Stop The Killing Now!

It is time to declare a cease-fire and end the killing in the Middle East.The martial madness is lurching out-of-control and threatens to involve morecountries and more innocent people. Jerusalem is a holy city of the greatprophets of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and it is once again being tornapart by an endless, mindless cycle of vengeful killing that has continued inthe area for 4,000 years. Millions of people have been died and these threereligious faiths have been used as reasons to kill.

The great medieval Crusades of the Christians slaughtered Jews as theymarched across Europe down to the Holy Land to kill Arabs and drive them fromJerusalem. The interminable bloody conflict over Palestine and Jerusalem betweenJewish Israelis and Islamic Arabs continues the senseless slaughter and madnessof mortal combat. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all descend from Abraham, andtheir principal prophets preached peace, justice and love. The United Statesshould convene a peace conference in Jerusalem.

President George W. Bush must take a bold and imaginative step for peace inspite of the corporate interests who appear to control his administration. As aperson who professes his love of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, Mr. Bush must standup to the weapons, energy, media and entertainment industries who profit mostfrom war and violence. Only three days after the disastrous attack on the WorldTrade Center and the Pentagon, I made a similar request of Mr. Bush to goJerusalem and make peace rather than make war in an essay entitled "An Eyefor An Eye". It was published in various papers and on web-sites and Iaddressed the war profit motives of corporate interests.

On September 14, 2001, I wrote, "Billions of U.S. tax dollars supply thesophisticated weaponry of the Israelis and the armed forces of Arab nations likeSaudi Arabia and Egypt while the U. S. defense industry makes big profits. TheU.S. dominated energy cartel uses Middle-Eastern conflict as an excuse to chargeexorbitant prices to an energy dependent world and increase their revenues. Ifthe U.S. declares war and attacks oil-producing Arabic countries in retaliationfor the "Attack on America," the weapons industry will rake in evenmore profits, the energy industry will have an excuse to charge more for theirproducts and the big media conglomerate's ratings and profits will soar over thecoverage of the violence and carnage of war."

We have not yet directly attacked an oil-producing Arabic country like Iraq,but the Bush administration has been furiously beating the war drums to do so.Our failure to make necessary peace initiatives in the escalating conflictbetween the Israelis and Palestinians has rallied every member of the ArabLeague to oppose our proposed war against Iraq. The Arab nations want the UnitedStates to give its full support to the Saudi-proposed peace plan thatestablishes a separate Palestinian state. The Arab states also expressed theirresentment of the United States and Israel calling Arab suicide bombers"terrorists" instead of referring to them as "martyrs". Theescalating war in the Middle-East has furnished an excuse to raise the price ofoil, benefitting U.S. oil companies along with oil-producing nations. The waragainst Afghanistan also has big oil implications.

The war against Afghanistan has enabled the Bush administration to install aninterim government in Afghanistan headed by Hamid Karzai, a former consultantfor the UNOCAL oil company. Another UNOCAL oil consultant, Zalmay Khalizad, wasnominated by Bush as a special envoy to the Afghan government. UNOCAL and theU.S. government worked for several years prior to September 11, 2001 to secure adeal with the Afghan government to construct a major pipeline from thepetroleum-rich Caspian sea basin through Afghanistan. Leaders of the Talibangovernment were brought to Houston, Texas in 1997 as part of that effort.Coincidentally, the Afghan war-inspired coalition with the previously"unfriendly" regime in Pakistan also helps insure that the pipelinecan be built on down through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea.

With all the talk of never-ending-war against terrorism and the mythical"axis of evil," the makers of killing tools in the U.S. weaponsindustry are set to make even more enormous profits.

Dan Rather is now coming to us live from Jerusalem as the media moves more ofits war coverage to the Middle-East. Recent reports from Jerusalem, Ramallah andBethlehem showed Israeli soldiers firing in the direction of non-violent peaceprotestors from Europe and the United States, a Boston Globe reporter shot andwounded by Israeli soldiers, and frightened families among the some 10,000 U.S.citizens of Palestinian ancestry living in the Ramallah area north of Jerusalem.U.S. reporters told of being forced to leave the area by Israeli soldiers atgunpoint and big Israeli tanks rumbling through the town of Bethlehem, reekingdestruction.

The United States is on the sidelines in peace efforts as weapons supplied byU.S. taxpayers are used in an all out war against many innocent Palestinians.The war is to avenge the acts of those the Israelis and the United States calls"terrorists" but the Arabs call "martyrs".

Retributive killing has always been the human species ultimate evil-doing,causing human suffering that far surpasses the misery inflicted on us bydisease, pestilence, and so-called "natural causes." Murder is thegreatest taboo in all cultures, but state sanctioned killing for revenge ishyped as a "just war" by the talking heads on the evening news and isapproved by most U.S. politicians. War sells. The mass murder of war isromanticized and glamorized by war profiteering corporate interests, from theweapons industry to the violence-peddling entertainment and media industry.

I wrote last September, ".. why doesn't President Bush convene a peaceconference in Jerusalem with all the leaders of the nations and religionsinvolved. He could declare the biblical "New Jerusalem" and gather atthe Temple Mount with these powerful leaders who always seem to call on the poorpeople to fight and die in the madness of mortal combat. We need to work harderthan ever before for peace. We must convince our fellow human beings that thereis no difference among people anywhere worth killing one more person over."

Tom Turnipseedis an attorney, writer and civil rights activist in Columbia, South Carolina.