Month: May 2021

Max Blumenthal: “To distract from Gaza slaughter, Israel lobby manufactures antisemitism freakout”

Max Blumenthal is one of America’s foremost investigative journalists.

He also happens to be Jewish, and has written two important books about Israeli militarism and the depth of Jewish Supremacy throughout the Jewish Israeli population.

I highly recommend his books, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel and The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza if you want a good picture of life in modern Israel and the Gaza strip.

Mr. Blumenthal is also the chief editor at The Gray Zone, an important, independent news site.

Today I discovered that he has written a story which I have been searching for.

In the heat of the current wave of accusations about “rampant” antisemitic attacks — all of them stirred up by pro-Palestinian demonstrations during Israel’s recent bombing of Gaza — I have been searching for someone who has investigated the details of these alleged attacks.

Today I found it.

Below is an excerpt from an actual investigation into the specifics of these charges. As I suspected, and as often happens, pro-Israel/pro-Zionist activists (like the Anti-Defamation League[ADL] and the Jewish Defense League [JDL]) have been manipulating and misrepresenting the evidence.

Yes, there have been isolated instances of antisemitic speech, like the  outrageous, offensive Tweets declaring that “Hitler was right.”

But for the most part, the facts are quite the opposite of what the ADL and JDL have been reporting.

Max’s article is entitled, “To distract from Gaza slaughter, Israel lobby manufactures antisemitism freakout.” Here is an excerpt:

With deceptively edited videos and dubious allegations, the Israel lobby has

The video of a man who said he was attacked for wearing a yarmulke shows that he was the aggressor and actually wearing a hoodie

manufactured an antisemitism epidemic to turn the media’s gaze away from dead children in Gaza.

Following an 11-day assault on the Gaza Strip in which the Israeli army killed over 220 people, including more than 65 children, and days of videotaped rampages of Jewish extremist mobs against Palestinian people and property inside Israeli cities, Israel lobbyists in the US and Canada have launched a carefully coordinated public relations campaign to deflect outrage.

Having failed to successfully defend massacres of entire families in their homes and the deliberate demolition of civilian residential towers and media offices in Gaza City, the US Israel lobby and the Israeli government it advocates for have manufactured an epidemic of antisemitic violence with the goal of portraying American Jewry as the true victim of the crisis.

These two veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces, living in New York City, went out looking for pro-Palestinian demonstrators to attack. They threw the first punch.

Led by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Israel lobbyists have portrayed a series of street scuffles between supporters of Palestine and pro-Israel activists as anti-Jewish pogroms. In nearly every case, no evidence exists to substantiate claims that Jews were targeted as Jews for violent assault. There is ample proof of deception, however, as video and photographic evidence reveals pro-Israel elements provoking demonstrators, initiating violence and falsifying or embellishing their testimonies. . . 

Now, as the Israeli police round up hundreds of young Palestinians citizens of Israel for participating in protests against their own dispossession, the New York Police Department has begun doing the same, arresting Palestinian American youth, jailing and investigating them for “hate crimes” over their involvement in videotaped tussles with pro-Israel demonstrators.

In many high-profile cases, however, video and photographic evidence examined by The Grayzone contradicts the allegations made by pro-Israel forces and reveals the stories of several accusers to be highly deceptive, if not entirely false. . . 

You can see the entire article here.

 

The Bombing May Be Over, But the Devastation Remains

Israel and Hamas may have reached a “ceasefire,” but Palestinian suffering continues unabated.

While Israel violated the ceasefire almost immediately, the western press says nothing about it. [I will be posting about this common scenario very soon.]

The recent missile exchange killed 12 Israelis and at least 288 Palestinians, including 69 children and 40 women. More than 8,900 others were injured in Gaza, many with life-threatening wounds.

Israeli bombing damaged or destroyed 187 Gazan schools, including 55 kindergartens and 132 elementary schools.

This man lost 14 family members in a single strike. Of course, all human lives are sacred. We are all created as the Image of God. But this one man lost more family members than were killed in the entire state of Israel.

Watch below to learn about his story:

Repost: Dispelling a Memorial Day Myth

[This Memorial Day weekend, I am reposting an article I shared several years ago. After listening yesterday to several speakers on Christian radio — neither of whom had served in the military or ever been to war — advertise the beauties of “Americanism” while defending Christian Nationalism and glorifying our military; hearing them disparage people like me who warn against the dangers of Christian Nationalism, I decided to resurrect this article.]

