(I will write a post about Israel’s bombardment of Gaza later today.)
Israel is a settler-colonial state, much like the USA, Australia, Canada, and South Africa.
One of the defining goals of every settler-colonial state is the elimination of the native. Israel has created a massive state apparatus that works to accomplish this goal, whether through annexing Palestinian territory, building separation walls, home demolitions, zoning restrictions, or travel restrictions, to name only a few.
Continuing efforts to erase both the history and the contemporary existence of the Palestinian people appears, again, in the videos below.
I could post multiple videos like these every week, but I choose to limit them in order to cover a wider range of topics. However, the historical erasure of any group of human beings is always a story deserving of our attention.
As Israeli citizens are suffering voting burn-out due to their fractious, unstable parliamentary system of government, the journalist Gideon Levy urges his nation to become “a normal country.”
In light of Russia’s recent threats to evict the Jewish Agency from Russian society, many are wondering, “What’s so bad about the Jewish Agency? Is this more antisemitism from Putin?”
Good questions. Why is Putin doing this? And what would it mean for Israel to become “normal”?
Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy
Check out Levy’s editorial below. It may surprise you (all emphasis is mine):
To be a normal country – that, too, is an option. We could start, for example, with a normal immigration policy, as is customary in any normal country. Railing against Russian President Vladimir Putin over his intention to put a stop to Israel’s subversive activities against his country – intentions that are immeasurably justified – demonstrate that the path toward normality is still long and arduous. As long as Israel continues to hold the mentality that “we are allowed to do anything” and that “we’re not like other countries,” the path toward normality will be endlessly longer.
And here’s more proof that there’s no difference between one Israeli government and the next: An issue that is untouchable no matter what government is in power is the sanctity of Israel’s immigration policy. And if the Law of Return [a law granting all Jews everywhere in the world automatic citizenship] is accorded primacy among laws, immigration policy is the last of the issues that would be debated.
In seeking to shut down the operations of the Jewish Agency for Israel in his country, Putin has sought to put an end to a foreign country’s intervention in Russia’s domestic affairs. It’s not difficult to guess what would have happened if Warsaw had openly attempted to have emissaries from the Polish establishment stationed in Israel to encourage former Polish Jews and their descendants to return to Poland. But when it comes to Israel’s efforts, it’s all right.
Putin will clearly have to back down on his demand, because the Jewish establishment is stronger, but we don’t need Putin to ask not only by what right but for what purpose Israel is pursuing its activities there. Why does Israel have to meddle in other countries in an attempt to recruit, to coax, bribe or convince Jews, half-Jews or quarter-Jews to immigrate here?
What is the purpose of this entire bloated network of emissaries around the world? What’s the purpose of all those ridiculous Birthright and Masa programs when it’s clear that there’s no more room here?
Israel is a country bursting at the seams, but it still wants more and more immigrants. Its passion for aliyah is insatiable – in a country that already has a population of 9.5 million living on an extremely narrow strip of land. The Jews of the world should therefore have been told: Come here only if you have no alternative. It’s crowded here, even in the sea, and there’s not a parking spot to be had.
Jews are secure and prospering almost everywhere in the world. Israel is less secure than anywhere else, but Jews are being called upon to come and save themselves here of all places, in this crowded and troubled land. And the problem isn’t only that it’s out of space, since Israel can always conquer additional land. The problem is also in the justification for its immigration policy.
It is necessarily based on a racist outlook. It was right in its time. One could understand and even admire the unceasing efforts to bring large numbers of Jews here to build a country here – and to rescue them from the horrors in their countries of origin. But both of these efforts have long been completed.
The country was established and has become a world power and at the present, Jews aren’t facing horrors anywhere in the world. The flags should have been folded up and the second phase of Zionism – which never happened – should have been initiated. And that involves making Israel a normal country.
A normal country has an immigration policy based on its needs and principles. Israel’s immigration policy needs to take the needs and rights of all of its citizens into account. For example, saving relatives in distress – in Ethiopia and Ukraine, as well as in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Syria.
Consider the name Birthright. Israel is encouraging young Americans to visit the country on a propaganda trip, in the company of armed guards to demonstrate the dangers, to coax them to immigrate here solely based on their origin. And sometimes they’ve even been required to undergo DNA testing to verify that they’re Jewish.
