Drinking Poison

Someone said, “A fool drinks poison expecting his enemy to die.”  I can’t think of a more fitting image for Benjamin Netanyahu.   Know it or not, he is killing himself.

There is a fascinating children’s story about an emperor who wears no clothes. The point of the story is that the emperor walks around naked and he is the only one who does not know that he is wearing no clothes. I think of Netanyahu. He is drugged on his own propaganda, chosenness, power and wealth and does not know that he is actually choking  himself.

He is poisoned by his own propaganda.  While the whole world saw television images of the senseless bombing of Gaza, the deliberate killing of men, women and children, the targeting of schools, hospitals, ambulances, electrical and sewage plants plus the destruction of agricultural fields, live stock and farms, Netanyahu still spoke of Israel as having “the most moral army on globe”.     He looks at five year old kids and can only see terrorists and justifies their massacre as an “act of self-defense”.  His nation supports two sets of laws, one for Jews and the other for non-Jews and he still speaks of Israel as the “only democracy in the Middle East”.  He steals land, labor, and resources, including water, from an occupied people and with a straight face calls Israel the “start-up nation.”  It is sad to see a man in power poisoned by his own propaganda.

And Chosenness.   I don’t know that Netanyahu has ever claimed to be a religious person. However, he loves that part in the Jewish scripture about God blessing those who bless Israel and cursing those who curse Israel.  Of course, this was recorded by a Jewish scribe who claims to have heard it from the Jewish God in a Jewish language and recorded it in his Jewish scared literature for all non-Jews to read and obey.

However, if we believe in monotheism, that there is one God over all, then when Israel celebrates Joshua’s victory over the Canaanites, was not God also God of the Canaanites? And if God won, does this not mean that God also lost?   More to the point, even in the Jewish Bible, chosenness carries with it the basic Jewish values of justice and charity. The land is held conditionally and is losable.

Wow! Chosenness really gets complicated.

Most outsiders would recognize that Netanyahu is poisoned by power.  Constantly having to outdraw and out shoot all his neighbors to survive is exhausting.  There has to be a better way to feel safe.  It’s an old saying, but true, that the only way to get rid of an enemy is to make a friend of him.  Israel had its chance but chose the poison of power as a means of dominating its enemies.  Thus Israel must invest more and more resources into maintaining its military might, and like salt water, the more it drinks, the more thirst it feels.  Never having enough power to feel secure, I wonder if Netanyahu lies awake at night yearning for more weapons, military aid and people without conscience to maintain his oppression of its neighbors.

When I remember how viciously the Nazis treated the Jews less than a century ago, it is impossible for me to understand how Netanyahu can turn around and abuse another people. He does it, not because he has a right, but simply because he is drunk with power.  His mind and heart must be so toxic until he is beyond memory, feeling or reason.  

Finally, Charity can become an addictive poison, especially when your very existence depends upon it.  Israel survives only by handouts from other people, mostly Americans.  In addition to the three to six billion dollars every year put in Israel’s cup by the US tax payer, hundreds of private, tax free, organizations send hundreds of millions of dollars to keep Israel afloat. However, with the ever growing needs of American people at home, even Netanyahu must realize that his “blank check” life line is in jeopardy.  More and more political leaders, especially Democrats, are beginning to ask why the fourth most powerful nation in the world needs our charity.  

There is no doubt that Israel has enemies. I can understand why.  I am an enemy of its policies. Yet, having said that, I do not wish harm to Netanyahu. I would strip him of his power if I could, which some believe would kill him, but I do not wish him dead.

Whether he believes in it or not, I believe his scripture, that he too is created in the image of God.  And, some day, maybe late in life, he is going to be lying on a bed and begin to feel a few qualms. Just because of the “image of God” in which he has been created, even Benjamin Netanyahu will realize that for most of his life, he has been drinking poison. And on that day I will feel sorry for him.

Thomas Are

September 3, 2015

Trigger Event

I keep hoping for a trigger event. Like the time that the US government seemed determined to continue the war in Viet Nam. Then, a picture of a screaming nine year old naked child, with her clothes having been burned off and the look of absolute terror all over her young face appeared on the front page of the New York Times. Suddenly, this became a trigger event and Americans began wondering if this was the way to peace in Viet Nam.