I wrote this article in 2006. It was originally published in Perspectives Journal  (August 1 issue).  It is as relevant today as it was then.

The only difference for me is that my father died several weeks ago of war related health problems.

“I’m an Army brat, the proud son of a proud veteran who completed four tours of duty in two separate conflicts. I am immensely grateful that my father always returned home, at least physically. My mother was never forced to grieve at her husband’s graveside, but there is more than one way for a soldier to die. Often the man who comes home is not the same man who left for war.

“I remember my mother’s stories of how his hands would encircle her throat at night as she crept into his nightmares, the sleeping wife lying next to him fused with the Chinese enemy crawling under his tent flap. I vividly recall the continual depression, the emotional detachment, the explosions of anger. Our family eroded (internally, if not externally) and gradually fell apart like a sand castle trying to withstand an oncoming tide.

“There is more than one way for a soldier to die. Sometimes the family that waits behind gets back only a shell of the man they once knew. Somewhere overseas the soldier’s insides are emptied onto a battlefield, scooped out by bombs and artillery, sleepless nights and ‘collateral damage.’ The father I once knew had been replaced by someone new, a stranger haunted by guilt and riddled with sickness.

“What do my mother and siblings have to celebrate on Memorial Day?

“Please, don’t urge me to remember the veterans who gave their lives so that we could be free. It’s cold comfort because it’s not true. Aside from the clearly religious overtones of those words, something my Christianity finds deeply offensive, my father’s life was not ruined while defending American freedom. Were that the case, I might be able to celebrate. But with the possible exception of World War II, what modern war has this nation fought for such noble purposes? None. My father’s life was hollowed out for a discredited domino theory that preserved American freedom by only the most strained exercise in mental gymnastics. (If Southeast Asia falls, we’re next!) In the end, half the Korean peninsula and the whole of Vietnam were ‘lost.’ Yet, our freedoms were not diminished one iota.

“Let’s be honest in our celebrations. My father’s comrades-in-arms died believing that they were defending American freedom. They died because this nation’s political leaders had convinced themselves that the borders of American national interests extended into Southeast Asia. But the verdict is now inescapable. American freedom was never at risk in any of those conflicts.

“Soldiers gladly give their lives defending the buddies huddled beside them.

Wounded U.S. paratroopers are helped by fellow soldiers to a medical evacuation helicopter on Oct. 5, 1965 during the Vietnam War. Paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s First Battalion suffered many casualties in the clash with Viet Cong guerrillas in the jungle of South Vietnam’s “D” Zone, 25 miles Northeast of Saigon. (AP Photo)

Soldiers die because they obey their orders, no matter how dangerous. Many die because they are patriots. Sometimes they die in the conviction that they are defending someone else’s freedom. More die because they didn’t know what else to do after high school graduation. Soldiers die because they trust their leaders and believe the rallying cries of the commander-in-chief. But none of this necessarily has anything to do with the defense of American freedom. History demonstrates that our soldiers most often die as instruments of the ambition, naivete, stubbornness, ignorance, arrogance, and miscalculations of our nation’s leaders.

Washington DC, USA – June 18, 2016: The Memorial Wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC at dawn.

“It is far more accurate to say that Memorial Day commemorates those men and women who unwittingly gave their lives for the extension of America foreign, political, and economic interests. But that’s neither catchy nor comfortable to repeat.

“In 1775 Samuel Johnson characterized patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel. It is also the first refuge of the masses unwilling to face hard political realities. I’ll stand to memorialize the patriot soldiers who gave their lives protecting a buddy while carrying out dangerous commands. But don’t ask me to memorialize a lie. My family has suffered enough for patriotic delusions.”

How Zionism Contributes to Antisemitism

Racist attacks against Jewish people, often in public and broad daylight, have increased in tandem with the worldwide demonstrations condemning

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, center, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, speaks in front of civic and faith leaders outside City Hall on May 20, 2021, in Los Angeles, condemning recent antisemitic attacks. (Marcio Jose Sanchez AP)

Israel’s bombing of Gaza. Support for the Palestinian people, in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, is more vocal and active than ever before.

But arguing for the equality of Palestinians is no excuse for antisemitism. Antisemitism is a form of racism.

