I proudly clench my fist

The American media has gone beyond irresponsible and biased in the last few years. I long for the days when the late Peter Jennings gave news accounts that were based on truth as opposed to the reports that come about now in all their false glory and have me shaking my head and yelling at the television. I feel that if Israel told CNN reporters the sky was neon green with flying camels, the report of neon green skies and flying camels would come back to America. It wouldn't surprise me to hear a report that Israel killed a 2 month old baby (not a novelty)because it felt insecure with its crying, especially if Bush responded with an "Israel has a right to defend itself".

Israel has a right to defend itself? Really? As if Israel is the only country that has a right to defend itself. The mere audacity of that statement makes my blood boil.

While I was in Palestine, and in ongoing attacks that are taking place at this very moment, reports of Israeli soldiers committing massacres, because that's what purposefully killing numbers of innocent civilians is, was on the news daily. Israel claimed to be targeting "militants", but for every suspected militant they assassinated, they killed another 10 innocent bystanders. Hundreds of Palestinians have died in the recent weeks but Israel has since laid claim to being victimized once again with one of its soldiers having been captured. Notice I didn't use the word kidnapped because a soldier illegally occupying another country and making life miserable for millions does not deserve the word kidnapped.

If this "democratic "Israel is leading by example, as the American government has repeatedly reminded us, then the cost of one captured Israeli soldier would equal at least 200 Palestinian lives. What would it cost for an actual dead soldier? For every one of these Palestinian lives, should the Palesitinians seek revenge to what would amount to 40,000 Israeli lives? Why does it bother Americans to know an Israeli soldier to be imprisoned, but the illegal imprisonment of over 10,000 Palestinian men, women and children who aren't even considered militants is ignored? Why is it OK for most of these prisoners to be imprisoned without a trial or sentence, a policy Israel has infamously followed for as long as its existance.

I can't even begin to explain how violated, humiliated and oppressed the Palestinians are right now. They are doubley violated. Once by Israel and the second time by the American media who refuses to recognize Israel for what they are: The oppressors, not the oppressed. The Palestinians aren't the ones who perpetrated the Holocaust. They are the ones who have had their homeland taken away from them. They are the ones who live in a virtual diaspora now, with at least 3.1 million refugees and generations of an ignored plight who live as second and third class citizens, even in the Arab world.

How can a nation whose 3 out of every 4 citizens living below the poverty line be considered a security threat to a country that recieves more monetary and military aid than the whole African continent and is the 13th most powerful military in the world? (Although I dispute even that low of a number for Israel has the most powerful country in the world in its corner)

The recent response Israel has taken to Lebanon further shows the trigger happy nation as more dangerous to the Middle East than the other way around. I've heard American Media try to make the situation sound equally devastating for both sides and have heard one famous news face say that "scores of civilians have died on both sides" which infuriated me. He didn't point out that over 200 mostly Lebanese civilians had died as opposed to the 24 Israeli lives. This disproportionate number should have been pointed out at that point, but I forgot that this media had taken the Israeli math class. 1 Israeli=more valuable than any arab life.

Some Americans are taking notes and trying to claim that Israel has a right to defend itself (yawn) and that Hezbollah should not even exist because of UN resolution 1559. I wasn't aware of the fact that the United States and Israel complied with UN resolutions. All I can say is that U.S. government should have "persuaded" its eternal ally Israel to comply with UN resolution 242 and UN resolution 381 which called for the immediate withdrawal of occupying forces from Palestine which would have meant less bloodshed in the region and less groups like Hezballah fighting against the occupiers. (Israel had occupied southern Lebanon for almost 20 years. )

CNN's Glenn Beck went as far as to say that the only people responsible for the Lebanese deaths were the Lebanese themselves because Hezballah exists and not Israel. So what Glenn Beck is saying is that a democratic parliament that includes two members of a group that were voted in represent a whole population who deserves to die? The government does not equal to the civilan population. What Glenn is saying, is that innocent civilians are responsible for their own deaths because of another nation's hatred of a government or their policies which the civlians may have nothing to do with. In other words, 9/11. Those men, women and children in their apartment buildings and gas stations in Lebanon deserved to die no more than the people in the Twin Towers and doomed flights. That is what Glenn Beck is telling us and that statement infuriates Arabs as much as 9/11 infuriates any American.

As for all those know-it-alls who insist the Lebanese government is responsible for having no control over Hezballah, I offer Iraq and the hundreds of thousands of the best trained and powerful American military forces who cannot control insurgants.

Think twice before you watch the news and soak in every word they tell you. Think twice about supporting a state which has caused the world over to view Americans as hypocrites. Remember that this current American administration who has created a civil war of this bloodbath we call Iraq does not always work in the best interest of Americans. I'm not asking you to support Hezballah or attack Israel, I'm asking you to look at the Palestinian and Lebanese lives the same as you would an Israeli. I'm asking you to put yourself in the shoes of the Palestinians who have no freedom or justice, who are subjected to death and destruction, who are met with racism and apartheid. Look beyond the empty words and excuses and into the truth.

Israel's former prime minister and resident evil, Golda Meir, once said "You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist". I offer that sentence back to the Israelis, although I also add, we cannot shake hands with the barrel of a gun. Israel has pointed that gun at us for as long as they existed. If we clenched our fists, we did so out of frustration.