I also think of all the preaching in Montgomery, Alabama denouncing segregation as an evil system.  Very little changed.  Then one day, Rosa Parks simply said, “I’m not going to sit in the back of the bus.”  That became the trigger event that lead to the civil rights of African Americans all over the southland.

I had hoped that the deliberate murder of 23 year old Rachael Corrie would have generated enough of a backlash that finally the US government would rise up and say, this has gone too far.  But in spite of the gory details of a multi-ton bulldozer crushing the life out of a young American girl, condemnation of Israel gained little traction.  Then, when Israel bombarded Gaza last summer for 51 straight days, I thought, surely this massacre of over two thousand people will spark a reaction to Israel’s senseless claim to own all of Palestine because “God” gave it to the Jews”. Yet again, when the bombs stopped falling and Gaza was left a pile of rubble, the nations of the world, especially the US, considered the conflict to be settled.

So, I ask, could the terrorist attack that burned little 18 month old Ali Dawabsha alive while he was sleeping in his own bed, become the trigger event that calls into question the whole oppressive regime of Israel’s occupation? At least, people are talking about it. The Associated press reported in American newspapers:

Israel intensified its crackdown on Jewish extremists Sunday imprisoning two high profile ultranationalist Israelis for six months without charge and arresting additional suspects in West Bank…The crackdown comes after a deadly July 31 firebomb attack on a Palestinian home in the West Bank that killed an 18 month old and his father and severely wounding his mother and brother.[1]

One can only imagine the panic and fear that gripped two parents who in spite of exploding flames tried to save their children.

Netanyahu is “shocked”, he said. But he could not be surprised. He appointed as Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, who actively called for the genocide of Palestinians and championed calling their children “little snakes.” [2] It was Netanyahu who had called for the bombardment of Gaza where 500 children were burned, blown up or crushed to death in what he called “revenge,” the very same word those who burned little Ali and his family alive spray painted on the wall of his house. And Netanyahu continues to provide state funds and weapons to every settler and refuses to crack down on the thousands of settler violence targeting Palestinians. It was only a matter of time.

There have been some  2,100 settler attacks since 2006, including 120 in the 222 days of 2015 so far… only 1.4% of those who murder Palestinian children are ever indicted.  Juliana Farha says, “This might be news to you, but rest assured that Bibi knows all about it.”[3]

Shahd Abusalama, writing for Mondoweiss:

As one who carries the memories of many brutal Israeli attacks on Gaza, this claimed “shock” didn’t hit me. It rather outraged me at Israel’s crocodile tears and pretentious humanitarianism, despite its brutal military occupation of West Bank, the continued  expansion of its illegal settlements, the suffocating siege of the Gaza Strip that remain in ruins after Israel’s genocidal war last summer, and its ongoing assertion of itself as a “Jewish State” not a state for its citizens, as it discriminates against 1948 Palestinian citizens of Israel, or what its leaders call a “potential fifth column.”[4]

Netanyahu had to say something, no matter how disingenuous it might be. More than 2,000 Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv to protest the killing.  Gilad Erdan, a member of Netanyahu’s cabinet said, “A nation whose children were burned in the Holocaust needs to do a lot of soul searching if it bred people who burn other human beings.”  Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party, compared Jewish terrorist to ISIS. David Grossman wrote in the daily newspaper, Haaretz, “I can’t get this baby, Ali Dawabsheh, out of my mind.[5]  Israeli president Reuven Rivlin said, “I feel a sense of shame, and moreover a sense of pain. Pain over the murder of a small boy. Pain that from my people, there are those who have chosen the path of terrorism, and have lost their humanity.”[6]

A prime example of "lost humanity" was when Nasar Jaber, a Palestinian youth in Ramallah simply wished a young soldier at a check point to have a “good day.”  The soldier stopped him. “Am I your friend to wish me a good day? The soldier then struck Jabar in the head with the butt of his rifle, fracturing his jaw, and detained him two hours before allowing him to be taken to a hospital.[7]

According to B’Tselem, in the past three years since August 2012, Israeli citizens set fire to nine Palestinian homes in the West Bank. Additionally, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Palestinian taxi, severely burning the family on board. No one was charged in any of these cases… In recent years Israeli citizens set fire to dozens of Palestinian homes, mosques, businesses, agricultural land and vehicles in the West Bank. The vast majority of these cases were never solved, and in many of them the Police did not even bother to take elementary investigative action.[8]

Again, could the murder of little Ali Dawabsheh become the trigger event that turns the tide of Israel’s public opinion against Netanyahu’s reign of terror?  For the first time in decades, it seems possible.

