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Weekend Edition August 1-3, 201<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/01/let-august-be-action-time-for-palestine/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/01/let-august-be-action-time-for-palestine/</a></small></small></b><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle">Confronting Your Member of Congress</div>
<h1 class="article-title">Let August be Action Time for Palestine</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by JEFFREY BLANKFORT</div>
<div class="main-text">
<p>In Italy, France, Spain, and much of Western Europe, August is
vacation time. That is one of the few customs that members of
the US Congress might admit sharing with what they see as “dead
and dying Europe.”</p>
<p>It also provides an unparalleled opportunity for those
justifiably frustrated by the limited effects of protests in
front of Israeli consulates and marching down city streets to
show their opposition to the latest bloody chapter in Israel’s
efforts to eliminate its “Palestinian problem.”</p>
<p>In every Congressional district across the United States,
members of the House and Senate are expected to use this month
as an opportunity to meet and glad hand their putative
constituents and shore up their votes in November’s mid-term
elections.</p>
<p>Since every member, repeat, <i>every</i> member of the House
and Senate, without a single dissenting voice, participated in
approving, by unanimous votes, resolutions supporting Israel in
its war on Gaza, all of them should be considered fair targets
for protesters who should, ideally, show up in numbers with
flyers and placards at every event on their public calendar and
in front of their district offices on days that no events are
scheduled.</p>
<p>There should be no exceptions made for the representative’s
positions on other issues, no more than an exception would have
made for a member of Congress who was “good” on every other
issue but supported racist, apartheid South Africa. Moreover,
there should be no exceptions made for the politician’s color,
gender, or sexual orientation. They have all taken a stand, and
not for the first time, that places US support for Israel at the
top of America’s foreign policy and domestic agenda.</p>
<p>There will be those who will tell you that is better to try and
arrange an appointment with the more liberal members of
Congress, to explain to them the situation facing the
Palestinians in a cordial rather than a confrontational setting.
<b>Don’t fall for it.</b> Over the years, these meetings have
had the same rate of success as the equally phony “peace
process.”</p>
<p>These members of Congress know the address of their real
constituents, the people they really need to please and it is
not in their district. It is 251 H Street, NW, the Washington DC
headquarters of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee or
AIPAC, the only lobbying organization for a foreign government
that is not required to register as a foreign agent. That, too,
is an example of its power over the federal government.</p>
<p>On Thursday, former Congressional staff member as well as
editor of AIPAC’s Near East Report, Blogger M J Rosenberg
provided examples of AIPAC power:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I worked in the House and Senate for 15 years and personally
experienced the pressure tactics that terrorize any
Congressman who even thinks of criticizing Israel. I watched
AIPAC write the foreign aid package and then simply hand it to
the chairman of the Appropriations Committees for immediate
passage; and then I watched AIPAC micromanage its
implementation, for instance, literally holding up
humanitarian assistance because a playground in Ramallah was
named after someone AIPAC deemed a terrorist….</p>
<p>I have seen it all first hand and I can tell you this. AIPAC
and its satellites constitute the sole reason this war goes
on. Otherwise, the images of the dead children would prevail
and America would use its clout to negotiate the simultaneous
end of the bombing and the lifting of the blockade of Gaza
(monitored by the United States to ensure no weapons get in.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For those who think the Congressional Black Caucus may offer a
bit of hope, <i>Black Agenda Report’s</i> Bruce Dixon, spelled
out their role on Wednesday:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Only two of over 40 Congressional Black Caucus members voted
against legitimizing the 2009 Israeli massacre of 1400 mostly
civilians in Gaza, with seven CBC members abstaining.</p>
<p>Last week, with the Gaza death toll climbing toward 1,000 not
a single CBC member could be bothered to lift a voice against
Israel’s genocidal assault of the moment or its ongoing
apartheid state in general. Black America should hang our
collective heads in shame.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In fact, when it comes to votes on Israel, with civil rights
struggle hero, Georgia’s John Lewis, being the most flagrant
example, the CBC has long acted as if it was AIPAC’s “invisible
plantation,” refusing to even speak out or take action against
Israel’s arms sales to apartheid South Africa. Even, Berkeley’s
Ron Dellums, another hero to the American Left, disgracefully
capitulated to AIPAC and Israel when, as chair of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee under Bill Clinton, he pulled a plank
out of the anti-apartheid resolution for 1989 that someone had
snuck in there that would have deducted from US aid to Israel
the amount Tel Aviv gained in sales to the apartheid regime.</p>
<p>Dellums did so, he later admitted at an anti-apartheid
conference at UC Berkeley, in response to demands by fellow
Democrats who told him if the plank punishing Israel was not
removed from the legislation, that they would withdraw their
co-sponsorship.</p>
<p>His successor, Barbara Lee, has been no better. Being the lone
vote opposing the US invasion of Iraq apparently took less
courage than speaking out on the floor or voting against Israel.</p>
<p>Already, people in her district are planning to distribute
flyers they have made calling attention to Congress having
provided in its aid package to Israel, a particularly pernicious
anti-personnel weapon manufactured by Boeing, the “Dense Inert
Metal Explosive,” referred to in the military by the acronym,
DIME.</p>
<p>As the flyer notes,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In September, 2008 the US Congress approved the sale of 1000
Boeing GBU-39 DIME bombs to Israel. The Pentagon said the sale
was vital to Israel’s self-defense. In 2006, according to
Boeing, the first 4.2 billion dollar production contract for
24 thousand DIMEs was authorized, probably protecting many
American Boeing jobs. At what price?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Below a photo of a Palestinian girl, victimized by DIME, the
flyer explains:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The DIME bomb was designed to produce a higher kill ratio
than other conventional bombs. It is smaller (5.9 feet),
lighter weight (285 pounds), and lower cost. Many more bombs
can be loaded onto any aircraft. Instead of shrapnel it
disperses small particles of tungsten metal at such a rapid
velocity that it cuts and shreds everything in its path,
including bone.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Congress has not only provided Israel with its major
instruments of death, the F-16s and Apache helicopters and the
missiles that both fire, but it has also assured Israel of a way
to guard against retaliation by those it has chosen to kill.
That, everyone knows by now, is the US-financed Iron Dome which
has proven capable of shooting down most of the relatively
unsophisticated rockets that have been fired from Gaza. To
celebrate its success, like applying icing to the cake, Congress
has since appropriated another $621 million for the project.</p>
<p>At the same time, the White House, has approved Israel reaching
into stocks of US weapons stored in Israel for “emergency use by
US forces” (we are told) to replenish the bombs and rocket
propelled grenades that they have expended in destroying much of
Gaza and killing over 1300 Palestinians.</p>
<p>Indeed, there is a lot to confront our representatives in
Congress about and August is the month to do it.</p>
<p><em><strong>Jeffrey Blankfort</strong> is a journalist and
radio host and can be reached at <a
href="mailto:jblankfort@earthlink.net">jblankfort@earthlink.net</a></em></p>
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