La Voz de Aztlan Editorial
Los Angeles, Alta California
May 22, 2001
La Raza as Palestinians
There are great similarities between the political and economic condition of the Palestinians in occupied Palestine and that of La Raza in the southwest United States. Fortunately, the struggle for equality by La Raza has not reached the level of violence that is now being experienced in the Holy Land and hopefully it never will. Some ominous signs, however, are manifesting themselves in Los Angeles County that may be a harbinger of things to come. Widespread areas in southern California have recently experienced ambushes, shootings and assassinations of police officers by young disaffected Raza youths who are routinely harassed by special police units like the now disbanded CRASH units of the Los Angeles Police Department.
The similarities are many. The primary one of course is the fact that both La Raza and the Palestinians have been displaced by invaders that have utilized military means to conquer and occupy our territories. The takeover of our respective lands by foreign elements occurred 100 years apart. For La Raza it happened in 1848 when Mexico lost the southwest at the end of the Mexican American War and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidlago. For the Palestinians it occurred in 1948 when the Zionist Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and signed the "Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel" on the day in which the British Mandate over a Palestine expired. The effects of the occupation policies over time , 153 years for La Raza de Aztlan and 53 years for the Palestinians, have been eerily similar.
The primary similarity has been the gradual taking of our lands by the invading enemy. La Raza lost immense acreage of land in the form of Ranchos through chicanery and through the establishment of property taxes that were designed to relieve La Raza of our rightful ownership to our land. For the Palestinians, the usurping of their land has been a similar process. The Zionist Israeli government has established laws that have gradually stripped legal ownership of land from the Palestinians. In addition, hordes of Jewish settlers have shamefully moved in to occupy Palestinian territories and push out Palestinian families. This process in Palestine has been backed up by brutal police and military might.
Another of the most glaring similarities is the incarceration policies of youths by the dominant culture. Presently, the survival of the Palestinian people is being threaten by the selective incarceration of the bravest, strongest and most productive members of the group. Like in the southwest and specially in Alta California, the number of "incarceration centers" built by the Israeli government in occupied territories to imprison targeted youths is growing at an alarming rate. The Zionists call the imprisonment of thousands of Palestinian youths who have dared to resist the occupation of their lands "administrative detention". The detention centers are mere barb-wired compounds where Palestinian youths are held up to six months without a trial.
The incarceration rate of La Raza in the southwest U.S., and specially the incarceration of Raza youths, is also having the effect of destroying the family structure of our communities. In many cases, children are being left fatherless in the critical stage of their development. Targeting by the police of Raza youths is similar to the targeting of Palestinian young males by the Israeli Armed Forces. In the City of Los Angeles, for example, special neighborhood assault police teams called CRASH Units were organized by the outgoing mayor to target groups of Raza youths that reside in certain barrios of the city. The CRASH Units have left a trail of devastation unprecedented in modern law enforcement history. Countless Raza youth were framed, savagely beaten, tortured and unjustly imprisoned. At this very moment, there is an ongoing trial of a young Mexican youth accused of ambushing and killing a CRASH police officer in 1998. The youth testified to his innocence just this week and his attorney is making the case that the real shooters were other organized youths who planned and carried out the "military type ambush" of the officer as an act of self-defense of their community from constant harassment by the CRASH LAPD Units.
Similarities between La Raza and the Palestinians also extends to the age old problem presented by traitors and collaborators. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, like many other occupations in history, could not have continued over the past 53 years without the help of a network of Palestinian collaborators. The Israeli army is just not big enough to police effectively the 1.5 million Palestinians under military occupation. The majority of the Palestinian collaborators, as with La Raza, are those who are reasonably satisfied with their position in society, and they come predominantly from the middle classes. They are joined by opportunists from the lower classes who see in the occupation a dislocation of society that might enable them to move ahead and improve their position. In both cases, the collaborators put narrow self-interest ahead of any obligation to their neighbors and display confidence in the permanence of the occupation.
The Zionists have relied on well-placed Palestinians, who in turn have recruited opportunists to serve the occupation in secret as well as out in the open. There is no doubt as to the identity of the open collaborators. They are the Israeli appointed mayors, mukhtars, and others who enforce the rules of the occupation. They carry Israeli-supplied weapons and threaten those who challenge their Israeli-given authority in any way. Their identities are thus well known to the whole community.
