President Obama's 4 June speech in Cairo has briefly brought the conflict between the Israeli government and the Palestinian people back into the mainstream media's rather narrow spotlight. Most of the reports, including those of CNN, The New York Times, and the Right-wing Fox News, upheld commercial journalism's tradition of merely parroting the rhetoric of "authorities" among the Hawks and the Doves, thereby acting as a mouthpiece for the establishment. While the absence of any sort of investigative reporting probably saved the corporations who own these media plenty of money, it also means that the majority of the US population will be woefully ignorant of what is truly taking place in Israel. This situation is unacceptable, as it is causing otherwise honest and caring people to support moral atrocities. To help remedy this ignorance, I have decided to review some of the more obviously false myths about the conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Why do different organizations and individuals speak of "mixed messages" coming from Obama's "first 100 days" in office? Obama's time in office thus far has played out almost exactly as I expected. He made perfunctory gestures toward fulfilling campaign promises, introduced initiatives to pacify the working and middle classes, and attempted to increase government transparency without upsetting the establishment. The Right also behaved almost exactly as expected by opposing almost every initiative with a flurry of rhetoric and pro-corporate propaganda. The only two surprises to me were that the Right didn't learn enough from their humiliating defeat to cut down their open and belligerent hostility toward the people and that Time Warner Cable wasn't able to move forward with its plans to further restrict Internet access.

I live in Blackbird Farms a neighborhood located in West Lafayette IN, where my Home Owners Association (HOA) bans permanent outdoor clotheslines. So, for the past two years, whenever the weather is absolutely beautiful I place my foldable hanger on the lawn, tie a line between two trees to hang the rest of my laundry and go about my day feeling good that I ‘harvested’ some of the sun’s free energy, spent some time outdoors and will shortly have a great smelling load of laundry. Yet this weekend I was approached by the HOA president who informed me that while I am not currently breaking the HOA rules, since I take down the line and bring my hanger inside at the end of the day, the HOA board will most likely have a vote at the next meeting banning all outdoor clothes drying and he just wanted to inform me of this impeding change.

The United States government is frequently criticized for abusing its veto power in the United Nations Security Council to block resolutions that call on Israel to deescalate military violence. A Security Council resolution is vetoed when any one of the five permanent member states casts a negative vote. In addition to the United States, the five permanent member states are the United Kingdom, France, China, and the Russian Federation. The Security Council also has ten rotating member states, but only a vote of "nay" from a permanent member state can veto a resolution. In addition to vetoing a resolution, a member state can abstain from voting, which allows a state to express its disapproval of a resolution without issuing an outright veto. Professor Noam Chomsky has referred to an abstention by the United States as a "double veto," because it effectively eliminates any coverage of the resolution in the media and it erases it from the historical record.¹ In its defense, the United States government does not hold the record for the most vetoes cast by a single member state. That dubious honor belongs to the USSR, which cast 118 vetoes in its lifetime. The US follows in second place with 76 vetoes (which means it is the nation with the highest number of vetoes that still exists in the Security Council). The nation in third place--the United Kingdom--cast only 31 vetoes.² The record of resolutions vetoed by the US government is troubling as it demonstrates, in addition to a commitment to continued violence by the Israeli government, a pattern of violence openly opposed by the international community and excluded from the mainstream domestic press.

As of Monday 29 December 2008, the death toll of Israeli military assaults in the Gaza region has passed 335 deaths since Israel began its bombing campaign on Saturday 27 December 2008. In this same time, rocket attacks by Hamas forces have caused two Israeli deaths. ¹ As usual, spokespeople for the U.S. government have helped to escalate the violence by offering unconditional military support to the Israeli government. In an effort to help the government understand that the people of the U.S. do not condone U.S. backing for further violence in the region, I drafted and transmitted a brief letter to the President and to my two U.S. Senators and one Representative. While I expect my individual request to have little bearing on on this matter, it is my hope that many others are also doing something similar. Anyone who is looking for information to include in a letter of h(er|is) own is welcome to use what I have to offer below.