The news of the Jerusalem
suicide bombing that claimed seven lives last week was splashed
across the headlines of American newspapers. The fact that five
of the dead at Hebrew University were American makes it particularly
easy
for U.S. readers to grasp the human dimensions of the tragedy.
President Bush responded by saying, "I'm furious that innocent
life has been lost," before offering Israel a green light
for commensurate bloodletting. ("Israel must defend herself.")
This
contrasts with the mild disapproval expressed by Bush spokesman
Ari Fleischer when Israel destroyed an apartment building in Gaza
last month, killing 15 Palestinians, including eight children,
to assassinate a Hamas military leader. Bush has now framed U.S.
support for Israel in terms of his global war on terror.
I suppose
it can be said that the citizens of Israel, unlike their Palestinian
counterparts in the occupied territories, are victims of terror,
because "terror" implies political violence that maximizes
its effect through uncertainty and surprise. By that definition,
the Israeli Defense Forces are not terrorists because the military
violence that Palestinians are subjected to is relentless and
inescapable.
In many
ways, I identify with the sense of solidarity and commitment that
galvanized those five Americans killed at Hebrew University, while
my sympathies lie in a much different place. I traveled to the
Middle East last month to join the International Solidarity Movement,
an organization that supports the Palestinian struggle against
Israel's 35-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, through
non-violent action -- a struggle whose legitimacy is reinforced
by U.N. Resolution 37/43.
Along
with other internationals from the United States, Western Europe
and Japan, I put my body in front of Israeli soldiers to discourage
attacks on unarmed Palestinians. As a citizen of a country that
supplies Israel with some of the most advanced weaponry on earth
through a $3-billion-a-year military package, my life is somehow
deemed to be more valuable than the lives of my Palestinian peers.
While
visiting the West Bank, I spent a week in Beit Umar, a small Palestinian
agricultural community north of Hebron, where farmers are coping
with a double tragedy of crop spoilage because of Israel's closure
policy and land loss due to the expansion of the Jewish settlements.
In that
week, my group witnessed two Israeli military exercises in which
soldiers backed by armored personnel carriers paraded through
town just before dusk, shooting into the air and beating any Palestinians
who had the audacity to stand on the street to observe the Israelis'
behavior.
Inevitably,
there were children, some no more than 10 years old, who responded
to this humiliating situation by throwing rocks at the soldiers,
who then fired tear gas and live ammunition at the children. In
neither case did we observe return fire from Palestinian militias.
(It must be mentioned that no suicide bombing operations have
been launched from Beit Umar.)
In the
aftermath of these exercises, we found bullet holes in the windows
of Palestinian homes, punctured water tanks and downed electrical
lines. Other international observers confirm that the military
conducts similar maneuvers throughout the occupied territories.
What are the military objectives of these operations? I do not
like to use the word "terrorize" because it is used
in a manipulative fashion to control public opinion, though the
word comes close to describing the experience of helplessly watching
soldiers fire on children armed only with stones, wondering where
you will go if those guns turn in your direction. "This is
our normal life" was the constant refrain of the Palestinians
we met. So it is true that what they experience is nothing like
the terror experienced in Israel, where placid, affluent neighborhoods
are occasionally interrupted by explosions of violence.
In Beit
Umar, we heard countless stories of young Palestinian men being
gunned down in front of their shops or walking along settler-only
bypass roads, of Palestinian homes being shot into by Israeli
soldiers and settlers alike, of homes being demolished by the
military for arbitrary and gratuitous reasons, and of Palestinian
men being detained by the military, where they were beaten and
pressured to become informers. The purpose of these attacks against
a largely unarmed and defenseless population can only be to intimidate
dissent, to destroy hope for the future -- in effect, to compel
submission to a more humiliating occupation.
We must
begin to favor justice for all the world's inhabitants over blind
support for the domination of the strong over the weak.
We could
start by halting the flow of U.S. weapons to Israel, which are
grievously put to use to take innocent lives.
* * *
Jordan
Green
Columbia School of Journalism
"Stay
strong and pay close attention ..."
