As I consider the violations of
human rights and all that Israel
does to dishonor and humiliate their Palestinian neighbors, I think it would be
a shorter list to try to come up with what Israel has not done. Israel has not built
gas chambers, has not used Palestinian bodies for medical experiments, or rounded
up young Palestinian girls to be sex slaves. That is to be commended. But when compared with its record of human
rights abuse, it is hard to overlook so many similarities with Nazi-like
practices in which Israel engages in seeking a “final solution” to its
“Palestinian problem.” It’s not that Zionist Israel is totally
similar to Nazi Germany. It’s that Israel is not un-similar enough in its
Nazi-like tactics. “Death to Arabs,”
expresses the mood of the day and it has been for a long time.
In writing of the founding of Israel
as a state, historian Arnold J. Toynbee declared:
The treatment of the Palestinian
Arabs in 1947 (and 1948) was as morally indefensible as the slaughter of six
million Jews by the Nazis…Though not comparable in quantity to the crimes of
the Nazis, it was comparable in quality.[i]
Chris Hedges summarizes how it
is today:
A report by Action on Armed
Violence found that Israel
When Palestinians cry out to the world, “our lives matter,” they
are not just asking that they be allowed to live, but that they be given the
same dignity and security that any life deserves. Try putting yourself in their place:
We as Palestinians are daily
humiliated by the Israeli forces; our human rights are violated daily; our
homes are demolished daily by bulldozers manufactured in the United States; our
olive trees are uprooted on a daily basis; our land is confiscated and turned
over into illegal settlements daily; our young people languish in Israeli jails
with no charges or due process for months on end; our teenagers are taken from
their beds in the middle of the night and imprisoned by the Israeli army on an
average two by night; and the Israeli government continues its violations of
international law while the nations of the world remain silent.[iv]
It’s not just that Israel , up-roots trees by the thousands,
destroys homes, schools and wells, Israel
has a record of horrible treatment of children.
Children in the West Bank :
--- Face arrest
without warning, military courts, and physical violence at the hands of the
Israeli forces. According to Defense of
Children International Palestine, 500 to 700 children each year are arrested
and come into contact with the Israeli military system in the West
Bank .
--- Over half
of the arrests take place during raids on homes in the middle of the night. Children
are routinely blindfolded and have reported being beaten, insulted, and
threatened with rape.
--- A 2013
UNICEF report concluded that, ”the ill-treatment of children who come in
contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic
and institutionalized.[v]
The Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs asks:
Do you know
what American taxpayer money to Israel
supports? Among other things, it funds the IDF’s detention of thousands of Palestinian
children --- 8,000 since 2000 --- who are pulled from their beds in the middle
of the night, often beaten, denied access to their parents, food or a lawyer,
and held without charge.[vi]
What will it take for us, the United States , to wake up and
acknowledge the fact that, “Children’s lives matter,” even if they are Palestinians?
Yet, the US
stands alone as the only country in the world to oppose a resolution by the
United Nations Human Rights Council calling for Israel to be accountable for war
crimes.
Someone is going to say, “Oh come on. Comparing Zionist
Israel to Nazi Germany
is a bit over the top.” And I will say,
“Make you case. I have made mine,”
except to point out that the world went to war to stop Nazi Germany. On the
other hand, Israel it still
at it, and the world, especially the US , looks the other way as
Zionism’s brutality rages on.
Thomas Are
August 1, 2015
[i] Naim
Ateek, Justice and Only Justice,
(Orbis Press, Maryknoll, New York, 1989) p.32
[ii] Chris
Hedges, Why I Support the BDS Movement
against Israel
[iii] Chris
Hedges. Truthdig, 2015
[iv] Ateek’s
Moral Universe., Mondoweiss, July 7,
2015,
[v] Ylenia
Gostoli, Teen’s Death Highlights Israel Abuse of West Bank Youth., Al Jezeera,
July 6, 2015
[vi] These
disturbing details were noted at a June 2 congregational briefing that featured
Tariq Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old American teen beaten by Israeli police last
summer. While he is now free, hundreds of children who don’t enjoy the
privileges of American citizenship remain in Israeli prisons. Reported in The Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs, August, 2015.
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