Public Comment

The festering Israeli Palestinian conflict is rooted in British colonial crimes. Following the Second World War, Lord Balfour, a fierce Zionist, gifted the land inhabited by predominantly Palestinians to the Jews with massive military and economic aid from the US.

Edward Said, the brilliant Palestinian academic, described the dispossession of Palestinian land: [“The Balfour] Declaration was made (a) by a European power, (b) about a non-European territory, (c) in a flat disregard of both the presence and the wishes of the native majority resident in that territory, and (d) it took the form of a promise about this same territory to another foreign group so that this foreign group might quite literally make this territory a national home for the Jewish people…. Balfour’s statements in the declaration take for granted the higher right of a colonial power to dispose of a territory as it saw fit”.

How quickly we have forgotten the shameful chapter in our own history when early US settlers committed genocide against the Native Americans. 

The American media reporting on the deteriorating situation in Israel has been profoundly disappointing. A common narrative, “barrage of rockets streamed out of Gaza while Israeli jets pounded the territory." Correction:The rockets were fired in response to unspeakable atrocities being committed by far-right Israeli police attacking Palestinian worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their homes(designated by the UN as a possible war crime). 

What is sorely missing from the American media reporting is the simple question “Do the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves from an apartheid government (designated as such by Human Rights Watch) bent on committing genocide? Why must Palestinians suffer the indignities of such a brutal occupation? Did we not repel our former colonial overlords, the Brits, because of seething anger and resentment over colonial rule? Why should we deny the Palestinians the same rights and aspirations?" 

President Biden has shown a complete lack of leadership parroting the same tired defense of Israeli aggression “Israel has the right to defend itself”. But he has not uttered one word of criticism excoriating Israel’s right-wing settler terrorists and Israeli police attacking Palestinian worshippers. 

Hundreds of Palestinians have been wounded with reports showing police fired rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas at Palestinian worshipers. This follows weeks of protests to block Israel from evicting dozens of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem to give their homes to illegal settlers. The Israeli government is using brute force to terrorize Palestinians while Israeli settlers walk freely in Palestinian neighborhoods driving them out of their homes with guns drawn.  

Videos posted online shows explosives, possibly stun grenades, being fired inside the mosque, which is the third-holiest site in Islam. Medical personnel were initially barred from reaching the injured Palestinians (a serious war crime). Eyewitnesses described a scene of terror when Israeli forces began opening fire while people prayed. 

Predictably, the situation escalated rapidly with Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killing scores of Palestinians, including many children. The tension in Jerusalem has been mounting for weeks as Palestinians have been desperately attempting block Israel from forcibly evicting them from their homes.  

This is excessively cruel and a complete violation of international law. The European Union and the UK severely condemned the planned evictions. Meanwhile, the timid Biden administration and Republicans remain silent, uncomfortable about offending the powerful pro-Israel lobby who routinely insist on unconditional support. Successive US administrations have created this incendiary situation by their long role as a dishonest broker, rewarding Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies with $billions in US military and economic aid, making us complicit in Israel’s war crimes. It is time US taxpayers raise our collective voices to halt this grave injustice and allow Palestinians to charter their own destiny free from Israeli oppression.