Apache Wars

As Israel’s main ally, the US supports Israel’s illegal annexation of Palestinian settlements, apartheid, and the genocide of the legal occupants of this land.

To aid Israel, the US has brought in their Apache helicopter with its gunships firing their machine gun bullets and missiles on Palestinian civilians in their own communities.

I strongly object to the Americans naming these instruments of terror and death after a people they exterminated.
 
I refer to the great guerilla fighters, the Apaches.

It is an insult to their memory and tradition of bravery, for the war upon a fenced in population does not require bravery.
 
The Apaches were great warriors who fought to stay free and on their lands.

They fought the Mexicans for 400 years, before they were pushed Northward out of Mexico and into the territory of their enemies the Commanche .

In 1840 after a treaty with Mexico, the Apaches came under ‘the care’ of the U.S. government.

Treaties were signed with the Apache ‘for as long as the grass shall grow’.

Without exception these treaties were broken.

Policies of removal were implemented to uphold the desire of the US to keep the best lands for themselves.  They put the remaining indigenous tribes out of sight in concentration camps and prisons.

Each outbreak of hostilities between the indigenous people and the white settlers brought an increase of soldiers to the area.  Each increase brought more unrest among the Apaches on the reservations and more escapes into the mountains of Northern Mexico. 

It became apparent to the Apaches that if they were going to survive they had to leave their traditional lands.

General Nelson A Miles from the Department of War issued an order in February 11 1887 for the ‘destruction or capture of the hostile Apaches’.
 
Apaches shared a belief with other indigenous people throughout the world: that a man’s attachment to his land was a vital necessity and that he would sicken and eventually die if cut off from this source of life - the land itself.

Geronimo, the Apache leader was a shaman, or medicine man.
The Americans thought he was chief because of his force of personality, bravery and his expertise in ‘ little wars’: guerilla warfare.

He was born in June 1829 around the headwaters of the Gila River. Known as Goyathlay by his people, named Geronimo by the Mexicans.

For many years he resisted taking his people to live on reservations because he saw that the promises made to indigenous people were never kept.

That the Reservation Indians starved to death. Their children were taken from them and sent away to Indian Schools.
 
This spirit of resistance marked the Apaches for extinction. 

Geronimo, the last great Apache warrior died a prisoner of war, February 17 1909 at Fort Sill, bitterly regretting that he’d surrendered in an effort to save the remnants of his starving tribe. That he didn’t it fight it out to the end in his beloved mountains.

Legend has it that his bones were secretly dug up and taken from the Apache section of the Fort Sill cemetery, to freedom.

There is nothing noble about the Israeli war in Palestine or about the way this war is being fought. 

This is not guerilla warfare , it is a total disgorgement of munitions upon a trapped people.

Israeli and American disregard for life and freedom does not honour Apache warriors.
 
If anything, these helicopters are being used against an occupied and resisting people who are suffering the fate of the Apaches.

May 17 2004