Please digest this explanation of the first Congressional vote scheduled for tomorrow (1/8/19) and call your elected officials. Explain to them that no foreign government, including Israel, can nullify your right to participate in BDS campaigns in your own country.
“Last Thursday, the Senate’s first bill of the new Congress – S.1 – was introduced
Marco Rubio is another senator receiving large contributions from AIPAC
by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and it encourages states to punish people for boycotting for Palestinian rights.
To make matters worse, the Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill tomorrow.
Then please pick up the phone RIGHT NOW and tell your Senators to vote NO on S.1.
Sen. Rubio’s new bill incorporates language from the Combating BDS Act, his unconstitutional bill which we defeated in the last Congress.
The Combating BDS Act calls upon states and cities to enact laws that curtail our constitutional freedoms by denying government contracts to people who boycott for Palestinian rights. In response to lawsuits filed by the ACLU, these types of laws have already been stopped by federal judges in Kansas and Arizona on constitutional grounds, and there are three additional lawsuits currently challenging similar laws in Texas and Arkansas.
Even though courts are siding with us and reaffirming our constitutional right to boycott for Palestinian rights, Sen. Rubio is still trying to pass legislation to deny our First Amendment rights.
The title captures the ludicrous nature of this bill and the corruption generated by the pro-Zionist lobby, especially AIPAC, in the US Congress.
Senator Chuck Shumer is also on the AIPAC gravy train
Here is an excerpt:
“…in the 2019 GOP-controlled Senate, the first bill to be considered — S.1 — is not designed to protect American workers, bolster U.S. companies, or address the various debates over border security and immigration. It’s not a bill to open the government. Instead, according to multiple sources involved in the legislative process, S.1 will be a compendium containing a handful of foreign policy-related measures, the main one of which is a provision — with Florida’s GOP Sen. Marco Rubio as a lead sponsor — to defend the Israeli government. The bill is a top legislative priority for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.”
Who do your senators and congressional representatives really represent? You or Israel?
Adam Raz has a good article in the most recent Haaretznews magazine investigating the debate that raged among Zionism’s leadership immediately after the 1948-49 War, when Israel declared its “independence,” over the future status of Palestinians remaining within the borders of the new state.
I have excerpted selected paragraphs below to give you a sense of the attitudes held by these men. If you want to know more, you can find the entire article here.
There were early Zionist leaders who possessed the remnant of a
Moshe Sharett, Israel’s second Prime Minister
humanitarian conscience. Men such as Moshe Sharett.
Although, frankly, any leader who failed vociferously to protest against the ethnic cleansing committed by Israel’s military forces in that war – which includes all of the men mentioned here — has abdicated any right to be respected, in my book.
Nevertheless, the article does a good job of showing that Israel did not have to end up where it is today: an oppressive apartheid state. There were alternatives on the table at the time. There were men advocating for a multi-ethnic state where Palestinians would have been fully integrated into Israeli society.
Sadly, those humane voices were a minority, and they lost the argument.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister
The iron-fisted racism of David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan and their equally savage ilk won the day, dooming both Palestinians and Israelis to the catastrophe that is Israel/Palestine today.
For those who are interested, I highly recommend a book by the Jewish, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (Yale, 2011).
Pinhas Lavon, Minister of Defense
“(Pinhas Lavon, minister of Defense,) insisted, ‘The State of Israel cannot solve the question of the Arabs who are in the country by Nazi means, he stated, adding, Nazism is Nazism, even if carried out by Jews…’
“’It is impossible to work among them if the policy is to oppress Arabs – that prevents concrete action. What is being carried out is a dramatic and brutal suppression of the Arabs in Israel…’
“(Moshe) Sharett maintained that Ben-Gurion had not given consideration to the root of the problem. ‘Terrible things were being done against Arabs in the country,’ he warned. ‘Until a Jew is hanged for murdering an Arab for no reason, in cold blood, the Jews will not
David Hacohen, Knesset member
understand that Arabs are not dogs but human beings…’
Zalman Aharon, Knesset member
“(Knesset member David Hocohen argued), ‘These laws that we are coming up with in regard to Israel’s Arab residents cannot even be likened to the laws that were promulgated against the Jews in the Middle Ages, when they were deprived of all rights. After all, this is a total contrast between our declarations and our deeds.’..
