NOTE: I recently published a new piece in Middle East Eye on the dangers of Israeli AI weapons. Give it a read.
Is
rael spent the last week wreaking utter devastation on Jenin, killing 12 Palestinians and wounding 120, 20 of them seriously. One Israeli soldier was killed. The vast majority of Palestinian victims were unarmed civilians.
The IDF assaulted the town’s hospital and fired tear gas into the halls, which filled with thick smoke. Three people were shot and severely wounded. The IDF claims there were tunnels under the hospital which stored weapons. This wouldn’t be the first lie the IDF has told. Nor the last. The real reason soldiers assaulted the hospital? Because a few people at the entrance threw stones at them. For that, they wreck an entire hospital. They also confiscated the keys and cell phones of ambulance drivers so they could not tend the wounded.
Israeli soldiers shot 3 unarmed Palestinian civilians including 2 in a very serious condition after being shot INSIDE THE HOSPITAL. pic.twitter.com/tfB40xjQl3
— Younis | يونس (@ytirawi) July 4, 2023
The Palestine Red Crescent reports that Israeli forces “confiscated” their ambulance keys and mobile phones in Jenin… https://t.co/Io5cClEN60
— Michael Bueckert (@mbueckert) July 4, 2023
🚨WARNING: GRAPHIC video from inside the Jenin refugee camp has emerged showing an unsuspecting unarmed Palestinian youth shot in the neck. He stumbles, tries to get to safety then falls to the ground. A cold-blooded execution. Video was shared by residents/music from the source pic.twitter.com/jzCwOKqv2O
— Nour Odeh 🇵🇸 #NojusticeNopeace (@nour_odeh) July 4, 2023
— Aquí L.A. (@virgaglianone) July 5, 2023
Roads have been bulldozed. The town is sealed off and under siege. No one can travel in or out. 1,000 of the town’s 12,000 residents fled their homes, 8,000 have nowhere to sleep tonight (see CNN tweet above). They’ve become refugees for the second time in their people’s history. The first exile was the Nakba. The expulsion of 1-million indigenous Palestinians. Jenin is the second Nakba. The IDF falsely claims it has not driven them out. But the residents have posted text messages from the IDF warning them to leave. Remember what I said above about this not being the last lie the IDF tried to pass off on the world?
This is an Israeli attempt to depopulate Jenin. To eradicate it completely. But it will not work. Palestinians are steadfast. They will not give up no matter what Israel does. They will return. They will rebuild. And if Israel returns and destroys the town again, the Palestinians will return and rebuild again.
Vengeance is mind, saith the IDF
The Israeli claim that the target of the operation was a militant “command center” which was planning “terror” attacks against Israel, is a lie. The real purpose of this attack was pure and simple: revenge. The resistance in Jenin made the IDF look like fools when they planted multiple IEDs before the last incursion, and blew up several armored vehicles; after which the army beat a hasty retreat.
Jenin Invasion |
Palestinians found earlier tonight that Israeli occupation forces blew up an ATM belonging to [@bankofjordan_ps] in Jenin city “near Haifa st.”, local reports state that the money in the ATM was gone. pic.twitter.com/H6HojzBm7F— Younis | يونس (@ytirawi) July 5, 2023
This time the IDF brought a thousand soldiers, bulldozers which destroyed homes and roads, and armed drones which rained down missiles on the homes of Palestinian civilians. It didn’t make the usual claim that it was targeting the homes of terror commanders. It simply wreaked destruction…for destruction’s sake.
A mosque was attacked because the IDF claimed that fighters fired at them from inside. An ATM was blown up and the money in it, simply looted. But they probably didn’t bother to check which bank they attacked: it was the Bank of Jordan, whose King Abdullah is the protector of Jerusalem’s Muslim holy sites. For an army to loot a foreign bank isn’t exactly good policy.
Jenin-Jerusalem-Warsaw: vanquished cities
The savagery of the Israeli assault recalls how the Romans treated vanquished cities. They destroyed them utterly, then sowed the fields with salt so no one could grow crops and hence must abandon their homes. They did this to Carthage and to Jerusalem after conquering them.
Tradition says that Jeremiah wrote the Book of Lamentations after the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple. Its opening passage parallels what Israel has done to Jenin:
How deserted lies the city,
once so full of people!
