Category: West Bank

NEME Interview About My Forthcoming Book About Christian Zionism

My friends at the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East (NEME) interviewed me last month about my book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in the Oppression of the Palestinian People (Cascade, 2021).

I am told the book will be available for purchase around October 1st. I am waiting to hear about the possibility of pre-publication purchases.

My friend, Dr. Bruce Fisk, formerly a New Testament professor at Westmont College in California, asked me a number of questions about the book as well as my experiences living in Palestinian Occupied Territory of the West Bank.

The interview is about 1 hour long. I hope you will take the time to watch and learn more about the truth of Israel as an apartheid state.

Also, feel free to share the video’s web link with your friends. (I tried to download the video onto this post, but it is too large.)

Then buy my book and share its message with as many Christian Zionist friends as possible. The majority of the American evangelical church needs to learn the truth about Israel-Palestine.

I am also eager to speak with any groups interested in listening, whether large or small.  Please contact me for possible speaking engagements on the subjects covered in my book.  Thanks.

 

For Israel, the Murder of Innocent Palestinians Never Ends

US media regularly repeats Israeli talking points about “terrorist attacks” (the common description of unarmed civilians protesting in the streets) against Israel. Yet, these same outlets remain mute about Israel’s daily terrorist attacks against Palestinians.

It’s as if US corporate media is joined at the hip to the Israeli government propaganda department.

Israel may not be carpet-bombing Gaza at the moment — though bombing

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy

has continued fairly consistently throughout the summer — but killing Palestinians in the West Bank continues apace without interruption.

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy aptly labels the Israeli shooters as “death squads.”

Mr. Levy’s latest article in Haaretz newspaper describing the recent murders of 4 innocent, young men — stories you will never see covered by US corporate media — is entitled “The Media Yawns at the Israeli Army’s Death Squads.”

Israeli terror is at it again. The Israel Defense Forces’ death squads chalked up another successful week: four bodies of innocent Palestinians piled up between the two Fridays. There doesn’t seem to be a connection between the four incidents in which four sons were killed, but the link cannot be broken.

In all these cases, soldiers chose shooting to kill as the preferred option. In all four cases another way could have been chosen: Arrest them, aim for the legs, don’t do anything or simply don’t be there at all. But the soldiers chose to kill. It’s probably easier for them that way.

They come from different branches of the army with different backgrounds, but they share the incredible ease with which they kill, whether they have to or not.

They kill because they can. They kill because they’re convinced that this is how they’re expected to act. They kill because they know that nothing is cheaper than the life of a Palestinian. They kill because they know that the Israeli media will yawn and not report a thing. They kill because they know that no harm will come to them, so why not? Why not kill a Palestinian when possible?

They killed a 12-year-old boy and a 41-year-old plumber. They killed a 17-year-old youth and a 20-year-old young man attending a funeral, all in one week. An Israeli slogan during the 1948 war went “To arms, every good man,”

Israeli soldiers at the funeral of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Alami in the West Bank town of Beit Ummar Thursday. Credit Emil Salman

leading later to the concept of the IDF’s “purity of arms.” Four in one week, for no reason, with no hesitation, with no terrorist facing them. Four executions of young men with dreams, families, plans and loves.

None of the four endangered the soldiers, certainly not in a way that justified lethal fire. Thirteen bullets at a car driving by innocently, carrying a father and his three small children. Shooting a plumber holding a wrench and claiming that he was “moving rapidly toward the soldiers.” Three bullets at the stomach of a 17-year-old who was on his way to take his brother home.

All this can be called terror; there is no other definition. All this can be called the actions of death squads; there is no other description. It sounds horrible, but it really is horrific.

It could be less horrific if the Israeli media bothered to report on it, possibly shocking Israelis. It could be much less horrific if IDF commanders took the necessary steps given their army’s murderous recklessness. But most of the media believed that the killing of a child interests no one or is unimportant, or both, so this shocking incident wasn’t reported on.

If the soldiers had shot a dog – also a shocking act, of course – it would have attracted more attention. But a dead Palestinian child? What happened? Why should it interest anyone, why is it important?

