In the last week, even Western supporters have had enough of Israeli genocide. Biden has said Stop. So have Nancy Pelosi and Jan Schakowsky and Richard Haass. American Jewish organizations that always supported Israel are at each others’ throats over Israeli actions, which is earning Israel “pariah status” to the detriment of “world Jewry.” Even Republicans say 33,000 civilians killed are too many. Fareed Zakaria ventures that bringing famine to 1 million people is “counterproductive” to Israel’s interests.
There may be at last cuts to Israeli aid, the U.S. made bombs that are maiming and killing thousands of Palestinian children.
We got there first– my community of leftists/realists/Palestinian solidarity activists long ago called for actions to stop Israel. We supported boycott, divestment and sanctions. And we were called antisemitic for wanting to curb Israeli violence, including by J Street. It’s worth reviewing why we acted so as to understand how long these unbearable conditions have prevailed.
We began by touring the occupation and seeing for ourselves the cruel Israeli tactics towards a subject population. We saw indiscriminate barrages that cut down children and families. We saw the maiming of demonstrators. We saw apartheid before our eyes, worse than the South African version– a truth that got me fired, a truth since documented by countless human rights organizations.
Years before the murder of American aid worker Jacob Flickinger in Gaza brought worldwide outrage this week, we condemned the murder of Rachel Corrie, who was trying to save Palestinian homes in Gaza from arbitrary destruction by an occupying force in 2003.
We saw Israel for what it is and declares itself to be: a Jewish nationalist state that treats Palestinians as lesser. Jonathan Pollak related that he asked his air force commander if he would bomb an apartment building in Tel Aviv if a terrorist were harbored there, and the commander said Of course not, there are Jews there – and on that simple principle Pollak refused to fly bombing missions. But this is the military principle Israel is employing in Gaza. No Palestinian is innocent, because so many support Hamas. Economics minister Nir Barkat said so on MSNBC, 70 to 80 percent of Palestinian civilians are not innocent.
We witnessed the enormity of collective punishment. Often I think of the time a Jewish colleague stood at Qalandiya crossing – the industrial complex that serves to separate the prosperous Israeli state from the masses of Palestinians in the West Bank, and said it was worse than Auschwitz—in the sense that Jews who knew about Auschwitz were perpetrating it.
There is no great virtue in being first. You are a vanguard. You are the activist grassroots. But the world must come round. You have an obligation to bear witness so as to convince others. This website tries to do that.