The organization Jewish Voice for Peace defines antisemitism as “discrimination against, violence towards, or stereotypes of Jews for being Jewish.” They endorse the standard, historical definition of anti-Jewish racism. Racism demeans and violates others because of who they are in and of themselves.

Three suspects wanted in an antisemitic attack in Times Square on May 20 2021 according to police. (Credit NYPD)

Whenever someone attacks a Jewish person, whether overtly or covertly, simply for being Jewish, he is being antisemitic.

That mindset is unacceptable. It is sinful. It deserves to be condemned. Antisemites must be called to account. People guilty of this sin need to confess and repent, person to person, face to face, if possible.

Unfortunately, pro-Israel, pro-Zionist activists have introduced a new, troubling factor into the public understanding of antisemitism. And I am afraid that it is backfiring on the entire Jewish community.

Nowadays the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other, similar Jewish defense organizations have embraced a new definition of antisemitism that confuses the state of Israel and the policies of political Zionism with the Jewish people.

Israeli Zionism has consistently encouraged this confusion with its claims to represent world Jewry.

Israel defines itself as THE Jewish State for all Jews everywhere. It acts on behalf of the Jewish people.

Therefore, since it is a Jewish state, criticism of Israeli state policy equals criticism of the Jews. (This is not my formulation. Pro-Israel activists have a long history of arguing explicitly for this identification.)

But this argument creates a host of problems.

Logically, this identification of Israel = Jews is an example of something called a category mistake. It’s like identifying an elephant with an orange

Two suspects wanted in an antisemitic attack in Times Square on May 20, 2021, according to police. (Credit NYPD)

and saying they are the same thing. Elephants are in the mammalian-animal category. Oranges are in the fruit-plant category. Any argument that concludes by saying, “Therefore, elephants are fruit like an orange” would obviously be ridiculous.

But this is the same line of illogic followed by pro-Israel activists today when they condemn the recent outbreak of antisemitism. (Watch these two recent interviews with an ADL representative. He implies this same confusion here and here.)

A nation-state, like Israel, is a political entity. Jews are a collective of human beings, made as the Image of God. Criticizing the actions of a nation-state has no logical relation to discrimination against Jews as Jews.

I am afraid that this is where pro-Israel activists, like the ADL, have stabbed their fellow Jews in the back.

Anyone who attacks a Jewish stranger, believing that it is an appropriate expression of anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian commitment is guilty of the same category mistake as their pro-Israel opponents.

While I condemn all racism, discrimination, and violence, I have to point out that the antisemites now attacking Jewish citizens (and their property) are also following the pro-Israel line of argument to its illogical conclusion. If Israel represents all Jews everywhere, then any Jew anywhere can be held responsible for Israel’s crimes.

Yes, that is a thoroughly reprehensible conclusion, but it is no more reprehensible than the Zionist argument which says, “Israel is a Jewish State, therefore those who criticize Israel’s slaughtering of Palestinian civilians are antisemitic; they are also responsible for instigating the current outbreak of antisemitic attacks.”

Perhaps, the pro-Israel purveyors of this New Antisemitism (as it is called) should give themselves an ironic pat on the back.

Their deliberate, cynical conflation of Israel with world Jewry and Judaism has penetrated the collective subconscious of those pro-Palestinian activists who don’t stop to think any more clearly than they do.

The result is more tragedy and manipulation on both sides.

We See the Impending End of This World Every Day

The inevitable end of this world shows itself to us more and more every day. I am not thinking about epic battles in the Middle East, or the attacks of “Gog and Magog” from the book of Revelation.

No. Our looming Armageddon surrounds us already. Yet, too many remain too blind to see and too hard-hearted to care.

I think of these things whenever I walk with my granddaughter through my wife’s flower garden. As a child I had a meager butterfly collection. I still recall the abundance of brilliantly colored butterflies flitting around my boyhood home every spring and summer.

Last week I told my granddaughter about how I once collected shimmering specimens of God’s most unlikely aerial acrobats. (How in the world DO those wings work, anyway?!)

But I won’t teach this 5 year old how to begin a collection of her own. Nowadays, butterflies are a rarity — at least, in comparison to their past abundance.  Many species, such as the glorious monarch butterfly, are

India now suffers intense drought regularly

nearing extinction.

The day is approaching when wild butterflies visiting a child’s flower garden will be a very rare treat, enjoyed by only a few.