Thomas Are

August 19, 2015

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[1] Daniel Estrin, Israel Holds Jewish Extremists, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,  August 10, 2015.

[2] David Harris-Gershon, You Aren’t “Shocked” Jewish Settlers Burned a Palestinian Baby Alive, Netanyahu You’re complicit.  Tikkun Daily August 1, 2015.

[3] The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)  reported by Juliana Farha,  Someone Else’s Normal: The Dawabshe Tragedy and Picturing Palestine. Mondoweiss, August 13, 2015

[4] Shahd Abusalama, The Burning of a Palestinian child: not an exception, but results of Zionism,  Mondoweiss,  August 1, 2015.

[5] David Pratt, Something is Rotten in the State of Israel,  Information Clearing House,  August 10, 2015.

[6] Allison Duger,  Mother of Palestinian Baby Burned to death tried to Save her  Child, Mondoweiss,  August 2, 2015

[7] International Middle East Media Center, July 30, 2015

[8] Press releases from B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories,  B’tselem: A Burned Infant was only a Matter of Time in view of Policy to Not Enforce Law on Violent Settlers. published July 31, 2015.

Palestinian Lives Matter

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:

Israel’s goal is to make life a living hell for all Palestinians, ethnically cleansing as many as it can and subduing those who remain. The peace process is a sham. It has led to Israel’s seizure of more than half the land on the West Bank, including the aquifers, and the herding of Palestinians into squalid ghettos or Bantustans while turning Palestinian land and homes over to Jewish settlers. Israel is expanding settlements, especially in East Jerusalem. Racial laws, once championed by the right-wing demagogue Mier Kahane, openly discriminate against Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.[ii]

A report by Action on Armed Violence found that Israel killed and injured more civilians with explosive weapons in 2014 than any other country in the world.[iii]

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

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[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. Published by Truthdig, July 27, 2015.

[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. 

Controlling the Narrative

Why is it important for Israel to bombard the tiny strip of Gaza over and over?  Certainly not for security, which is the reason given to and bought by most Americans.  Gaza is hardly a threat to Israel. Gaza has no planes, tanks or bombs with any explosive significance.  What Gaza threatens by its very existence is Israel’s narrative.

How do you explain locking up almost two million helpless people as of in prison, most of whom are kids, denying them access to education, health care and a safe place to sleep at night and still tell the world that you are a moral nation. There is no way to justify a Gaza, so you silence their cry.

Today, one year after Israel’s “defensive” massacre, Gaza still remains in ruins: 18,000 homes are still destroyed, 120,000 people are still homeless, living on the streets. Repair on hospitals, schools, sanitation and water systems have yet to be started. If materials were allowed into Gaza and full scale reconstruction were to begin today, the United Nations warns that it would take 30 years to bring Gaza back.[1]  Even Bassam Eid, who blames Hamas for what happened to Gaza last summer, admits a bleak picture:

2.5 million tons of rubble remains in Gaza to this day. 200,000 workers lost their means of employment. 80% of Gaza people are surviving on welfare. 40% of Gazans are living below poverty lines. 22,000 Gazan are homeless. Only 600 caravans have been provided to the Gaza Strip since the end of the war.[2]

According to the Secretary General of the UN, there are no schools – no hospitals – no electricity and no proper drinking water and this is the reality for the Gazan people these days.[3]

“Hamas is trying to rebuild Gaza, and homelessness is at the top of its agenda.” Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan said. “From the first day of the war until now, Hamas has tried to support the homeless by offering relief and financial aid. Hamas offers tents, barracks and compensation for victims who lost their houses. But some of them still live in schools.”  Among the 100,000 homeless and jobless living in a school building with 100 other families is Liala Kloob. “You can’t imagine. I, and my six children, have to stand in line and wait our turn to get food, water or even go to the bathroom.”[4] 

All of this at the hands of “the start-up nation,” with the “most moral army on the globe,”  the “only democracy in the middle east,” simply fulfilling the orders of their God who “gave” everything the Palestinians owned to the Jews.”

