Tag: Palestinians

The ICEJ Promotes Zionist Propaganda and Shares the Guilt

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)

 

Nabi Saleh, The Toughest Little Village You Probably Have Never Heard Of

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:

Meet the Skunk Wagon. Palestinians Know It Well

Today I want to introduce you to the Skunk Wagon.  I call it the Skunk Wagon because its one and only job is to shoot a long stream of skunk water through a water cannon, powerful enough to knock people — typically Palestinians — off their feet.

Skunk water is one of several new crowd control devices developed by Israeli arms manufacturers.

A BBC reporter described skunk water like this:

“Imagine the worst, most foul thing you have ever smelled. An overpowering mix of rotting meat, old socks that haven’t been washed for weeks – topped off with the pungent waft of an open sewer. . .Imagine being covered in the stuff as it is liberally sprayed from a water cannon. Then imagine not being able to get rid of the stench for at least three days, no matter how often you try to scrub yourself clean.”

Don’t worry.  Numerous American police departments have purchased skunk water from Israel so that it can be used on US protesters, too.  You may have a chance to smell it for yourself one day.

Below is a picture of a Skunk Wagon lumbering down a narrow alley way in the Palestinian refugee camp where Terry and I periodically live with my friends.  As you can see, there are no conveniently located crowds of terrorists immediately in need

The Skunk Wagon approaching my home away from home

of dispersal, but that never stops the Israeli army from taking the initiative in looking for someone in need of a good skunk water bath.  The army is nothing if not industrious when it comes to oppressing Palestinians, even when they are living peacefully in their own neighborhoods.

Typically, when Israeli soldiers can’t find anyone to spray on the streets, they begin looking for open doors and windows in order to shoot the skunk water into people’s homes.  Apparently, the soldiers assume that the families inside are a sufficient “crowd” in need of military control.   I guess you could call it an Israeli strategy for domestic crowd control.

On this particular day, my friend’s elderly mother had her windows open to catch the morning breeze.   She is in her late 80s and suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, so she was unaware of the Skunk Wagon’s approach.  Even though she was home alone — not malingering in a dangerous crowd of family members — the Israelis decided that she posed an imminent threat and needed to be dispersed.

After all, she is a Palestinian.  As far as the political Zionism of modern Israel is concerned, the only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian, or one who lives somewhere else, far removed from the real estate claimed by Israel’s government.

Even feeble, senile women in their late 80s deserve to be sprayed by the Skunk Wagon simply because of who they are and where they live:  they are Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.  As far as the Israeli forces are concerned, that is reason enough to beat, batter, control and dehumanize Palestinian residents in any way possible.

This day was no exception.

So, this Palestinian matriarch saw both her bedroom and living room generously bathed in skunk water.  And hers was not the only home visited by high-powered, mechanical projectile vomiting.

Imagine all of your rugs, chairs, sofas, bedding, curtains, walls, floors, clothing — everything! — drenched in skunk water.  The stench is unbelievable.  After several weeks of intensive scrubbing and cleaning by her family members, the home still reeked.  I have no idea how long it took for the smell to finally dissipate.

But this was only the beginning of the army’s fun.  The soldiers returned several days later, angered that a few boys had dared to throw rocks at them while they shot teargas down the streets and into open windows during another of their frequent invasions.  Driving a mobile teargas launcher

with a PA system, Israeli soldiers returned to deliver a message:  stop throwing rocks at us or we will slaughter you all, young and old, women and children alike.

Listen to the announcement for yourself in the video above.  You can also read a good account of the incident in the online newspaper, Middle East Eye here. (Several friends have confirmed the accuracy of the translation.)

I know of at least one instance where an asthmatic woman died in her own  living room after soldiers fired teargas through her window.  Of course, the military never acknowledges any responsibility, much less liability, for the deaths and numerous injuries caused by their reckless behavior in the camp.

My friends would have bust a gut laughing had I suggested that they send a bill to the army base next door charging them for the time and money spent cleaning up the skunk water in their mother’s home.