We are destroying our world.

The earth is on its last legs. Global warming is an indisputable scientific fact. Climatologists tell us that we have past the tipping point. The current

Graph of rising, global temperatures

trajectory of intensifying heat is now irreversible.

More and more areas of this globe will become uninhabitable. Rising sea levels will flood coastlines around the world, displacing millions of people. Intensifying droughts will create more emigrant farmers, such as the thousands of Honduran immigrants fleeing to our southern border in part because their parched, cracked farmlands will no longer produce crops.

I now read Revelation 16:8-9 from a new perspective:

The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was allowed to scorch people with fire. They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.

I share these thoughts by way of introduction.

My friend Suzanne McDonald, theology professor at Western Seminary, has

Professor Suzanne McDonald

written an excellent chapter for the recent book, Human Flourishing (Pickwick 2020). Her important chapter is entitled, “Waiting with Eager Longing: The Inseparability of Human Flourishing from the Flourishing of All Creation.”

Suzanne pulls together and highlights the numerous Old Testament texts where God commands — yes, COMMANDS — his people to carefully tend his creation. Human beings were given the direct responsibility to ensure the environment’s longevity by focusing on sustainability. Not exploitation, but sustainability.

Here is an excerpt, but I encourage you to buy the book and meditate of the entirety of Suzanne’s wisdom. Our future literally depends on it. (All emphases are mine):

One of my passions outside of theology is birding, so the final command to which I will draw our attention is irresistible to me. It is Deuteronomy 22.6-7, “If you come on a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs, with the mother sitting on the fledglings or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. Let the mother go, taking only the young for yourself, in order that it may go well with you and you may live long.”

Once again, very evidently this command is not simply about how to treat birds. It is about what we would call today “sustainability,” and the message is simple. If God’s people keep on killing mother birds as well as baby birds, eventually there will no longer be any mother birds, and then there will not be any more baby birds either. So, leave the mother birds alone!

We might well consider this to be completely obvious, and so it is, but it should not escape our notice that we are doing the equivalent of what God forbids in this command all the time. We are overexploiting natural resources of every

Monarch butterflies are nearing extinction.

kind. We are destroying habitats and driving species to extinction at an alarming rate. In addition to extinctions, the sheer number of other living creatures has dropped precipitously in recent decades. The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report in 2018 indicated a sixty percent drop in the overall numbers of animals, birds, aquatic creatures, and reptiles since 1970. This means there are sixty percent fewer creatures in the chorus of creation’s praise to God within many of our lifetimes.

In other words, to return to Deuteronomy 22.6-7, we are taking the mother birds as well as the baby birds, so to speak, and God know that if we continue to do that, it will not go well with us, and we will not live long in the land. . .

. . . The implications for us are the same as they were for ancient Israel: requiring us to put limits on our perceived needs, and to stop our willful exploitation of the rest of creation for short-term gain, and to look instead to the flourishing of the whole of creation, and of the poor, and [of our] own longer-term flourishing too. And the flip side of this is clear in scripture as well. Sinful disobedience to God’s commands leads to devastating consequences for the rest of creation as well as for us. . .

. . . Intentionally seeking the flourishing of the rest of creation, even when that is costly for us and pushes against what seems to be our immediate self-interest, should not be a matter of indifference to Christians, still less of the kind fierce resistance which is a lamentable feature of the current political polarization in the United States and elsewhere. Wise earthkeeping should be an intrinsic element of Christian discipleship, as part of what it means to love the triune Creator God will all of our being, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (54-55).

 

Leader of Israeli Jewish Mob Admits, “Today We Are Nazis.”

During the recent violence in Israel/Palestine, mob rule seemed to be the norm in many Israeli neighborhoods, especially after dark. Both Jews and Palestinians fell victim to racist attacks.

Israeli Jewish extremists wave Israeli flags amid a night time curfew in the central city of Lydd Oren ZivPicture AllianceDPA  [Notice that the Jewish demonstrators are violating the curfew. Yet police are standing with them making no attempt to enforce the order.]
Two days ago, the Electronic Intifada printed an extensively documented story about the Jewish mobs that were roaming the streets of Palestinian communities and assaulting residents.

The article, “‘Today we are Nazis,’ says member of Israeli Jewish extremist group,” was written by Ali Abunimah and Tamara Nassar. It includes extensive video evidence and other documentation verifying their claims.

