west bank
oh man.
for months I have not been immersed in the situation in Palestine....perhaps exercising my privilege by indulging my feelings of being overwhelmed and hopeless.
but now I feel much as I did when i first became a palestine solidarity activist, in the year before 9-11, during the second intifada...when I realized that the mainstream news was showing such a biased and limited picture of what was going on there.
yesterday we heard of the eviction of the house of contention. Israeli settlers had taken over a palestinian house, in hebron, which is the West Bank, which they claim was sold to them. IOF (israeli Occupation Forces) removed them. most of the news about this was framed as though this is a fair dispute. As fucking if. this has been going on for a long time. I used to read a journal regularly from a human rights observer based in Hebron, and it was so...so intense to read about the daily attacks, violence, and all around nastiness that the Palestinians who have so far refused to be expelled are suffering.
here is what is happening in the west bank right now.
back in late November, Jewish settlers protesting against an official Israeli eviction order have desecrated Muslim buildings in the flashpoint West Bank town of Hebron.
They sprayed "Death to Arabs" and an insult to the Prophet Muhammad on a mosque wall and vandalised a cemetery.
"They called me names. Whore, prostitute," she said. "Then they threw stones. One of them hit me and I haven't received medical treatment since."
Her sons later confronted the Jewish youths but three of them were arrested by police. A Red Crescent ambulance was called to treat Munwar, but Jewish youths threw stones at it too.
An innocent Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. All of
them women and children, save for three men. Surrounding them are a few dozen masked Jews seeking to lynch them. A pogrom. This isn't a play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word. First the masked men set fire to their laundry in the front yard and then they tried to set fire to one of the rooms in the house. The women cry for help, "Allahu Akhbar." Yet the neighbors are too scared to approach the house, frightened of the security guards from Kiryat Arba who have sealed off the home and who are cursing the journalists who wish to document the events unfolding there.
Violence spread to another West Bank town where Palestinians said settlers torched olive orchards, a day after settlers shot and wounded three Palestinians in anger at the removal of Israeli families from a building occupied in defiance of a court order. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki accused the settlers of "waging war" on Palestinians and urged the United Nations Security Council to take up the issue.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has released graphic video footage showing settlers fighting with Palestinians in Hebron and shooting two men at close range in the hours after a settler house was evacuated by police yesterday.
(I haven't watched this video. I'm scared to)
but this goes back. I have been reading and hearing aobut settler violence in hebron for at least a couple of years now.
(from 2007)HEBRON, 9 September (IRIN) - Israeli policy in Hebron city center has led thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes and some 1,829 businesses have been shut down since 1994, a report by the Israeli human rights organizations B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights has charged.
you can even go back to 2002. I know nothing about this websiote (ie, if it has a bias, and if so, toward what) but check this out:
Reports are all too common of Hebron settlers entering into a Palestinians home to smash the furniture and knock things over or start raging fires inside of the homes. When this happens, it is typical that the soldiers will impose a curfew on the Palestinians, "For their (the Palestinians) security" as one soldier explained. Journalist risk the destruction of their expensive equipment, stone throwing and guns being pointed at them if they dare to enter into the area to cover a story. Not only is the aggression perpetrated by the local settler adult community, but also by the younger generation of children and women. "The kids were throwing stones at me while calling me a dog and a cow, while the mothers stood by and watched. Then, the men and teenagers started coming over waving their guns at me. I just started to run away from them and get out of there.", said a reporter from Italy.
I found all of these articles via google in just the past half hour. the point, though, is that for most americans the house of contention is the first they've heard of this situation, and the picture being painted is bullshit. the settler sin Hebron are perpetrating daily abuses and crimes against Palestinians and human rights monitors on a daily basis and have been for years, and the IOF either stands by or offers active support.
I am disgusted and outraged and ashamed.
for months I have not been immersed in the situation in Palestine....perhaps exercising my privilege by indulging my feelings of being overwhelmed and hopeless.
but now I feel much as I did when i first became a palestine solidarity activist, in the year before 9-11, during the second intifada...when I realized that the mainstream news was showing such a biased and limited picture of what was going on there.
yesterday we heard of the eviction of the house of contention. Israeli settlers had taken over a palestinian house, in hebron, which is the West Bank, which they claim was sold to them. IOF (israeli Occupation Forces) removed them. most of the news about this was framed as though this is a fair dispute. As fucking if. this has been going on for a long time. I used to read a journal regularly from a human rights observer based in Hebron, and it was so...so intense to read about the daily attacks, violence, and all around nastiness that the Palestinians who have so far refused to be expelled are suffering.
here is what is happening in the west bank right now.
back in late November, Jewish settlers protesting against an official Israeli eviction order have desecrated Muslim buildings in the flashpoint West Bank town of Hebron.
They sprayed "Death to Arabs" and an insult to the Prophet Muhammad on a mosque wall and vandalised a cemetery.
"They called me names. Whore, prostitute," she said. "Then they threw stones. One of them hit me and I haven't received medical treatment since."
Her sons later confronted the Jewish youths but three of them were arrested by police. A Red Crescent ambulance was called to treat Munwar, but Jewish youths threw stones at it too.
An innocent Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. All of
them women and children, save for three men. Surrounding them are a few dozen masked Jews seeking to lynch them. A pogrom. This isn't a play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word. First the masked men set fire to their laundry in the front yard and then they tried to set fire to one of the rooms in the house. The women cry for help, "Allahu Akhbar." Yet the neighbors are too scared to approach the house, frightened of the security guards from Kiryat Arba who have sealed off the home and who are cursing the journalists who wish to document the events unfolding there.
Violence spread to another West Bank town where Palestinians said settlers torched olive orchards, a day after settlers shot and wounded three Palestinians in anger at the removal of Israeli families from a building occupied in defiance of a court order. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki accused the settlers of "waging war" on Palestinians and urged the United Nations Security Council to take up the issue.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has released graphic video footage showing settlers fighting with Palestinians in Hebron and shooting two men at close range in the hours after a settler house was evacuated by police yesterday.
(I haven't watched this video. I'm scared to)
but this goes back. I have been reading and hearing aobut settler violence in hebron for at least a couple of years now.
(from 2007)HEBRON, 9 September (IRIN) - Israeli policy in Hebron city center has led thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes and some 1,829 businesses have been shut down since 1994, a report by the Israeli human rights organizations B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights has charged.
you can even go back to 2002. I know nothing about this websiote (ie, if it has a bias, and if so, toward what) but check this out:
Reports are all too common of Hebron settlers entering into a Palestinians home to smash the furniture and knock things over or start raging fires inside of the homes. When this happens, it is typical that the soldiers will impose a curfew on the Palestinians, "For their (the Palestinians) security" as one soldier explained. Journalist risk the destruction of their expensive equipment, stone throwing and guns being pointed at them if they dare to enter into the area to cover a story. Not only is the aggression perpetrated by the local settler adult community, but also by the younger generation of children and women. "The kids were throwing stones at me while calling me a dog and a cow, while the mothers stood by and watched. Then, the men and teenagers started coming over waving their guns at me. I just started to run away from them and get out of there.", said a reporter from Italy.
I found all of these articles via google in just the past half hour. the point, though, is that for most americans the house of contention is the first they've heard of this situation, and the picture being painted is bullshit. the settler sin Hebron are perpetrating daily abuses and crimes against Palestinians and human rights monitors on a daily basis and have been for years, and the IOF either stands by or offers active support.
I am disgusted and outraged and ashamed.