At least the soldier speaking in this  video was honest enough — an arrogant lapse for which he may well have been reprimanded later on — to call his comrades what they really are:  THE OCCUPATIONAL ARMY.  (A description consistently denied by Israeli/Zionist apologists.) Of course, as an occupying army they can do no wrong while the subjugated Palestinians can do nothing right.

Terrorizing the locals in any way they please is perfectly acceptable.  There are no repercussions.  But should a few testosterone driven boys decide to express their youthful anger; should they exercise human agency by refusing to lie down and play dead beneath another barrage of teargas

Israeli soldiers conduct a night raid, their favorite time to abduct people, including children, from their beds

and skunk water; should they resist Zionist  oppression by (oh my, heaven forbid!) throwing rocks at the very soldiers who daily treat them as subhuman scum in need of a good skunk water bath before their mass deportation, well then, those rebellious children deserve arrest and imprisonment.

This kind of action serves as Zionist justice in the Occupied Territories.

Israel Bombs Gaza on APR Time.  The Rest of Us Need to Reset the Clock

APR is my own abbreviation for “After Palestinians Respond”.  It is the unofficial but permanent demarcation for all of post-1947 history in Israel.

The Gregorian calendar uses BC and AD, making the birth of Christ the dividing line in world history.  BC designates history “before Christ.”  AD is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase Anno Domini, meaning “in the year of our Lord”.

For instance, Cleopatra ruled Egypt from 51 to 30 BC.  Emperor Nero ruled the Roman empire from 37 to 68 AD.  The birth of the Nazarene is the permanent line of demarcation between two historical eras.

Recent bambing in Gaza, August 2018

But modern Israeli society has devised a new way to demarcate their history, especially their military confrontations with Palestinians.  Now, the historical clock always begins immediately after the Palestinians respond to Israeli provocation.  In this way, Israeli aggression is conveniently erased from the story.  All that remains are Palestinian actions against Israel.

Let’s look at a few recent examples:

“Israel Launches Broad Air Assault in Gaza Following Border Violence” – This was a NYT headline on July 20, 2018.  The lead paragraph says: “Israeli warplanes launched a large-scale attack across the Gaza Strip on Friday, one of the fiercest in years, after a Palestinian sniper killed an Israeli soldier along the border fence during a day of escalating hostilities.” (emphasis mine)

Not until the middle of this article does the writer get around to mentioning that Israeli soldiers have been killing unarmed Palestinians regularly for the

Gazan woman protesting at the Great March of Return

past 17 weeks!  Since the largely peaceful protests in Gaza began on March 30, at least 159 Palestinians have been shot and killed, including women, children and emergency first-aid workers.  More than 16,000 have been wounded, many crippled for life as Israel insists on using live ammunition against unarmed people.

Yet, these facts are not considered relevant for the reader’s understanding of Israel’s recent assault.

The NYT would never deign to report this story more honestly by saying

Gazan child shot by Israeli sniper

that a Palestinian sniper retaliated against Israeli aggression after 17 weeks of constant Israeli sniper fire, during which time Israeli snipers killed 159 Palestinians and wounded over 16,000 more.

Or take this story from the Washington Post (8/9/18):

“Rocket Barrage from Gaza Prompts Fierce Retaliation by Israeli War Planes” — The lead sentence declares: “Israeli aircraft struck more than 150 targets in the Gaza Strip in response to a barrage of rockets from the Palestinian territory…” (emphasis mine).

According to the Post’s framing of the story, Palestinians continue to behave as irrational, suicidal actors instigating yet another round of Israeli bombing by their unprovoked aggression against Israel.

The writer mentions that 11 Israelis were injured by flying debris in their

Israeli war tourists watch Gazan march and Israeli solders shoot

neighborhood. Yet, nowhere does this article print a single word about Israel’s unrelenting assault against the residents of Gaza since March.  The 159 dead Palestinians, including old women, children and medics, go unmentioned.  Neither is there a word about the 16,000 innocent civilians wounded.