How like a widow is she,
who once was great among the nations!Bitterly she weeps at night,
tears are on her cheeks.
Among all her lovers
there is no one to comfort her.All her gateways are desolate,
her priests groan,
her young women grieve,
and she is in bitter anguish.Her foes have become her masters;
her enemies are at ease.
Her children have gone into exile,
captive before the foe.
The Nazis too destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto during and after the Jewish revolt. Israel has done the next best thing. It knows it cannot repeat what the Nazis wrought, because the world would rise up in righteous indignation. So it wreaks suffering just below that threshold. Like an expert torturer, Israel knows how much it can get away with and when to stop before killing the victim.
Yesterday, Bibi Netanyahu took a victory lap flying in a helicopter over Jenin, looking triumphantly upon what his army wrought. He might as well have had a photo op standing atop the skulls of the Palestinians he’s murdered.
Whoever thinks that Israeli terror in Jenin will deter the Palestinian resistance from its fight against Israel terrorism, is wrong. Palestinian resistance will continue as long as necessary till victory. https://t.co/Vc4zoHac1Q pic.twitter.com/jdvM8krFPU
— Tikun Olam (@richards1052) July 5, 2023
Yesterday as well, a young Palestinian rammed a bus stop in Tel Aviv, after which he drew a knife and tried to stab others. 7 Israelis were wounded. A bystander shot him. After the attacker was disarmed and lying wounded on the ground he fired multiple shots, executing him.
Israeli media call it a terror attack. It isn’t. It is an act of armed resistance against an occupying power, which a 1982 UN resolution declared legitimate. As long as Israel engages in acts of terrorism against Jenin and Palestinians in general, then Palestinians are entitled to fight back and defend their homes and towns.
Israelis cannot “refuse to get murdered.” THey will continue dying as armed resistance will never end. Be prepared to die until you stop murdering Palestinians. https://t.co/UDz6eD86se
— Tikun Olam (@richards1052) July 3, 2023
We must affirm the inalienable right of Palestinians to armed resistance against Israel’s reign of terror. We must repeat this mantra over & over till the world absorbs it: apartheid, war crimes, terror. https://t.co/JSWWvxMd3z
— Tikun Olam (@richards1052) July 4, 2023
Israelis denounce the Palestinian resistance for targeting civilians. As long as the IDF refuses to recognize that there are Palestinian civilians whom it murders indiscriminately, there is no such thing as an Israeli civilian. In the first six months of 2023, Israel murdered 155 Palestinians. In the same period 24 Israelis died. That is a ratio of 7 to 1. Now tell me who is the terrorist?
Following the attack, police minister Itamar Ben Gvir urged every Israeli Jew to arm themselves. Ben Gvir, a devout follower of Meir Kahane, the foremost champion of Judeo-fascism for the past half century, was realizing a Kahanist Dream. Kahane’s infamous “every Jew a .22” has been transformed from dream to reality. Or is it a nightmare?
Israel and the US crow about the Abraham Accords, which brought recognition from four Arab states. They rejoice at finally gaining acceptance from the Arab world, even though the agreement is little more than opening a few new markets for Israeli spyware, weapons systems, and other business deals. The citizens of these countries despise Israel, while their kleptocratic leaders rake in cash from the money and goods flowing both ways.
The Accords are an effort to normalize Israel in the region. But one cannot normalize war crimes. One cannot normalize apartheid. One cannot normalize desecration of Muslim holy places. In the end, normalization cannot trump Israeli crimes.
We must confront this normalization with terms of our own: war crimes, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. The world prefers to see Israel in positive terms: as a state beset by enemies against whom it defends itself valiantly. These are outdated stereotypes which must be uprooted. Instead, we must force the world to see Israel as the criminal terrorist state it has become.
It gives me no satisfaction to use such terms. For decades I was a liberal Zionist like so many other Jews and Israelis. But as Israel turned into a monstrous Kahanist vision, I was forced to confront this Golem-like transformation with radical changes in my own perspective. I didn’t abandon Israel. Israel abandoned me and millions of Diaspora Jews.
As Jews, we must stand against this perversion of our values. Israel no longer represents us, no longer speaks for us. In Judaism, a divorce is finalized when the wife holds out her hands and the husband gives her the get (divorce document). We have handed Israel the get. We are now divorced.
