Gideon Levy on Gaza

I just hope the following article by Gideon Levy is a wake up call to the Israeli army to start with, and to all those who support and feel very strongly that Israel has the right to defend itself.   This is not new to the most moral army in the only democratic state in the region.  Indeed, every country that has set borders and is not occupying other people’s land and dispossessing them daily has the right to defend itself.  Will Israel pass the test?

A few days ago, on November 26, a sick prisoner who was dying of cancer, Sami Abu Deyak passed away after spending  his dying days in the prison hospital chained to his bed.  He begged the authorities to let him die at home with his mother, but to no avail. And that was not the end of the brutality.  His body has been held by the Israeli authorities.  Why? I challenge any of you to give me a logical answer for this absolute inhumane  act.    How much more does this mother need to go through  after losing her son who had spent the last seventeen years in jail?   Don’t they have mothers?  Don’t they have children?  Don’t miss Levy’s article on those little children. 

Analysis

The Israeli Army's Excuses Won't Help. Only War Criminals Kill Nine Innocent Civilians in Their Sleep

Had the IDF wanted to, it could have known exactly who was inside the shack it targeted in Gaza. But it didn't care, and now a little girl is left alone in the world

Gideon Levy

Anyone who bombs houses from a fighter jet in the middle of the night without checking who is inside is a war criminal. Whoever claims they did not intend to kill the nine members of the Palestinian al-Sawarkah family is trying to mislead and wash their hands of it, but their hands are not clean. They are dripping with the blood of innocents.

Maybe they did not intend to murder nine people in their sleep – five of whom were children and among them two infants – but they certainly did not do everything in their power to not harm them. No excuse will serve to justify the actions of the Israel Defense Forces, the Israeli intelligence and of course the Israel Air Force pilots.

The audacious statements by Southern Command head Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi are an outstanding example of apathy and the loss of humanity: “Such things can happen,” he said innocently. Maybe his statement was a reference to one made by former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, who said that “it's like a light bump to the wing of the plane” when he was asked what he felt when he dropped a bomb that killed innocent civilians.

Not a word of guilt, not a sentence expressing regret, no acceptance of responsibility, no apology. Of course there's no point in talking about compensation, because the army doesn't see those who died as important. The IDF is the most moral army in the world, and Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are terrorist organizations. And those who kill nine helpless civilians sleeping in their own beds in their own home – what should they be called?

What else needs to happen so that Israelis begin to understand that their so beloved and admired IDF is a brutal army that has lost all of its inhibitions and that Gaza is not a target bank. That an army that invented a wanted man who never existed in order to justify the killing of a family is a sick army. That it's impossible to strike Gaza with fighter jets without killing innocent people. That there's not a single place in the densely populated enclave without civilians who don't have any shelter for salvation, no rocket alerts sirens and no Iron Dome defense systems. That Gaza is not just a hornet’s nest and home to terrorist compounds, but first and foremost a horribly crowded home to miserable people subject to the Israeli occupation that has never ended in the Strip.

Fourth and fifth generation refugees, who Israel imprisoned 13 years ago in the largest cage in the world and expects them to sit quietly, surrender and throw rice at the planes bombing them and at the fence that imprisons them.

The revelations that keep one from sleeping reported by Haaretz's Yaniv Kubovich on Thursday join Kubovich's November 15 report, describing the chain of events in Deir el-Balah in their entirety: An unbelievable reality in which the army bombs targets without checking what, and more importantly who, is inside.

                                                     

An Open Letter to the Consul General of the United Kingdom

The following Headline appeared in Al-Quds, our local Arabic newspaper, on Friday, October 18. 2019: Britain joins the Palestinians in the olive picking season.   

It is quoting the Consul General of the United Kingdom in Jerusalem Mr. Philip Hall,  that for the sixth consecutive year  the UK has been supporting the Palestinians during the olive picking season. It is an opportunity for the staff of the consulate and other international volunteers to take part in this activity which is very vital for the Palestinian economy,  over and above its cultural and social significance.  He further emphasized the violence of the settlers in this season, and that fifteen diplomats from the Consulate and other international representatives were able to help the farmers in the Makhrour Valley where a Palestinian restaurant was recently demolished so that the settlers could start another building there.  

He further referred to the increasing violence of the settlers and that this activity is considered part of the humanitarian, and political support to the Palestinian towns, especially the marginalized ones in Area C.

I could not help but respond to the item by writing back to the paper an open letter to the Consul General which I will translate in the following lines:  

I am sure the farmers and the owners of those olive trees are very grateful to the Consul General of the UK for this support, especially that the olive picking season has become a nightmare for the Palestinians due to the raids of the Jewish settlers with the support of the Israeli army. 

As we express our gratitude to the representative of the government of the United Kingdom for this initiative, I would like to draw his  attention and the attention of  the government of the United Kingdom, that the Palestinians expect much more from the United Kingdomthan its support of the olive picking season.

To start with,  an apology for the infamous Balfour Declaration which facilitated the road for the Palestinian Nakba. Furthermore for the withdrawal of the British Mandate on May 15, 1948 without taking responsibility for the consequences of this withdrawal, over and above the consequences of the partition of Palestine.

After seventy one  years of  the Palestinian dispossession and fifty two years of a brutal Israeli military occupation of the remaining Palestinian territories, don’t you think it is high time for the government of the United Kingdom to take a Moral Stand and recognize a Free Palestinian State that has a right to self- determination?

Yom Kippur

October 9, 2019

Today is Yom Kippur in the Jewish calendar, and it has been  so quiet in the whole area, especially that there is a  Jewish settlement Neve Yacov built after 1967 adjacent to our neighborhood.  Of course Israel refers to it as a northern  neighborhood of Jerusalem.  And since I had not written for a long time,  I decided to reflect on that day.  To start with I looked up what the day stands for so that I am sure the information I already have was correct, and that is exactly what I found.  A day of fasting and atonement, and the holiest day in the Jewish Calendar. 

