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Israel Must Rein in Settler Movement, Protect Palestinian Children
SOUTH HEBRON HILLS, West Bank - I left my home in the United States to spend the summer in the West Bank, where I was attacked by Israeli settlers late last month. As a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team, I went to the South Hebron Hills to help keep young Palestinian children safe from Israeli settlers intent on hurting Palestinians. Armed only with a video camera, it was my job to escort the children back and forth from school and summer camp.
On July 27, the children and I were walking home when a group of Israeli settlers assaulted us from a hilltop with fist-sized stones. Some narrowly missed my head. Focusing my video camera, I recorded an Israeli settler flinging stones at the children from his long-range slingshot. When he saw that I was filming him, he struck me in the leg with a rock. He chased me, kicked me and screamed that he was going to kill me. Wrestling the video camera from my hand, he then repeatedly struck me in the face and upper body with a stone.
After the assault, I was helped by Palestinians to reach a hospital where I was treated for my injuries.
The occupied West Bank today is like walking through a page from a different era - part Wild West, part Jim Crow - with one set of laws for Palestinians and another set for Israeli settlers.
There are now over 450,000 Israeli settlers living on land taken from Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in defiance of international law. The settlers in and around Hebron are, according to Israeli journalist Ran HaCohen, "fanatic extremists even by Israeli standards. They regularly ransack Palestinian shops, cut electricity lines and water pipes, wreck cars, and attack schoolchildren."
The schoolchildren I worked with have no one to protect them. In fact, the Israeli military had refused to provide an escort for them. Consequently, volunteers from America and Europe have been accompanying the children. We take them on a longer route through the hills to bypass the Israeli settler outpost.
I spent my formative years in Mississippi. I know the stories of African-American students being denied an education and intimidated by adults who had no shame. As we trudge up the hillsides with Palestinian children, I am reminded of African-Americans having to avert their eyes and get off the sidewalk to avoid passing white people during the Jim Crow years in the American South.
Settler violence towards the children here has been a persistent problem. In 2004, the local Palestinian leadership requested assistance from international organizations. CPT responded and has been accompanying Palestinian children and documenting their interactions with Israeli settlers and soldiers ever since. As my beating demonstrates, we have become targets as well.
In 2004, five masked settlers attacked American volunteers Kim Lamberty and Chris Brown with a chain and bat. According to The Washington Post, "Lamberty suffered a broken arm and bruised knee, and Brown was hospitalized for several days with cracked ribs and a punctured lung."
The day I was attacked, the Palestinian children with me were fortunate to escape unscathed. One result of my spilt American blood is that the Israeli military is now providing these children with an escort. However, just three days after my attack, my colleagues in CPT and other international volunteers witnessed the soldiers failing to escort the children the entire designated route; settlers hiding along the way began to throw rocks at the children. And, according to a report issued in July by the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, only one in 10 Israeli investigations of settler attacks on Palestinians ends with anyone being charged with a crime.
Something has gone profoundly wrong when Palestinian children must risk their lives just to get to school. It is past time for our government to pressure Israel to rein in the settler movement.
How much more powerful would it have been for Sen. Barack Obama to have said in Jerusalem - or Hebron - what he said in Berlin: "The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down."
Our leaders must insist that Israel not apply one system of law in the West Bank for Israeli settlers and another for Palestinians. Colonizing another people ought to be regarded as ancient history.
31 Comments so far
Show AllOur (meaning the US) leaders are too busy kissing AIPAC's ass to even mention these atrocities in public.
Of course, Gulledge will be slandered by accusations of anti-Semitism as will anyone who criticizes the primitive behavior of these settlers and the callous cynicism of the Israeli military.
q
How else are those little palistinian kids going to learn to hate isreali's, unless the isreali's use slingshots against them. It's not about land, it's about teaching them to hate you so you can raise money from the idiot yankees.
Using a slingshot against a child... If that's not evil, nothing is. If that's not attempted murder, than there is no such thing.
