The murder of three Israeli teenagers was horrifying but the Israeli government’s response is equally so. Two suspects—allegedly members of Hamas—who disappeared from their homes, had been effectively pronounced guilty before an investigation was concluded, let alone a trial. Israel’s revenge was swift. Homes were demolished and over 420 Palestinians were arrested, many with no affiliation to the group.
A video circulating on the Internet showing one of those arrests illustrated Israel’s sheer barbarity. Women were seen being roughed-up in their own homes and traumatized small children clinging to their mother screamed “Baba, Baba” as their father was dragged away in handcuffs brought me to tears.
There was much worse to come. Colonists (I refuse to call them settlers) allegedly pulled a young Palestinian into a car and literally burned him alive. The terror and the physical pain he must surely have endured are too terrible to imagine. His 15-year-old American cousin caught on camera being brutally beaten and kicked by Israeli police for allegedly throwing stones, was imprisoned without charge before being put under house arrest. The only reason that his plight has attracted White House disapproval is the color of his passport. Yet, the US Consulate in Jerusalem has informed the boy’s family that they have little legal recourse except to go along with Israeli procedures!!
And, according to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), “Late on Friday night, Israeli settlers kidnapped Tareq Ziad Odeily, 22, after two settler vehicles invaded the village of Osarin, forced him into one of their cars and drove away. The settlers first sprayed his face with pepper-spray. He was then taken to an isolated area where he was repeatedly beaten, kicked, punched and stabbed” before being left to die. Tareq managed to call his father and is now in a hospital in Nablus with serious injuries.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doused fuel on this atmosphere of raw hate. “May God avenge their blood,” he told colonists mourning the loss of their son, which could be interpreted as a green light for mourners to do God’s work. Instead of reserving judgment on those culpable for the death of the three Israelis, he pointed a finger at Hamas, which denies involvement, even as his Cabinet mulled an all-out invasion of Gaza and new West Bank settlements in honor of the trio. For now, Israel is content to rain air strikes on this heavily populated strip of land that’s been met with missiles launched by the Qassam Brigades. Sympathy for the incinerated Palestinian lad had initially had to be dragged out of Netanyahu’s lips and the Israeli media slandered his grieving nearest and dearest suggesting his demise was “an honor killing,” an accusation his family vehemently denies.
This cycle of an eye-for-an-eye type revenge has brought a new and very dark dimension to this conflict, which has the potential not only to ignite Palestinians living in east Jerusalem and the West Bank toward a third intifada, but the fact that children are being targeted could also raise the ire of Israeli Arabs. How can Palestinian or Israeli families protect their young when crazed vigilantes are going around kidnapping and murdering youngsters?
These latest events, as tragic as they are, have only served to highlight Palestinian suffering. How many more years or decades must they be abandoned to occupation, humiliation, and imprisonment, being forced to queue for hours at checkpoints, barred from praying at Al-Aqsa, and separated from family and friends by security walls? How long is the international community prepared to stand paralyzed watching colonists, who live in comparatively luxurious well-guarded gated communities with manicured green spaces and lakes, destroy the olive groves and orchards of their Palestinian neighbors?
I was deeply disturbed over a televised documentary focusing on the Ha’aretz writer Gideon Levy, “the most hated man in Israel” for his sympathetic coverage of the other side. Palestinians in a market over which netting was suspended recounted how colonists living on the higher floors of apartments above regularly throw bleach, sewage, urine and objects over the heads of shoppers. An elderly woman said she was banned from going out of her own front door whereas Levy was free to do so because he is Jewish. If that doesn’t indicate that Israel is an apartheid state, then what would?
It should be said that not all Israeli colonists are extremist; some have relocated to the West Bank for economic reasons, lured by subsidies, while others were ideologically driven to leave their comfortable lives in the US or Europe for the land they term “Judea and Samaria.” They are supported by Israel’s religious right and have been cheered on by successive Israeli leaderships in the knowledge that they present the greatest obstacle to a two-state solution. Ideological colonists and Hamas are different sides of the same extremist coin.
As long as the Israeli government sticks to its expansionist policies and turns a blind eye to colonists’ crimes, even the most faded hopes for a peaceful tomorrow with Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in two-states are doomed to die. And when all hope is crushed, what next?
