Ever since the "establishment" of Israel in 1948, true lovers of peace, freedom, and justice have remained horrified at the extent and intensity of human rights violations against Palestinian civilians by successive governments of the Jewish state. While vigorous media coverage has spurred international pressure to dismantle apartheid in South Africa and win political independence for the East Timorese, the plight of the Palestinians has only received sporadic exposure.

Yet for 52 years, the Palestinians have been the most oppressed people for the longest period of time in modern history. When the Palestinians do receive coverage, it is not uncommon for both the media and western politicians to almost always analyse events in terms of "Palestinian terrorism" and "Jewish victims". Such biased reporting conveniently justifies Palestinian casualties as a consequence of their own doing, and Israeli brutalities as acts of self-defence.

The majority of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops during the recent intifada have been children. In spite of this, the west has remained unmoved toward Israel's continuing military violence against a relatively powerless people. The holiest holiday in the west, Christmas went by without a significant mention of a prayer for an end to transgressions taking place in Jesus' own birthplace of Bethlehem.

How could a nation of four million sustain its political survival to implement its reign of terror in a world that has become increasingly sensitive to human rights violations and social injustices? And why is it difficult for the world to feel the pain and sorrow of the Palestinians?

The answers to these questions lie in two important historical contexts, within which the conflict takes place. First is the strength of Zionist ideological propaganda, which emerged against the backdrop of European anti-semitism. Second is the hegemonic role of the United States in a capitalist world economy.

Zionist ideological propaganda

For centuries, the oppression of Jews in Europe was widespread and common at all levels of society. It is ironical that many of them fled to the Muslim Ottoman and Andalusian Empires for permanent refuge. The 20th century Nazi holocaust seemed isolated only because it marked the climax of centuries-old European persecutions of Jews in that continent.

Zionism, a politically secular movement asserting the "incompatibility" between Jews and non-Jews, took advantage of the holocaust and used it as a political ultimatum for the establishment of a Jewish homeland. Zionism has been largely responsible for categorising Jews as a nation/race instead of followers of a common religion. This move facilitated the transplanting of a Jewish state named Israel in the Middle-East region called Palestine.

Despite its racist character, Zionism won many supporters in the west who falsely perceived a parallel likeness between them and other national independence movements. Under immense international pressure and driven by guilt and political strategy, European political leaders assisted in the creation of Israel by rejuvenating the defunct Balfour Declaration of 1917 as well as facilitating mass migrations of Jews to Palestine. Although Zionism consisted of many factions, the most influential and politically effective were the right-wing groups, who have been unconditional and open in their call to cleanse the area of Arabs and Palestinians.

Through their presence in universities and the media in the west, the Zionists successfully generated public support for their cause by using a political ideology that seemed consistent with western principles of human freedom and nationhood. Taking advantage of their powerful control of the media in particular, the early Zionists skillfully deceived the world audience, both Jews and non-Jews, that the creation of Israel was to occur without the displacement of any other people. One popular myth has been that Palestine was uninhabited, thereby rendering the Palestinians as a non-entity. In the words of Golda Meir, the former prime minister of Israel,

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people ... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist." ( Sunday Times , London,1969)

Another myth to justify for the migration and settlement of European Jews in Palestine was that the Arabs constituted a negligible number of people who left willingly at the suggestion of their leaders. This notion served to affirm the rights of Zionists to settle, organise, and build a political community in a place that had been long abandoned.

But perhaps the most effective of the mythical excuses perpetuated by the Zionists has been one that played to the tune of racist sentiments so profusely empathised by Europeans within an Occidental-Oriental contextual dichotomy.

The Zionists cleverly propagated the belief that the Palestinians were "backward tribes" with a quiescent culture unable to understand the concept of modernity. Thus it was as though Zionism had brought prosperity and modernisation to the land "by transforming a barren desert to bloom with fruits and grains". The fact that agriculture and commerce had been vibrant activities among the Palestinians for centuries was never mentioned. Compare the similarities of Zionist ideological propaganda to that of colonialists and one can well understand how Europeans could relate to this perception.

Hence the Zionists received generous political and financial aid from western governments and organisations. Zionist ideology had laid the foundation upon which future Israeli governments operate, and through which the world came to understand the creation of Israel. Today, the legacy of this ideology has been translated into a "David and Goliath" syndrome, fervently used to portray a peaceful but courageous Jewish state residing in a "sea of hostile and barbaric Arab-Islamic nations".