But what about the natives of the country who have no birthright?Why wasn’t an elderly Palestinian woman from Haifa living in exile in Syria not permitted to return to the city of her birth in her old age when a civil war was raging in Syria? Find one convincing reason. And why doesn’t her brother, an Israeli citizen, have the standing to save her? Jeremy from New York and Leonid from Kyiv can come here to live but not Sa’adia from Yarmouk.
It’s a Jewish state. So be it, but why entirely Jewish? Why only Jewish?And why Jewish by force? How is it Jewish if half of its subjects, those under Israel’s authority, aren’t Jewish? And what would happen if we would dismantle all the moldy and fossilized aliyah institutions?
Israel would begin turning into a normal country. That’s all.
It is mind-numbingly absurd to hear the president of the United States seriously referring to “the two state solution” as the best hope for the Palestinian people.
The supposed “two state solution” died years ago, asphyxiated beneath the weight of 700,000 illegal Jewish settlers occupying hundreds of illegal, Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank; buried beneath the unending
U.S. President Joe Biden signs the visitors book as Israeli President Isaac Herzog looks on at his residence in Jerusalem, July 14, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli land grabs, government annexations of “military zones,” illegal home demolitions, unremitting crop destruction, orchards butchered, olive trees and vineyards uprooted, not to mention the brutal, suffocating military occupation now entering its 75th year.
As Israeli journalist Gideon Levy explains, Biden’s appeal to the future prospects of a two-state solution, one for Israel and one for Palestinians, expresses America’s surrender to Israel’s stone-cold hard-heartedness, inflexibility, and Zionism’s blinding belief in Jewish, ethnic entitlement.
Posing as a neutral mediator, while never — no never — acting as anything of the sort, the US has encouraged decades of false hope and wasted effort in supposed “Peace Talks” between Israel and the Palestinian leadership.
Granted, Yasser Arafat was a foolish negotiator — but never the intransigent deceiver that Israel and the USA always made him out to be — and the PLO made plenty of irresponsible mistakes while betraying their own people.
But as Israel’s greatest political supporter, financier, and supplier of military hardware and technology, the US never intended to assist the Palestinians in their efforts to escape Israeli’s colonial domination.
For instance, when dealing with the Likud negotiators under Begin and Netanyahu, the US never — never — challenged the Likud party platform proclaiming that Israel would never permit the creation of a Palestinian state.
If that’s not reprehensible collusion, I don’t know what is.
After all, what are 4.5 million Palestinian refugees when compared to two colonial, nuclear armed super-powers pledged to watch each other’s backs? The strategic interests of neither America nor Israel has ever included the moral imperative of justice for oppressed, brown-skinned, Arab human beings.
Why has anyone ever been foolish enough to imagine otherwise?
At Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem, of all places, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a death certificate. The two-state solution died a long time ago, and now so has the Palestinians’ strategic choice of relying on the West in their struggle for their national rights.
This hope drew its last breath at Augusta Victoria. In his speech Biden mused at great length about his and his family’s time in the hospital; he remembered the intensive care ward. A flat line on the monitor meant death, he learned there. About an hour later, in Bethlehem, the monitor flatlined. The path the Palestinians embarked on 50 years ago has come to an end. They have reached a dead end.
At the beginning of the ‘70s, a new star appeared in the political skies: the cardiologist Issam Sartawi, a refugee from Acre, a student in Iraq, an exile in Paris and an architect of the plane hijackings. He underwent a complete change. He became the Palestinians’ trailblazer to the West’s heart; until then they had relied on nonaligned countries. Sartawi led the Palestinians to Bonn, Vienna, Paris and Stockholm instead of Moscow, Jakarta, Delhi and Kuala Lumpur.
This was depicted as an excellent choice. The protégé and even the darling of Western Europe’s social democratic stars of those days – Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky, Olof Palme and François Mitterrand – continued on to the Israelis’ hearts. Sartawi began with meetings with representatives of the Israeli left. Yasser Arafat enthusiastically joined the path his adviser had blazed. It seemed much more promising than winning support from Karachi.
Fifty years later this road has reached its end, with the Palestinians bleeding on the ground. An American president only gives them a few hours – on a visit that gives new meaning to the terms doing the minimum and lip service. So the time has come to awaken from the dream that Europe and America will ever do something for the Palestinians that won’t be to the satisfaction of their unassailable cherished one, Israel.