“’Zalman Aran compared the situation of the Arabs in Israel with the situation of Jews in other countries. On the basis of what we are doing here to the Arabs, there is no justification for demanding a different attitude toward Jewish minorities in other countries. I would be contemptuous of Arabs who would want
Moshe Dayan, military commander and politician
to form ties with us on the basis of this policy. We would be lying…we are lying to ourselves and we are lying to the nations of the world…
“He (David Ben Gurion) added, ‘We view them [Palestinian Arabs] like donkeys. They don’t care. They accept it [their subjugation] with love… To loosen the reins on the Arabs would be a great danger,’ he added: ‘You and your ilk – those who support the abolition of the military government or making it less stringent – will be responsible for the perdition of Israel.’”
Let me make two observations on these citations.
First, the hard-line, political Zionists like Ben-Gurion make it very clear from the beginning that they envisioned a nation for Jews only. There was no room for anyone else to have equal rights in Zionist Israel.
Here we see the essentially racist heart of political Zionism, the strain of Zionism that won these early contests and has controlled Israeli political life ever since. For nearly twenty years Israel enforced two different sets of laws for its citizens. Jews were governed by the state’s normal, civil legislation. Palestinians, on the other hand, were governed by draconian military law stripping them of their civil rights.
When the United Nations passed Resolution 3379 in 1975 declaring that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination” they were absolutely correct insofar as “Zionism” was represented on the world stage exclusively by Israel.
Second, notice that drawing comparisons between Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews and Zionist Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has a very long history. Many Jewish critics of political Zionism have made the comparison, as you can see in this article. It is not, in and of itself, an anti-Semitic slur, but a simple, fair-minded observation of “facts on the ground,” as Israeli politicians like to say.
Every time I return to Israel’s Occupied Territory, I am taken aback by the irreversible transformations foisted onto the resident Palestinians by Israel’s illegal settlements project.
Every year, more and more hilltops sprout cookie-cutter apartment blocks, all covered by the same red-brick tiles, stretching end-to-end from one
Ariel settlement in the West Bank
settlement rooftop to the next. Older settlements have grown. Newer settlements appear as if by magic. All of them shamelessly blushing brick-red under heaven’s gaze.
What little forest and greenery once existed in this barren land has been uprooted, plowed under and paved over to make way for more Jewish settlers, a good many of whom come from the United States, happy to take advantage of the many financial enticements Israel offers to this new generation of “pioneers.”
Several weeks ago, the Israeli daily paper Haaretz published an interesting exposé about this settler movement, and its sad ties to American evangelicalism. It is entitled: “Inside the Evangelical Money Flowing Into the West Bank.”
The article details the vast sums of money being donated by U.S. Christian Zionists to Israel’s illegal settler movement.
According to Haaretz, “the total amount of funding raised in the past 10 years [is] somewhere between $50 million and $65 million.”
Yep, $50 to $65 million US dollars channeled from Christian coffers into the
An American family of Christian Zionists volunteering in an illegal settlement
last western, settler-colonial project occurring in direct violation of international law.
Believe it or not, it is another of the many bizarre ways in which Israel continues to mimic the behavior of Nazi Germany and every other settler-colonial project in history. I kid you not.
Check out the Fourth Geneva Convention, if you’ve never read it. Especially Section III, article 49 dealing with Occupied Territories. The most relevant portions declare:
“Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
Written during a time of rising anti-colonial sentiment, this portion of the Geneva Convention was also drafted in the shadow of Hitler’s massive population transfers throughout Eastern Europe prior to the outbreak of World War II. After his conquest of Poland in 1939, Hitler announced:
“a new order of ethnographical conditions, that is to say, a resettlement of nationalities in such a manner that the process ultimately results in the obtaining of better dividing lines.”
Populations would be moved about in order to benefit the expansion of
American volunteers helping with an illegal grape harvest in Occupied Territory
ethnic Germans.
Hitler’s explicit goal was to protect all Germans in Europe who were “threatened with de-Germanization.”
THAT is the primary motive behind the inclusion of Section III, article 49 in the Fourth Geneva Convention.
How tragically ironic that the offspring of Holocaust survivors who found refuge in Israel now implement a similar ethnographic plan intended to “Judaize” Samaria and Judea (aka the West Bank) by means of massive population transfers, i.e. native Palestinians are being pushed out so that foreign, Jewish settlers can move in.
