Israel Commits War Crimes Against Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah.
The State of Israel is committing war crimes against Palestinians with support from the United States. If this comes as shocking news to you then you simply haven’t been paying attention.
Palestinians have been taking to the streets of Israel in recent days to protest against the state’s policy of forcibly displacing Palestinian families from their homes on occupied land claimed by Jewish settlers. Most recently, residents of Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem have organized protests that Israeli security forces have responded to with tactics that the U.N. claims could amount to “war crimes.”. This is just the latest example of the Israeli campaign to force Palestinians out of East Jerusalem.
According to Al Jazeera, the U.N. human rights spokesman, Rupert Colville told reporters in Geneva that Israel must “call off all forced evictions” in the occupied Palestinian territory of East Jerusalem because according to international law, “The occupying power…cannot confiscate private property in occupied territory”. He added that Israel’s actions “could amount to war crimes”.
Al Jazeera reported that Israeli security forces have attacked Palestinian and international solidarity activists attending nightly vigils to support Palestinian families under threat of displacement by attacking them with “…skunk water, tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and shock grenades.”. At least one protester lost an eye and several others suffered serious headwounds after security forces took headshots at them using rubber bullets. Also, dozens of solidarity protesters have been arrested and could face indefinite detention in prison.
Last Friday on one of the most sacred days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israeli security forces brutalized Palestinians worshipping outside of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, more than 90 Palestinians were injured as a result of the state-sanctioned assault. This attack took place just one day after Israeli police injured more than 200 Palestinians while storming the same mosque, which is considered by Muslims to be the third most holy site in Islam. There are numerous videos in circulation on social media showing Israeli Security Forces firing tear gas, flashbangs, and rubber bullets at Palestinians while they were worshiping inside of the Mosque. Attacking cultural and religious sites is considered a war crime under international law.
The attacks that injured hundreds of Palestinians while they were worshiping at one of the holiest sites in Islam led to reactionary rocket fire from militants in Gaza. No casualties were cited in the Reuters report on the matter, while the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza that followed the rocket attack killed 21 Palestinians, including three children. This tracks with previous reports on the disparity between Israeli and Palestinian casualties. An article in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting explained that according to a report from the human rights organization B’Tselem spanning from 2000 to 2019, Palestinian militants were responsible for the deaths of a total of 301 Israeli civilians while Israeli security forces were responsible for the deaths of 5,279 Palestinians “who did not take part in hostilities, or were killed during the course of targeted killings (which are illegal under international law).”
Another more in-depth analysis done by Visualizing Palestine found that from 1988 to 2018 a total of 1,670 Israelis have been killed, while during that same period a total of 11,284 Palestinians have been killed. According to Visualizing Palestine, “Since the start of the first Intifada, nearly seven times as many Palestinians have been killed by Israelis than Israelis killed by Palestinians, and this disparity is growing over time.”
One of the Palestinians who witnessed the attack at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Mahmoud Al-Marbua, told Al Jazeera:
“They do not want us to pray. There is a fight every day, every day there are clashes…Look how they are firing at us. How can we live? Is this normal life?”
Life is anything but normal for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. In the eyes of the international public, it appears as though Israel and Palestinian leadership are distinct entities with separate spheres of sovereignty when in reality Israel exercises control over every aspect of Palestinian life within the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank.
Palestinians living under occupation are subject to hundreds of security checkpoints that prevent them from having the ability to move freely throughout their own country. In addition, Israel has prevented Palestinians from accessing oil and gas reserves on their own territory, making them dependent on Israel for their energy needs. Also, Palestinians living under occupation in East Jerusalem aren’t granted the same residency rights as Jewish Israelis, meaning Palestinian residency is conditional and can be revoked by Israeli settlers. Palestinian demonstrations against this policy have been at the core of the most recent protests in Sheikh Jarrah.
Palestinians living in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank don’t even have the ability to access water without the approval of Israel. According to the World Health Organization, the minimum recommended amount of water someone needs to drink per day is 100 liters, but Palestinians in Gaza are only granted access to 90 liters per day, and Palestinians in the West Bank are granted just 73 liters per day while Israeli settlers average about 369 liters per day. Palestinians living under occupation are forced to buy water from Israel’s national water company Mekorot, which provides 80% of the West Bank’s water supply.