As always in APR time, Israelis remain the only victims in the story.  Because that is the point of APR time.

Referring to the rockets sent from Gaza, Naomi Zolberg, 34, a resident of the Israeli city of Sderot (located less than 1 mile from Gaza’s northern border; only 840 meters at the closest point) complained, “We only slept an hour…People were freaking out. It is not normal to live like this, under the will of the other side.”

Perhaps Ms. Zolberg should turn down the volume on her TV.  Apparently,

A section of the Gaza fence

she hasn’t heard the regular, weekly (sometimes daily) rifle-fire targeting the imprisoned people struggling to survive only a short walk from her doorstep.  These are her fellow human beings trapped in an open-air prison, shot like fish in a barrel by Israeli snipers enjoying target practice.

Is that a normal way to live, Ms. Zolberg?

Sadly, it is perfectly normal for people like Ms. Zolberg to ignore the human  tragedy happening under her nose, just as it is normal for Palestinian families to endure it.  Every single Gazan resident would think themselves blessed many times over if only they could switch places with you, Ms. Zolberg, and experience your hard, hard life of freedom living next door to their prison fence.

Israel’s latest existential threat — Palestinians throwing stones at soldiers holding high powered rifles and tanks with machine guns

But we will never see this particular story-line on the evening news because it does not conform to the standard APR rule-book.  And the one rule that can never be broken in Israel’s reporting – and this applies to the vast majority of the Western press which robotically repeats Israel’s perspective on all things Palestinian – is that you never describe Israel’s actions before the Palestinian response.

 What came before the Palestinians acted?  Before the people of Gaza began to march?  Before Gazan activists shot their homemade rockets over the prison fence containing 1.8 million people in the Gazan ghetto?

What came before is repeatedly erased from Israel’s memory, even as it is etched indelibly into Palestinian consciousness.

Yet, it is exactly for the sake of conscience, that we all – especially God’s people – must refuse to abide by Israeli APR time frames.  Ask, learn, study, become educated in the long, tragic history of the many crimes committed against them before the Palestinians finally responded.

Teargas on the Playground

Children in the Aida refugee camp – 7/10ths of a densely packed, square kilometer containing nearly 6,000 people on the outskirts of Bethlehem – have one playground.  It is nestled behind the Lajee Center, one of several community development organizations in this Palestinian community.

No one goes to the playground hoping to play dodge-ball with incendiary teargas canisters, not even Palestinian kids.  But it never hurts to be prepared.  Especially when there is an active Israeli military base across the street from the swing sets and the slide.

Actually, the concrete Annexation Wall (as I call it) is directly across the

Annexation Wall & sniper tower overlooking Aida refugee camp

street, but the resident army unit snuggles tightly against their side of the barrier overlooking the playground.  So, the soldiers have a bird’s eye view of the little boys pushing their toy cars in the sand box.

The army base also has its own set of steel gates, large enough to accommodate trucks, tanks and fully loaded personnel carriers, built into the Wall that grants them immediate access to Aida’s largest street.  The very street passing by the Lajee Center and its playground.

This mammoth, gray gate can only be opened and closed from the outside, the Israeli army side.  The residents of Aida have no control at all.  They cannot lock the soldiers out of their neighborhood, but the soldiers can, and do, invade their homes as they please.

What seems to please the Israeli soldiers most often these days is shooting teargas, rubber bullets and skunk water at the people whose only “crime” is being Palestinian living in Israeli-occupied territory.

Naturally, the crime of being Palestinian includes little children, too.

Why else would Israeli soldiers fire teargas onto the Lajee Center

Children run from teargas on their playground

playground, terrorizing Aida’s preschoolers that sunny, spring morning?  It’s hard for a 4-year-old to outrun the gas, especially when the wind speeds its dispersal.  But the youngsters do their best.  Fortunately, most of them have a parent or older sibling present to help their escape.