This is why Israel’s settler project in the Occupied Territory is illegal, folks. It’s illegal because it would make Hitler proud. It violates the Geneva Conventions, which was spearheaded by the United States.
Only weeks ago, I was driving past many of these settlements as my
Illegal settlements funded by Christian donations from the US
Palestinian friend pointed out the numerous, new expansions now under construction. In several cases, he also told me the stories of how the Israeli authorities had, once again, used their laughable “laws” of land ownership to “legally” confiscate, i.e. steal, more of this Palestinian real estate.
As I read this article (and another on the same subject) I am struck by the near complete absence of any reference to the native inhabitants of this land – the Palestinian people. When passing reference is made to the “other” folks who were living here long before the state of Israel, they are noted in passing as the restless hostiles who really ought to give up their struggle, if they know what’s good for them.
One American Zionist, working as a volunteer picking illegal grapes in an illegal vineyard rooted in stolen land, calmly passes judgement, “It’s impossible to remove the settlers from here, as long as they believe in the Bible. The solution to the conflict will be for the media to stop encouraging the Arabs’ uprising and encourage them to live together with the Jews.”
So, I guess it’s all the media’s fault. Too many reporters agitating the hapless Palestinians who, apparently, aren’t able to think for themselves.
But it’s hard for anyone “to live together” with the marauders who invaded your property, taken control of your home, pushed you out, made you homeless, and then warns you repeatedly not to put down new roots whenever you try to make a new start.
Another American volunteer confirms the Zionist prejudice that all Palestinians are violent agitators:
“Last February a number of [volunteers in an illegal settlement] found themselves in the midst of a clash between settlers and Palestinians near Har Bracha. According to them, Palestinians from the nearby village of Iraq Burin attacked them with stones while they were in the vineyard.
“The Har Bracha security coordinator came and fired on the Palestinians, who say they were defending their lands, wounding a shepherd.”
But, of course, the American visitor never bothered to learn the first thing about the history of this conflict. He certainly does not know why he is helping these settlers to break international law. He knows nothing about the resident Palestinians who have long depended on this very piece of land for their own livelihoods. He has never ventured beyond the walls and electrified fence surrounding his settlement. He certainly has never asked a Palestinian about the difficulties of living under military occupation while watching strangers pick fruit from your soil.
As with most western accounts, there is no back-story; the narrative begins ex nihilo with a “Palestinian attack” that comes out of nowhere, seemingly for no reason. It’s just another story about those pesky Injuns doin’ what Injuns do best. Makin’ trouble, hinderin’ the advance of western civilization.
Christian Zionists are remarkably incurious people, by and large. Rarely do they ask if the Palestinians might have a good reason to be angry. If they did, they would hear stories about the many previous assaults launched against them by Israeli soldiers and the very settlers they are now helping to protect.
They might also stop to think about why they are helping Israel do for Jews in the Middle East what Hitler hoped to do for ethnic Germans in eastern Europe.
I encourage you to take a few moments to check out these articles for yourself.
Below is an excerpt from another recent story to illustrate what life is like for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. It appears in Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.
“Susan Abu Ghannam, 39, (see above) the mother of Mohammed Abu Ghannam, 22, who was killed by Israeli occupation forces in July 2017 as he protested against the imposition of electronic gates at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, was sentenced by an Israeli court to 11 months in prison on 17 December. Abu Ghannam was seized by occupation forces in early August 2018, only weeks after the one-year anniversary of the killing of her son. She was accused of “incitement” for posting about Palestine, politics and the killing of her child on Facebook, as prosecutors listed 40 of her social media posts.
It should be noted that Israeli occupation forces attempted to steal her son’s body after killing him in an attempt to hold it hostage. The imprisonment of the bodies of slain Palestinians is used as a tactic to attempt to suppress Palestinian resistance and popular protest.”
You may have noticed that my posting frequency has diminished significantly over the past month or so. The reason is that Terry and I have been traveling.
First, we spent most of the month of November in the West Bank of Palestine and Israel. I was continuing my research by contacting and interviewing the staff of 4 different human rights organizations in both Israel and the Occupied Territory.
I was humbled and encouraged to meet numerous men and women, both Palestinians and Israeli Jews, who are working for justice, peace and equality for Palestinians living in Israel and in the Palestinian Territories.