A recent report from Human Rights Watch also found that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, confirming what many Palestinians have been saying for a long time. The report explained that Israel can be defined as an apartheid state because “a stated aim of the Israeli government is to ensure that Jewish Israelis maintain domination throughout the territory…that Israel controls.”. The report also said that,
“the fragmentation of the Palestinian population…furthers the goal of dominaiton and helpts to obscure the reality of the same government repressign the same population group, to varying degrees in different areas, for the benefit of the same dominant group.”
Those who attempt to both sides this conflict never seem to acknowledge these facts since they seek to blame Palestinians for the horrendous conditions that they live in, rather than holding the state of Israel accountable for forcing Palestinians into this horrible situation in the first place. It should come as no surprise that after decades of systemic oppression, a marginalized group might resort to using drastic measures in the name of fighting for their freedoms. Regardless, data proves that the actual terrorism has been inflicted against Palestinians on behalf of Israelis.
It’s important for Americans to remember that this brutal occupation would not be possible without support from the United States. According to Visualizing Palestine, the United States gives roughly $3.3 billion in Foreign Military aid to Israel annually. That’s more than the U.S. gives to all other countries in the world combined.
The United States also uses its permanent position on the U.N. Security Council to block any attempt at holding the state of Israel accountable for the human rights abuses they carry out on a daily basis. For example, according to Visualizing Palestine:
“since 1967 the United States has used its UN Security Council veto as much as all of the other permanent members combined, and more than half of those vetos were to protect Israel from criticism and accountability.”
You can’t understand why the state of Israel acts with such contempt towards Palestinians without addressing the idea of Zionism. The State of Israel was founded with the ideals of Zionism in mind, and according to the Editor for Jewish Currents, Peter Beinart, Zionism is the belief that there needs to be a state that privileges Jews and has a special responsibility to protect and represent all of them. While antisemitism is a terrible problem that always needs to be called out, many pro-Israel voices have attempted to label all criticism of Zionism as anti-semitism when that’s simply not the case.
Peter Beinart, who considers himself a Zionist, has said that it’s not accurate to regard all anti-zionist remarks as anti-semitic. According to a write up on his appearance on the Munk Debate podcast, Beinart said,
“I am a Zionist because as a Jew, I believe in the importance of a state that has a special responsibility to Jews. But I also think that there are many, many examples of people who do not support that Jewish privilege in the state of Israel who are not anti-semites.”
Beinart proceeds to explain that some sects of Judaism, such as the Satmar Hasidim, the largest Hasidic group in the world, are strongly anti-zionist “because of their traditional reading of Jewish texts.”. He also said that left-wing activist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace believe that allowing Israel to grant special privileges to Jews over Palestinians is something that causes tension with the group’s liberal-democratic values.
These special privileges have allowed the Israeli government to inflict systemic harm against Palestinians, including allowing Israeli settlers to forcibly displace Palestinian families from their homes (the same policy that has inspired the most recent protests).
Smearing all anti-zionist speech as anti-semitism is nothing but an attempt to delegitimize pro-Palestinian activism and silence criticism of the human rights violations the state of Israel carries out against Palestinians on a daily basis. According to Beinart,
“If you say that all Palestinians who are anti-zionists are anti-semites, even those who say that all they want is one state in which Jews and Palstinians live under equal law, then in fact, you are essentially delegitimizing all Palestinian politics. You’re equating Palestinian politics with bigotry, and I think that’s very destructive for our appreciation of Palestinian human dignity, and I think it also undermines the quest for peace.”
The polarization that surrounds this topic only makes it more difficult for society to address, and due to the fact that most people are unable to hold more than one idea in their head at a time, you can see some Israeli’s calling for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and some Palestinians calling for the elimination of the state of Israel in its entirety. This polarization that causes each side to see the other in the worst possible light only serves to make this situation harder to resolve, and it causes Israeli leadership to ignore Palestinians who simply advocate for Israel not to be a state that privileges its Jewish residents, but to be a state that offers equal treatment under the same laws for all of its citizens.
Finally, if the United States actually wanted to stand up for human rights it would stop sending more than $3 billion in aid to Israel annually to help them carry out a system of apartheid against Palestinians. If this were happening in a country that wasn’t a close ally of the United States you’d see American officials calling for regime change in Israel. This is just the latest example of how U.S. allies are shielded from accountability for their human rights abuses and violations of international law.