And how does Israel get away with it when it is so blatant and contrary to human decency?  By control of the narrative, especially in America.

So, we have AIPAC, whose job, according to Mico Peled, is to convince Americans that the U.S. and Israel are essentially identical. They do so by rewarding legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda and punishing those who challenge it.

The key to Israel’s legitimacy is the Zionist narrative, and AIPAC is selling the narrative in order to maintain the legitimacy. The Zionist narrative in this country is not only accepted it is treated with religious fervor. It is seen as biblical and indisputable. One does not need to convince Americans that Israel is always right and that the Zionist narrative is true, they receive this with their mother’s milk.

And what is the narrative?

It is a mythical story that turned the history of Palestine from 1947 until the present time on its head. The brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the establishment of a racist apartheid state which offers exclusive rights to Jewish people in Palestine was sold here as a story of heroism and revival. Thanks to AIPAC, the horrific brutal destruction of Palestine – from 1947 to the present day – is virtually unknown in this country.[5]

No one denies that AIPAC has done its job. But, it could not have been done without the aid of about 50 million so called Christian Zionists who support the narrative in what they call a Rapture Theology. There are many windows through which we can glimpse the core of Rapture Theology and every one of them focuses on Israel.

Rapture Theology grows out of pulling together little bits and pieces of obscure biblical texts and linking them to produce the idea that Jesus cannot come again until the temple in Jerusalem has been rebuilt.  They claim that sometime between the rapture, the time when all the true believers have been lifted up out of the world, and before the final judgment, the antichrist will cause “sacrifices to cease.” Of course for sacrifices to cease, they must be practiced and the only proper place to make sacrifices is in the temple in Jerusalem. Thus, the Dome of the Rock, the third most holy place for Muslims to worship, must be destroyed and replaced by a new temple in Jerusalem.     

If you are finding all this confusing and far fetched, I am with you. But it is supported by such TV personalities as Hal Lindsey, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Benny Hinn, James Dobson, Sarah Palin and 80 million copies of the Left Behind series.

The late Jerry Falwell said:

God is kind to America because America has been kind to the Jews… I believe if we fail to protect Israel, we will cease to be important to God.  God has blessed America because America has blessed the Jews, his chosen people.”[6]

Two reasons why we should be concerned about Rapture Theology: One - it controls our Congress and Two - it drives our foreign policy. It is not just a harmless heresy.  It is dangerous and it causes unbelievable pain in the Middle East.  

I blame the seminaries for not combating this, the most dangerous heresy to threaten the church and synagogue, in a more aggressive way.  It should be addressed from every pulpit and Sunday School class until Christians scream for the rights of oppressed people.  Unfortunately, most Americans seem to be more committed to loosing five pounds or betting on which way a ball bounces than to becoming engaged in matters uncomfortable or controversial.  

Every now and then we stumble over truth. We see a late night news report or read something on the internet that causes us to question our blind support of all Israel does.  But, mostly, when that happens, we get right back up, dust ourselves off and go on as though we never noticed a crack in the Israeli narrative.  After all, no one wants to be labeled anti-Semitic.   

On the other hand, someone pointed out that Israel is not a religion. It’s not a race. It is a country. And it’s OK – it’s not anti-Semitic – to talk about and even criticize a country we support financially and diplomatically.

So, let me come back to where we started. Gaza, by its very existence, threatens not Israel’s security, but Israel’s narrative.

Thomas Are

July 21, 2015

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[1] The Huffington Post:  Alexandra Ma, This is What Life in Gaza Looks Like, One Year After the War., Posted July 10, 2015

[2] Bassam Eid, Former Director of the Jerusalem based Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. Gaza one year later: From bad to worse. Blogged July 13, 2015.

[3] Bassam Eid. Gaza one year later: From bad to worse.

[4] Asma’ Jawabreh and Mohammad Atallah, 100,000 in Gaza Still Homeless after War with Israel.,  USA TODAY, April 25, 2015.

[5] Miko Peled, How the Lobby Enables Israeli Policy: Views of an Israeli in America, National Press Club Conference, THE ISRAEL LOBBY, April 10,2015, Washington, D.C., Reported in A Special Supplement to the Washigton Report on Middle East Affairs.