I am a Jew. When I was raised, we were taught that Israel was a noble place, that our army was the most moral. My parents thought the USA was the greatest country in the world and was a friend, as it should be to Israel, I thought I was so lucky to be living in America and to be Jewish. It turned out to be a lie. It was always a lie – from the beginning. My mother having lived through WWII hated the Germans for what they did. She never forgave them. I also will never forgive Israel for their nazi-like behaviour. The Jewish, Zionist state is an abomination to all Jews who believe in decency and justice.
This pre-emptive operation in Jenin successfully dismantled the largest terror hub in the West Bank.
A large cache of explosives and weapons were seized before they could be used to target innocent Israeli civilians.
A one hundred year cycle of violence with no end in sight.
I think you’re on the wrong blog, no readers here believe in your crappy hasbara.
@ Rafe: You drank the Zionist koolaid. Nor did you even bother to read my post or address anything in it. Why the hell did you even bother??
“Israeli media call it a terror attack. It isn’t. It is an act of armed resistance against an occupying power, which a 1982 UN resolution declared legitimate ”
The UN said no such thing. The UN said that a people living under occupation can engage in armed resistance.
The UN does not allow for carrying out acts of terror against non-combatant civilians.
UN Security Council Resolution 1566 (2004) gives terrorism a definition as:
“criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious
bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general
public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a
government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.
A UN panel, on March 17, 2005, described terrorism as any act “intended to cause death or serious
bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a
government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act.”
@ chad fisher:
Wrong. The 1982 resolution, which you conveniently omit, says that armed resistance is legitimate. It makes no reference to civilians or non-civilians. You’ve also refused to understand that Israelis are not civilians. As I wrote, again you ignored this point, for Israel there is no such thing as a Palestinian civilian. It murders them idiscriminately, as you can see in the Twitter video in which an unarmed Jenin resident is murdered in cold blood. So if no Palestinian is a civilian, then no Israeli is a civilian. There cannnot be two separate definitions for the same act. You are saying Palestinians must treat Israelis as civilians without conceding that Israel must obey the same principle.
And don’t bother arguing that Israel respects or makes any effort to distinguish Palestinian civilians. That would be a lie and I know you believe in truth and facts rather than lies and propaganda (a bit or irony).
In the matter of targeting, international law tends to distinguish not civilians in particular but protected non-combatants.
A non-combatant, who keeps tanks running, can be targeted, but a wounded or captured soldier, who no longer participates in combat, is a protected non-combatant.
@ Jonathan: What about Palestinians who are disarmed and incapacitated after being wounded, yet executed anyway? “Protected non-combatant?” If so, protected by whom? International law? Idraeli law??
” You’ve also refused to understand that Israelis are not civilians”
Right. And Jews are sub-humans,
You have become a monster.
I’m done with you. I’ll no longer engage your corrupting evils.
Turn and face Jesus. It’s not too late.
@chad: No, I am a Jew and Jews are not “sub-human.” But many Israelis are. Especially the generals, prime ministers, spy chiefs, and Judeo fascists are.
As for being a “monster,” I’d say murdering thousands of Palestinians over the past decade, more than qualifies as monstrous.
“Jesus?” WTF??
Have a good flight to Ben Gurion. Im sure we won’t have to wait long for the new Hasbara flack to take up residence here.
Re the NYTimes reports of this: They use the word “terrorist” for Palestinians which they cannot somehow, because of fear of their readership I suppose, replace it with “resistance”. Israel has been doing the terrorizing, and oppression to a much greater degree. And so this is the Palestinian response. Illegal Israeli settlers now have impunity.
Palestinians have a growing population. They, the young especially are living without hope. Neighboring Arab eyes and the eyes of the world are elsewhere. So the violence brings attention back to this situation.
Israeli’s are, for this latest mowing of the grass seemingly. Israel justifies aggression with ornate arguments and lies, claims victimhood (unbelievably), asks for sympathy. Recent demonstrations are not about the occupation but about losing their version of democracy, a democracy that does not include Palestinians. I am at the point of only regretting our unconditional support. I deplore our complicity in this.
The Palestinian situation, with new young blood, is likely to worsen because they have no hope.