I've come across other stories like this and like the majority in Israel it enrages me. When stories like this appear in Haaretz newspaper the "talkback" is outrage. (with only a few HOWABOUTS) The Israeli government is mostly indifferent about the human rights of the Pals but they also fear these settlers. European militant zionists (out of necessity) have abandoned many Jewish values which is demonstrated by this story.
I'm sorry to say that having no concern for human values, these violent "settlers" :
___ place the entire concept of
___ "Jewish values" and/or "being Jewish" in question.
If they have no values, while they also hypocritically accept the land as bounty for being "Jewish" -- then the sham is revealed -- and they are no better than con-men and violent criminals, whose residence should be in jail.
Namaste
___________ O U T R A G E ___________
If receiving deadly delivery of a fist-sized rock,
and then reporting it is anti-Semitism, then
- - - - - - - that word is meaningless - - - - - - -
With such a brutal beating there had to be DNA transfer, so my hope is that the rock wielder is tried for attempted murder.
If not, then this is proof of fragility of justice, when state-sponsored terrorism is the cause. Perhaps we need to hold responsible those encouraging the stone throwers, and see how well their legal briefs hold up against high velocity murder ?
Namaste
Because of its refusal to comply with longstanding UN Security Council resolutions, international law, and the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, Israel has forfeited, through its own actions, the right to exist. It is far past the time to abandon Israel.
Yes, U.N. Resolution 242 et al.
The damage inflicted on the Palestinean civilization will be with us for centuries.
It was our unconditional support for these Jewish atrocities that brought
down the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001 and is destroying America today.
Perhaps __ 9_!_! __ was just the ☠_"bones"_☠ that Israel had to cut
__ to join the next higher level of global Mafia
While the Palestinian apartheid and collective punishment
__ tests their resolve to " do whatever it takes "
Who else knows so well how to kill innocents gleefully ( roof dancing police report ),
__ while making it look like arabs did it ?
P r a c t i c e __ does ensure success, remember the thousands dead & millions suffering:
__ USS Liberty -'67 our hard to swallow "Project Sinai_de" pill,
__ King David Hotel - '46 pre-birth terrorism using civilians, many Jewish
__ Advanced Knowledge of -- but FAILURE to warn -- 291 soldiers in Lebanon Marine barracks Explosion
__ Sabra and Shatila massacre ( allowed Phalangists to enter Palestinian refugee camps )
Although most would consider that 9_!_! was a tad less than perfect, that changes a lot if
__ you were the recipient of thousands of billion$ of loot and
__ contract$ dolled out since.
The ISRAELI ( gov't, not people ) are much more responsible than just "causing" this, by being the USA govt's world war OF terror buddy, and have such an inconvenient locale loaded with oil.
Namaste
If the UN was functioning correctly, and not being used by the US/UK and other powerful nations for it's own corrupt plans, then there would be an independent peacekeeping force in Israel, and Israel would not be allowed to commit these atrocities. Why should one country in this World, be allowed to escape justice?
Two countries.
Joe
The UN was created for "public" appearances, as demonstrable in the existence of the "Security Council's" veto authority.
A real egalitarian organization of ALL nations, would not have a select group of the 6 most powerful nations, being able to overrule anything the the overall body of nations agrees upon.
The veto is the proof of the structural inadequacy of the UN to do its job, when anything rocks the boat affecting the richest and most powerful -- the organization is castrated.
Israel is our surrogate in the Mid East, and the USA uses its veto power to make a mockery of all the UN resolutions, by kicking the teeth out of enforcement.
Namaste
And, like clockwork, even when the Zionists make minor concilatory gestrues, like they did for the Gaza Peace Boats, they then use it as cover to quietly speed up the settlement building - it is all a deliberate diabolical scheme to preemptively foreclose on any just solution.
At this point, any two-state solution is dead.
It's not that our leaders are too BUSY kissing AIPAC's ass to mention Israel's atrocities, it would be absolute politcal suicide to do so. When people finally wakeup the backlash is going to be of tsunami like poportions
¿ But, perhaps the real Zionists have wanted and been pushing hard all along -- for this cataclysmic situation -- of pending USA reaction ?