[6] Gracce Halsell, Prophesy and Politics, Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War,  (Lawrence Hill and Company, Westport, Conn, 1986.) p. 74.

I am Flabbergasted

If you are concerned about peace in the middle east and seek security for Israel when the entire neighborhood is in turmoil, if you want to avoid a needless war with Iran, (a war  which we will not win), and if you are looking for someone with great negotiating skills and experience in understanding the needs and point of view of the other, someone with knowledge of the region and its history, someone known for diplomacy, then, where do you turn? 

Of course, you call on professional football players.  Who better to understand what it is  like to be ordinary people trying to survive in an oppressive situation than those who grew up and continue to live in what the news media calls a “culture of entitlement?” 

That’s why Robert Kraft, ultra Zionist, and owner of the New England Patriots led a delegation of 20 former National Football League players to Israel where they met with Benjamin Netanyahu. The Prime Minister wanted an opportunity to explain to them why Obama’s effort to avoid a war with Iran is a dumb move.  It’s not that Netanyahu himself seeks a war with Iran where Israel would have to pay the price in lives and money, he is clear in proclaiming that he wants the United States to go to war with Iran. So, he chose the bright minds of the NFL to make his case. He put it in terms that even they could understand. Call it football diplomacy.

Iran is one yard away from the goal line. If they get nukes, the preeminent terrorist regime of our day will be armed with nuclear weapons.  That’s dangerous for the United States and for Israel and for the entire world. And our effort today is to make sure that we block them and push them back. That’s the ultimate contest and the ultimate challenge, and I hope it was advanced somewhat by this visit.[1]

“I lead my life according to the four F’s – at least phonetically,” Kraft is often reported as having said; “family, faith, football and philanthropy.  This trip has connected all those dots for me.” 

Some one needs to ask, which of these “dots” includes the right of Jews to steal land from Palestinians, kidnap and imprison their children, take their water, blow up their homes and lock them up behind cement barrows and barbed wire fences? Which of his four F’s justifies the past and on-going war crimes committed by Israel every day?

Kraft also chooses to live by a few other “F” words, such as the word foolish, or even fantasy. Or what about fiction?  It’s make believe to think that a team of football players could have a better grasp of how to deal with Iran than President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. 

Mr. Kraft needs another “F" word to connect his dots. It’s the word fairness.

Football is an entertaining game, but when it gets involved in foreign affairs, which causes so much pain to so many people, it is no longer amusing.  Mr. Kraft should stick to something he knows something about for when he gets into defending Israel, he has fumbled and somebody needs to blow the whistle on him.

When I read that wealthy professional football players are recruited to influence US policy in the Middle East, the best “F” word to describe me is flabbergasted with an equal measure of fear.

William Sloane Coffin said it well. “If what you think is right causes some one else to suffer, there is something wrong with what you think is right.”

 Thomas Are

July 13, 2015

[1] Philip Weiss, Patriots’ Owner Brings 20 NFL veterans to Netanyahu who calls them to block Obama’s Iran Deal. Mondoweiss, June 22, 2015

Meet Issam

He has a name and a face. What he does not have anymore is a family.

On August 24, last summer, around 4 o’clock in the afternoon, Issam Abu Mustafa was inside preparing a meal which he thought would be a treat for his family. Then, BOOM! An Israeli bomb killed his wife and four of his children.

Issam’s wife, 6 year-old Osama, 8 year-old Mohammed, 12 year-old Raghad and 14 year-old Tasneen all died on the spot. Thaer had his right leg amputated above the knee and he was sent to Germany where doctors are still treating him for severe burns that cover most of his body.[1]

If it made the news at all, it was presented as a statistic.  Issam’s family was only five of the 2,200 Palestinians, including 547 children killed by Israel, 68 percent of whom were 12 years old or younger. Ten year-old Thaer, the sole survivor from the back yard massacre, is only one of the estimated 1,000 children in Gaza who sustained life time disabilities. 

We know very little about Mr. Issam Abu Mustafa. But what we do know is significant. If he is old enough, he is one of the 750,000 Palestinians driven out of their homes in 1948 by force or fear.   If he is a little younger, and if he escaped the Nakba, he probably fled to Gaza as a refugee from the six day war of 1967. Regardless, he is now living behind guarded fences as a criminal. He has never committed a crime, nor has he ever been accused of one. He is a victim of Israeli imperialism.  To the U.S., he is invisible. To Israel, he is simply a nuisance.  