The same is true with La Raza in the southwest U.S. There is a group of "vendido" corrupt politicos that are being utilized as "occupation administrators" and who are selling out the interests of La Raza for their own personal benefit. These so called "elected" representatives have no real power and only serve the interests of the real rulers. For example, in California we have an "elected" Lieutenant Governor by the name of Cruz Bustamante. He is supposed to be the second most powerful politician in state government, yet he is totally useless to our community and has done nothing to improve the lives of La Raza who are increasingly having to endure tremendous economic hardships and problems in housing and health. He is a mere figurehead with a brown face and an Hispanic last name.
The same is true with many other Hispanic politicos and Hispanic leaders of national Hispanic mainstream organizations. Another example is a politico in California by the name of Tony Villar (aka Antonio Villargairosa) who is presently a candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles. It is a well known fact within La Raza that "Tony" is simply a lackey for immensely powerful Jewish interests in Los Angeles, but what La Raza does not know is that the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL) arranged and paid for Antonio Villargairosa to go on an indoctrination trip to Israel in 1999 (B'nai B'rith means "Sons of the Covenant"). The ADL is a powerful Jewish organization with a multi-million dollar per year budget that has very close ties with the Zionists and the Israeli intelligence agency called the MOSSAD. The ADL has been repeatedly accused of spying for Israel and breaking into private files of American citizens who hold pro-Palestinian views.
Hispanic politicos are not the only collaborators. Last week, Raul Yzaguirre, Director of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), was ordered to write a letter of condemnation against La Voz de Aztlan by his Jewish handlers because we wrote an editorial that the American Jewish Establishment did not like. Raul Yzaguirre has very strong ADL connections as well. In a San Diego Union-Tribune article published in 1993, Raul Yzaguirre was quoted as saying in a speech at a ADL Luncheon, "I am an Hispanic Jew and part of the same familia". He was given a standing ovation and Howard P. Berkowitz immediately stood up and loudly proclaimed monetary assistance to the NCLR. There is no doubt that many of our so called leaders are selling La Raza short for their own benefit. Every man has a price and the wealthy Zionists use this trait of human nature very effectively.
The political and economic condition of La Raza and of the Palestinians are the same, the only differences are ones of degree and duration. The occupation of Aztlan has lasted for 153 years so that the manifestations of the effects on La Raza will differ from those on the Palestinians only because La Raza has already gone through many of the injustices the Palestinians are having to presently endure. The other difference is one of degree. The degree of hatred against the Palestinians by the Zionists is great and runs very deep. Their is no hesitation by the Israeli police or armed forces to bomb enclaves where Palestinians reside. In Aztlan, we have had few sporadic riots where only a few Mexicans have been killed as occurred in East Los Angeles during the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War or as occurred during World War II when hordes of U.S. Military personnel invaded East Los Angeles and savagely beat up Mexican Zoot-Suiters. However, with our increasing population and the nervousness of some white hatemongers in the fringes of society like Glenn Spencer of American Patrol, the situation is extremely volatile. All it takes is one little spark at the right time and all hell could break loose. Raza, let us be prepared in case we have to rise and defend our families and our community.
The following commentary on the above picture of a Palestinian youth facing down the Israeli Defense Forces is by Delinda Curtiss Hanley of the Washington Report:
A small, solitary figure in slacks and a white shirt stood up to a column of 17 tanks heading to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989. The previous day’s massacre had killed 155 Chinese students camped in the square and wounded some 65 workers, students and children.
As the first enormous tank swerved right to miss the young man, later identified as 19-year-old student Wang Weilin, the boy moved right to block the lead tank. When the powerful machine next turned left, Wang moved left, too. Finally he climbed up onto the tank and reportedly said to the driver, “Why are you here? My city is in chaos because of you.”
Newspapers around the world declared that one lone “Everyman” had defiantly stood up to the People’s Republic of China and its massive arsenal of weapons to become a symbol of Chinese freedom. When newsmen asked Chinese leader Jiang Zemin a year later what had happened to the young man, Jiang replied, with some uncertainty, that Wang had not been killed.
On Oct. 29, 2000, another courageous youth faced down a tank—this time on the outskirts of Gaza City. As young Fares Udah defiantly hurled his rock at the menacing Israeli tank, Associated Press photographer Laurent Rebours took a photo that may come to symbolize the Palestinian “Everyman.”
Tragically, we know with dreadful certainty what happened to Fares Udah, the fearless 13-year-old boy on the cover of the Washington Report’s December 2000 issue. On Nov. 8, nine days after his picture was taken and while the Washington Report with his cover photo was still being printed, Fares was shot in the neck and killed by Israel Defense Force troops.
Real Player Video of the Murder of a Palestinian Father and Son by the Israeli Defense Forces
