Occupation Has Consequences

In the wake of the Hamas led offensive in the occupied regions of southern Palestine the world has once again decided that “Israel has a right to defend itself”. We pretend that Israeli civilians being attacked is an “unprecedented terror attack” because we want to have some excuse to ignore decades of Israeli aggression and violent oppression of Palestinians in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The insistence that nothing prior to this attack can be considered when talking about Israel is a calculated attempt to hide the full context of what led to this escalation, how Hamas even came to be, and why Israel is now seeing the consequences of its actions on a scale Netanyahu always wanted.

Christians who support Israel are the same sorts of people who love to quote verses about “you reap what you sow” when people they hate are suffering any given anguish. Many are using those verse right now as Palestinian families are exterminated by Israeli airstrikes. Yet for decades the Israeli state has understood that it would eventually have to deal with “blowback”, consequences, for its crimes against the Palestinians. That is why Tel Aviv has kept an eye on Iran and Lebanon. Because the Jewish ethno-state knows that its violent oppression of Palestinians would make it enemies among its neighbors. Leaders like Netanyahu however didn’t just know that consequences were coming, they have engineered among Palestinians the harvest they wanted all along. For Netanyahu the existence of groups like Hamas has always been politically profitable. Having a boogeyman to scapegoat whenever necessary is what all authoritarians want. And now that we know that Egypt warned Tel Aviv well in advance of this weekend, it is clear that Netanyahu saw the consequences coming. It was an excuse for the total war he wanted to launch. War being historically how Netanyahu has solidified his hold on the government in Israel. How Netanyahu has gained support among Israelis who believed their government all along when they were told they would never suffer the consequences for the occupation and apartheid policies. While Netanyahu appears to have allowed the consequences to come home to the Israelis, it cannot be ignored that the Israelis themselves went along with their government for decades under the promise that they would be shielded from accountability. What Israel saw when the ghetto walls of Gaza were breached was an uprising of people who have been denied their rights, their humanity and their homeland. As violent as this has been, this is the harvest that Israel made possible. The harvest sprouted from the seeds Israel alone spread across Palestine.

As a Jew, I am reminded of the conversations I was able to have with survivors of the Holocaust in Croatia. Partisans who used extreme violence to fight back against the Nazis and Ustaša alike. People who had participated in the reprisals that took place before Tito ended the resulting communal violence in Yugoslavia. Of the three of them, none seemed truly remorseful for taking revenge. At no point did I blame them for that hardness either. Having listened to what the Ustaša did to them, I was in no place to judge what they wanted to do in return. The Croatian fascists had planted a harvest that they believed they would never have to reap. That eventually the Jews, the Serbs, the Roma would be gone. That under the guidance of their Nazi counterparts, Croatia was going to be Catholic only. But each family member they murdered in the forests and mountains, each family member they sent to camps was a seed their fascist sins planted in the hearts of those who remained. Once sprouted, somebody had to pay. An exchange was to be made. And this part of the Holocaust, the part that came after the fascists were defeated, isn’t isolated to the stories I listened to. In Germany the survivors also put forth revenge actions. Be it poisoning SS inmates under American guard or planning to poison German water supplies, the price of the crimes committed against them carried over even after the war had ended. Many would illegally immigrate to Palestine. And many of those would use the crimes European states committed against them as reason enough to force Palestinians to pay the price.

Only in the comfort of privileged distance do we find it convenient to say that killing citizens of an occupying force, which Israel is, is morally unjustified. It has not been our families murdered by Israeli occupation. It has not been our brothers abducted by the Israeli occupation forces, and it has not been our sisters who have endured sexual assault and victimization by Israeli soldiers and settlers. We get to watch Gaza burn while pretending that each new death in this Israeli carpet-bombing campaign isn’t a new seed being planted for a future harvest of bloody revenge. By ignoring the over 80 years of violence perpetrated against the Palestinians we get to “stand with Israel” in feigned outrage over mislabeled “terrorism”. Only when we have decided to ignore Netanyahu’s fascism, Israel’s original sins and the longstanding blockade of Gaza can we get atop our soapbox and shout about how violence is never the answer.

Until Palestinian suffering is recognized, until Israel faces true consequences for its crimes, the Western world will have to get comfortable playing the role of hypocrites. That is unless we somehow decide to start telling our governments to withdraw support for Israel and end financial backing of its murderous campaign against Palestinians. Let Israel face the horror of what occupation looks like. Force Netanyahu to come outright with his desired crimes against humanity so he and the rest of Israel’s leadership can be tried like the Nazis at Nuremberg. But given the Democrats’ current response, appeasement of the genocidal government in Israel, the status quo, seems more likely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Bullet In The Chamber

(A Bridge Too Far series)
(PLUCK series)

(Every Word Has The Power To Wound)

No matter how well I articulate my position on Palestine and Israel I will always be seen as a "Zionist". Of this much I'm certain.