For certain, he and his family lived through Operation Cast Lead which was started by Israel on the night that all America was watching the election returns between Barack Obama and John McCain.   

According to Noam Chomsky:

On November 4, while the media were focused on the US presidential election, Israeli troops entered Gaza and killed half a dozen Hamas militants. That elicited a Hamas missile response and an exchange of fire. (All the deaths were Palestinian.)  In late December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire. Israel rejected the offer, preferring to launch Operation Cast Lead.[2]

A few Israelis in Tel Aviv demonstrated against the slaughter of the people of Gaza. They were attacked by hooligans as the police stood by and did nothing. Others took lawn chairs and sat on a hill top overlooking Gaza to cheer every explosion.[3]  And they would have much to cheer. Israeli air corps flew nearly 3,000 sorties over Gaza and dropped 1,000 tons of explosives killing as many as 300 people in the first four minutes.[4]

In the course of Cast Lead, Israel damaged or destroyed “everything in its way,” including 280 schools and kindergartens, 1,500 factories and workshops, electrical, water and sewage installations, 190 greenhouses, 80 percent of agricultural crops, and nearly one-fifth of cultivated land. Whole neighborhoods were laid waste, fully 600,000 tons of rubble were left behind… 29 ambulances, almost half of Gaza’s 122 health facilities (including 15 hospitals) and 45 mosque.[5]

Issam and his children would have also lived through Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012.  Israel called it defense.  The facts say otherwise.  From January until November of that year, one Israeli had been killed. During that same time, seventy-eight Palestinians had been killed in attacks on Gaza.[6]  

At least, we can know this. Issam, in his whole lifetime, never lived a day with hope and security.  In spite of the agreement Israel had made to lift the siege, the blockade brought Issam’s world to near collapse. Food, medicine, fuel, parts for water and sanitation systems, paper and even such things as children’s toys and shoes were denied entry. The fact is, Israel had killed more than two Palestinian children per week for the previous fourteen years.[7]

Then came Operation Protective Edge, in the summer of 2014.

By massacre’s end, Israel had killed 2,200 Palestinians, of whom 70-75 percent were civilians. Among the dead were 500 Palestinian children. In addition, 11,000 Palestinians suffered injuries (including 3,300 children, of whom 1,000 will be permanently disabled): 11,000 homes, 360 factories, 160 mosque, 100 schools, and 10 hospitals were either destroyed or severely damaged; 100,000 Palestinians were left homeless. Israel suffered 66 combatants and five civilian casualties including one Israeli child. In addition, 120 Israelis suffered injuries, one person seriously wounded.[8]

“Yeah, yeah” a friend said to me. I know the story. We’ve heard it before.” 

I understand his feelings. Statistics and numbers can get boring.  But, it is not boring to Isaam.  Those statistics include his wife and children.  They were real people who wanted to live as much as any child would want to live and enjoy life.  Issam would overthrow his oppression if he could, but he has no power or army.  As far as Israel is concerned, he is just a statistic. That’s all.

And, how does Israel justify itself to the world?   Gideon Levy, writing for one of Israel’s leading newspapers, Haartz, calls it “Hasbara,” a fancy word for propaganda:

Propaganda shall cover everything. We’ll say terrorism, we’ll shout anti-Semitism, we’ll scream delegitimation, we’ll cite Holocaust; we’ll say Jewish state, gay-friendly, drip irrigation, cherry tomatoes, aid to Nepal, Nobel Prizes for Jews, look what’s happening in Syria, the only democracy, the greatest army. We’ll say the Palestinians are making unilateral moves, we’ll propose negotiations on the “settlement bloc borders,” we’ll demand recognition of a Jewish state and we’ll complain that “there’s no one to talk to.”[9]

And that’s the way it will continue to be. Issam will be little more than a statistic as long as the only nation on the globe strong enough to do something about it is “on the take.”

Thomas Are

June 15, 2015

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[1] Patrick Strickland,  Gaza Fallout: “I cannot Understand These Crimes. Al Jazeera Media Network,  Published in Other Voices, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2015.

[2] Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, On Palestine,  (Haymaker Books, 2015)  p.185

[3] Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, On Palestine,  (Haymaker Books, 2015) p. 99

[4] Norman Finkelstein, Method and Madness,  (Or Books, New York, 2014) p.3, 15.