“Are you working for the Arabs?” journalist Yinon Magal maliciously tweeted, addressing Haaretz’s Hagar Shezaf, virtually the only journalist who covered the boy’s funeral. This is the new journalistic ethos: Reporting the truth is tantamount to working for the Arabs.

Let’s leave aside the media of trivia and nonsense that was busy to the hilt with the modeling agent suspected of sexual misconduct and with lists of pedophiles – what does the media have to do with the killing of children? The question is: Where are the military commanders and the political leaders?

Their disgraceful silence leads to only one conclusion: They believe that this killing is acceptable. It’s exactly what they expect of soldiers: the killing of innocents. There is no other way to explain everyone’s silence without even a semblance of condemnation.

If the killers of the boy Mohammed al-Alami are still not in custody, then the IDF under Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi – a person known to speak in lofty terms about values – is saying that the soldiers acted correctly. If the paratroopers who killed Mohammed Tamimi by firing three bullets into his body from their armored jeep are still walking around freely in the West Bank, this means the army salutes them.

And if the IDF salutes them, we really are talking about death squads, just like in the most dreadful regimes.

Gideon Levy asks, “What would Israelis think of an ice cream company that boycotted South Africa?”

I am sure you have  heard about the Israeli ruckus occurring in the wake of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream company deciding to join the international BDS

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy

movement by no longer supplying ice cream to the illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank.

Certain US news outlets have gotten this wrong. Ben & Jerry’s is not boycotting the entire West Bank, only the Jewish settlements now housing some 700,000 Jewish colonizers occupying stolen Palestinian land.

Israeli politicians, as well as the citizens they represent, are up in arms over this latest “antisemitic” attack against the Jewish state.

There is so much propagandistic malarkey at play in this recent Israeli temper tantrum, it would be funny were it no so tragic.

Gideon Levy, columnist for the Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, gives us the necessary perspective on this latest display of Zionist insanity. His article is titled “A Tempest in an Ice Cream Tub Revealed Some Truths to Israelis.” (All emphasis is mine):

If Ben & Jerry’s keeps to its word and pulls its product from the settlements in a year and a half (and there’s good reason to doubt it will, given the pressure expected from American Jews), I will start eating its ice cream. I will be able to enjoy a product that shows a little more caring, more involvement, more conscience and, above all, more decency.

Until then, one can only laugh at the summer frenzy that has broken out and will disappear when the next storm of vanity emerges. Do Israelis now need to boycott the ice cream to protest the company’s decision? Or should we buy more in a show of support for the patriotic local franchisee, who will continue selling in the settlements until its contract is up? Meanwhile, what we have is a tempest in a tub of ice cream that teaches us more about Israel than a thousand scholarly papers.

The Ben & Jerry’s affair has made Israelis happy. There aren’t a lot of things they love more than the appearance of an external threat. It brings us together, to wallow in the bitter fate that we of all peoples must face, to create a repulsive unity and groupthink, and to launch a bombastic counterattack, with the knee-jerk accusation of antisemitism for dessert.

When the franchisee of our beloved McDonald’s, Omri Padan, decided to boycott the territories, collective Israel shrieked a lot less. Why? Because Padan is a patriot who in no conceivable way can be tarred as an antisemite. He is untouchable. With an American company, it’s a lot easier.

Ice cream succeeded where the deaths of 67 children in Gaza failed – to remind Israelis of the occupation. Still, the madness remains: The occupation is a victim, the only victim. It boggles the mind that whenever someone dares remind Israelis that something is still wrong, the issue immediately becomes how Israel is the victim. Headlines, endless talk, and the only thing no one asks is – why?

Why would any reasonable person want to boycott Israel? Well, maybe because of the pressure exerted by BDS. Only because of such pressure. Otherwise, there’s no way an ice cream company might come to the conclusion on its own that it no longer wants to sweeten the lives of the settlers. There’s no chance of there being business people with values. It’s just the consequence of pressure. The mechanisms of repression and denial that Israeli society has developed won’t drink from the cup of Chubby Hubby. It’s society’s Iron Dome – it can’t be abandoned.