It’s a president who doesn’t bother to correctly pronounce the name of Shireen Abu Akleh, [Biden mispronounced her name as Abu Al-Qaeda!] the journalist killed almost certainly by Israel, becoming a national and international symbol. Jamal Khashoggi he knows how to pronounce. The Palestinians no longer have anything to look for in this arena. When Biden quoted from a poem that says how “hope and history rhyme” and threw them $100 million for Augusta Victoria, it was clear that it’s lost with the United States.
With an American president who promises them a two-state solution, but “not in the near term,” you get to the end of the story. You feel like asking Biden: “What will happen ‘not in the long term’ that will achieve this solution? Will the Israelis decide on their own? Will the settlers return on their own? When there are a million of them instead of 700,000, will that satisfy them?
Will America ever think differently? Why should this happen? With the laws against BDS and the new and distorted definitions of antisemitism, the United States and Europe are lost as far as the Palestinians are concerned. The battle has been decided, Israel has all but beaten them, and their fate might be the same as that of the indigenous peoples in the United States.
It’s enough to look at the picture of the meeting in Bethlehem: Twelve grim Palestinian men in ties around the two leaders in a group photo of despair. It’s enough to recall Biden’s words in 1986 to the secretary of state at the time, George Shultz: “I hate to hear an administration … refusing to act on a morally important point. … I’m ashamed that this country puts out a policy like this, that says nothing, nothing.”
Biden was referring to U.S. policy on the previous apartheid country, South Africa. Amazingly similar remarks can be hurled now at Biden because of his approach to the second apartheid country. But there’s no Biden to hurl them.
Israel-Palestine news recently published a story about Israel’s arrest and conviction of a Christian official with the humanitarian organization, World Vision.
Israel targeted NGOs and Palestinian children in one fell swoop in the June 2016 arrest of Mohammad Al Halabi – World Vision- Australia director of the West Bank and Gaza
But this is a standard Israeli move. Despite a lack of evidence — in fact, the defense produced abundant evidence demonstrating that the accused was completely innocent — Israel moved aggressively on its bogus charges.
Israel found Mohammed El Halabi guilty of diverting $50 million from World Vision charity, ignoring compelling facts: the total budget for 10 years was under $23 million; El Halabi’s alleged ‘confession’ was directed by Israeli authorities; independent audits showed Israeli charges were unfounded; and both the Australian government (a major donor to World Vision) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) conducted special reviews and found no wrongdoing.
In violation of international law, Israel kept Mohammed El Halabi in prison for weeks before he was allowed access to an attorney, and before informing his family of his whereabouts. He reported that his Israeli interrogators beat him – the UN says his treatment “may amount to torture.”
Israel’s reliance on highly questionable “secret evidence” to convict El Halabi (and thousands of other Palestinians) indicates a deeply flawed judicial system.
Though I can’t agree with his theology, I can’t help but have the deepest admiration for Dr. Cornel West. He was denied tenure at Harvard because of his outspoken defense of the Palestinian people suffering under Israeli apartheid.
In this clip from Middle East Eye, he explain the complicity of US media in covering up Israeli war crimes.
The organization known as Defense for Children International, Palestine monitors the abuse of Palestinian children in the Occupied Territories (Gaza and the West Bank.)
They recently posted a horrifying story about a teenage girl being used as a
Ahed-Mohammad-Rida-Mereb. She was made a human shield by Israeli soldiers, made to stand in front of their Jeep, in the middle of a crossfire.
“human shield” by Israeli forces in the northern, West Bank refugee camp of Jenin.
The Israeli military often refers to itself as “the most moral army in the world.” But you must understand the ideology of political Zionism in order to understand the meaning of this slogan.
To the average westerner, being called “the most moral army in the world” means that Israeli soldiers always obey international law, will never commit war crimes, and will always fight justly and fairly.
Don’t believe it.
This phrase is actually another Zionist word game. But you won’t get the joke if you don’t understand what makes political Zionism tick. In the Zionist world, the most moral thing any Jewish person can do is to defend the Jewish state.
Thus, the “morality” of the Israeli military is not measured by international law or humanitarian standards of fair play or just war theory. These concerns have no bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsehood of Israel’s military proposition.
Instead, Israel’s military is supremely moral because they are “defending” the Jewish nation-state. And THAT, by definition, is the apex of military morality.
Consequently, I am not surprised to read this heartbreaking story of life-threatening child abuse committed by Israeli forces.
By the way, also notice the example of another war crime mentioned briefly at the end of this story. Because the teenager’s older brother was a wanted man, the army fire-bombed her family home.
