April 8, 2024
Dear Editor:
I am writing in response to “Netanyahu’s got to go but so do other obstacles to Mideast peace” by Erich Bridges, which itself is a response to Mark Wingfield’s “Netanyahu has turned Israel into an evil empire”. I appreciate the dual articles being released on this topic, however I must disagree with Bridges on a few key points:
First, disputing the official count of the dead is a fruitless endeavor; it is already well-known that the death count of Palestinian versus Israeli is in the vicinity of 30 to 1. It doesn’t matter how many of these may be considered Hamas fighters, because regardless, “an eye for an eye” already has been extracted from the Palestinian populace by the same 30 to 1 figure. The Israeli campaign is revenge, not justice.
Derek Madsen, chief development officer for Anera, said it best when talking to the BBC’s Radio 4 Today, linked via X:“I’m not saying I don’t believe this was a mistake, I’m waiting for evidence to demonstrate that it was.” Anera suspended operations along with the World Central Kitchen after the strike, as it is being made more blatant by the day that aid workers are being targeted.
Both Anera and World Central Kitchen were able to serve more than 250,000 meals per day before this strike; therefore, suspending operations further guarantees increasing famine conditions and subsequent deaths from starvation. The IPC currently reports around 95% of the population is in Phase 3 or higher of acute food insecurity, a situation expected to reach 100% of the population over the next month. By these projections, it is expected about 1.1 million of the 2.3 million Palestinians will be in Phase 5 food insecurity, and North Gaza will largely be in a position of true famine.
Second, the sentence “Whatever the actual number, thousands of innocent Gazans have died under Israeli bombing — and are now beginning to starve with no way out (thanks, neighboring Egypt and Jordan, for heartlessly refusing to allow any desperate Gazans across your borders because you fear the extremists among them)” is a misrepresentation of the situation.
NPR explained this last month through interviewing Egyptian officials. If Jordan and Egypt begin a program of absorbing Palestinians as refugees, they will be accomplishing the goal Israel has to push Palestinians out of their land for colonization and further domination. They believe by taking in refugees, Israel never will take them back, which seems in line with Israel’s expansionist policies, already demonstrated by the 2 million registered Palestinians who are still refugees within Jordan from previous incursions.
Anyone seeing how the Gaza war is currently operating as cover for even more expansion into the West Bank can also see the policies Israel is furthering serve to boost their own settlers moving into occupied territory. The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories has chronicled the efforts to displace Palestinians from their own land for their own economic development, forcing out residents through increasing violence, destruction of schools and other community-built buildings.
Third, bringing up the historical argument to reject the country’s modern moves serves to downplay current actions, including those currently being taken within the West Bank. It can be argued that handling this 20 or 30 years ago with creating two individual states could have been the best option for peace, but that isn’t now. Now, we’re faced with an angry Israel whose most extremist political leaders are calling for forced emigration from occupied territory.
Israel’s own finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, made it clear: “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” he said. “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be totally different,” he said.
This is a literal call for expulsion of the native population of Gaza, an act which is quite illegal by International Humanitarian Law Rule 129:
- Parties to an international armed conflict may not deport or forcibly transfer the civilian population of an occupied territory, in whole or in part, unless the security of the civilians involved or imperative military reasons so demand.
- Parties to a non-international armed conflict may not order the displacement of the civilian population, in whole or in part, for reasons related to the conflict, unless the security of the civilians involved or imperative military reasons so demand.
This rule also highlights the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits forced transfer or deportation of civilians by stating: “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive” (Article 49, Paragraph 1).
The article further dictates how civilians are to be returned to their lands if forced to displace for their own safety. Once hostilities are over, occupying powers may not arrest civilians, and occupying powers may not move their own civilians into an occupied area. Israel is breaking all these dictates, by my plain text reading of these rules in comparison to what news does get to us by reputable sources.
We are now in a situation where Israel is literally calling all the shots; they control virtually all access in and out of the country. They control what supplies are trucked into Gaza. They control the number of trucks allowed in daily. They can use their self-imposed “fog of war” — accomplished through the deaths of around 100 people in media-related jobs, from news show hosts to freelance workers to media directors. Many more of their family members are dead from these strikes.
Whataboutism is an insufficient defense of Israeli policy. Yes, Hamas killed about 1,200 people in a strike and captured hundreds more. Israel has killed more than 30,000 people in response.
Finally, I suggest you read the latest report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs, covering March 29 to April 2’s violence in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank. One of the dozens of examples is news out of the West Bank:
Between 26 March and 1 April, Israeli settlers perpetrated nine attacks that led to five Palestinian casualties or damage to property. On 1 April, Israeli settlers raided the village of Huwwara in Nablus and physically assaulted and injured a Palestinian and hurled stones at Palestinian houses. In three separate incidents near the Khallet el Louza area in Bethlehem between 30 March and 1 April, settlers raided Palestinian land and vandalized gates, a solar panel and water tanks in one incident, a latrine in another incident and the door of a house and surveillance cameras in a third incident. On 30 March, Israeli settlers shot live ammunition at a Palestinian and physically assaulted three others on the outskirts of Mikhmas town in Jerusalem, injuring four people. In two incidents, Israeli settlers set fire to a vegetable stall owned by a Palestinian on Road 90 in Tubas on 29 March and to an animal shelter belonging to Al Muarrajat East Bedouin community in Ramallah on 27 March. On 26 March, Israeli settlers threw stones at a Palestinian herder in Umm al Kheir community in Hebron, killing a sheep.
Notice that the incidents are stone throwing at people and property, destruction of electricity-generating and water-holding facilities, settlers firing at Palestinians, and the destruction/killing of food. These actions, collected together, demonstrate a very disturbing picture of how much Israeli colonization of occupied territory is working: Destroy the infrastructure; make living there untenable; then, the original populace feels forced to move to a safer region, leaving the area ripe for outsiders to move in.
I was also disturbed to see that the word “genocide” did not appear in the counter-article once. Mark used the term twice; once to affirm the atrocities of the Holocaust, and another to accurately assess that the Christian Savior has nothing to do with this violence.
I end with a quote from Eugene T. Gendlin: “What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse. Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away. And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.” Do not be afraid of reporting facts. Do not be afraid of talking about the real events that politics attempts to pave over.
Do not become an apologist for genocide.
Matthew W. Jordan, West Virginia