"
For over 75 years, the American public received only one side of the Israeli-Palestine conflict – the Israeli side. The Palestine side was censored from the most prominent newspapers, like the New York Times, to the most minor online news sources.
If a reporter dared to write about the ethnic cleansing, imprisonment of civilians and children, theft of Palestine land, and destruction of their homes, he or she would be censored and fired. If a college professor dared to teach about the Palestine Nakba, he or she would be labeled antisemitic and fired. Until recently, most Americans have not heard about the human rights abuses of Palestinians.
THE NAKBA OR CATASTROPHE
In 1947, the United Nations divided Palestine into two regions, with 55 % given to Jews who were escaping the Holocaust in Germany and 45% of the land to the Indigenous Palestinians who had lived in the area for centuries. The Arab population did not agree to this deal.
As soon as the country was divided, the Zionist movement, with superior weapons and military training, attacked the Palestinian civilians, resulting in the first Nakba or Catastrophe. Between 1947 and 1948, over 15,000 Palestinian civilians were killed, with 750,000 violently displaced and about 530 Palestinian villages and cities destroyed, along with the destruction of their society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations.
The Zionist agenda was then and still is today: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine to develop an exclusively Jewish state.
Today, Israel controls all of Palestine and claims 85% of the land, with Palestinians clinging to only about 15% of their ancestral homeland in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
ARAB-ISRAELI WARS
There have been many conflicts fought between various Arab neighbors and Israel, including in 1948-49, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, and 2023—Israel, with its superior military forces supported by the United States, usually wins.
The Six-Day War of 1967 began with Arab neighbor’s mobilization for war. Israel attacked and destroyed Egypt’s and Syria’s air forces and defeated Jordanian attacks. The war ended with Israel in control of more of Palestine’s land, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.
With each conflict, Israel gains more control of Palestinian land, and with that control comes domination and abuse. For a more in-depth reading of all the disputes, google Wikipedia for Israel and Arab conflicts.
ISRAEL IS AN APARTHEID STATE OCCUPYING PALESTINE’S LAND
An Amnesty International report in 2022 calls Israel an apartheid state with a cruel system of domination and crimes against humanity. This report reveals the extent of Israel’s apartheid regime everywhere Palestinians live, either in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, or Israel. Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights. Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession, and exclusion across all territories under its control amount to apartheid. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/
B’Tselem, Israel’s human rights organization, says, “Israel’s regime of apartheid and occupation is inextricably bound up in human rights violations. B’Tselem strives to end this regime, as that is the only way forward to a future in which human rights, democracy, liberty, and equality are ensured to all people, with Palestinians and Israelis living together between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.” https://www.btselem.org/
Israeli prisoners are beaten and tortured, even children. They are held in inhuman conditions: windowless cells with mold, solitary confinement, exposure to extremes of heat and cold, sleep deprivation, unsanitary conditions, and bad food. In the interrogation room, they are bound to a chair with arms tied behind their back without moving for hours and even days. Interrogators threaten to harm their relatives, as reported by B’Tselem.
Former president Jimmy Carter wrote a book in 2006 “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, and was severely criticized for calling Israel an apartheid state. In his book, Carter argues that Israel’s control and construction of settlements have been the primary obstacles to a peace agreement in the Middle East.
HAMAS ATTACK ON ISRAEL, OCTOBER 7, 2023
Hamas attacked Israel, killed 1,200 Israelis, and kidnapped hundreds of civilians, including foreign nationals and Americans.
Just days after October 7, the Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, said that they were cutting off all food, fuel, water, and electricity to Gaza because they were fighting “human animals.” Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, said the Palestinians have the option to leave or die.
Hamas’s attack was a war crime, and Netanyahu’s response was a war crime of genocidal proportions, including using starvation as a weapon of war. October 7 was not the beginning of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine started back in 1947 and continues in Gaza and the West Bank today.
The seventy-five years of censorship broke when Palestinians started sending out horrific cell phone videos of mass bombing of homes, hospitals, apartments, schools, mosques, and Gaza’s infrastructure, with thousands of children and civilians killed by bombs the United States sent to Israel.
Since October 7, the world has watched a genocide unfolding on their phones.
The latest death toll of Palestinian civilians is 45 thousand from direct war by bombs and missiles. This does not include those buried under the rubble nor those who starved to death or died from diseases due to Israel’s manufactured famine and the destruction of the healthcare system.