Therefore, the situation demands nothing less than a real boycott of Israel, of all Israelis, everywhere – a painful, costly, destructive one. Not a boycott-lite on the ice cream sold at the Rami Levy supermarket at the Etzion Junction, but one that all of Israel will feel in its pocket. Only one that can relieve Israel of its blindness and expose the lie it has been feeding itself for so many years.

Equally amazing is all the unity and groupthink that the affair has created. Suddenly, it has become clear that we’re all settlers. The Green Line has long ceased to exist. The Ben & Jerry’s affair has revealed that there’s no difference between the radical right and the left. Everyone is for the settlements. Everyone opposes their being harmed, even if it’s minor harm to the contents of their freezers.

But is it really so sudden? Yair Lapid talks about antisemitism and Economy and Industry Minister Orna Barbivai acts if she dreams of being Miri Regev when she grows up. Meanwhile, we can ask ourselves why we deserve ridiculous politicians like these and why no one has mustered the courage to thank Ben & Jerry’s for acting in their small way.

In any case, the step the company took is artificial: It’s no longer possible to separate the settlers and the rest of Israel. The tempest in the tub proves that.

We should praise the ice cream makers from Vermont: They won’t end the occupation – that’s not their job – but on a hot summer day they revealed a few truths to Israelis. Only one question remains for all reasonable Israelis to ask themselves: What would they think of an ice cream company that boycotted South Africa?

The Title of My Forthcoming Book on Christian Zionism

Often times, authors are not allowed to pick the title for their books. The publisher typically makes that decision.

I recently learned, however, that Wipf and Stock Publishers has decided to use the title I proposed for my next book. I am letting you know about this so you can keep your eyes open for it once it becomes available (perhaps in the fall).

The title will be Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People.

For those unfamiliar with the term, “Christian Zionism” (CZ) refers to a large segment of the Christian church who believe that the modern state of Israel is God’s chosen nation, now preparing the way for Christ’s second coming.

May of these folks will talk about reading “the signs of the times” anticipating various beasts, the antichrist, and the final battle of Armageddon, all occurring in the land of Israel.

My argument with Christian Zionism takes a three-pronged approach.

First, I dissect the basic problems with CZ Bible-reading, showing why and how their approach to scripture is wrong. Bad methods can only produce bad results. CZ has no Biblical foundation.

Second, I trace the history of political Zionism — the branch of Zionism that gave birth to the Jewish nation-state — and its abusive treatment of the indigenous Palestinians.

Israel’s establishment was the last venture of western, settler colonialism. The goal was to create a Jewish supremacist state (yes, go ahead and make the

Illegal Jewish-only settlements & related programs funded by Christian donations from the US

implied comparison to white supremacy in this country), where Jews alone claimed all the rights and privileges of citizenship. The natives were displaced, replaced, and excluded by European, Jewish settlers who built a society only for themselves.

Third, I tell a number of eyewitness accounts detailing the unrelenting brutality of Israel’s military occupation in the West Bank. Captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel continues to violate international law by annexing large portions of this territory and building Jewish-only settlements on stolen Palestinian land.

The United States is Israel’s largest source of foreign aid, to the tune of nearly $4 billion each year.

Christian Zionists are the largest pro-Israel lobbying group in this country.

The logic is self-evident.

Israel will not change its behavior until the USA stops financing their military. The US government will not cut Israel’s foreign aid budget without consistent, long-term pressure to this end from American citizens.

Here is the logic  that led me to write Like Birds in a Cage.

My prayers and my hopes are focused on educating American evangelicals, convincing them that not only does Israel not deserve the church’s support, but that Israel is a rogue state built on ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

No Christian, no congregation, no denomination, no non-profit organization, no country can ever support a nation like Israel with a clear conscience.

I hope you will look for my book and buy copies for you and your friends when it comes out. My Palestinian friends need your help.

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.

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?

“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.