The soldiers paused occasionally as they strolled down the wide street, gas masks covering their faces.  Over and over they calmly lobbed canisters of fuming noxious smoke among the panic-stricken children.

Imagine the chaos as people flee in all directions, either trying to escape the plumes of blinding gas or frantically searching for their little ones now vanishing inside a wet cloud of white smoke that can easily suffocate a small child in less than a minute.

Teargas blinds your senses.  It blinds your eyes with incredible, stinging pain, flooding your cheeks with acidic tears.  It also blinds your brain to the neural impulses that tell your lungs TO BREATHE!  So, you think you can’t.

Teargas in the streets

First, because of the burning gas torching your mouth and throat, you can’t breathe.

Second, because your brain has been tricked into suppressing the automatic reflex, you can’t breathe without great, deliberate effort.  But, unless you’ve covered your mouth sufficiently or escaped the cloud of smoke, taking another breath of teargas is the last thing you want to do.  But you need to breath!  So, what do you do

Soldiers do as they please, when they please, wherever they please. This day it pleased them to shoot teargas at little children

I have no idea how the minds and bodies of tiny infants, delicate toddlers, baby brothers and bigger sisters managed to cope with this surprise attack.  Nor do I know the stories of the family members and friends, all blinded themselves, whose only thought was to rescue the screaming child they heard somewhere off in the murky distance. (I heard this story from a friend who filmed the incident as it unfolded from the balcony of her home.  The image above is one frame from that film.)

No one had expected to play dodge-ball with teargas canisters on the playground that day.

But Israeli soldiers are inventive at coming up with new games to play with Palestinians, especially in the Occupied Territories.  And aren’t we told repeatedly that this is the most moral army in the world defending the only democracy in the Middle East?

It’s Official: Israel is a Racist State by Law

Israel’s Knesset has passed a new Basic Law – a series of laws that substitute for Israel’s non-existent constitution – called the Jewish Nation-State Law.  You can read the full text of the law here.

Israel has always struggled to defend its contradictory claim of being a Jewish and a democratic state, simultaneously.  Critics, which most recently includes members of Israel’s Supreme Court, have long pointed out that establishing a state only for Jews undermines its claims to democracy, which requires equality for everyone, Jews and non-Jews alike.

Many Israeli legislators have worried about the court’s bizarre tendency to acknowledge this obvious contradiction and to rule accordingly, issuing decisions which typically favor democracy above Zionist racial profiling.

Horrors!

But, don’t worry.  Israel’s political Zionists have a plan.  Enter the new

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked

Jewish Nation-State Law.  One of the law’s staunchest supporters is the current Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked who openly laments the court’s tendency, when forced to pick between Jewishness or democracy, to defend the democratic principle of equality before the law.

Now the Jewish Nation-State Law will force even the highest court in the land to change its evil ways and acknowledge that, in the land of Israel, Jewish ethnicity rules supreme.  As Justice Minister Shaked declared in a Knesset debate last February

“There are places where the character of the State of Israel as a Jewish state must be maintained and this sometimes comes at the expense of equality.”  (emphasis mine)

Ms. Shaked’s thoughts on how to respond to Palestinian resistance against Israel’s military occupation.

Speaking in Jerusalem at the Israeli Congress on Judaism and Democracy the Justice Minister reaffirmed her position, insisting that Israel

“is a Jewish state and not a state for all of its nationalities…the Supreme Court should stop upholding the former at the expenses of Israel’s religious values…We need to protect the Jewish character of the state even if that means sacrificing human rights.” (emphasis mine)

Opposition leaders, some of whom are also Arab legislators, voiced their opposition to the law (here, here and here).  But they lost by a 62 – 55 vote.  This new “constitutional amendment” has thrown down the gauntlet on the world stage.  The message is clear:

Behold, here we stand!  Israel.  A racist, apartheid, Zionist nation-state, and we are proud of ourselves.

What will the world’s civilized nation-states do now?

