By Bill Durland, J.D., Ph.D.

How may we determine whether Palestine should be a free, independent and sovereign nation? When critical thinking employs justice, logic and humane treatment, we may be able to answer that. So what is in the way? There are myths Americans believe that have clouded their thinking.

These are:

1) A select group of people is preferred by their tribal god. God chose the Israelites as his “chosen people in a promised land.” They incorporated this self-serving myth into their religious structures, and current political claims. If there is a god, for the creator to prefer one of his/her creations over others is untenable.  If there is no god, there is no such people .

2) The State of Israel deserves preferential treatment because Jews suffered a holocaust. There have been many holocausts. All create victims. Palestinians do not deserve to be victimized by a previously victimized Israel.

3) The media describes Israel and Hamas as militarily equal.Both are described as if they have an organized military, nuclear weapons and missiles of mass destruction This device is called “leveling.” But in fact, there is no state of Hamas. Gaza has been invaded, surrounded and blockaded by the 4th strongest military in the world, and resists with short-range, outdated rocketry only.

4) Israel invokes its right to self-defense with the use of aggressive invasions, military occupation and blockade. Under International Law an aggressor nation waives its right to claim self-defense while it invades, occupies, and blockades another.

5) Hamas has no right to resist Israeli invasion, occupation, and blockade. The media persists in describing the two parties as equals when one is a political party and para-military group and the other a nation state. To be logically consistent and fair, it is Palestine or its parts – Gaza and the West Bank – versus Israel. Gaza, has been invaded, occupied, and blockaded from receiving life-supporting resources. The West Bank is separated into numerous, non-contiguous parts including illegal Israeli settlements and harassed by Israeli-imposed checkpoints and curfews. Palestine has a right under international law to defend itself by forceful resistance.

6) Israel is a democracy and Palestine is not. Israel calls itself a Jewish State making it similar to Iran and ISIL – Islamic states. It treats non-Jews within its borders as second-class citizens and has created Apartheid in the West Bank. 

7) Israel has a right to exist and Palestine does not. Palestine (the P.L.O. and P.A.) recognized Israel’s right to exist in 1988. Israeli government spokesperson, Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1969 said: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. They don’t exist.” In 2014 Israeli Cabinet Minister Naftali Bennet said: “The Israeli Peace Plan is the annexation of the West Bank.”  

Israel was recognized in 1948 as a free, independent and sovereign nation by the U.S. and U.N. over 78 percent of the former British mandate territory it invaded. Palestine deserves the same recognition over the remaining 22 percent that Israel illegally occupied in 1967. Its actions have been condemned by the U.N. but many protected by U.S. vetoes. The Palestinian people ask only to be judged objectively and fairly with all the myths put aside. This is how freethinking people practice fairness in building a human world.

Originally published in the Freethought Views advertorial column in the Colorado Springs Independent on October 22, 2014 with the following quotation.

"You can't have occupation and human rights."  Christopher Hitchens