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The October 7 Hamas attack on Israel was a violent, bloody war crime that killed 1,400 civilians and captured over 200 civilians held as hostages.
Israel’s genocidal response to the Hamas attack has brought international protests worldwide. In Atlanta, hundreds lined the street across from the Israel Consulate. More protests are planned.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to destroy Hamas at all costs, even if the hostages are killed, and Palestinian civilians continue to be killed by the thousands.
Yoav Gallant, Israel’s Defense Minister, said, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly by ordering a complete siege on Gaza, with no electricity, no food, no water, and no fuel.”
Gallant tweeted that the only thing that needs to enter Gaza are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force and not an ounce of humanitarian aid.
Withholding humanitarian aid is a war crime.
Israel’s collective punishment of babies, children, and civilians is illegal under international law. In the past two weeks, over five thousand Palestinians have been killed, and almost half are children. Thousands of civilians are displaced from their homes are destroyed.
Gaza has been without water, food, medicine, and electricity for two weeks, and only yesterday did 20 trucks enter with humanitarian aid for the 2-plus million thirsty, starving civilians. This was enough water for about 20 thousand people for one day.
“All civilian lives matter. The relentless bombing campaign in Gaza is cruel and unconscionable on every level. It is the collective punishment of besieged and helpless people. It is a violation of international humanitarian law. It is a war crime,” Jordan King Abdullah’s speech at the Cairo Peace Summit. Here is the link to his entire speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-O0tZWxwzw
President Biden plans to send $14.5 billion to Israel. Will it be used to continue the genocide of Palestinian civilians?
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International report that the dropping of white phosphorus on civilians in Gaza is a war crime. They report that Hamas’s bloody killing spree on October 7 and the taking of hostages was also a war crime. How many more war crimes before Palestinian resistance to occupation and Israeli revenge for Palestinian resistance ends?
Netanyahu says he wants to rid Gaza of Hamas. He can’t eliminate Hamas by killing more Palestinians. This will only make more Hamas fighters. This generational cycle of violence is not working toward peace or safety for Israel or Palestine.
Since October 7, Israeli airstrikes have killed over 5,087 people in Gaza, including 1,119 women and 2,055 children, the health ministry said. The blasts have leveled entire neighborhoods, including schools and mosques, and devastated the already insufficient healthcare system, as reported by CNN.
Yara Eid, a war journalist, said in a Sky interview that Palestinians don’t just die. They are killed. Yara has had 30 family members killed; they were all civilians, and 17 were children.
“Palestinians have been subjected to ethnic cleansing and genocide for the last 75 years. This is not a war against Hama. This is a 75-year-old occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of Palestinians. I’ve lived through four horrible aggressions, so I left Gaza. I saw people cut into pieces in front of my eyes when I was 14. I have spent seven years in therapy to overcome the traumatic experience of living in Gaza. We can’t look at this just by looking at what happened on October 7th. Palestinians are being killed in the West Bank, and women are being raped in Israeli jails. Israeli forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan and beat Palestinian worshippers inside. Hamas does not operate in the West Bank and was not there during these crimes,” Eid said.
What happened in Israel on October 7 is horrible, but what has happened to Palestinians for over 75 years is shocking and gruesome.
The Zionist agenda has always been for an exclusively Jewish state and the genocide of the indigenous Palestinians. With their technologically superior army against an impoverished indigenous population, they have been successful in their plan. Netanyahu has said, “Palestinians can submit, leave or die.”
THE NAKBA OR CATASTROPHE
(What happened before October 7, 2023 matters)
Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist military forces attacked major Palestinian cities and destroyed 530 villages. Over 15,000 thousand Palestinians were killed, and 750,000 civilians were forcefully displaced. Israel captured 78 percent of historic Palestine, and the remaining 22 percent was divided into the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip. This was the beginning of the Zionist campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestine.
For over 75 years, Palestinians have endured ethnic cleansing, displacement, incarceration, dehumanization, abuse, rape, torture, and the stealing of their land and destruction of their homes.
At the core of this conflict is an apartheid state with its military occupation of Palestine and the relentless land grab by illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Amnesty International reports 100,000 hectares or 247 l05.38 acres of land appropriated by Israel from Palestinians since 1967. Israel has created settlements for exclusively Jewish settlers that now number 700,000. Israel has demolished 50,000 homes in the Occupied Palestine Territories (OPT) over the past 50 years, and 4.9-plus million Palestinians face daily restrictions on their movement. Natural resources such as water and agricultural land have been diverted for settlement use. These Illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestine Territories violate international law and are war crimes.
1987 The first Palestinian Intifada, Hamas, was formed. It was a sustained series of protests and violent riots in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. It was motivated by collective Palestinian frustration over Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Over six years, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) killed an estimated 1,162 Palestinians, and Hamas killed 60 IDF personnel and 100 Israeli civilians.
2000, the Second Palestinian Intifada ushered in suicide bombings and shooting attacks by Palestinians. Israel destroyed the Gaza International Airport and continued air strikes on Gaza, destroying homes and buildings and killing civilians. Gaza’s fishing zone was reduced by Israel destroying Gaza’s fishing industry, a source of income for tens of thousands.
According to B’Tselem, in the ten years from 2000 to 2010, of the 6,371 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, three thousand did not participate in hostilities, and 1,317 were minors. Of the 1,083 Israelis killed, 741 were civilians, and 1,24 were minors.