We also had a wonderful visit with our extended, adopted family in the Aida refugee camp. The bonds of love and friendship grow deeper with each new visit, and we are beginning to feel as though we are coming to know the city of Bethlehem beyond the typical tourist understanding.
A Palestinian child being arrested by an Israeli soldier.
Second, I have just returned from a conference in Philadelphia sponsored by the Quaker agency, the American Friends Service Committee (the AFSC). Learn
The conference was called “What Does Justice Look Like? Moving towards a just peace in Palestine and Israel.” You can read a bit about the conference and the speakers here.
It was a gathering of Christians, Muslims, Jews and others with a shared concern to break the chains of Israeli apartheid.
An 8 year old child arrested by an Israeli soldier
A majority of the conference speakers were Palestinian activists, mainly from Gaza. It was an excellent opportunity to network with others who share a passion for this cause and to devise numerous action plans for continuing the work of pursuing justice for the Palestinian people.
I intend to return to a more frequent rate of posting now that I am back in NW Montana.
Thank you for continuing to subscribe and taking the time to read what I
Would you like your child to be treated like this?
have to say.
I understand that there is no particular reason why anyone should give two hoots about what I have to say about anything.
Nevertheless, I pray that some of my writing will help to move you closer to Jesus Christ, which in itself is always a step nearer to God’s renewed humanity, a true humanity that yearns to see justice done for the oppressed, freedom for the captives, and a place at the table for those left behind.
Terry and I were visiting Ramallah, the provisional capital of the West Bank in Palestine, only a few weeks ago. We drove with friends from the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem.
Along the entire route my friend pointed out the many, ever expanding Jewish settlements that spring up and grow like pestilent weeds in the Palestinian territories, taking more and more of EVERYTHING for themselves while leaving the native Palestinians with less and less.
Less water to drink. Less land to live on. Less air to breath. Less money to spend – on necessities. Less freedom. Less respect.
Israel’s goal is to strangle the life out of every Palestinian remaining in Palestine, until the Zionists finally have it ALL to themselves.
Israeli soldiers conduct a search for Palestinian suspects of a terror attack yesterday in the West Bank City of Ramallah, December 10, 2018. 6 Israelis were injured in the drive-by shooting attack, near Ofra. December 10, 2018. Photo by FLASH90
You may have heard about the attacker who killed one Israeli soldier and shot a pregnant woman, leading to the death of her baby. A number of others were injured. It was a horrible act of violence, deserving strong condemnation.
But there is more to the story that you may not have heard about. This lamentable attack was carried out in response to the earlier killing of 3 Palestinians by Israeli soldiers. Very few news outlets have reported that piece of the story. But that is par for the course when it comes to the news about Israel/Palestine. (When you listen to the link above, be sure to notice the blatant assertion of racial privilege expressed by the female settler in the red head scarf.)
And of course, precious few reporters ever remind their viewers about the larger context of the violence that Palestinians must endure EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES. For the state of Israel has imposed an extremely violent, racist, inhumane military occupation upon the entire population of Gaza and the West Bank.
But, hey…it seems that the Palestinians don’t have enough sense to simply lay down and die quietly, as the Israeli government would like. Believe it or not, they actually resist and occasionally fight back, in an extremely modest sort of way. Imagine that!
With an Israeli boot pressed against their throat, strangling the life out of them, the uppity, ungrateful (and, of course, as we all know, “inherently violent”) Palestinian people have the unmitigated chutzpa to resist their occupiers! Imagine that. The gall of those people.
And the average Israeli says, “Why don’t you all just DIE already! Or leave.” (I am not exaggerating. That’s the attitude. Remember the words of the woman settler in the video above.)
So, Israel sends in more soldiers to kill more Palestinian civilians, to wreak more havoc, to tear apart more families. To blow up more homes in repeated acts of collective punishment (which also violate international law, by the way).
Why? Because the Palestinians rudely insist, “We will not lay down and die for you so easily, Israel.”
Today, I would not be allowed into Ramallah. The beautiful, hospitable al-Azzeh family would no longer be free to share their home with my wife and I. We wouldn’t be able to eat maqluba together while talking, laughing, drinking strong Arabic coffee and sharing our lives with each other.
