Sheldon Adelson and his Band of Singing Jewish Cowboys take on the Heathen Palestinian Renegades in, Bad Day at the Kibbutz

Joseph Warren, Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com

When I was a boy roaming my neighborhood streets of Los Angeles many decades ago one of our favorite games was Cowboys and Indians – for the unfamiliar, a game whereby a group of boys (and girls) choose sides and become either a Cowboy or an Indian. Given the life expectancy of an Indian, I was always amazed at how many took on the role of (expected) underdog and opted to be defeated in play.

A few basic rules were: Cowboys had guns and Indians didn’t; Indians could hide and surprise a Cowboy; Indians were supposed to lose. Alas, the outcome was not so certain in play. In historical fact, though, it was.

At the beginning of European settlement in North America there were from 1.3 to 3 million or more aboriginal people co-existing (relatively) peacefully on America’s “Fruited Plains”, mountains, and deserts. The concept of Manifest Destiny (variously interpreted in American history as, “Divine Destiny” or, “Obvious Destiny”) didn’t come into popular being until the 1840’s, yet the thought and actions of its adherents predates that time by nearly two centuries.

The Settlers approach (italics added for a reason) was to begin a slow, methodical push: to displace, to move, to contain, and eventually to control the American Indian population. Control was popularly interpreted to mean eradicate or destroy, and so they were, leaving few more than 250,000 by the conclusion of the so-called Indian Wars in the 1890’s.

Read this carefully: As the Indians were moved off of their lands the invaders claimed absolute domain and ownership. They destroyed villages, they built homes, tended the land, developed towns consistent with their cultural heritage, and through this simple means, combined with aggressive armed enforcement by both settlers and militia (and the US Army), and the infusion of alcohol into tribal culture, and by stimulating dissension between tribal groups thus preventing a united defense against the aggressors, turned what by today’s standards might appear to be a genocidal rampage into nothing more than a forgettable historical footnote, except to the hundreds of thousands of American Indians who today live in poverty and destitution.

To illuminate the lesson history has to teach us, let’s rewrite the paragraph above to the following by substituting the names of the principals involved:

As the Palestinians were moved off of their lands the invaders claimed absolute domain and ownership. They destroyed villages, they built homes, tended the land, developed towns consistent with their cultural heritage, and through this simple means, combined with aggressive armed enforcement by both settlers and militia (and the IDF) and the infusion of alcohol and drugs into tribal culture, and by stimulating dissension between tribal groups thus preventing a united defense against the aggressors, turned what by today’s standards might appear to be a genocidal rampage into nothing more than a forgettable historical footnote.

Having some difficulty with this analogy? Allow us to clarify: Imagine that East Jerusalem and the West Bank were the indigenously-occupied lands, and that the Israeli settlers were the invading Europeans, which, oddly enough in many cases, they were and are, having no claim to the land other than that which was manufactured or, as Newt Gingrich likes to say, “Invented”.

Since 1948 the number of Palestinian homes destroyed by the invaders is estimated at far more than several tens-of-thousands. The number of Palestinians driven from these homes shortly after the conclusion of the Arab-Israeli War by most estimates exceeds 800,000. Today nearly 5,000,000 refugees are concentrated in camps where food, medical, educational and all other basic human-needs are only marginally met or not met at all.

Enter Sheldon Adelson whose girth is exceeded only by his wealth, and his wife, who are pressing forward with an extensive and well-funded campaign to publicly shame anyone who speaks ill of the Israeli government here in America; anyone who might dare to be critical of the deplorable conditions into which the Palestinians have been cast. The LA Times covered it, and here’s the article.

And this is where we are today: Through a truncation of logic that defies rational thought, to be against Israel’s abhorrent and damnable treatment of the Palestinian people is to now be tainted as anti-Semitic. This response defies logic on so many levels that if it weren’t so pitiable it might be laughable: Criticism of a government’s treatment of a people is criticism of its practices and policies. To be critical of the United States is not to be anti-Christian. To be critical of Mexico’s policy regarding civil rights, as another example, is not to be anti-Catholic. How does this mythological relationship between criticism of a Fascist government and that of the religion practiced by less than half of its population perpetuate?

You’d have to ask those who control the media for an answer…like Sheldon Adelson owner of, among many other news outlets, the Las Vegas Something or Other.