Here is an excerpt:

Israeli Jewish extremists used instant messaging services to organize armed militias to attack Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Voice messages, texts and other communications indicate they coordinated attacks in cities where Palestinians live in close proximity to Jews – including Haifa, Bat Yam and Tiberias in the north, and Ramla and Lydd – Lod in Hebrew – in the center, to Beersheba in southern Israel.

Settlers from Jewish-only colonies in the occupied West Bank also joined the coordinated attacks, with the apparent knowledge and collusion of Israeli officials.

They communicated via WhatsApp and Telegram, as well as Facebook groups.

In many cases, extremist organizers said they relied on either the active or passive support of Israeli authorities.

Israeli research organizations Fake Reporter and HaBloc intercepted messages from some of those groups and reported what they found to Israeli police as a “ticking time-bomb.”

“It’s painful to know that despite our attempts, very little was actually done,” Fake Reporter said.

“No one in the authorities could claim that they did not know,” HaBloc said.

In screenshots from the groups posted by Fake Reporter, members talked about types of weapons and made plans for where to meet up in order to attack Palestinians and burn mosques. They engaged in virulent racism and incitement against Palestinians.

The messages were released in the context of recent attacks by extremist Jewish Israelis on Palestinians, their homes and businesses as Israel escalated its attacks on the occupied West Bank and Gaza over the last week.

“We are no longer Jews today,” one user wrote in a Telegram group titled “People from Holon, Bat Yam and Rishon Lezion go out to bring war.”

“Today we are Nazis.”

These towns are suburbs south of Tel Aviv.

You can read the entire article here.

Here is the Link to My Webinar Conversation about Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism

For those of you who could not watch the Webinar live on Tuesday, here are a few links that will connect you to the recording. Thanks for your interest and engagement:

A link to the Network for Evangelicals for the Middle East resource page containing links to various webinars from the past:  https://neme.network/resources/

A link to my webinar discussing “Two Chosen Peoples?” Two Promised Lands?” Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism under Trump and Biden”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_kdwlYNm8U

A link to the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East: https://neme.network/about/

 

When Are Palestinians Allowed to Defend Themselves?

American and Israeli officials repeatedly remind us that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” It is the standard refrain whenever Israel unleashes another conflagration upon the people of Gaza.

In fact, it is the perennial explanation for anything and everything the Israeli military does that results in the death or injury of Palestinians, whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or Israeli proper.

Israel’s right to self-defense is the diplomatic equivalent of Abracadabra, making all details, questions, and specific circumstances irrelevant when it comes to reporting events on the ground in Israel/Palestine.

Regardless of the situation, no matter the sequence of events, whenever Israeli power meets and defeats a Palestinian standing in its way, the bloody outcome is always chalked up to Israel’s right to self-defense.

But when do Palestinians have the right to defend themselves?

When are they finally given permission to stand up and say, “Enough is enough! We are not going to take this oppression anymore.”

By what law does Israel and its allies serve as judge and jury in adjudicating these “rights” on the world stage, determining the guilty and the innocent from their bastions of power and privilege?

I was sitting in the small kitchen of a Palestinian family living in the Dheisheh refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem. As in so many Palestinian homes, three generations shared the tiny space together, continuing to bear witness to the aggrieved ancestors who fled their home in 1948. Terrified of the approaching Israeli army, they hoped to escape the bloodshed that had taken so many others before them.

Now they lived in fear of night raids and random shootings carried out by the Israeli army in their refugee camp.

My friend served as translator as the matriarch of the family updated me on the family story. Five of us were crowded together sipping coffee in the living room. The woman’s two sons sat in chairs on either side of me. She held a shy granddaughter on her lap while the child’s mother stood back in the kitchen listening to our conversation.

Both men were home briefly from the local hospital. They had returned to eat lunch and would go back for more treatment when they were finished. Each of them was wrapped in fresh bandages, one around his waist, the other on his leg. Neither could walk without assistance.

They both were recovering from gunshot wounds given to them by Israeli soldiers.

They were walking home after dark when neighbors warned them to be careful. The IDF (Israeli Defense Force) was conducting another night raid, breaking down doors, invading homes, pulling people out of their beds and arresting them for unknown “offenses.”

As these brothers got close to home, flashlights peered from around a corner shining abruptly into their faces. Quickly running up the short flight of stairs to the front door, shots rang out.