As I write this post, Israeli soldiers, and rabid, illegal settlers from nearby outposts, continue on the rampage throughout the city. No one is safe. No Palestinians have any rights or protections. Soldiers and settlers may attack anyone they see, kick down any door they choose, shoot at any car or whatever window that happens to tickle their fancy.
Yet, the anchors for U.S. news will continue to repeat the propagandistic lies written for them by the Israeli embassy describing how Palestinian “terrorists” have been attacking innocent Israelis.
Folks, in Israel today: up is down, black is white, right is wrong and wrong is right.
That, my friends, is the Israel-Palestine “conflict” in a nutshell.
The B’tselem website has posted a video (with a transcript) of Hagai El-Ad’s recent speech to the United Nations’ Security C0uncil. You may recall from an earlier post that Mr. El-Ad is the current president of B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
This speech offers a clearer description of the systematic racism embedded at the heart of Israeli society than anything you will ever hear or read from a typical American news source.
Mr. El-Ad should know. He is an Israeli, an Israeli with a conscience who understands that all people, including Palestinians, are created in the Image of God.
Thus, Mr. El-Ad has the courage to call out the racism and the apartheid system that make Israel what it is today — one of the most extensive abusers of human rights in the world.
The paragraph below is an excerpt from El-Ad’s speech. I encourage you to check out the entire speech when you can.
“Consider these historical analogies: Voter suppression was a cornerstone of the American South under Jim Crow laws, but we [Israel] have gone and done one better, delivering no less than voter obliteration. As the occupied Palestinians remain non-citizens, not only can they not vote, but they have absolutely no representation in the Israeli institutions that govern their lives. Or take a look at the discriminatory planning mechanisms and the separate legal systems in the occupied territories. They are reminiscent of South Africa’s grand apartheid. Granted, neither analogy is a perfect fit, but history does not offer precision: rather it offers a moral compass. And that compass points towards rejecting Israel’s oppression of Palestinians with the same unwavering conviction with which humanity’s conscience rejected these other grand injustices.”
B’Tselem is the Hebrew work for “in the Image.” It appears twice in Genesis 1:27, “So God created humanity in his own image, in the image of God he created humanity.”
B’Tselem is also the name of an important Israel-based human rights organization (its full name is The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territory) that gives special attention to the inhuman treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (i.e. the West Bank and Gaza).
B’Tselem is staffed by Israeli men and women of conscience who understand that all people are created as the Image of God. Building upon this Biblical foundation, they also understand the dehumanization and systematic abuse inflicted upon the Palestinian people by Israel’s illegal military occupation.
“B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories strives to end Israel’s occupation, recognizing that this is the only way to achieve a future that ensures human rights, democracy, liberty and equality to all people, Palestinian and Israeli alike…”
B’Tselem finds creative ways to inform the world about Israel’s egregious, daily crimes against humanity. If you want to know the truth about Israel/ Palestinian relations, forget about Christian news outlets. Turn off the corporate news media. They only repeat the acceptable lies, misrepresentations and puerile mutterings of Israel’s Zionist propaganda.
Instead, as a first step towards learning the truth, read the regular updates available from B’Tselem. Subscribe to their newsletter. Order a few of their many publications. Watch the numerous videos on their Youtube channel.
Discover the truth for yourself.
Hagai el-Ad is the current head of B’Tselem. He recently spoke to the
Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director of Israeli NGO B’Tselem. AFP / JACK GUEZ (Photo credit should read JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images)
United Nations about Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and was instantly condemned by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister.
You can watch Amy Goodman’s two-part interview with Mr. el-Ad here and here.
Mr. al-Ad and his coworkers are a shining ray of light, truth and humanity in an otherwise very dark, oppressive land known as Israel.
Today I received a fundraising email from the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. The ICEJ is a American based, Christian Zionist organization that spreads Israeli government talking points, whatever they may be.
Here are the letter’s first two paragraphs:
“In the last 3 months, more missiles have been fired at Israel than in the last 3 years combined. About 600% more! Night after night, families have been awakened by the piercing sound of warning sirens, knowing they have only seconds to scramble for cover, fearing their home will be the next one destroyed…
“Terror kites and incendiary balloons have filled the skies over southern Israel for months, burning over 8,500 acres of crops, trees, and nature reserves and filling homes and communities with choking smoke.”
Let’s put this letter into perspective.