Because many Zionists are not Jewish, nor in the least moral, and
__ the Backlash of anti-semitism
__ will be more valuable than gold
… in their imagined but unlikely future, of enhanced power through worldwide sympathy ganged up against "evil America's" taking revenge upon Jews ( especially when the proper targets should have been neoCONers and ZIONIST agent provocateurs ).
¿ One has to wonder with all of these accusations of anti-Semitism going around day-in-&-out,
__ who's considering protecting all of the Jews from the Zionists and likely backlash ?
Namaste
What kind of men would throw rocks at children? They must be so infected with racism that they have lost the ability to see humans and to act like a human.
Joe
Bullies and cowards: attacking innocent children
With AIPAC (and their boot-licking US politicians) and the MSM complicit in the prevention of any pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli news, these types of brutal behaviour will only continue or perhaps get worse.
It's not just the Palestinians these people hate-They hate EVERYONE. They would and have gleefully murdered their own on occasion as well, The more I see insane behavior like this, the more I wonder what Israel's real purpose is, It's almost like some kind of insane divine hatred or something-and something that has gone on long before Hitler came into the picture. I get the feeling that these particular people have always been like this.
Something has to give here-In the natural world, there is no such thing as endless, boundless slaughter and violence. Somewhere, it ends...........
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
~Philip K. Dick~
"Something has to give here-In the natural world, there is no such thing as endless, boundless slaughter and violence. Somewhere, it ends..........."
Violence has been wreaked by one being on another since the beginning of life on this planet. It can never be completely eradicated just as we cannot expect people to stop arguing and fighting. This is not a perfect world nor should it be. But I do think we can appeal to our better natures and minimize our violent tendencies.
How can it not enrage any thoughtful person with even an atom of empathy?
Someone I know accidently came across an admittedly scathing CD comment I posted several months ago on still another report of some IDF or Israeli government atrocity-- I forget which one at the moment. There are so many from which to choose!
This person was aghast that I would use the descriptive term "Reich of Zion", among other things, although I replied that the context should make it clear that I apply that term only to the unspeakable genocidal cabal within the government and non-governmental leadership of the State of Israel and their supporters-- not to the good and decent citizens of Israel, and CERTAINLY not to Jews in general.
He remained appalled, on the grounds that such powerfully ANGRY terminology would surely be misunderstood, and was both hurtful and harmful to ordinary Israelis and Jews; he asked me what the point was of expressing such angry recriminations. Surely such intense rancor would only offend and repel Israeli and Jewish readers, and reinforce the very deep-seated fear that Jews are destined to be misunderstood and hated that is the pathological basis for these heinous policies and actions!
I replied then, and admit now, that I can't be certain that such scathing criticism is "right" or ultimately "helpful". But I also asked whether he believed the converse-- that suppressing bitter outrage, and presumably confining one's expressed disagreement to mere tongue-clucking or general remonstrance, if expressed at all, would diminish or eliminate the daily depredations practiced by the Israeli government and military upon the Palestinian people.
I asked why taking this kinder, gentler high road of offering only positive regard or muted criticism wouldn't instead reinforce the perpetrators' sense that what they do is acceptable and righteous, and thus preserve the status quo. That is, apart from sparing the feelings of good-hearted Israelis and Jews, what greater good comes from keeping quiet and inoffensive in the face of such perpetual horror?
I'm still waiting for an answer.
BillofRights
My most recent as of 8/29 from the ships of FreeGaza on their way back to Cyprus.
The SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty left port in Gaza at 3:40 PM, and have
begun their long voyage back to Cyprus. Aboard the ship are seven
Palestinian passengers, including several children. We were able to speak
with Paul Larudee on the SS Liberty just a few minutes ago:
"We're a little over an hour into our return trip to Cyprus and, unlike
when we came in, there are several Israeli naval vessels in sight. We seem
to be the focus of their activity, the center of their attention so to
speak. However they're keeping a careful distance, not really approaching
us. We expect to reach the twelve-mile limit around 7 PM this evening, and
then cross over into international waters.