Exploiting its European connection with the west, successive leaders of Israel have often used Islam as a concern with which the west and Israel must seriously deal. It is not uncommon to stumble upon advertisements in such magazines as US News and World Report , and Time by right-wing Jewish groups attributing the instabilities of the Middle-East to Islam as a violent and oppressive religion. The degree to which westerners have accepted Zionist ideology as the true historical construction of the embattled conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is manifested in their oblivious response to the cries of Palestinian mothers and widows grieving for their dead children and husbands.

US dominance

The rise of the US to replace Britain as world hegemonic power also saw the changing of the guards in protecting the Israeli imperial palace. The US' concern for Israel's security is ascribed to two factors. One, an uninterrupted flow of oil from the Middle-East and two, financial lifelines of corporate and Jewish lobby groups.

Both factors are crucial to the survival of American businesses and politicians. American geopolitical interests and domestic factors therefore have much to do with Israel's unpunished violations embodied in the United Nations resolutions, totalling 70 since 1948, through US vetoes. No other country has had as many resolutions passed against it. Yet, Israel has not only been safeguarded by US military might, it has also been the largest recipient of US financial aid.

Israeli atrocities toward innocent Palestinian civilians have often been discounted, while reports of Israeli and American servicemen killed in "terrorist" attacks have been disproportionately magnified. Of the 475 original Palestinian villages present before the invasion of Jewish settlements, 417 have been obliterated from the face of the earth, many with people herded into them before the explosions.

Today, Palestinians not only suffer from the physical harm of Israeli authorities, but also a slow process of extinction through severe social disenfranchisement. Besides being driven from their homes by expanding Jewish settlements, Palestinians are not allowed to own, inhabit, or cultivate the lands within the Green Line. Political rights are denied and travel is restricted. Schools are poorly funded, while health and housing provision for them are non-existent.

Yet, the US, as a leading proponent of human rights and democracy, has chosen to remain silent on these issues. Instead, Israel from 1948 to 1997, has received from the US, a total of US$8 billion in loan guarantees, US$55,171 billion in grants, nearly US$780 billion in military assistance, and US$85 billion in taxpayer interests, to list a few.

American protection and aid to Israel are explained in terms of its economic imperatives in sustaining an otherwise declining hegemonic role in the capitalist world economy. Internal political interests are intricately linked to capital interests in foreign lands. In order to secure the flow of oil to the west, without which the capitalist economy becomes dysfunctional, American interests are best served with the founding of many puppet regimes in the Middle-East. The rulers of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, although bought with American money and power, are still regarded as unreliable allies.

Israel, on the other hand, with its close affiliations to various groups in the US, and its role as a "European" state in the Middle-East, stands to be a more dependable partner to US interests in the region. Israel also serves a counter-balance to any Arab leader who steps beyond his defined role.

Playing off one regime against another has been a visible trademark of US foreign policy. At the helm of control are the corporate barons and Jewish lobby groups, each with its own capital interests and political agendas in continued US support for Israel. In the capitalist world economy, human rights and social justice serve as secondary considerations to the interests of the capitalist elite and sponsors of political office.

Unknowing American public

The American public is made unaware of their indirect patronage of tortures and murders of Palestinians through the media's craftiness in playing down Israel's ruthless policies. While Americans scorn at the meagre funding of affirmative action programmes and welfare for the poor, they can rightfully claim ignorance to their tax money flowing in the blood of Palestinian children.

The American citizenry has proven to be a potent social force when united and informed of the irrelevance of their government's involvement in atrocities abroad. Vietnam was a good example. As such, various US administrations, Congressional groups, and the media have consistently diverted the attention of the American public away from the realities of the Palestinian tragedy. A permanent solution to alleviate the miseries of the Palestinian people may well lie within the voting power of the American public.

It is not surprising that the US government has never felt the compassionate need to protect and arrest Israel's genocidal policies. In the early 19th century, a Federal Law decreed by then President Andrew Jackson called for the deportation of the Cherokee nation from their homelands in southeastern US to a new settlement in Oklahoma. Infamous for its "trail of tears", thousands of Cherokee men, women, and mostly children under the age of 10, died of hunger, disease, and bitter cold as they were forcibly marched west to make way for European settlers greedy for coal, timber, and gold.

In this new century, the "trail of tears" has taken place in the holiest sites of the Abrahamic faiths. The expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland, however, is not just a breach of religious decency, but one of extreme human injustice as well. But similar to the fate of the Cherokees, the world has yet to cry for the Palestinians.

AZLAN TAJUDDIN teaches sociology courses at the University of Tennessee in the United States.