The Blatant Hypocrisy of “Liberal Zionism” #zionism #christianzionism

Liz Rose, a public school teacher and writer living in Chicago, has an excellent article in Mondoweiss (6/27/18) explaining the hypocrisy of liberal Zionism.  It is entitled “It’s time for Tom Friedman to face the contradictions of liberal Zionism, and move on.”

Because Friedman frequently waves his Zionist banner in the pages of the New York Times, he has become the paradigmatic liberal Zionist in America whose blind loyalty to Israel forces him to speak out of both sides of his mouth.

Trump with al-Sisi

On the one hand, Friedman and his Zionist compatriots complain about an American president embracing fascist dictators, such as Egypt’s al-Sisi, but they remain deafeningly silent about America’s blind support for Israel’s far-right leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump with Netanyahu

Friedman happily quotes and defends Human Right’s Watch when it condemns the abuse of human rights in Egyptian, but he will ignore or condemn the same organization when it highlights identical abuses suffered by Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

Here is an excerpt.  You can find the full article here.  It is well worth reading.

“It’s becoming more and more difficult for liberal Zionists to balance their support for human rights and global justice in Trump’s America with their support for Israel. But liberal Zionists in the U.S. still believe they can.

“This tension is evident in Thomas Friedman’s June 19, 2018, opinion piece in the New York Times, “Trump to Dictators: Have a Nice Day.” Friedman compares Trump to dictators and defends human rights, but Israel is left out of the column, and it feels like a glaring evasion. “What’s terrifying about Trump is that he seems to prefer dictators to our democratic allies everywhere,” Friedman rightly suggests, and uses North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as his examples. These dictators don’t just “crush their revolutionaries or terrorists but even their most mild dissenters,” Friedman writes.  There’s no “space for even loyal opposition.” Friedman is correct, of course, that dissent is criminalized in these countries, and that Trump’s administration puts no limit on these dictators.

“When looking at Friedman’s column with a non-Zionist lens, however, the alliance between Trump and Netanyahu seems simply too obvious to leave out.  Netanyahu’s dictator-like behavior is clear. The recent murder of 135 Palestinians at the Gaza border (and the wounding of more than 14,000), the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem that Netanyahu pushed, Israel’s decision to ban 20 groups who support BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) from entering Israel, and the ongoing occupation and colonization of the Palestinian people that Israel has never taken responsibility for, are just a few indicators of Netanyahu’s desire for total control.

“That Netanyahu is left out of this column speaks to this growing tension between a universal liberalism and liberal Zionism; to reconcile the two, Friedman is forced to avoid the topic altogether.

“Similarly, Friedman can only sound as though he supports human rights if Israel is not mentioned.  He cites Human Rights Watch to show the changes occurring in Egypt:

“Take Egypt. On May 31, Human Rights Watch reported that the Egyptian police had ‘carried out a wave of arrests of critics of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in dawn raids since early May 2018.’ Those arrested included Hazem Abd al-Azim, a political activist; and Wael Abbas, a well-known journalist and rights defender; as well as Shady al-Ghazaly Harb, a surgeon; Haitham Mohamadeen, a lawyer; Amal Fathy, an activist; and Shady Abu Zaid, a satirist.

“Again, Friedman accurately warns of increased censorship among Egypt’s citizens.  But a site like Human Rights Watch becomes a convenient and valid source for liberal Zionists as long as it is not used to criticize Israel.  When it does, it is accused of perpetuating an anti-Israel bias, rather than being a source that has authority and shows human rights violations by Israel. But Friedman’s liberal Zionism prevents him from acknowledging that Israel might violate the very rights he insists all people should have. For liberal Zionists, however, the only way Zionism and human rights can coexist is to erase Palestinian history and give Israel a pass.”

Munther Amira’s Statement after Prison Release #Palestinians #Israelioccupation

I am happy to say that my friend, Munther Amira, was released from an Israeli military prison about 1 1/2 weeks ago. Munther released a thank you statement on Facebook yesterday, and I want to share it with any of my readers who may have participated in the “free Munther” actions I posted here.