The death toll from 2008 to 2023 included 6,407 Palestinians killed and 308 Israelis killed, according to the United Nations office coordinating humanitarian affairs. This data excluded the current conflict that started on October 7, 2023.
The U.S. is a partner in the genocide of Palestinians. The U.S. sends 4 billion to Israel yearly, and an unknown number of U.S. weapons are used to slaughter Palestinian civilians.
Stop the bombing of Gaza, stop the killing, and start peace talks. Approximately 6,000 Palestinians are imprisoned in Israeli prisons and detention centers. Start the prison exchange for Hamas hostages.
King Abdulla of Jordan gives a roadmap to peace in the region. First, stop the bombing in Gaza and adopt a position that condemns the targeting of all civilians. Second, ensure the uninterrupted delivery of humanitarian aid, fuel, food, water, and medicines to the Gaza Strip. Third, the rejection of the forced displacement or internal displacement of the Palestinians. Fourth, Restart a political process for sustainable peace based on the two-state solution and the belief that every human life is of equal value.
Not all Palestinians are Harmas, and not all Israelis are Zionists.
Written and photos by Gloria Tatum
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You must take responsibility for using inflammatory rhetoric like “Zionist campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestine…” which has NEVER been true and is a dog whistle for extremists to act violently against Jews and Israelis. Anyone who knows historical context prior to 1948 understands that Jews were never bent on genocide, they were only guilty of immigrating in large numbers to escape persecution elsewhere. Where is your exact historical reference to “ethnic cleansing” by the Jews? Jews, along with Arabs and Christians, have an ancient history in the land called Palestine. Prior to WWI Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire and the Jewish population was small, due to deportations, immigration, economic trouble and disease. When the British defeated the Ottomans in WWI they partitioned Syria and Lebanon to the French, while the British controlled Palestine and Transjordan. They wanted to allow a general self-governing institution in Palestine that included Jews and Arabs but this never happened. The increasing numbers of Jewish immigrants and land purchases, unchallenged by the British, angered and radicalized many Arabs following WWI. The 1920 Nabi Musa riots left four Arabs and five Jews killed, with 216 Jews and 23 Arabs wounded. About 300 Jews from the Old City were evacuated following the riots. During the Jaffa riots in 1921, thousands of Jewish residents fled for Tel Aviv and were temporarily housed in tent camps on the beach. Following the 1929 Palestine riots, which left 133 Jews dead, the Jewish community members of Gaza and Hebron were ordered to evacuate by the British forces. During the Arab revolt of 1936–1939, the Jewish residents of Akko and the ancient Jewish community of Pok’in were ousted from the city by local Arab residents. In the years leading up to WWII, even more Jews were immigrating to escape persecution in Eastern Europe. Tens of thousands of Jews were saved from the Holocaust by illegal immigration to Palestine. Yes, Jews were guilty of being refugees and even illegal immigrants during this time but where is even a single example of an “ethnic cleansing” happening at the hands of Jews?
After the Holocaust– where your history begins in 1948– even more Jews wanted to immigrate but the British refused, claiming resistance from the Arabs and Jews already in Palestine. This is the time when Jews began to defend themselves and their right to live in Palestine, carrying out attacks on British forces. By 1947 the British had 100,000 troops in Palestine trying to maintain order and protect themselves. The United Nations proposed a partition of the British Mandate for Palestine into 2 states—Arab and Jewish (UN Resolution 181). The Jews accepted it, while the Arabs stated that they would do everything in their power to prevent it and began to attack and besiege the Jews. Jerusalem was held under a siege with no access to weapons, food or water. Jews mounted a successful full-scale military plan to defend themselves. Then the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution in November 1947 recommending the adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine, while the British planned their withdrawal after the British Mandate expired in May of 1948. This is when the 1947–1948 civil war began. Both the Jewish and Arab paramilitary communities of Palestine began defending their right to live in the land by using indiscriminate violence, followed by recriminations, followed by more violence… this pattern is the tragic and heartbreaking situation that continues today more than 70 years later.
Terrible atrocities have been, and are being, committed by both sides. To understand and accept how both sides share responsibility, we must truly understand the history which is only described briefly here, there is so much more. I believe peace is possible when recriminations end. As Americans, I think it is important for us to recognize that we can be pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli. The actions of the US and the world should try to support and work with both sides in their obvious inability to make peace with each other. But how can we help them start anew if we continue to cast one or the other as the enemy? Both sides are victims.
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Thank you for your input. You are correct that my history was brief because I was writing an article, not a book. I was trying to show the imbalance in death rates between Palestinians and Israelis over the years. This imbalance was increased because Israel has more advanced weapons than the indigenous Palestinians. We are indeed mourning any loss of life, whether Israeli or Palestinian. But the Palestinian’s death rate over the years is so much higher than the Israelis. All life is of equal value.Some of my information came from The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian.
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Ilan Pappé is the author of many books, including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, in which he documents that ethnic cleansing was a long-standing Zionist goal that was planned in detail by David Ben-Gurion in the Red House headquarters outside Tel Aviv. It included a much greater number of atrocities against Palestinians in the establishment of Israel in the late 1940s than Western establishments acknowledge.
Pappé says it was the start of a process of ethnic cleansing that continues until today, especially in what is happening today in Gaza.
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