Israel has unilaterally confined nearly 2 million Palestinians within a 141 square miles (approximately 25 miles long, averaging 6 miles wide) area called Gaza. The people of Gaza are fenced in, trapped, and they are not allowed to leave. Even those suffering from serious medical conditions are commonly prevented from traveling by ambulance to the nearest Israeli hospitals. All the Gazan hospitals have been bombed.
The Gaza fence is not Israel’s southern border, as Zionist propaganda claims. It is a tightly controlled prison fence, guarded by the Israeli military.
Until 2010 it was official Israeli policy to control food imports into Gaza in order to maintain the entire population at the borderline of malnutrition. The Israeli government calculated that each Palestinian needed only 2,279 calories/day. Available food stuffs were restricted accordingly.
Fishing is/was a major industry for the Gazan economy. Since Israel imposed its blockage against the Gazan people in 2007, fishing areas are severely restricted by the Israeli navy. Israel arbitrarily limits Palestinians fishermen to a 6 mile fishing zone. But even within that narrow limit Israeli naval vessels regularly attack fishermen and destroy their boats.
Israel arbitrarily declared a 300 meter wide “no man’s zone” extending from the fence encircling Gaza. It is now a free-fire zone, where anyone — man woman or child — can be shot and killed. Besides shrinking the size of Gaza dramatically, all of this land is private property, much of it farmland now made inaccessible by Israeli fiat.
Beginning this past March, thousands of Palestinians began making weekly marches at the Gaza fence, protesting their imprisonment. Israeli soldiers use live ammunition to kill, maim and cripple innocent Palestinian civilians every time they march.
Thus far, Israeli soldiers have killed at least 130 people (including journalists, medics and children). They have seriously wounded, crippled and maimed at least 20,000 people. Let that sink in.
But such bloodshed in Gaza is not unusual.
Israel’s last concerted attack on Gaza in 2014, called Operation Protective Edge, inflicted massive civilian casualties. According to the United Nations Office on Humanitarian Affairs Israeli bombers, missiles and planes killed — do I need to remind my reader that the Palestinians have none of these weapons? — more than 2,250 people. At least, 1,462 of them were civilians, 551 children, and 299 women.
11,231 Gazans were injured, including 3,436 children and 3,540 women. Over 1,500 children were orphaned. 18,000 housing units were demolished.
From July through August, the Israeli military carried out more than 6,000 airstrikes on Gaza, many of them hitting residential buildings. The army reported using 5,000 tons of munitions, including 14,500 tank shells and 35,000 artillery shells. These figures do not include precision-guided missiles or aerial bombing.
So, it is not surprising that the people trapped in Gaza, who are regularly used for target practice and shot like fish in a barrel, protest their captivity. Wouldn’t you?
Some of them build home-made rockets and fire them into southern Israel. These are not “guided” missiles. They are generally very short range, and Israel boasts that the majority of these missiles are intercepted by their “Iron Dome” anti-missile system.
But, of course, they can still be deadly. Between 2001 and 2014, 44 Israelis (30 civilians and 14 soldiers) were killed by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza. I don’t know the cumulative figures since then.
Every Christian must condemn violence, whatever form it takes. We grieve for every Israeli, especially unarmed civilians, killed or injured by Gazan rockets. God’s people are called to be instruments of peace in this violent world.
Yet, who grieves for the Palestinians?
Apparently, not the ICEJ. Nor the millions of other Christian Zionists in the west who never give a second thought — in fact, they never give a third, fourth or fifth thought — to Palestinian suffering. We are morally incurious, never bothering to learn about the inconvenient millions who happen to stand in the way of Israel’s plan for a purified ethnic state forever populated by a Jewish majority.
How blind God’s supposed people can be.
It is a profound spiritual blindness that reveals the truth about the hearts of American evangelicals. Our hearts are hard. Hard as granite.
We raise our hands in church and shed tears of joy for ourselves whenever the Lord seems to answer our self-centered prayers for excess. A bigger house. A better job. A pretty spouse. A longer vacation. You name it.
And all the while we are applauding and helping to finance one of the more horrendous crimes against humanity in the modern world.
The typical evangelical would rather go to Israel as a tourist, walk where Jesus walked, get weak in the knees over a visit to the Western (Wailing) Wall, and never give a thought to the weekly slaughter of innocent human lives occurring only a few miles south of Jerusalem.
