A Blog from David Crump
Though I can’t agree with his theology, I can’t help but have the deepest admiration for Dr. Cornel West. He was denied tenure at Harvard because of his outspoken defense of the Palestinian people suffering under Israeli apartheid.
In this clip from Middle East Eye, he explain the complicity of US media in covering up Israeli war crimes.
Yesterday, I introduced you to the story of Ahed Mohammad Rida Mereb, a 16 year old resident of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
Today we can listen to her describe what it was like to be abused by these Israeli soldiers.
The organization known as Defense for Children International, Palestine monitors the abuse of Palestinian children in the Occupied Territories (Gaza and the West Bank.)
They recently posted a horrifying story about a teenage girl being used as a
“human shield” by Israeli forces in the northern, West Bank refugee camp of Jenin.
The Israeli military often refers to itself as “the most moral army in the world.” But you must understand the ideology of political Zionism in order to understand the meaning of this slogan.
To the average westerner, being called “the most moral army in the world” means that Israeli soldiers always obey international law, will never commit war crimes, and will always fight justly and fairly.
Don’t believe it.
This phrase is actually another Zionist word game. But you won’t get the joke if you don’t understand what makes political Zionism tick. In the Zionist world, the most moral thing any Jewish person can do is to defend the Jewish state.
Thus, the “morality” of the Israeli military is not measured by international law or humanitarian standards of fair play or just war theory. These concerns have no bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsehood of Israel’s military proposition.
Instead, Israel’s military is supremely moral because they are “defending” the Jewish nation-state. And THAT, by definition, is the apex of military morality.
Consequently, I am not surprised to read this heartbreaking story of life-threatening child abuse committed by Israeli forces.
By the way, also notice the example of another war crime mentioned briefly at the end of this story. Because the teenager’s older brother was a wanted man, the army fire-bombed her family home.
This form of collective punishment is also a war crime regularly performed by Israel forces against Palestinian families. Imagine if your cousin had committed a crime but law enforcement came to destroy your home simply because you were family.
Israel does this, and so much more, all the time.
Read Ahed’s story below:
Ramallah, May 19, 2022—Israeli soldiers used a 16-year-old Palestinian girl as a human shield in front of an Israeli military vehicle while deployed in the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin last week.
Israeli soldiers forced Ahed Mohammad Rida Mereb, 16, to stand in front of an Israeli military vehicle on May 13 around 8 a.m. in the Al Hadaf neighborhood of Jenin as Palestinian gunmen shot heavily toward the Israeli forces’ position, according to information collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Israeli forces ordered Ahed to stand outside the military vehicle for around two hours while they sat inside.
“International law is explicit and absolutely prohibits the use of children as human shields by armed forces or armed groups,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program director at Defense for Children International – Palestine. “Israeli forces intentionally putting a child in grave danger in order to shield themselves constitutes a war crime.”
Israeli forces besieged Ahed’s home around 6 a.m. on May 13 in order to arrest her 20-year-old brother, according to documentation collected by DCIP. Israeli forces ordered Ahed, her parents, and her two younger brothers out of the house and to move to a yard across the street. Israeli forces exchanged fire with Ahed’s older brother, who remained in the house. Around 8 a.m., Palestinian gunmen shot heavily toward an Israeli military vehicle, which is when Israeli forces ordered Ahed to stand outside the military vehicle.
“Bullets were being fired at the military vehicle from all directions,” Ahed told DCIP. “I was trembling and crying and shouting to the soldiers to remove me because the bullets were passing over my head, but one of them ordered me in Arabic through a small window in the military vehicle, ‘Stay where you are and don’t move. You’re a terrorist. Stand in your place until you say goodbye to your brother.’”
Ahed tried to tilt her head to the side to dodge the bullets, but one of the Israeli soldiers ordered her to stand up straight, according to information collected by DCIP. Ahed stood in front of the Israeli military vehicle for about two hours before running to a nearby tree and collapsing on the ground, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
Around two hours later, Israeli forces evacuated Ahed’s two-story house, where she lived with her parents, three brothers, grandparents, two uncles and their wives, and their eight children ranging in age from one to 11 years old, according to information collected by DCIP. After the family evacuated, Israeli forces bombed the house with rocket-propelled grenades, which caused the house to catch on fire. Israeli forces also shot live ammunition at the house, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
Israeli forces withdrew from Ahed’s neighborhood around 11 a.m. She learned that Israeli forces arrested her older brother and that neighborhood residents posted on social media that she was being used as a human shield by Israeli forces, which led the Palestinian gunmen to stop shooting at the Israeli military vehicle.