[5] Finkelstein, p. 75.

[6] Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, On Palestine,  (Haymaker Books, 2015) p. 185.

[7] Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, On Palestine,  (Haymaker Books, 2015) p.190.

[8] Norman Finkelstein, Method and Madness,  (Or Books, New York, 2014) p.156.

By the way: Under international law, those resisting occupation are not debarred from using force to defend themselves. The issue is, does Israel have the right to use force to maintain its illegal occupation.  As long as Gaza is shut up like an outdoor prison, soldiers, either within the land or deployed to surround its borders, maintain an occupation.

[9] Originally published at www.haartz.com.  January 4, 2015

She Called Me a Radical

I seldom use this blogspot to defend myself. In fact, if I’m not accused of being “anti-Semitic” from time to time, I feel like I am falling down on the job. 

However, when I was dis-invited to speak to a church group because their leader said, “I understand perfectly well what is happening between Israel and the Palestinians, but Tom is a radical.”  I had two responses.

First, if she really understood what is happening over there, why is she not a radical. When the rich and powerful openly oppress, abuse, misrepresent, rob and kill a weaker people to take their land and resources, it is not a time for calmness and business as usual. It is a time to scream for justice, understanding and compassion.

Second, I am not the radical. I want peace and a decent life for the Israelis and the Palestinians. What’s radical about that?  In fact, I am a conservative. I want to conserve human rights and civil rights and women’s rights. The radicals are in Washington and Tel Aviv.

I want to urge those extremist in Washington to make the motto of “liberty and justice for all” the standards by which America treats the world. What is radical about that?

It’s not the American people but those in Washington who are screaming for war with Iran. They are the ones who want to allow the most right wing bully of another nation dictate our U.S. foreign policy. They are the ones who are willing to sell out the average American for one more term in Congress.  And they are the ones who over and over again put our moral standards in jeopardy before the international community by voting the interest of Israel above the well-being of the United States. I say, “That’s radical.”   

Want radical?  Representative Steve Israel, in an interview with Mondoweiss, boldly declared his loyalty to Israel.

I support Israel through and through, no matter what atrocities it commits.

My job as congressman from NY district 3 is to advocate for Israel at all cost. People argue that I harbor dual loyalty. They’re totally wrong I’m just loyal to Israel. We share a name after all… I have to keep the military aid flowing. Israel can never have enough white phosphorus. Am I right?[1]

Now, that’s radical.

Also, compared to those drastic leaders in Tel Aviv,  I am not radical. 

Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, recently appointed Civil Administrator responsible for all aspects of the occupation, said on August 1, 2013:

            Palestinians are beasts, they are not human.

Four months later he adds:

            A Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile, even if he is a homosexual.[2]

When elected officials justify Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians on the grounds that God (Yahweh) gave Palestine to the Jews, and when they quote Genesis 12 as a real estate deed, I see that as rather radical and drastic. That’s when I become very conservative. I want to conserve the moral and ethical teachings of their own Jewish prophets. I want to conserve such things as:

--- Remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:16-17)

--- For the Lord is a God of justice. (Isaiah 30:18)

--- Behold my servant, He will bring forth justice to the nations. (Isaiah 42:1)

--- For I, the Lord, love justice. (Isaiah 61:8)

--- Thus says the Lord,  Do justice and righteousness and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless and the widow, nor shed innocent blood. (Jeremiah 22:3)

--- Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24)

--- Justice and only justice, you shall follow that you may live and inherit the land which the Lord your God gives you. (Deuteronomy 16:20)

In fact, listen to the Bible and it is clear that God is a God of justice. If you know this about God and you don’t know anything else, you will know more of God than if you know everything else there is to know of God, and you don’t know this. God is passionate for justice. 

The lady who called me a radical was right in being concerned about the injustice brought about by the radicals in positions of leadership. It’s just that I am not one of them.

Thomas Are

June 5, 2015

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[1] Scott Roth, Mondoweiss Exclusive: One on One with Rep. Steve Israel. Mondoweiss, April 1, 2015.

[2] Philip Weiss, Netanyahu Deputy Charged with Administrating Palestinians Says They are “Beasts, Not Human.” Mondoweiss, May 9, 2015