Neither do the majority of tourists ever think to worship with their Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ who weep and suffer every day beneath the massive boots of Zionist thugs.
We are those thugs.
The boots are ours.
Palestinian blood stains the American church indelibly. The Lord Jesus will not forget our guilt. He will judge us all when The Day finally arrives, saying:
“Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” (Matthew 25:41-43)
Terry and I stepped off the bus and walked to the small gathering area beneath a few shade trees. It was still morning but you could already feel that it was going to be another hot day.
We sat on one of the village’s shaded benches and waited for others to arrive. It did not take long. Soon we were joined by a handful of international supporters who came, like us, to link arms with the residents of Nabi Saleh, a small Palestinian village in the central-western portion of the West Bank. (A great deal has been written about Nabi Saleh, much of it malicious and false. For some introduction, check out here, here and here).
Every Friday morning a small group of villagers, together with whoever else wants to come along, attempt to walk down the narrow, one-lane road
Do these people look like dangerous terrorists to you?
offering the only access to their homes. It is also the only paved access to the nearby spring that historically served as the village’s primary water supply.
The spring is owned by the Tamimi family, an extended network of men, women and children who compose a sizeable portion of the village. The spring at the foot of the hill has been in their family for generations.
Not anymore.
The Nabi Saleh spring
A Jewish settlement now “occupies” the Nabi Saleh spring, making it inaccessible to their Palestinian neighbors across the road.
The settlement is called Halamish. It now occupies the neighboring hillside, easily overshadowing the village of Nabi Saleh only a stone’s throw away.
According to international law, settlements like Halamish should not exist. They are prohibited by the international convention on apartheid. But people who build such illegal, fortified settlements and then live in them
The illegal settlement of Halamish
while stealing the neighbors’ only water supply obviously do not care about such niceties as international law or anti-apartheid conventions.
Israeli-Jewish settlers often don’t even care about Israeli law, since the Israeli supreme court has, on rare occasions, also ruled against these West Bank settlements. In fact, Jewish settlers in the West Bank are notorious for committing the most egregious, violent acts against Palestinians with total impunity.
On this particular Friday morning, our march began with 30 to 40 people, mostly villagers, including many children and young people. Our only armaments were flags and banners, though a few teenage boys eventually pulled out their sling-shots and began throwing rocks after the Israeli soldiers arrived and began pelting us with tear gas.
This march has happened every Friday for years. The goal is very simple. The villagers want to walk down to their spring, affirming their right of access. The village leaders want to talk with the people of Halamish and ask them by what right they not only took over their water supply but now exclude Palestinians from using it.
That goal has never been achieved, to my knowledge. What happened to us happens every week. In fact, we got off easy. We hadn’t walked more than
Soldiers begin to block the road
20 yards before several military vehicles appeared from nowhere, sped onto the village road and blocked the intersection about 75 yards away. Dozens of soldiers armed with automatic rifles and tear gas launchers jumped from armored personnel carriers and fanned out in a long line. Troops not only blocked the road but watched us from the nearby hills ensuring that we all were targets wherever we went.
Soon the tear gas canisters began to fall among the unarmed, peaceful
Shooting tear gas
demonstrators who only wanted to walk to a spring. In Israel it is a crime for Palestinian villagers to visit and take a drink from their only source of drinking water, a spring that refreshed their parents, grandparents and great grandparents as far back as anyone can remember.
For Zionist Israel, Palestinians pose a threat by their mere existence. Israeli’s commonly refer to them as the “demographic” or the “existential” threat to Israel. For political Zionists, Israel can only exist as a purely Jewish state. Thus, all Palestinians must go, one way or another. Allowing them to drink from a traditional pool of water is, apparently, a slippery slope to another Holocaust. Or so it would seem.
The march came to a halt. I suspect that we got just about as far as it has ever gotten. We were barely out of the village. Yet, we had been quarantined as if we were a dangerous band of Typhoid Marys threatening to unleash an unstoppable epidemic among the Jewish population beyond.
Who is David and who is Goliath now?
I decided to walk forward in order to talk to the soldiers. Behind me teenage boys began to swing their slingshots at the soldiers in the same way that David felled Goliath. The villagers knew how to protect themselves against the gas. Most of the younger children returned to their homes. There were no guns or weapons of any kind, except those carried by the Israelis.