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
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Arab-Israel conflict sinks to new depths
Posted on July 10, 2014 by Linda S. Heard
The murder of three Israeli teenagers was horrifying but the Israeli government’s response is equally so. Two suspects—allegedly members of Hamas—who disappeared from their homes, had been effectively pronounced guilty before an investigation was concluded, let alone a trial. Israel’s revenge was swift. Homes were demolished and over 420 Palestinians were arrested, many with no affiliation to the group.
A video circulating on the Internet showing one of those arrests illustrated Israel’s sheer barbarity. Women were seen being roughed-up in their own homes and traumatized small children clinging to their mother screamed “Baba, Baba” as their father was dragged away in handcuffs brought me to tears.
There was much worse to come. Colonists (I refuse to call them settlers) allegedly pulled a young Palestinian into a car and literally burned him alive. The terror and the physical pain he must surely have endured are too terrible to imagine. His 15-year-old American cousin caught on camera being brutally beaten and kicked by Israeli police for allegedly throwing stones, was imprisoned without charge before being put under house arrest. The only reason that his plight has attracted White House disapproval is the color of his passport. Yet, the US Consulate in Jerusalem has informed the boy’s family that they have little legal recourse except to go along with Israeli procedures!!
And, according to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), “Late on Friday night, Israeli settlers kidnapped Tareq Ziad Odeily, 22, after two settler vehicles invaded the village of Osarin, forced him into one of their cars and drove away. The settlers first sprayed his face with pepper-spray. He was then taken to an isolated area where he was repeatedly beaten, kicked, punched and stabbed” before being left to die. Tareq managed to call his father and is now in a hospital in Nablus with serious injuries.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doused fuel on this atmosphere of raw hate. “May God avenge their blood,” he told colonists mourning the loss of their son, which could be interpreted as a green light for mourners to do God’s work. Instead of reserving judgment on those culpable for the death of the three Israelis, he pointed a finger at Hamas, which denies involvement, even as his Cabinet mulled an all-out invasion of Gaza and new West Bank settlements in honor of the trio. For now, Israel is content to rain air strikes on this heavily populated strip of land that’s been met with missiles launched by the Qassam Brigades. Sympathy for the incinerated Palestinian lad had initially had to be dragged out of Netanyahu’s lips and the Israeli media slandered his grieving nearest and dearest suggesting his demise was “an honor killing,” an accusation his family vehemently denies.
This cycle of an eye-for-an-eye type revenge has brought a new and very dark dimension to this conflict, which has the potential not only to ignite Palestinians living in east Jerusalem and the West Bank toward a third intifada, but the fact that children are being targeted could also raise the ire of Israeli Arabs. How can Palestinian or Israeli families protect their young when crazed vigilantes are going around kidnapping and murdering youngsters?
These latest events, as tragic as they are, have only served to highlight Palestinian suffering. How many more years or decades must they be abandoned to occupation, humiliation, and imprisonment, being forced to queue for hours at checkpoints, barred from praying at Al-Aqsa, and separated from family and friends by security walls? How long is the international community prepared to stand paralyzed watching colonists, who live in comparatively luxurious well-guarded gated communities with manicured green spaces and lakes, destroy the olive groves and orchards of their Palestinian neighbors?
I was deeply disturbed over a televised documentary focusing on the Ha’aretz writer Gideon Levy, “the most hated man in Israel” for his sympathetic coverage of the other side. Palestinians in a market over which netting was suspended recounted how colonists living on the higher floors of apartments above regularly throw bleach, sewage, urine and objects over the heads of shoppers. An elderly woman said she was banned from going out of her own front door whereas Levy was free to do so because he is Jewish. If that doesn’t indicate that Israel is an apartheid state, then what would?
It should be said that not all Israeli colonists are extremist; some have relocated to the West Bank for economic reasons, lured by subsidies, while others were ideologically driven to leave their comfortable lives in the US or Europe for the land they term “Judea and Samaria.” They are supported by Israel’s religious right and have been cheered on by successive Israeli leaderships in the knowledge that they present the greatest obstacle to a two-state solution. Ideological colonists and Hamas are different sides of the same extremist coin.
As long as the Israeli government sticks to its expansionist policies and turns a blind eye to colonists’ crimes, even the most faded hopes for a peaceful tomorrow with Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in two-states are doomed to die. And when all hope is crushed, what next?
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.