Ahed was transferred by private vehicle to Jenin Hospital and was treated for intense mental stress and a severe lack of oxygen, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
The use of civilians as human shields, wherein civilians are forced to directly assist military operations or used to shield armed forces or armed groups or objects from attack, is prohibited under international law. The practice is also prohibited under Israeli law based on a 2005 ruling by the Israeli High Court of Justice.
Since 2000, DCIP has documented at least 26 cases involving Palestinian children being used as human shields by the Israeli army. All except one case have occurred after the Israeli High Court of Justice ruling. Only one of those cases led to the conviction of two soldiers for “inappropriate behavior” and “overstepping authority.” Both were demoted in rank and given three-month suspended sentences.
David J. Rothkopf is an American professor of international relations, political scientist and journalist.
Today’s issue of Haaretz newspaper published an insightful comparison witten by Rothkopf of the essential similarity between yesterday’s attack by Israeli soldiers against the murdered Palestinian journalist’s, Shireen Abu Aqla’s, funeral procession in east Jerusalem, and the mass murder of 10 African-American’s in Buffalo, NY by a young, white supremacist.
What do both have in common? Professor Rothkopf hits a bull’s eye when he says, Ethnic Nationalism.
The mass murderer in Buffal0 is a white supremacist worried about white people being “replaced” by immigrants and other people of color. In other words, he killed for his dream of a “white’s only nation.”
The entire Israeli state apparatus is built upon the foundation of Jewish supremacy, a supremacy that the Jewish state will defend at all costs. The murder of the Palestinian journalist, Ms. Abu Aqla; the unprovoked attack against her funeral procession; the continued military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, are all examples of Israel’s continuing efforts to preserve a “Jew’s only nation.”
Ethnic nationalism is never pretty.
My single disagreement with Rothkopf concerns his idea that Jewish ethnic nationalism is embraced only by Israel’s right-wing. However, my book, Like Birds in a Cage shows how very, very wrong this misconception is.
Below are excerpts from professor Rothkopf’s article, “What Binds America’s White Supremacists and Israel’s Brutal Assault on Palestinians” (all emphasis is mine):
An 18-year-old walks into a grocery store in Buffalo, New York and opens fire, killing ten. On the barrel of his gun is written a racist epithet so offensive that most media simply refer to it as the “n-word.”
dignified funeral.” What could their behavior possibly have to do with that of an unhinged racist who perceived those who were different from him as a mortal threat and, as a result, felt justified in turning to violence against them? . . .
And as repulsive as Carlson’s comments were, the logic that brought him to cite Israeli views toward Palestinians was akin to American white supremacists’ views toward non-Christians and non-whites is easily understood.
Gideon Levy’s recent article in the Israeli daily, Haaretz, is titled, “Is Blood of Iconic Journalist Redder than Blood of Anonymous Palestinians?”
In the wake of yesterday’s murder of Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military, Mr. Levy recalls the numerous innocent Palestinians who have also been murdered recently in the West Bank.
Ms. Abu Akleh is not an outlier. Rather, her circumstances are characteristic of Israel’s ongoing colonial atrocities. The Palestinians are a subordinate, oppressed, occupied people. Israel holds all the power.
Below is Mr. Levy’s article (all emphasis is mine):
The relative horror expressed over the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh is justified and necessary. It is also belated and self-righteous. Now you’re appalled? The blood of a famous journalist, no matter how brave and experienced she was – and she was – is no redder than the blood of an anonymous high school student who was traveling home in a taxi full of women in this same Jenin a month ago when she was killed by gunfire from Israeli soldiers.
Even if the smoking Israeli bullet that killed Abu Akleh is found, and even if footage is found that shows the face of the shooter, he will be treated by Israelis as a hero who is above all suspicion. It’s tempting to write that if innocent Palestinians must be killed by Israeli soldiers, better for them to be well-known and holders of U.S. passports, like Abu Akleh. At least then the U.S. State Department will voice a little displeasure – but not too much – about the senseless killing of one of its citizens by the soldiers of one of its allies.
