights organizations have joined Palestinian academics in denouncing Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid policies, and international law violations. Well-documented studies illustrate unlawful annexation of Palestinian land, denial of civil and human rights, restrictions on freedom of movement, suppression of economic development, destruction of olive trees and crops, demolition of homes, imprisonment of fathers and mothers, arrest of children, and periodic military operations that have killed and maimed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Apart from occasional statements of concern, U.S. policymakers continue to reward Israel with more than $3.8 billion per year in military aid, and each successive administration, whether Democrat or Republican, vetoes U.N. Security Council Resolutions addressing the ongoing injustice. On April 24, President Biden signed a bill that provides Israel $17 billion in additional aid despite growing calls for restricting U.S. assistance to the country because Israel using U.S.-supplied bombs has killed more than 35,000 civilians in Gaza and demolished Gaza’s universities, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, housing, agricultural and commercial stock.
Like in the case of South Africa, when world pressure helped bring an end to South African apartheid through boycott, divestment and sanction actions, Israel, too, must face similar consequences to force the dismantling of its occupation, annexation, blockade, and apartheid policies. Israel must forgo conquest, displacement, and dispossession of the Palestinian people and territory and recognize the promised and lawful right of self-determination denied the Palestinian people since the time of the British Mandate in Palestine beginning in 1922. Only then can honest and meaningful peace negotiations succeed.
Given our government’s unconditional support for Israel, citizens must pressure the ethno-nationalist State of Israel to end its violations of international law that for more than 75 years has killed, oppressed, displaced, and dispossessed the established indigenous Palestinian population between the Jordan River the and the Mediterranean Sea.
Connecticut demonstrators in towns, cities, and campuses have joined with voices of conscience in Israel, Palestine, and throughout the world, demanding an immediate ceasefire and a just and honest Israel-Palestine peace. Our federal government must end U.S. financial and military aid to Israel and stop vetoing U.N. Security Resolutions aimed at holding Israel accountable for its international law violations.
Our state government must follow the example of the Connecticut General Assembly in 1981-82, when it passed legislation divesting the state’s pension portfolio from companies active in South Africa as part of the world movement demanding an end to SA apartheid. Likewise, we must insist that the State of Connecticut pension portfolio divest from Israeli bonds and securities.
John T. Fussell of West Hartford is a board member of WeWillReturn.org