Religion is a vile and despicable construct that has served no other purpose but to divide those G-d created so much alike. Poison from the lips of imams and scholars has taken it's toll upon the moderates' minds. Venom that drips like honey, so as to hide it's bitter ends, flows from those who claim to preach peace in the name of a G-d that has apparently turned His gaze away. Their decorated temples and houses of thieves bring in the sheep to the slaughter. Yet a devout mass makes no attempt to question their masters as they raise the axe above their bowed heads.

Yes, I will always be considered a vile and ill-mannered "Zionist". But not because I hold organized religion in such contempt. No, I am "the enemy" because of my lack of apologies for supposed sins I have never once committed.

For it is not Islam that I hate. It is not Judaism which I hold such abhorrent views of. It is the perverse twisting, the manipulating, of faith in the name of politicized religion. This placement of an imagined devotion to a religion rather than the G-d it allegedly is supposed to serve. This is the source of my discontent.

On the battlefield for the survival of Israel or the "reconquista" of Palestine the main line of battle forms along religion. It is across this barrier that the two sides use the propaganda they have been fed as they release volley after volley of hate filled rhetoric. Yet both claim to be after peace? Both sides claim to be hanging their hats beneath the banners of religions that preach love and yet this is where they decide to mount their attacks from?

All my life my faith has been at war with the religion to which it is supposed to belong. Under the mislead guidance of "men of G-d" I have had to bow my head. Years of internal combat finally broke the shell and released my repulsion with every pit of snakes we so elegantly call houses of G-d. No longer could I tolerate the manipulation of holy words to serve the desires of a few. No more could I tolerate the lies that come with crosses, crescents, or stars.

For years now I my faith has been signified by the kippa atop my head. My only temple to which I retreat is that of the shadows beneath the cover of my tallit. For my faith does not need a scholar, a rabbi, an imam, or a preacher. My G-d does not need a church, a temple, or a mosque in which to confine me. My brother, my akhi... my sister, my ahoti... these are not confined by those who pray to G-d by the same name as I. The world is my alter and the persistent service of my fellow man my religion.

This is faith.

Faith cannot be used to strike at another with hollow attempts at advancing ourselves. It leaves us defenseless before the world. It places us in a state of servitude to those who most need it. In faith we step out onto a battle field where everyone carries loaded guns. Yet faith offers us nothing with which to fire back.

When we use religion to attack one another we are void of the faith to which we supposedly cling. Religion provides us a series of ritualistic defenses to hide our vulnerability. It shelters us amongst a multitude so that we become faceless... nameless. We become Muslims... Jews... we however do not become unique.

Unique talents of the individual are only highlighted in organized religion if they serve the desires of those pulling the strings. These talents that would otherwise be valuable contributions to mankind as a whole are hoarded for the selfish advancement of a few. Thus creating in situations like that in Israel an arm race of sorts that utilizes man as ammunition rather than valuing us for who we are.

The most damning part of religion playing a role in Palestine and Israel's conflict is just how effective it really is.

Through the application of "the Jews" as a blanket statement a political statement implicates not just Israel but an entire religion as a whole. The interchangeable use of Zionist with that of Jew or Jewish makes this connection between politics and faith that much more difficult to break. By utilizing these words, this ammunition, the words of a few place an entire people within the cross hairs.

No matter how moderate or rebellious the individual might be these few words can trigger a reaction based on religious devotion rather than one that might arise out of faith alone. For my faith would guide me to look beyond the words alone and toward the pain from which they originate. And yet the sting of being implicated with the masses instead of being taken as an individual brings forward only hostility. And this is from where a person will draw their reaction to such blanket statements.

For every time that I take up the position to defend Palestinians' most basic of human rights there will always be this familiar sting. As long as there are those who would defend their religion in spite of those who might otherwise align with them... I'm nothing more than a supposed "Zionist". It is this familiar sting that drives many back to the trenches their religion has dug for them and off the position their faith has guided them to hold.

This is the miserable reality of religious perversion on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Entire masses so eager to die for a flag designed for them not by G-d but by the hands of perverse leaders. This is what breaks the heart of a G-d who lives not in Jerusalem but rather in the soul of every man.