This form of collective punishment is also a war crime regularly performed by Israel forces against Palestinian families. Imagine if your cousin had committed a crime but law enforcement came to destroy your home simply because you were family.
Israel does this, and so much more, all the time.
Read Ahed’s story below:
Ramallah, May 19, 2022—Israeli soldiers used a 16-year-old Palestinian girl as a human shield in front of an Israeli military vehicle while deployed in the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin last week.
Israeli soldiers forced Ahed Mohammad Rida Mereb, 16, to stand in front of an Israeli military vehicle on May 13 around 8 a.m. in the Al Hadaf neighborhood of Jenin as Palestinian gunmen shot heavily toward the Israeli forces’ position, according to information collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Israeli forces ordered Ahed to stand outside the military vehicle for around two hours while they sat inside.
“International law is explicit and absolutely prohibits the use of children as human shields by armed forces or armed groups,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program director at Defense for Children International – Palestine. “Israeli forces intentionally putting a child in grave danger in order to shield themselves constitutes a war crime.”
Israeli forces besieged Ahed’s home around 6 a.m. on May 13 in order to arrest her 20-year-old brother, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Israeli forces ordered Ahed, her parents, and her two younger brothers out of the house and to move to a yard across the street. Israeli forces exchanged fire with Ahed’s older brother, who remained in the house. Around 8 a.m., Palestinian gunmen shot heavily toward an Israeli military vehicle, which is when Israeli forces ordered Ahed to stand outside the military vehicle.
“Bullets were being fired at the military vehicle from all directions,” Ahed told DCIP. “I was trembling and crying and shouting to the soldiers to remove me because the bullets were passing over my head, but one of them ordered me in Arabic through a small window in the military vehicle, ‘Stay where you are and don’t move. You’re a terrorist. Stand in your place until you say goodbye to your brother.’”
Ahed tried to tilt her head to the side to dodge the bullets, but one of the Israeli soldiers ordered her to stand up straight, according to information collected by DCIP. Ahed stood in front of the Israeli military vehicle for about two hours before running to a nearby tree and collapsing on the ground, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
Around two hours later, Israeli forces evacuated Ahed’s two-story house, where she lived with her parents, three brothers, grandparents, two uncles and their wives, and their eight children ranging in age from one to 11 years old, according to information collected by DCIP. After the family evacuated, Israeli forces bombed the house with rocket-propelled grenades, which caused the house to catch on fire. Israeli forces also shot live ammunition at the house, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
Israeli forces withdrew from Ahed’s neighborhood around 11 a.m. She learned that Israeli forces arrested her older brother and that neighborhood residents posted on social media that she was being used as a human shield by Israeli forces, which led the Palestinian gunmen to stop shooting at the Israeli military vehicle.
Ahed was transferred by private vehicle to Jenin Hospital and was treated for intense mental stress and a severe lack of oxygen, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
The use of civilians as human shields, wherein civilians are forced to directly assist military operations or used to shield armed forces or armed groups or objects from attack, is prohibited under international law. The practice is also prohibited under Israeli law based on a 2005 ruling by the Israeli High Court of Justice.
Since 2000, DCIP has documented at least 26 cases involving Palestinian children being used as human shields by the Israeli army. All except one case have occurred after the Israeli High Court of Justice ruling. Only one of those cases led to the conviction of two soldiers for “inappropriate behavior” and “overstepping authority.” Both were demoted in rank and given three-month suspended sentences.
David J. Rothkopf is an American professor of international relations, political scientist and journalist.
Today’s issue of Haaretz newspaper published an insightful comparison witten by Rothkopf of the essential similarity between yesterday’s attack by Israeli soldiers against the murdered Palestinian journalist’s, Shireen Abu Aqla’s, funeral procession in east Jerusalem, and the mass murder of 10 African-American’s in Buffalo, NY by a young, white supremacist.
What do both have in common? Professor Rothkopf hits a bull’s eye when he says, Ethnic Nationalism.
The mass murderer in Buffal0 is a white supremacist worried about white people being “replaced” by immigrants and other people of color. In other words, he killed for his dream of a “white’s only nation.”
The entire Israeli state apparatus is built upon the foundation of Jewish supremacy, a supremacy that the Jewish state will defend at all costs. The murder of the Palestinian journalist, Ms. Abu Aqla; the unprovoked attack against her funeral procession; the continued military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, are all examples of Israel’s continuing efforts to preserve a “Jew’s only nation.”
