Jun 7, 2011

Finding the Israel Lobby on the Map

How can you see the influence of the pro-Israel lobby on a map? You could, I suppose, look up the address of AIPAC headquarters, but that wouldn't be nearly as illustrative as this.

You see, I spend A LOT of time (probably too much time) working with maps and statistics, and, when you study a conflict over land, the precise location of every square meter is important. For years, Israel's continued colonization of Palestinian territory has happened one settlement or one settlement home at a time. Hilltops, aquifers, valleys, walls, checkpoints, distances, locations are all vital for understanding the intricacies of this conflict. So, as with just about every field, technology has revolutionized the study of Palestinian geography, especially with the advent of widely available satellite imagery (e.g. Google Maps) which allows anyone with a computer to see how big illegal settlements around Jerusalem are, just how deep Ariel protrudes into the West Bank or how tiny Gaza really is.

Google Maps is a truly amazing tool. Take a look at this image, for example. What you are looking at, at Google Maps' highest available resolution, is Military Aircraft parked at Area 51, the secret U.S. military base in Nevada's desert used to test and develop state of the art weapons and planes. Go ahead, zoom in and out.

But if we were to look at any random location in Israel at Google Maps' highest resolution, not say a top-secret military facility, we get this:

This image is supposed to be of the Dahmash village outside of my ancestral hometown of Al-Lyd. Dahmash is an Arab village unrecognized by the state and thus homes there do not receive permits and they are subject to demolition. Hardly a sensitive military location, in fact, it is more like a shanty town. If you zoom out you can see it. But you won't be able to see it, or any other area under Israeli state control (including in the Occupied Territories) at the highest resolution. Why is that?

Well, it's because Congress passed a law which stipulated that Israel and any territory it controls deserve more privacy than the USA's most secret military installations. In bipartisan fashion, Republican Senator Jon Kyl and Democrat Jeff Bingaman put forward an amendment to the 1997 National Defense Authorization Act (see Sec. 1064) assuring that Israel, and only Israel, was protected from high-resolution imagery, available through sources like Google Maps which everyone can use, of territory it controlled. It tasks a federal regulatory agency within the Department of Commerce with enforcing this provision for Israel, and it is worth repeating, only for Israel. Kyl and Bingaman have both announced they will not seek re-election after their current terms expire, but they will leave the Senate among the top career recipients of pro-Israel PAC contributions.

Is there any better way to illustrate how our Congress is literally turning a blind eye to appease the Israeli lobby?

4 comments: on "Finding the Israel Lobby on the Map"

joseph bedway said...


JJG said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MoTalking said...

Breaking The Israel/Palestine Silence http://wallsofdespair.blogspot.com is my edited blog with the permission of the web site Breaking The Silence
It relates the war crimes of the IDf in the Occupied Territories in the soldiers own words and is irrefutable evidence of the crimes committed. No major media seem interested. I have appeared on PressTv Remember Palestine with Lauren Booth and will return on July to talk about my blog
Richard Morris
Writer and Performer of Bitter Fruit Of Palestine on YouTube and vimeo.com


MoTalking said...

I am sorry to see that few people are contributing to your blog
I am sure you will know Meron Benvenisti's book Sacred Landscape which gives detailed testimony of maps and the removals of Palestinian villages from the Israeli lanscape as well as changing names of hundreds of villages
You might be interested in an article in today's Guardian DEc 6 on the relocation of Bedouin by Harriett Sherwood
Richard Morris
Breaking The Israel/Palestine Silence http://wallsofdespair.blogspot.com