It is the rise of people-power all over the Muslim world, and I’ve got news for you.  The people—or the street, as it’s called in places like Cairo, Manama, Sana, and Amman—are united by two things only: A loathing for the autocratic crooks who have been keeping them poor and lording it over them since time immemorial, and Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.  If neocon warmongerers like Robert Kagan believe that Uncle Sam can now buy the Arab street as he has bought the dictators in the past, he’s got another think coming.  When the Arabs finally get the vote, look for Gaza-like results, and for good reason.  As the flamboyant Thomas Friedman of the unspeakable Big Bagel Times wrote, “Israel was frantically calling the White House and telling the president he must not abandon the Pharaoh.”  Friedman also wrote that Israel today has the most out-of-touch, unimaginative, and inbred cabinet ever.  (Gangster cabinet would be a more apt description.)

Israel and the United States are the two most despised nations throughout the world, no ifs or buts about it.  Arab tyrants are our only allies in the Middle East, thieving towelheads such as the Saudis and the Gulf “sheiks.”  The current Palestinian leadership, under President Mahmoud Abbas and the very capable and honest Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, has worked tirelessly to set up a security plan to reduce anti-Israeli violence.  Palestinian television has been purged of anti-Israeli incitement, and Palestinian state-building—education, health, and the economy in the West Bank—is succeeding.  What have the Palestinians got in return?  Less than zero.  The population is now geographically divided by the large open-air prison that is Gaza, and a West Bank shuttered by the wall of shame that severs Palestinian villages from land and water coveted by Israel.  With America unwilling to hold Israel accountable to international law and existing agreements, Israel remains intransigent and outright aggressive in the unlawful building of settlements on Palestinian lands.  The Israeli plan is a simple one: Nod and wink to the Americans, take billions from them each year, and keep building illegal settlements.  Israeli control of Palestinians’ water and other natural resources ensures that no future Palestinian state can exist.  The true impact of Israeli settlements can only be measured by the enormous damage they inflict on countless Palestinian communities.  Built on expropriation and theft of Palestinian land, they dominate the surrounding hilltops of the occupied West Bank, encircling and besieging Palestinian towns and villages below.  Needless to say, Palestinian farms, businesses, and homes have all been destroyed to make way for illegal settlements, making normal life for the Palestinians almost impossible.

It is almost impossible to explain to brainwashed-by-nonstop-Israeli-propaganda Americans just how deeply the hurt and suffering inflicted by Israel on an innocent people has turned into real hatred against America among Arabs.  Just as it is impossible to explain to our Congress that Israel is playing Uncle Sam for a sucker.  The mantra is always the same: Israel is the sole democracy in the Middle East, our only real ally.  But since when is someone whose actions have turned more than half the world against us an ally?  This is madness, not realpolitik.

And what kind of democracy is it where the leader of the largest Orthodox party in Israel, Shas, declares that he hopes the “Palestinian president and all his people die”?  If that’s an ally, I’m Monica Lewinsky.  George W. Bush declared war on terror, and the world watched while Israel killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.  Old men, women, and children died under the guise of a war against terrorists.  Saddam Hussein claimed in 1990 that he would not withdraw from Kuwait until Israel withdrew from the occupied Palestinian territories, so, after his defeat, the thieving Kuwaiti ruling family expelled thousands of Palestinian workers and slaughtered thousands more.  I wondered at the time who the terrorists were, the innocent Palestinian workers or the fat, thieving Kuwaiti ruler?  But the Kuwaitis are our friends and allies, whereas the Palestinians are our enemies.  Go figure, as they say.

According to the Israeli historian Benny Morris, David Ben-Gurion once said, “If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel, that is natural.  We have taken their country.”  That was then.  Now there are five million displaced persons living in camps and squalor.  Gaza is a hellhole, choked by the Israelis, who are intent to punish Palestinians for having voted for Hamas four years ago.  The West Bank is crushed by occupation.  Yet the neocons want more blood, more billions for Israel, more war.  When will America’s leaders discover something the Arab street has known all along?  What Israel is doing is evil, and we are aiding and abetting that evil.