Opening the door and falling inside, both men had been hit. One in the leg. The other in the abdomen. Two expanding pools of blood now decorated the kitchen’s linoleum.

Israeli soldiers burst in after them and ran-sacked the house. The place was torn apart. Chairs, a baby’s crib, and bedding materials all ruined. I asked for permission to photograph the damage to make some small record of their claims.

After determining that the brothers were not the men they were looking for, the soldiers walk out leaving the panicked grandmother and wife to deal with their wounded, bleeding menfolk on their own.

Fortunately, neighbors who owned a car quickly got the two men to the local hospital where they received emergency medical aid. This was not their night to bleed to death as victims of Israel’s “shoot first and ask questions later” policing policy.

But there will be other nights. And many, many future opportunities to be crippled, wounded, maimed, or die at the hands of Israeli soldiers.

The family is now left to cover the medical expenses for themselves. No one receives a Sorry We Shot You letter in the mail. No one from the Israeli government ever comes around to say, “Oh, sorry. We shot you by mistake. Our bad! We meant to kill someone else. Let us pay your hospital bills.”

Nope. If you are a Palestinian, it’s all on you. After all, your mere existence is a pain in the ass to Israel’s ever expansive settler colonial enterprise. The soldiers had hoped you would bleed out on the kitchen floor. Couldn’t you take the hint? That’s why they didn’t give you any medical assistance at the time.

This is daily life for the Palestinians living in the West Bank. Gaza stories are even more horrific than this. But that will have to wait for another post some other day.

Imagine living in this fragile environment, under this type of interminable threat day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Not just in one location, but in many, many places all throughout your homeland where dozens and dozens of others are abused in similar ways over and over again with no end in sight.

No one ever comes to your assistance. No one stands up for you. No one defends you. No one tells Israel that they have to stop mistreating you, now.

So, one day, you decide to stand up for yourself. You are not going to take it anymore.

The only question is: when will the rest of the world wake up and recognize that Palestinians have a right to defend themselves?

Don’t Miss the Online Seminar Tomorrow: Two Chosen Peoples? Two Promised Lands?

I invite you to join me tomorrow at 12:00 Eastern Time for a Webinar entitled “Two Chosen Peoples? Two Promised Lands? Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism under Trump and Biden.”

My fellow panelists are Lisa Sharon Harper and L. Daniel Hawk. I am sure we will have a lively conversation about a pressing issue in world news. Our moderator will be professor Andrea Smith.

Click this link to register:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2up_wyTWQ_CpGHeule7xHQ

“Our Lives Don’t Matter to the World”

Today I have been in contact with one of my Palestinian friends in the West Bank (what Israel calls Samaria and Judea).

A demonstration in Bethlehem

Street demonstrations have been organized in several cities to show the people’s outrage over the Israeli attacks against worshipers praying in the al-Aqsa mosque.

They are also protesting Israel’s massive bombing campaign in Gaza now killing men, women, and children.

The fact that Israel claims that Hamas has launched over 1,100 missiles into Israel demonstrates how amateurish and ineffective the Hamas rockets

Israeli soldiers in Bethlehem streets

really are. They lack targeting abilities and the vast majority explode in unpopulated areas.

I asked my friend if he thought these tragic events were the beginning of another Intifada (Arabic for “uprising.” Since the 1980s, there have been two intifadas in Israel-Palestine.)

He said, “Yes. I think it’s already begun.”

Israeli soldiers are attacking and arresting many unarmed, peaceful demonstrators. But this is standard fare in the Occupied Territories.

Palestinians have no civil rights whatsoever.

My friend asked me why the US president won’t tell Israel to stop the Gaza bombings.

You can read his words for yourself:

People here are fed up. I hope this will be over soon. Lives are lost. This seems like the only route for us to get attention. (Israel’s) persecutions and more grabbing of lands and rights are unbeatable now.  They (Israelis) keep pushing and killing and we are asked to keep quiet and peaceful. They push and kill but our lives don’t matter to the world, and this so-called civilized country (the US) is calling us the terrorists and poor Israel has the right to defend itself. The US administration calls the security of Israel a matter of American national security. Isn’t there a courageous journalist to ask the speaker of the house,  “Why is that so?”

I wish I could tell him that Palestinian lives DID matter to the United States.

But, then, I would by lying.