Ethnic nationalism is never pretty.
My single disagreement with Rothkopf concerns his idea that Jewish ethnic nationalism is embraced only by Israel’s right-wing. However, my book, Like Birds in a Cage shows how very, very wrong this misconception is.
An 18-year-old walks into a grocery store in Buffalo, New York and opens fire, killing ten. On the barrel of his gun is written a racist epithet so offensive that most media simply refer to it as the “n-word.”
Israeli police brutally assault mourners at the funeral of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. They rip the Palestinian flag off the hearse carrying Abu Akleh’s coffin.
Two events, worlds apart. What could they possibly have in common?
After all, the Buffalo shooter, Payton S. Gendron, was an avowed antisemite who feared that Jews and Blacks and people of color were seeking to “replace” whites. Another symbol on his gun, the number 14, evoked a white supremacist credo, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” He was a criminal.
According to the Israeli police they were seeking to “facilitate a calm andIsraeli soldiers attack mourners and pall bearers at Ms. Abu Aqla’s funeral procession.
dignified funeral.” What could their behavior possibly have to do with that of an unhinged racist who perceived those who were different from him as a mortal threat and, as a result, felt justified in turning to violence against them? . . .
. . . the underlying impetus behind both assaults was hatred fueled by fear of the “other.” Yes, both Gendron and the Israeli police acted with reckless disregard human life or decency. Yes, the police and Gendron were both actively protecting a world view in which people of different races and creeds were seen as lesser, in which denying them basic freedoms, even depriving them of life, has become commonplace.
Yes, the white replacement theory espoused by Gendron was promoted by right-wing media like Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. And yes, when Fox star Tucker Carlson was attacked for espousing “white replacement theory,” his defense was to cite the case of Israel: “It is unrealistic and unacceptable to expect the State of Israel to voluntarily subvert its own sovereign existence and nationalist identity and become a vulnerable minority within what was once its own territory.”
And as repulsive as Carlson’s comments were, the logic that brought him to cite Israeli views toward Palestinians was akin to American white supremacists’ views toward non-Christians and non-whites is easily understood.
The racism and hate-mongering of right-wing media in both countries is linked directly to political parties in the U.S. and Israel who have tapped into race hatred and fears to fuel their popularity. . .
. . . Both acts flowed from irrational hate fueled by ethno-nationalist politicians who have made crimes like these ever more likely, offered the predicate for the attacks (even if the monstrous behavior was very different in nature), and one way or another made available the weapons used in the crimes. . .
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Here is an exercise in seeing the difference that “framing” makes in the way different “authorities” can tell the same story to very different effects.
The first clip below is from an Israeli national news program. You will hear a conversation about yesterday’s fatal shooting of the Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh. Listen and make a few mental notes on what you hear.
What is emphasized? What are the guest’s primary concerns? What do you think is omitted from this discussion?
The next clip is from the alternative news site Democracy Now. Amy Goodman talks with Dr. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward W. Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University.
You will notice that professor Khalidi’s way of framing of the shooting is very different from Dan Perry’s framing in the Israeli clip.
Make some mental notes. What is Khalidi’s emphasis? What does he discuss that you did not hear in the previous interview? What did Mr. Perry discuss that you do not hear about from Khalidi?
How can you account for these differences?
A number of issues strike me as very important.
First, notice how Mr. Perry frames the issues in terms of competing media narratives, or battling storylines. He laments that fact that, in his opinion, Israel is currently “losing” the media battle to the Palestinian version of the story.
Personally, I do not believe that he has a basis for his lament, although his focus of the public’s perception of Israel — quite apart from what actually happened — is typical of what you will hear from Israeli representatives.
Second, I also hear Perry repeat the characteristic lament over “Israeli victimhood”; my words, not his. For the Israeli propaganda machine (yes, I know, I am letting my own framing show itself at this point), Israel is always under attack; Israel is always the innocent victim; any and all accusations made against Israeli behavior are inevitable examples of the world’s eternal hatred of the Jews.
This victim mentality is an essential component of political Zionism.
Third, I do agree with Perry, however, when he criticizes the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for refusing to cooperate in a joint enquiry into the shooting. This is a foolish move on his part, which will hopefully be overturned quickly.
Fourth, notice the alternative framing offered by professor Khalidi. He describes this shooting as another in a long line of murderous incidents illustrating the brutality of Israeli settler-colonialism — a perspective with which I happen to agree.