"When we arrived in Gaza last Saturday, it was the first time in forty-one
years that anyone has freely entered Gaza. But our leaving is in a way
even more significant. Last Saturday, two of our Palestinian members came
into Gaza on these boats. Today, seven more Palestinians are leaving with
them. They got exit stamps from the Palestinian government, they boarded
the ships, and soon they'll be in international waters, and then in
Cyprus. This is the first time, ever, that Palestinians have been able to
freely enter and leave their own country. It's an incredible step forward,
and a sign of greater things to come."
--Paul Larudee, aboard the SS Liberty, freely leaving Gaza
They were threatened by the Israeli government on their way in, yet were allowed to leave with 7 Palestinians. Free Gaza, literally.
Im amazed at CD. Earlier, the very mention of Zionism and Israel and Jew in any one sentence was enough to smack your post into the CD censor beureau and to get labeled an anti-semite and have finger-wagging 'liberals' squeeze your gonads.
there is nothing more than Israel wanting every person from Gaza/ Palistime to leave. Send more boats and save those people I say. If HARPER ( Canada) wants to show he isn't under the AIPAC control take these people in.
I would wholeheartedly support moving ALL of the Palestinians to the United States and offering them the education needed to pass the citizenship test. Give Israel all of the land west of the Jordan River and north of the Sinai. AND THEN CUT OFF ALL MONETARY AND MILITARY AID to that shitty little country. I'm serious. If their arrogance prompts attack by their neighbors, let them defend themselves. WE HAVE NO DOG IN THAT FIGHT! Enough is enough!
-- EKATON --
Israel is a State, a legally constituted nation and thus subject to criticism for its inhumane actions against people. Extremists among its citizenry are also open to such critiques. This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with religion, and those who would label such criticisms as "antisemitic" show the weakness of their argument by doing so.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
It seems as though the BUSH administration is getting a little worried.
The prospect of a possible Barack Obama victory in November, is worrisome.
The Citizens of the World might find out eventually the "Truth" of the events
surrouding 911. Israel is involved up to it's Eyeballs in 911.
The Defence Minister in Georgia is an Israeli.
Putin is on the "Ball" of his analysis of the Georgian attack on South Ossetia,
as a way to boost the chances of MACINSANE obtaining "the" presidency.
The USA and Israel have been supplying weapons and training the Georgian
Armed Forces for a few years.
The ZIONIST/NEOCON agenda to surround Russia, will blow up in their Faces.
I don't think the appointment of Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential
Candidate will fool ALL the women who supported Hillary Clinton.
Any attack by the USA and/or ISRAEL on Iran will surely illicit a response
from Russia. Russia might even install and man themselves a missile Defense
System in Iran. That might even prevent this Insanity.
It is strange indeed that the Russians are the only ones to stand
up to the Zionists. Could it be that the Russians remember too well the evil works of Yagoda and Kaganovich? And, here in America, how many know the TRUTH about the USS Liberty, or Sabra and Shatilla, or the terrorist activities of Begin and Shamir?
From Harry Truman's diaries:
""The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog."
What wa true sixty years ago, appears to be true today.
In the Middle East how does one even begin. I feel a profound sadness for the good and innocent people on all sides. Just imagine living there in a perpetual state of conflict where even children are not spared. The great powers should impose a solution there and enforce it. This has gone on too long.
Ahhh Andy my buddy .. good to see you here. We (U.S) have effectively neutralized the U.N. and rendered it impotent. The U.N. is a defunct body that exists in its current form to serve the interests of Empire.
Gaza And The Warsaw Ghetto
same place
different time
while the world stood by
genocide
live
These settlers are extremely self-centered. They take away others' land, refuse to serve in the military yet expect less religious soldiers to protect each of their outposts. You know how we used to say "He thinks he's God's gift..." They really do think they are God's special ones, and why anyone would support them in their land grabs is beyond me.
Joe