When I was close enough I shouted out to the soldiers, “Why? Why are you doing this? They only want to walk to their spring!”
The soldiers, including this boy with peach fuzz, act as if I am invisible
After first shouting at me to go back, they all decide to ignore me. No one so much as turned his head to look when I yelled. I suspected that these soldiers had plenty of experience in ignoring western visitors coming to protest the grotesque inhumanity they show towards their fellow human beings. It was my own up close and personal experience of the stone-cold poker face Israel has cultivated over the years as it consistently ignores the numerous protests, boycotts and complaints lodged against it by members of the international community still possessing a conscience.
The tires begin to burn
I am certain that had I not been such an obvious western visitor, one of these soldiers would have shot me in the head or chest without a second thought. The families of Nabi Saleh have grieved many times over the dead and wounded loved ones who have been shot on that single-track
road leading to Halamish.
Chest and head shots are the soldiers’ favorites.
It wasn’t long before a few young men had set tires on fire in front of the marchers, masking them from the line of fire. The black smoke obscures the soldiers’ vision so that, hopefully, fewer tear gas canisters hit their target.
Slowly the marchers began to disperse. I turned back to the village. The soldiers eventually climbed into their armored vehicles and drove
Soldiers and a manned sniper tower keep watch over the only road into Nabi Saleh
away, though the small installation with its sniper tower at the end of the road remained occupied, guns always pointed at the people of Nabi Saleh.
I also knew that the villagers who marched that day would steel themselves against the threat of after-dark raids by these very same soldiers. Who might be arrested or shot or thrown into the back of a truck conveying them to the local military prison for interrogation?
(Below is a film showing a military night-raid in Nabi Saleh. Protesters are arrested and removed from their homes while a skunk wagon sprays skunk water into their homes).
It happens regularly.
While waiting for our bus Terry and I met Bassem Tamimi, one of the village leaders and the father of (now internationally known) Ahed Tamimi, whom I will write about another day. Mr. Tamimi kindly invited us into his home for tea where he talked about his life, his wife and children, his village, and his commitment to continued peaceful resistance against Israel’s military occupation and continued theft of his property.
I wondered how many of the residents of Halamish kept their binoculars near the window sill in order to watch Mr. Tamimi’s weekly efforts to visit his family spring. I suspect that the struggles of Nabi Saleh makes for interesting sport among these settlers.
Do they cheer when the soldiers arrive, screeching to a halt in their massive gray machines?
Did they root for the men shooting at us?
Do they shout when someone is hit and injured, as so many have been in the past?
Does anyone in Halamish ever stop to ask themselves, Why did we take their water away from them? Why can’t we share it with Nabi Saleh, or even give it back to the villagers outright?
Does anyone in Halamish have conscience enough to see their neighboring Palestinians as people no different than themselves?
These are some of the questions I pondered as I sat with Terry on Bassem Tamimi’s couch, waiting for his wife to finish making our tea. We enjoyed a friendly conversation that day with a generous man and his wife whose primary concern in life is ensuring that his children and grandchildren will have a safe, peaceful future to look forward to in the family village.
Why does that make him a criminal in his own land?
Why should asking for a safe, peaceful future in his own home put his family at risk every Friday morning in the Occupied Territory of the West Bank?
Take a moment to watch Ahed Tamimi describe her life in Nabi Saleh, a tiny Palestinian village under Israeli military occupation:
interviewing the staff of 4 different human rights organizations in both Israel and the Occupied Territory.
Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
Rights in the Occupied Territory) that gives special attention to the inhuman treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (i.e. the West Bank and Gaza).
organization that spreads Israeli government talking points, whatever they may be.
allowed to leave. Even those suffering from serious medical conditions are commonly prevented from traveling by ambulance to the nearest Israeli hospitals. All the Gazan hospitals have been bombed.
The Israeli government calculated that each Palestinian needed only 
Gaza dramatically, all of this land is private property, much of it farmland now made inaccessible by Israeli fiat.
airstrikes on Gaza, many of them hitting residential buildings. The army reported using 5,000 tons of munitions, including 14,500 tank shells and 35,000 artillery shells. These figures do not include precision-guided missiles or aerial bombing.
that it was going to be another hot day.
armaments were flags and banners, though a few teenage boys eventually pulled out their sling-shots and began throwing rocks after the Israeli soldiers arrived and began pelting us with tear gas.
