By Gay Wilmerding, San Juan Island

Twenty-two years ago, wearing a fluorescent vest and wielding a megaphone, Rachel Corrie stood atop a pile of earth defending a Palestinian home as an Israeli crushed her with a D9 Caterpillar. Far from home in Olympia, Washington, her parents Cindy and Craig sought justice for years in Israel and the United States while founding the nonprofit Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice.

As with the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, killing 34 and wounding 177 crew (where survivors were sworn to secrecy), or again in international Mediterranean waters, the Israeli attack in 2010 killing nine and wounding 30 in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla of six civilian aid ships, no one was held accountable. Nor in 2024 when Israelis shot three young Americans in the West Bank: Tawfic Jabbar, age 17, on Jan. 19; Mohammad Khdour, 17, on Feb. 10; and Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, on Sept. 6. A sniper shot the University of Washington graduate in the head half an hour after protest ended.

One might well ask why appeals to Israeli courts, U.S. politicians and elsewhere lack consequence. In 1963, Sen. William Fulbright objected to nonprofit donations in Israel being returned to influence U.S. politics. A decade later on “Face the Nation,” he said on April 15: “Israel controls the U.S. Senate. The Senate is subservient to Israel, in my opinion much too much. We should be more concerned about the United States’ interest rather than doing the bidding of Israel. This is a most unusual development.”

Attributed to outspokenness including maintenance of the same support for Israel (not increasing the dollar amount), Fulbright’s primary defeat in 1974 served as a warning to others.

On July 24, 2024, Congress gave 58 standing ovations to Benjamin Netanyahu, responsible for the Palestinian genocide. The bombing of Syrian schools and 4,000-year-old Christian villages in Lebanon is part of the Greater Israel Plan, where boundaries will expand between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf to include large parts of neighboring countries as far, or farther, north than Baghdad and Beirut with some maps including part of Turkey; others including the Red Sea and a strip of Egypt.

Running for election, President Harry Truman is reputed to have received a suitcase with $2 million in cash in exchange for promising the State of Israel: boundaries were drawn over part of Palestinian Territory in 1948 despite vehement warnings from 80% of his State Department regarding future unrest and violence. Are Israel’s subsequent violations the precursor to Greater Israel?

Our present administration advocates spending less on foreign defense and aid, specifically Canada, Mexico and the EU among others. Israel should be no exception. A chronic violator of the Leahy Law (as in a U.S. bulldozer killed Corrie) and of other nations’ borders, sanctioning and de-funding all aspects of Israel-United States relations should be a national priority until Israel returns Palestinian land to 1967 boundaries and makes reparations.

With the U.S. bombing in Yemen this weekend, we teeter on the brink of World War III. The death of 48,572 Palestinians and 112,032 wounded motivates the Houthi blockade of ships in the Red Sea bound for Israel. A U.S. foreign policy based on diplomacy, not war, is paramount.

Our tax dollars are needed for our own people, the rebuilding of homes and infrastructure after the Southeast’s devastating Hurricane Helene last September and the fires in Lahaina and Los Angeles. With Corrie’s Olympian example, we may aspire to wage peace if America is to become great, or good, again.