But the crime begins long before the shooting. The crime starts with the raiding of every town, refugee camp, village and bedroom in the West Bank every night, when necessary but mainly when not necessary. The military correspondents will always say that this was done for the sake of “arresting suspects,” without specifying which suspects and what they’re suspected of, and resistance to these incursions will always be seen as “a breach of order” – the order in which the military can do as it pleases and the Palestinians cannot do anything, certainly not show any resistance.
Today an Israeli army sniper shot and killed the Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh. She was covering the most recent Israeli military attacks against the Jenin refugee camp for Al Jazeera.
Ms. Abu Akleh was unarmed. She was wearing a clearly visible, blue “Press” jacket when she was murdered.
Israeli soldiers shoot, wound, and murder unarmed Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank on a regular, perhaps even a weekly, basis.
But Ms. Abu Akleh’s murder is receiving noticeably more attention than the regular victims because she has been a high profile figure among Palestinians for decades.
As always, the Israeli press and military leaders are claiming that she was shot accidentally by a Palestinian gunman. After all, isn’t the Israeli army the “most moral army in the world,” as they say?
Watch this news panel of chattering dunderheads, otherwise known as “experts,” blather on about the impossibility of anyone in the Israeli army ever doing such a horrible thing!
The propagandistic i24 News, pearl-clutching is disgusting to watch, for none of these so-called experts has obviously taken the time to give their attention to the eye-witness accounts of the other journalists who were also being shot at.
Watch the video clip below to see those interviews yourself.
At least 4 Al Jazeera reporters came under repeated rifle fire for a sustained period of time. The shootings were obviously not an accident. They were deliberately targeting this group of journalists, all of whom were wearing blue Press jackets.
The shooting was deliberate, pre-meditated murder, pure and simple.
Two journalists were hit by this rifle fire. One was hit in the back and survived. The other, Ms. Abu Akleh, was fatally hit in the head/face.
This is not unusual. Israeli soldiers commonly aim for the victim’s face and head.
A third journalist drew repeated rifle fire whenever she tried to move in any direction. The shots aimed at her clearly demonstrate that the shootings, and the resulting murder, were intentional.
The journalists reported that there were no Palestinian fighters anywhere near them.
The Israeli military and its state propaganda machine specialize in two things: killing Palestinians and lying to the world about the horrible things they do.
The cold-blooded murder of a middle-aged, Palestinian Christian woman, who was doing her job reporting on Israeli violence in the West Bank, is only the most recent public instance of the continuing war crimes that Israel commits week in and week out in the Occupied Territories.
We cannot allow them to continue to get away with this!
Call your elected representatives and tell them that all American support and foreign aid to Israel must stop now.
Tell them that you do not want your tax dollars given to a racist, apartheid state that uses US weaponry to commit crimes against humanity.
If you are unfamiliar with something called Christian Zionism, allow me to introduce you to it.
Christian Zionism (CZ) is a kissin’ cousin to the ideology called political Zionism which governs the modern nation-state of Israel. CZ is a similar political ideology that draws from the Bible to defend the Jewish, Zionist conquest of Palestine in 1948 as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.
Psalm 122, especially verses 6-9, is commonly cited by CZ folks as setting God’s spiritual goal posts for his future work in the land of Israel. The psalmist says:
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May those who love you be secure.
May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels.”
For the sake of my family and friends,
I will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your prosperity.
Establishing peace in the literal city of Jerusalem, as the physical capitol of
territorial Israel, will be the centerpiece of God’s work of ushering in the New Heavens and the New Earth according to my CZ friends.
I just finished reading an article by a CZ scholar who quotes Psalm 122 while concluding with a plea for the end of conflict in Israel/Palestine — notably, while seeming to assume that the Jewish people will maintain their ethnic domination over resident Palestinians.
Reading this scholar’s quotation reminded me that I was recently 
interviewed by the good folks at ChristianZionism.org. We had a friendly conversation about the events in my life that led me to write my book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People.
Perhaps you will be interested in my story. I also talk briefly about life in a Palestinian refugee camp.
The final question my friend asked me was to explain the meaning of Psalm 122. So I did, applying what I will call the New Testament, “apostolic” method for reading the Old Testament (as I explain in my book).
It comes out very differently than the interpretations offered by my CZ brothers and sister.
You can read my entire interview here.
I have excerpted the interview below by posting my answer to the question, “Scripture tells us to ‘pray for the peace of Jerusalem’ (Ps 122:6). What should that look like?”