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Holiest Day

Yom Kippur, also known as the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the year in Judaism. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with an approximate 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services.

Observances: Fasting, prayer, abstaining from physical pleasures, refraining from work

Observed by: Jews, Samaritans

Significance: Atonement for personal and national sins, fate of each person is sealed for the upcoming year

I  could not help but wonder whether one day per year is enough for atonement for all the atrocities that have been carried out by Israel against our Palestinian people.  The young men and women languishing in Israeli jails, the children who have been harassed on their way to school and interrogated until they wet their pants, the young couples who are not allowed to live in Jerusalem together because one of them does not have a Jerusalem Identity Card, the Palestinians with foreign passports who are denied entry into their country,  the humiliation that people face at the check points on their daily journey to work. 

The people of Gaza alone need a whole year of atonement for what has been happening to them under those long years of siege, and for daring to protest,  so many lives have been lost.  The farmers,  who are losing access to their land, and its income,  especially during this season when they start picking olives. Over and above,  all those  people who have been evicted from their homes without mercy and have strangers occupy them  under their own eyes, just because they claim that they belonged to Jews before 1948.  How ironic that Palestinians have never been able to claim their homes of pre 1948, not even those Palestinians who stayed in Israel and became Israeli citizens, but were evicted from their homes to other areas in what became Israel.  Let alone all those homes that are being demolished every day not only in the Jerusalem area under the pretext of not having the proper license,  but also in Arab towns inside Israel as well as the West Bank, where those homes have a license from their own Palestinian  municipalities.  Indeed, a grave injustice that the whole world has turned a blind eye to.  No wonder Israel continues to get away with all these measures with impunity. 

As I reread the observances for that day I noticed that  abstaining from physical pleasures was on the list.   Some of  those trigger-happy young Israeli soldiers consider shooting, harassing and torturing our people as a physical pleasure.  So hopefully at least for one day per year our people are being  spared.  But honestly and truly,  is one day per year enough for atonement for  a people who are occupying another people and violating international law and all human rights accords?  By the end of the day the slate is clean and ready to get filled up as soon as the next day starts while the world is watching. 

Too Sad For Words

To My American Friends:

After watching the news about the El Paso, Texas shooting I started writing a note of condolences to my friends in Texas.

It has been sixty-five years since I graduated from from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, but I still have a soft spot for that area despite statements by some of the Texas representatives regarding our region and our rights.  Even those who favor peace and a two state solution never seem to be willing to impose sanctions on Israel for violating human rights.  While the shooting in El-Paso was taking place, Israeli soldiers were shooting young Palestinian children and holding a seven year old boy for interrogation and putting restrictions on the funeral of a released prisoner.  

The world has gone crazy, but at least in our area, we know who the enemy is.  As brutal as it is,  we expect it because it is an occupation, and when we resist an occupation we are not terrorists.  But in a free country when you are even free to carry a gun, and your president feels he can twitter any hate messages all over, it is scary because you never know when the next shooting is going to come from.  Actually,  that is terrorism.  

It  was very interesting to hear comments from people interviewed by CNN criticizing statements by president Trump that help feed this white supremacy phenomenon,  which eventually led to that  shooting episode.   I know you were  still trying to get over the California shooting and here you were faced with the shooting in Texas and in no time it was followed by another one in Dayton, Ohio.

My heartiest condolences to all my dear American friends, whether they are in California, Texas or Ohio;  my heart goes out to all those who lost dear ones.  I just hope that the losses of this past week  would be a lesson for legislators to reconsider some of the legislation regarding  the free access to arms, as well as the hate language that prevails by responsible people like the president.  

The Demolitions of Sur Baher

There was a wide coverage by the media this past week of the brutal demolition of Palestinian homes in Sur Baher in the Palestinian territories.  It was so brutal that the attack by some settlers from the Neve Yacov settlement on the St. James church in Beit hanina with yogart cartons and tomatoes while they were celebrating the end of the summer camp seemed almost harmless despite its racist significance,  and intrusion on the grounds of the church which is very close to our house and where I usually worship.  

Israel claims that it had to resort to the demolitions  for the sake of its security as the homes were too close to the separation wall. How ironic indeed because the Israeli claim for building the separation wall in the first place was for security reasons, but in reality the wall ended up snaking through the Palestinian territories. And now they claim that the buildings are too close to the separation wall so once again in the name of security those buildings had to be demolished although they were not illegally constructed as Israel claims, because they were located on Palestinian territory and had building permits from the Palestinian authority. Where does Israeli security stop? Is the sky the limit or is it the whole Palestinian territories ?

UN officials and the European Union condemned the demolitions and called for an immediate halt to the policy. Canada expressed its deep concern calling on Israel authorities to halt such demolitions which are illegal under international law and undermines efforts for a two state solution (as if there is a chance anymore for the two state solution!!) 

At this stage of Israeli impunity, condemnation and concern have no impact any more, and Israel has been getting away with all its violations of human rights and international law. So unless there is action and Israel is made to pay for its impunity those statements are useless, and have no power to redress such a grave injustice.  We all still remember that it was the boycott and sanctions that helped bring about the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, yet the US staunchly shields Israel from such actions and criminalizes any party that imposes sanctions or boycotts Israel. It is worth reminding my readers of Dorothy Thompson’s quotation in 1951 in the early years after the Nakba when she  said "The state of lsrael has got to learn to live in the same atmosphere of free criticism in which every other state in the world must endure." - 

How long will the international community continue to accept such double standards? 

Once again I would like to end with a quotation by Dr. Martin Luther King:

"In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends" Martin Luther King.