Recall that Munther was arrested for quietly, non-violently protesting Israel’s policy of imprisoning children in its military prisons. He was peacefully walking down the street in his own neighborhood holding up a picture of the Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi, who remains in prison for the “crime” of slapping one of the soldiers who shot her young cousin in the head.

Here is Munther’s letter:

JUN 17, 2018 — My dear friends,

I would like to start my message “post” by thanking each and every woman, man, organization, union, and group for your tremendous support and solidarity. My imprisonment is no more than one small event in the series of the long lasting occupation’s violations of human rights. Since the beginning of occupation 70 years ago, the violations of human rights never stopped. They just varied in shape from cold blood killing, to injuring or imprisoning. They included land confiscation, home demolitions, road blockage, siege, exile, individual and public punishments, all of which contribute to a system of ethnic cleansing. All of which destroy human lives, deprive freedom, erase dignity, end lives, kill hope, and steal childhoods.

My short, but tough and humiliating, six month imprisonment empowered me and strengthened my convictions. Since the beginning I knew that the nonviolence approach I adopted to defend Palestinians human rights, dignity, and freedom will be difficult. This is still true and was confirmed by the violence of the Israeli occupation’s response to my, and many other activists, nonviolent resistance. Your solidarity and support makes it easier for me and others like me to lead this every day fight.

This support will empower the nonviolence movement in Palestine in this long-term endeavor. I hope this support will continue and grow in scale and forms.
During my imprisonment I met with comrades, spending, 36, 30, 28 or 26 years in Israeli political prisons. A lifetime of prison is their fate on this earth. Each of them has their own heartbreaking and incredibly strong story. I listened to them tell me about their dreams, feelings, and hopes for freedom. I learned from their enthusiasm and was stunned by their positive, ongoing energy. They have an incredible discipline and are eager to learn and to teach each other. In prison, I attended lectures discussing global sustainable environments, social sciences, human rights, and international humanitarian laws. It was not – and is still not – easy for me to grasp the source of their hope, their energy, and their ability to think about things like economics and the environment, all while living in a 9 square meter cell.

I saw them touch the glass separating them and their mothers during the monthly visits, imagining they could actually feel them.
I admire their spirit, and hope that one day, sooner rather than later, they will wake up outside, next to their loved ones. As a human rights defender, activist, social worker, father, and most importantly as a human, I and many others in and outside of Palestine will continue our peaceful fight for justice, dignity, freedom and a brighter future.

Finally, I would to like to thank you all again, and to extend my gratitude to all your tremendous support during my time in Israel’s kangaroo courts, which fail to meet the basic standards of fair trial and due process.
These military courts are designed to criminalize Palestinian rejection of the occupation and punish Palestinians for demanding their basic human and national rights. They are a conveyor belt of convictions and injustice that prosecute between 500 and 700 Palestinian children every year, with a near 100 percent conviction rate.

I would like to thank all who demonstrated in the streets, and those who were punished for it. Thank you to the 15,000 people who signed the petition for my freedom. I wish I could thank them all one by one. Thank you to all human rights defenders, unions, human rights NGOs, grassroots NGOs, journalist, bloggers, individuals and groups.

Last but not least I would like to thank my family who has stood by me in this dangerous endeavor from the very first day.

Munther Amira
Aida Refugee Camp
Occupied Palestinian Territories

(Posted on Facebook on 17 June 2018)

Israel, the Great Western Narrative and the Kingdom of God #zionism #jonathancook

Jonathan Cook, a British journalist living and working in Nazareth, Israel.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist living and working in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.  You can find his biography and CV, including his many books, here.

I read Mr. Cook’s blog regularly. I also check out any of his articles or books whenever I come across them.

Yesterday, The Greenville Post (another excellent website I read regularly) published a Cook article entitled “How the Corporate Media Enslave Us to a World of Illusions.” Cook describes the slow evolution of his own social, political and historical consciousness as his work in journalism taught him to recognize something he calls the “Great Western Narrative.”

