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?
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book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People (Wipf and Stock, 2021).