Naturally, Mr. Perry never raises this settler-colonial perspective because the majority of Israelis refuse to see themselves in this light. This is not surprising, however.
All throughout history, colonizers have always tried to whitewash their
Filling a mass grave with frozen Lakota bodies after the massacre at Wounded Knee (1890)
crimes, in one way or another. Guilt is always laid at the feet of those who have been colonized. The settlers were bringing civilization to eradicate the barren wilderness and to bring enlightenment to primitive people.
Both the bloodshed, the shirking of responsibility, and the political rhetoric in Israel-Palestine are no different. This is why the two video clips above offer such divergent analyses.
The frozen body of Spotted Elk, leader of the Sioux band slaughtered at Wounded Knee in 1890
Think of the 17th to the 19th century settlement history of the United States. The white, European settlers commonly, almost universally, framed themselves as the innocent victims of Native savagery.
To the white mind, the Indians were always the senseless aggressors. Every
settler storyline began at the moment the Indians appeared threatening or attacked,
Spotted Elk’s village at Wounded Knee prior to the cavalry’s attack. Government authorities feared the Lakota enthusiasm for the new Ghost Dance ceremonies might lead to rebellion
unjustly, inexplicably. Rarely did anyone discuss what the settlers had been doing to the Natives beforehand.
White settlers also never lacked a noble justification for their latest betrayal.
Modern Israel is the last settler-colonial state in this world of ours, and we are seeing the same colonial distortions of history working themselves out in Israel-Palestine today.
Israel’s airwaves provide the final frontier of media battles over “competing narratives.” Israel, and its many Zionist sympathizers, tell their stories from the settlers’ perspective.
Frozen, dead bodies and burned teepees are all that remain after the soldiers attack at Wounded Knee
Palestinians, on the other hand, tell their stories from the Native perspective. The Palestinian narrative, whether or not it “wins” the nonstop media battle, explains how a powerless, conquered people continue to be abused by their conquerors, conquerors who hold the power and always carry the biggest weapons.
In the wake of yesterday’s murder of Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military, Mr. Levy recalls the numerous innocent Palestinians who have also been murdered recently in the West Bank.
Ms. Abu Akleh is not an outlier. Rather, her circumstances are characteristic of Israel’s ongoing colonial atrocities. The Palestinians are a subordinate, oppressed, occupied people. Israel holds all the power.
Below is Mr. Levy’s article (all emphasis is mine):
Al Jazeera reporter, Shireen Abu Akleh
The relative horror expressed over the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh is justified and necessary. It is also belated and self-righteous. Now you’re appalled? The blood of a famous journalist, no matter how brave and experienced she was – and she was – is no redder than the blood of an anonymous high school student who was traveling home in a taxi full of women in this same Jenin a month ago when she was killed by gunfire from Israeli soldiers.
That is how Hanan Khadour was killed. Then, too, the military spokesman tried to cast doubt on the shooters’ identity: “The matter is being examined.” A month has passed, and this “examination” has yielded nothing, and never will – but the doubts were planted, and they sprouted in the Israeli fields of denial and suppression, where no one actually cares about the fate of a 19-year-old Palestinian girl, and the country’s dead conscience is silenced again. Is there a single crime committed by the military that the right and the establishment will ever accept responsibility for? Just one?
Abu Akleh seems to be another story: an internationally known journalist. Just this past Sunday a more local journalist, Basel al-Adra, was attacked by Israeli soldiers in the South Hebron Hills, and no one cared. And a couple days ago, two Israelis who attacked journalists during the Gaza war last May were sentenced to 22 months in prison. What punishment will be meted out to soldiers who killed, if indeed they did, Abu Akleh? And what punishment was given to whoever decided on and carried out the despicable bombing of the Associated Press offices in Gaza during the fighting last year? Has anyone paid for this crime? And what about the 13 journalists who were killed during the Gaza war in 2014?And the medical personnel who were killed during demonstrations at the Gaza border fence, including 21-year-old Razan al-Najjar, who was shot dead by soldiers while wearing her white uniform? No one has been punished. Such things will always be covered by a cloud of blind justification and automatic immunity for the military and worship of its soldiers.
Even if the smoking Israeli bullet that killed Abu Akleh is found, and even if footage is found that shows the face of the shooter, he will be treated by Israelis as a hero who is above all suspicion. It’s tempting to write that if innocent Palestinians must be killed by Israeli soldiers, better for them to be well-known and holders of U.S. passports, like Abu Akleh. At least then the U.S. State Department will voice a little displeasure – but not too much – about the senseless killing of one of its citizens by the soldiers of one of its allies.
