Why A Courageous Congressman Stood Up for Palestine

Support for Israel in America is so engrained and institutionalized that it is the de facto position. This is for a myriad of reasons: the Biblical narrative of the Jews rebuilding a Jewish homeland cannot be underestimated in its nature in a deeply devote United States, this is Christian Zionism; there is also the similarity between America's founding myth of Manifest Destiny and Zionism's 'people without a land for a land without a people': white European settlers conquered and bringing 'civilization' to a land otherwise inhabited by 'savages' whose claims are to be dismissed; amongst American liberals there is the image of Israel being a quasi-socialist, tolerant and pluralistic country as opposed to the de-humanized Arabs; and for the security hawks on the right there is the idea of Israel serving American interest in the region first as a U.S. ally during the Cold War against the Soviet-backed Arabs and now as a nation ostensibly fighting the same 'war on terror' and equally aligned against hostile Iran; and Arabs have long been defamed in American culture as backward terrorists who threaten America thus it is not surprising that Hollywood has greatly undermined the ability for Americans to sympathize with Arabs.

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These are the reasons for widespread pro-Israel sentiment in America, and because they are so plenary in their affects that those who grow to become critical of Israel and pro-Palestinian have the few individuals who make a concentrated effort to learn beyond what is presented in the mainstream. I have long been of the view that one may become pro-Palestinian by casually reading the, say, European press. But in America it is the reverse: casually consumption only reinforces pro-Israel dogma.

Thus those individuals you'll find have maybe made a trip to Palestine and seen the Israeli occupation first hand, or have befriended a Palestine, or read the European press, or read left-wing publications, or read an honest book on Palestine, ect... These acts are few and it is only through such acts will someone grow to support Palestine noble reasons. By that I mean that they will not 'support' Palestine because they are anti-Semites who knee-jerk-ly take any side against the 'Jews', but genuinely support Palestine with a clean conscience because they know that the Palestinian people have been the victims of a historic injustice in the form of ethnic cleansing, disposition, theft and massacres.

There are few righteous individuals in America on this issue and one of them is retiring Congressman Brian Baird.

Representing Washington state, Rep. Baird was the first Congressman (along with Minnesota's Keith Ellison) to visit Gaza after Israel's brutal war and massacre of hundreds of Palestinians. He saw the devastation first hand and claims that it has changed his life. He saw the Palestinian textbooks that taught American heroes.

In a passionate speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Baird compared three dead children in Gaza to his own.

He denounced a resolution (overwhelmingly passed) that sought to condemn the United Nation's Goldstone report which accused Israel of war crime in Gaza.

Most recently, he has called for the United States to break the Israeli blockade - collective punishment - against the 1.5million Palestinian in Gaza through a new 'Berlin Airlift'.

Baird recently discussed how he came to support Palestine in an interview with a 'hometown' paper:

>Why Gaza? In an interview, Baird recalled a speech some years ago by Israel's current premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). To Baird, the speech was "thinly disguised racism" — and he recoiled from it. When the crowd applauded, he and his wife walked out.

Then there was Rachel Corrie, who in 2003 was killed in Gaza while trying to block an Israeli bulldozer from wrecking a Gazan house. The Corrie family lives in Baird's district.

Many of his friends "are very distressed" with his criticism of Israel, Baird said. "But if they would see what I have seen and could meet the people I have met, they would change their position."

He recalled his visit to Gaza in February 2009, after Israel's invasion. The American International School had been "a beautiful school, with a Western curriculum." Israel had flattened it, Baird said, "using bombs made by us." A U.S. military man told him of finding a phosphorus shell from the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.

By Israel's count, the final death toll of the war on Gaza was 1,166 Gazans and 13 Israelis — a kill ratio of 90-to-1. By the Gazans' count the ratio was 111-to-1.

Israel said it was defending itself, against rockets — homemade pipe-bomb-type rockets. These had been fired by Gazan hotheads against the Israeli town of Sderot to protest Israel's quarantine. The rockets hadn't killed any Israelis, but they might have.

All sides in war claim self-defense. Maybe because Baird is a psychologist he is less inclined to accept such claims at face value. He recalled the reaction of Israeli generals and rightist politicians when he disputed them: How dare you question us?

Keep pushing on them, he said, "and something more pernicious comes out." They will say, "Don't lecture us about humanity after all you've done."

Netanyahu once reminded an interviewer who was pushing him that the British and Americans had firebombed Dresden. Years ago, on a radio show, when I condemned Israel for taking Palestinian land, my host asked if I would give New Mexico back to the Mexicans.

It is a telling argument. A conqueror's argument. You don't hear it, though, unless you peel off the wrapping paper of "defense." And Congress won't do that.

Baird recalled the vote on the Goldstone report, in which jurist Richard Goldstone listed human-rights violations on both sides of the Gaza war. Goldstone has big credentials from his work in Bosnia and Rwanda. And he is Jewish. But he criticized the Israeli military — and the House quickly voted to dismiss his report. All of this state's representatives voted against the report except Baird and Seattle Democrat Jim McDermott, a psychiatrist.

"Colleague after colleague denounced a report they had never read, about a place to which they had never been," Baird said. "I read the Goldstone report. All of it. I found it credible."

It is sad he is retiring. His replacement will probably grovel at the foot of the Israel lobby.