I am convinced that this is the proper Christian response to the question:
Psalm 122 is a “psalm of ascent” that was sung by ancient pilgrims as they travelled to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the center of Jewish worship because the city’s temple was God’s earthly residence. The psalmist’s calls for peace and harmony within the city and among God’s congregation of worshipers (verses 6 – 9), visualize the blessings of God’s presence reflected in harmony among God’s people. Christians today understand that our incarnate Savior, Jesus Christ, was the new temple of God’s presence here on earth (John 2:19 – 22; 4:21 – 24), who is now seated on David’s throne (verse 5) inside the heavenly temple at the right hand of God (Hebrews 1:1 – 4). An earthly temple is no longer needed. We now pray for the expansion of God’s peaceable kingdom on earth: for all of God’s people throughout the world to reflect the peace of Jesus Christ as they worship together and work together to extend God’s peace to the world around them. The New Testament vision of “the peace of Jerusalem” extends far beyond the provincialism, territorialism, and ethnic nationalism embraced by Christian Zionists.
Dina Elmuti retells her grandmother’s story of fleeing the massacre by Israeli troops of well over 100 Palestinians in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin in 1948.
Many Israeli historians insist that the massacre never happened.
Elmuti’s grandmother says otherwise. She is living testament to the inhumanity of war, whether it is a Jewish war against Arabs or an Arab war against Israelis.
Below is an excerpt from Elmuti’s article at the Electronic Intifada. It’s entitled “Deir Yassin Makes a Mockery of Israel’s ‘Never Again” Pledge.”
As Israeli security forces continue to ravage the people of the West Bank, now is a good time to remember what happened at Deir Yassin.
. . . Earlier that same morning, my great-grandmother, Aziza, and her oldest daughter, Rifka who was 13 at the time, went to the village bakery to bake bread. That was something they did each morning as their homes were not equipped with ovens.
My grandmother, nearly 10, and her five younger siblings remained at home.
Inside the bakery, my great-grandmother and great aunt witnessed a horrific scene that continues to haunt me. My grandmother often shared this story with us because she believed it was our responsibility to never forget.
While holding villagers in the bakery hostage, Zionist soldiers ordered the baker, Hussein al-Shareef from the town of Lydd, to throw his son Abdul Rauf into the burning oven. After refusing, the soldiers knocked Hussein to the ground and proceeded to throw Abdul Rauf into the oven while his father watched.
“Follow your son. He needs you there,” said one of the soldiers before throwing Hussein in next.
These are among scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history. Yet, this memory often remains too controversial to share.
Telling it challenges the myths that Israel has manufactured.
Following the gruesome scene, soldiers took the captive villagers and paraded them through the streets of Jerusalem. That is how Zionist forces celebrated their “victory” in Deir Yassin.
Upon returning to the village, the male villagers were lined up against the stone quarry wall and executed. Bodies riddled with bullets were then dumped into a mass grave and set aflame.
Approximately 110 villagers were massacred. Untold hours of human life, gone up in flames. . .
You can read the entire article here.
The escalating violence instigated by the Israeli military in the West Bank continues unabated.
The numbers of dead, wounded, and arrested Palestinians far exceeds the number of Israeli civilians killed last week in Israel. But this is par for the course.
Israel’s vengeance against the undifferentiated “mass” of neighboring Palestinians always far exceeds the damage done by isolated acts of Palestinian violence.
God intended to curb the ancient urges for Israelite vengeance with his rule of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Modern Israel, however, has kicked that rule to the curb.
Israel now insists on a dead body for an eye, or five of their dead or injured for one of ours.
The two videos below are only a tiny portion of the many available reports that western, corporate media deliberately ignore.
I challenge you to ask yourself, How would you respond to such treatment?
The recent flurry of seemingly random shootings committed by Palestinian men in Israel has spurred a new wave of demands that Palestinian leaders “condemn these acts of terrorism” against innocent Israeli civilians.
Naturally, every Christian should certainly condemn these acts of violence and grieve with the victims’ families.
However, as I mention in my book, Like Birds in a Cage, such attacks are extremely rare. Their rarity is especially noteworthy when we recall that millions of Palestinians are subjected to Israel’s state-sponsored terrorism on a daily basis throughout Gaza and the West Bank.