At the time of writing, it was still unclear who killed Abu Akleh. This is Israel’s propaganda achievement – sowing doubts, which Israelis are quick to grab onto as fact and justification, though the world does not believe them and is usually correct. When the young Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura was killed in 2000, Israeli propaganda also tried to blur the identity of his killers; it never proved its claims, and no one bought them. Past experience shows that the soldiers who killed the young woman in a taxi are the same soldiers who might kill a journalist. It’s the same spirit; they are permitted to shoot as they please. Those who weren’t punished for Hanan’s killing continued with Shireen.
But the crime begins long before the shooting. The crime starts with the raiding of every town, refugee camp, village and bedroom in the West Bank every night, when necessary but mainly when not necessary. The military correspondents will always say that this was done for the sake of “arresting suspects,” without specifying which suspects and what they’re suspected of, and resistance to these incursions will always be seen as “a breach of order” – the order in which the military can do as it pleases and the Palestinians cannot do anything, certainly not show any resistance.
Abu Akleh died a hero, doing her job. She was a braver journalist than all Israeli journalists put together. She went to Jenin, and many other occupied places, where they have rarely if ever visited, and now they must bow their heads in respect and mourning. They also should have stopped spreading the propaganda spread by the military and government regarding the identity of her killers. Until proven otherwise, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the default conclusion must be: the Israeli military killed Shireen Abu Akleh.
If you are unfamiliar with something called Christian Zionism, allow me to introduce you to it.
Christian Zionism (CZ) is a kissin’ cousin to the ideology called political Zionism which governs the modern nation-state of Israel. CZ is a similar political ideology that draws from the Bible to defend the Jewish, Zionist conquest of Palestine in 1948 as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.
Psalm 122, especially verses 6-9, is commonly cited by CZ folks as setting God’s spiritual goal posts for his future work in the land of Israel. The psalmist says:
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May those who love you be secure. May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels.” For the sake of my family and friends, I will say, “Peace be within you.” For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your prosperity.
Establishing peace in the literal city of Jerusalem, as the physical capitol ofterritorial Israel, will be the centerpiece of God’s work of ushering in the New Heavens and the New Earth according to my CZ friends.
I just finished reading an article by a CZ scholar who quotes Psalm 122 while concluding with a plea for the end of conflict in Israel/Palestine — notably, while seeming to assume that the Jewish people will maintain their ethnic domination over resident Palestinians.
Perhaps you will be interested in my story. I also talk briefly about life in a Palestinian refugee camp.
The final question my friend asked me was to explain the meaning of Psalm 122. So I did, applying what I will call the New Testament, “apostolic” method for reading the Old Testament (as I explain in my book).
It comes out very differently than the interpretations offered by my CZ brothers and sister.
I have excerpted the interview below by posting my answer to the question, “Scripture tells us to ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem’ (Ps 122:6). What should that look like?”
I am convinced that this is the proper Christian response to the question:
Psalm 122 is a “psalm of ascent” that was sung by ancient pilgrims as they travelled to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the center of Jewish worship because the city’s temple was God’s earthly residence. The psalmist’s calls for peace and harmony within the city and among God’s congregation of worshipers (verses 6 – 9), visualize the blessings of God’s presence reflected in harmony among God’s people. Christians today understand that our incarnate Savior, Jesus Christ, was the new temple of God’s presence here on earth (John 2:19 – 22; 4:21 – 24), who is now seated on David’s throne (verse 5) inside the heavenly temple at the right hand of God (Hebrews 1:1 – 4). An earthly temple is no longer needed. We now pray for the expansion of God’s peaceable kingdom on earth: for all of God’s people throughout the world to reflect the peace of Jesus Christ as they worship together and work together to extend God’s peace to the world around them. The New Testament vision of “the peace of Jerusalem” extends far beyond the provincialism, territorialism, and ethnic nationalism embraced by Christian Zionists.
My single disagreement with Rothkopf concerns his idea that Jewish ethnic nationalism is embraced only by Israel’s right-wing. However, my book, Like Birds in a Cage shows how very, very wrong this misconception is.
territorial Israel, will be the centerpiece of God’s work of ushering in the New Heavens and the New Earth according to my CZ friends.
interviewed by the good folks at