I hope you will take the time to read Cook’s article.  He is extremely insightful.  I have posted an excerpt below with a link to the entire article.

Cook’s analysis can be particularly challenging for Christians. He not only diagnoses the ways in which western Christians succumb to establishment propaganda, just like everyone else — no, brothers and sisters, we are not immune to the dangers of brainwashing —

But Cook’s advice for breaking free of the “Great Western Narrative” and learning to understand and engage in this world from a more humane perspective, is very similar to the argument I tried to make for Christian readers in my book I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America.

Christian disciples can only perceive this world aright, that is, from a New Testament, heavenly perspective, when we learn to replace the Great Western Narrative with Jesus’ own Narrative of the Kingdom of God.

That should be a lifetime goal for every follower of Jesus.  Yet, it is so much easier to live as loyal Americans than it is to be faithful citizens of God’s kingdom on earth.

This, in a nutshell, is the goal of my blog. Everything I write at HumanityRenewed, is something (I hope) that will help us to peel off the worldly consciousness — the Great Western Narrative — that works overtime to hold us captive and cripple our ability to live out God’s Kingdom citizenship in the here and now.

Nowhere is the evangelical church’s idolatry of the Great Western Narrative, coupled with its abandonment of Jesus’ Narrative of the Kingdom of God, more evident than in its blind devotion to Christian Zionism and the state of Israel, whatever its crimes.

Here is the excerpt:

“Israel is enthusiastically embraced by the Great Western Narrative: it is supposedly a liberal democracy, many of its inhabitants dress and sound like us, its cities look rather like our cities, its TV shows are given a makeover and become hits on our TV screens. If you don’t stand too close, Israel could be Britain or the US.

“But there are clues galore, for those who bother to look a little beyond superficialities, that there is something profoundly amiss about Israel. A few miles from their homes, the sons of those western-looking families regularly train their gun sights on unarmed demonstrators, on children, on women, on journalists, on medics, and pull the trigger with barely any compunction.

“They do so not because they are monsters, but because they are exactly like us, exactly like our sons. That is the true horror of Israel. We have a chance to see ourselves in Israel – because it is not exactly us, because most of us have some physical and emotional distance from it, because it still looks a little strange despite the best efforts of the western media, and because its own local narrative – justifying its actions – is even more extreme, even more entitled, even more racist towards the Other than the Great Western Narrative.

“It is that shocking realisation – that we could be Israelis, that we could be those snipers – that both opens the door and prevents many from stepping through to see what is on the other side. Or, more troubling still, halting at the threshhold of the doorway, glimpsing a partial truth without understanding its full ramifications.”

You can read Cook’s entire article here.

Anthony Bourdain’s Support for Palestine #BourdainRIP #Palestinians

Today we learned that Anthony Bourdain committed suicide last night.  Hearing this news will shock some people.  He seemed to have everything, but his tragic death reminds us that we never know another person’s true state of mind.

I always enjoyed Mr. Bourdain’s programs.  He struck me as a wonderful human being. I thought we could have been good friends.

Anthony Bourdain was also a vocal advocate for the Palestinian people. In 2014 the Muslim Public Affairs Council awarded Anthony their “Voices of Courage and Conscience in Media Award” for one of his programs dedicated to Palestinian refugees. During his acceptance speech he said:

“I was enormously grateful for the response from Palestinians in particular for doing what seemed to me an ordinary thing, something we do all the time: show regular people doing everyday things, cooking and enjoying meals, playing with their children, talking about their lives, their hopes and dreams.

“It is a measure I guess of how twisted and shallow our depiction of a people is that these images come as a shock to so many. The world has visited many terrible things on the Palestinian people, none more shameful than robbing them of their basic humanity.

“People are not statistics. That is all we attempted to show. A small, pathetically small step towards understanding.”

May you rest in peace, Mr. Bourdain.  I wish I had known you.