For those of us who follow this story, it is not unusual to read weekly accounts about Israeli soldiers demolishing Palestinian homes and property, cutting down family olive groves, or attacking, beating, arresting, and shooting Palestinian civilians, including children, women, and old men.
What amazes me about Palestinians in Israel/Palestine is how docile they remain in the face of Israel’s unrelieved terrorist campaign against them.
Below are excerpts from two recent pieces in Haaretz newspaper written by the Israeli journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy. Click on the titles to read the entire articles.
Hass and Levy speak for the small minority of Israeli Jews who faithfully cultivate a humanitarian conscience, seeing Palestinians as fellow human beings equal to themselves.
First, Hass’ article, “For the Palestinians in the West Bank, It’s an Exception, Not a ‘Terror Wave” (all emphasis in mine):
While the Palestinian public understands the attackers’ motives, the vast majority does not choose this path, which does not advance their cause, and has reservations about targeting civilians. But condemnation? Let Israelis first condemn the violence they exercise against Palestinians.
The three acts of murder-suicide perpetrated by four Palestinians — from both sides of the Green Line — in less than two weeks only highlight the absence of a leading political Palestinian body, employing a single, clear and unifying strategy. The attacks reflect internal divisions and the painful awareness of Palestinian weakness and inability to act in the face of Israel’s might. On the other hand, the fact that so few choose this route, despite its availability, indicates a broader political understanding that such attacks do not further the Palestinian cause.
Every Palestinian, on both sides of the Green Line, has many reasons to wish that Israelis feel pain, because it’s they and not only their government that are responsible for the Palestinians’ predicament. It’s likely that this was the desire of the four suicide-murderers — regardless of their background, family circumstances or individual character. Israelis immediately know, since there is an entire apparatus disseminating such information, which attacker had been arrested previously, after which attack candy were handed out and next to which assailant’s house young people celebrated (with total disrespect for the family’s pain). But Israelis, on the whole, are not interested in the extent to which Israel, and they themselves, as its citizens, constantly and for many decades have been harming Palestinians, as individuals and as a people.
This huge gap between specific knowledge and willful lack of knowledge is sufficient to explain why the Palestinian public in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is indifferent to the recent attacks by individuals, whether committed by Israeli citizens or West Bank residents, and is not obeying Israeli demands to condemn the murders. What is noteworthy is not that the attackers have escaped the Shin Bet’s attention, but that despite their understanding for the assailants’ motives, the vast majority of Palestinians do not choose to take this route.
Thousands of Palestinians without a work permit openly enter Israel every day through the multiple gaps in the separation fence. This has been going on for years, with the full knowledge of the army and police. As everyone knows, there are ample weapons and ammunition among the Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank. These two facts could have engendered many more revenge attacks by individuals that could not be discovered in advance, both by Palestinian citizens of Israel and by West Bank residents. Even if copycats crop up in the coming weeks, like the screwdriver attack on Thursday, for Palestinians, the number of these attacks pales in comparison to the extent of the injustice Israel inflicts on them, and its systematic nature.
“Raad” means thunder in Arabic. On Thursday evening he sat on a bench on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street for 20 minutes before he stood up and began shooting at people around his age who were enjoying happy hour at Ilka Bar. In the picture that was posted later he looks handsome; in a different picture, in which he clutches two rifles, he appears enraged and frightening. Hazem killed Tomer Morad, a mechanical engineering student; Eytam Magini, a computer science, psychology and neuroscience student; and Barak Lufan, a former Olympic athlete and the head coach of Israel’s national kayak team. All of them, like him, were young men.
It was a mirror image that could have been from a movie. Young people from the same country, sitting across from each other: the so-called stranger on the public bench, tense and agitated, facing locals in a bar on Thursday evening. In the days preceding the terrible night friends of the guys in the bar, soldiers and Border Policemen, killed five young people in his refugee camp, and now he sets out to kill them indiscriminately.
The people facing him are the characters he would like to be, with the life he would like to live, the freedom and the opportunities he too would like to have. He wants to make his existence known and say: If I don’t have that life, those rights, you who sit in the bar facing me will also never have them. That’s the whole story. On top of it one can build piles of intelligence and weapons, punishment and deterrence, theories about bloodthirstiness and moral judgment, about murder and killing, war plans, operations and fences. In the end, that’s the story. This and no other. Nothing can beat it.