The estimated total due to indirect impacts of war, including the deliberate starvation of children, could be over 186,000, according to the Lancet medical journal. Today, Gaza is destroyed and uninhabitable, with millions homeless. It is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu continues to bomb Gaza and is turning the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) toward the West Bank to rid it of Muslims. The United Nations reports nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed, including 143 children, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since October last year. Most were unarmed and going to work or to school.
Netanyahu’s son, Yair Netanyahu, said there would not be peace in Israel until either all the Jews or all the Muslims leave – and he would prefer the latter, reported in the Forward.
The International Criminal Court has filed applications for arrest warrants on numerous senior Hamas and Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu and Gallant, for crimes against humanity.
PRESIDENT BIDEN’S GAZA POLICIES ARE INFLUENCED BY RACISM
The Biden administration has sent more than 10,000 destructive 2,000-pound bombs that can destroy apartment buildings and thousands of Hellfire missiles since the start of the current war, according to Reuters.
President Biden’s blind support for Israel and complicity in the destruction and genocide in Gaza resulted in many young people, American Muslims, and other Democrats refusing to vote for him. This is one of the reasons he was forced to step down and allow Kamala Harris to run for president.
A dozen U.S. officials, including members of the State Department, resigned in protest over Biden’s Gaza policy. They said the administration’s complicity in the killing and starvation of Palestinians and the destruction of homes and infrastructure in Gaza by U.S. bombs was why they resigned. Other reasons for resignations were the administration’s dehumanizing of Arabs and Muslims and the fact that human rights apply to Israelis but not to Palestinians.
Some of the federal laws the Biden administration’s Gaza policy violated are:
1. The Foreign Assistance Act forbids the sale of weapons to a government that consistently engages in gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.
2. Arms Export Control Act, which says countries that receive U.S. military aid can only use weapons for legitimate self-defense. Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza goes beyond self-defense.
3. The Leahy Law prohibits the U.S. from sending weapons and money to Israel where there is credible information implicating they violate human rights.
4. The U.S. War Crimes Act forbids grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including wilful killing, torture, and inhuman treatment perpetrated by the Israeli Occupying Forces.
5. The Genocide Convention Implementations Act provides criminal penalties for individuals who commit or incite others to commit genocide.
Many who resigned said that anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Palestinian racism influenced the government’s policy in Palestine and the dehumanization of the Palestinian people. Biden’s complicity in the genocide earned him the name “Genocide Joe” by primarily young voters.
NETANYAHU PLANS TO EXPAND THE WAR
Netanyahu’s obsessive drive for revenge compels him to continue bombing Gaza into the Dark Ages, and he vows to do the same in the West Bank. Under his leadership, Israeli Defense Forces launched attacks in Lebanon and killed a Hamas leader in Iran, risking a wider war in the Middle East.
Netanyahu needs a wider war so he can stay in power and not go to prison for corruption charges and genocide, and he expects the U.S. to fight that war for him.
He is not acting in the best interest of the Israeli people, the hostages, or Palestinian civilians. He knows the majority of Israelis want him out of office, and he has alienated every significant world power because he is bowing to his extreme far-right coalition.
Tzachi Hanegvi, Netanyahu’s national security adviser, said on Israel’s Channel 12 that Netanyahu will not agree to end the war in Gaza in exchange for the release of hostages unless opinion polls show it is politically advantageous for him.
Family members of hostages believe Netanyahu is using the hostages as propaganda tools to continue the war so he can stay in power and not go to jail.
Netanyahu is a dangerous extremist and a self-serving crook like Trump.
JUDAISM IS NOT THE PROBLEM: IT IS APARTHEID AND ZIONISM
Israelis deserve a safe and peaceful homeland, and the Palestinians deserve equal rights and human rights, for they have lived on this land for centuries. Historically, Jewish communities have lived peacefully with Arabs in Palestine. So why did the Zionist movement believe that an exclusively Jewish state was the only solution?
Haredi Orthodox Jews state the need to live in a close community together is the solution and not in an exclusively Jewish state. They are opposed to Zionism due to concerns that secular nationalism would redefine the Jewish people from a religious community to an ethnic group.
Many believe in a two-state solution, but that would require Israel to return much of the land they stole or claimed in wars. Another option is a one-state solution, with Israel granting equal rights to all Palestinians. Israel must recognize the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and provide victims of human rights violations and crimes with full reparations.
Streets of Atlanta 