[Peace-discuss] Dear U of I College of Communication:

[David Green]

ZNet | Mideast
 
Israeli Attacks
 
by John Petrovato; April 03, 2005  

Over the past week American viewers have consumed
endless images of Terry Schiavo as she lay on her bed
in a vegetative state. Scenes of protests outside the
hospital and multitudes of political pundits on news
programs waded in to give analysis and opinions.
People came out in droves to decry the euthanasia of
one woman who has been in a vegetative state for 15
years. As Americans were consumed by the media circus
surrounding the case, unimaginable tragedy for
hundreds of thousands of otherwise healthy people
around the world went unnoticed by the media. 

Meanwhile, international organizations such as the
United Nations have reported that some 30,000 people
are now dying daily from lack of food and water.
Further, thousands more die every day from treatable
illnesses. Beyond death caused by poverty,
state-sponsored terror against civilian populations by
governments’ military or by militia groups is
occurring on almost every continent. 

Of personal interest was the upswing of attacks
against non-combatant Palestinians by both the Israeli
military as well as Israeli civilians who are
illegally residing in the Palestinian West Bank. While
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a regular
segment on U.S. news programs, over the past week very
little has been reported. One friend told me: “you
must be pleased that things are very quiet in
Palestine – looks like peace may be on its way”. It is
common to assume that peace and “quiet” is the norm in
places that aren’t being covered by the media.
Unfortunately, such is very far from the truth. Below
I want to relate some of the violence that has
occurred against both Palestinians and international
human rights observers in the West Bank over the past
few days. Most of these stories have not been covered
by the media and thus begs the question: why does the
media cover nearly every incident of violence against
Israeli’s (both civilians and military) but not of
Palestinians when they are the victims? 

As reported on numerous Palestinian and international
human rights web sites, as well as by foreign
journalists, there has been an upswing of attacks by
armed Israeli civilians against unarmed Palestinian
civilians. For instance, on Friday, March 25, armed
groups of Israeli Talmudic settlers from the Yitzar
settlement (outside of Nablus in the center of the
West Bank) attacked the Palestinian village of Asira
Al-Qibliya. Wearing black masks and screaming, the
Israeli settlers went into people’s homes, threw rocks
through people’s windows and beat Palestinians. 

Masked Israeli settlers were also attacking villages
in the Hebron area as well. On March 24, Israeli
settler militias attacked shepherds and international
peace activists (including two Americans) who were
merely attempting to document the attacks while the
Israeli military did nothing to stop them. “KL”, a
Danish ISM activist wrote of the incident: 

“Three young soldiers get out just to stand around and
do nothing, despite the fact that we repeatedly ask,
as the settlers begin to kick and beat us. Not until a
grown man has thrown himself on top of our female
American friend and punched her many times in the
face, neck and chest, does one of the soldiers help to
get him off of her. Afterwards the soldier decides to
help the man find his glasses. We draw back toward the
village with the shepherds, as the screaming settlers
try to get past the soldiers. We phoned the police as
soon as the two youngsters got out of the pick-up, and
were positively surprised that they promised to come
quickly. I had heard that the police often don't
really handle cases involving settlers out of fear. My
positive attitude toward the Israeli Police did not
last long. It took several calls before they finally
showed up one and a half hour later. We tried to
explain to them what happened, but soon the settlers
came driving down again and started yelling in Hebrew
at the police. Before we knew it, the police had taken
our passports, the settlers were going home, and we
are on our way to the police station”. (Electronic
Intifada, April 1, 2005). 

The international human rights activists have now been
informed that they are not allowed to return to the
area as the masked Israeli settlers charged that the
two activists had beaten them. 

Also in the Hebron area, the villagers of Yatta
discovered that Israeli settlers had placed poisonous
feed and pellets on Palestinian land. Investigated and
confirmed by the Christian Peacemaker team, they
reported that many animals have died and others have
been injured by the poison. 

On a different level, many towns and areas, such as
Balata refugee camp, had been invaded and harassed by
the Israeli military. Daily military incursions into
Palestinian residential areas are common. The result
is constant fear of unwarranted arrests or violence. 

With such occurring on a daily basis it is astonishing
to see that most Palestinians have kept their
commitment to non-violence as their choice of
resistance. Even over the past week or so, over a
dozen protest marches and demonstrations have occurred
throughout the West Bank. 

On Wednesday, March 30, in commemoration of
“Palestinian Land Day”, there was over half a dozen
demonstrations that occurred. Hannah Mermelstein, a
Boston-based activist, wrote of a march that she and
other internationals attended in Salfit: 

“We marched with “Women for Life”, a Salfit women’s
group that formed in part to oppose the impending Wall
in this region, to a polluted valley called Wadi Qana.
Surrounded by settlements and outposts, this village
was evacuated in the 1980s and most of the land and
water has been stolen or completely contaminated by
sewage from the settlements”. 

The Israeli government is doing its own part to
dispossess Palestinians from their land for the
benefit of Israeli civilians. Over the past week, it
has been discovered that the Israeli government is in
the process of building another 3,500 housing units in
the West Bank. Authorized by Ariel Sharon, these
housing units will be located between Maaleh Adumim
and East Jerusalem. The project is designed to make
Palestinian claims to Jerusalem less viable. Though
Israel had invaded and annexed Jerusalem in 1967, the
international community has refused to accept its
legality. While applauding Sharon’s “bold moves” for
removing 5,000 settlers from the Gaza strip, American
leaders have given little attention to the rapid
growth and development of settlements in the
Palestinian West Bank. Indeed the extension of the
Gush Etzion settlement in the West Bank has been
designed to take in the settlers who are being
evacuated from Gaza. 

Settlement building and expansions are in
contradiction to the internationally backed “road
map”. Further depressing is the fact that George W.
Bush has made repeated statements of recent saying
that large Israeli settlement blocs in the West bank
need to be accepted as a reality for any future peace
deal. This policy statement is in direct opposition to
international law and the 4th Geneva Convention that
states that an occupying power cannot transfer its own
population into the territory that it is occupying. 

Along with settlement expansions, Israel continues to
build the controversial “Separation barrier”
throughout the West Bank on Palestinian land,
effectively annexing thousands of acres into the state
of Israel. Thus even while it is widely recognized as
illegal under international law, it continues to be
built at an ever quickening pace. For the past few
weeks, the wall is being built at the northern
entrance to Bethlehem. The wall has segregated a
number of Palestinian families from Bethlehem leaving
them in “no-man’s land” as they are not Israeli
citizens and now have no access to Palestinian areas.
The wall has also destroyed thousands of olive trees
and other agricultural properties. 

Thus, not only does the Wall continue to be built on
Palestinian land further impoverishing the indigenous
population for the benefit of a select ethnic group,
the continued unchecked violence by both Israeli
settlers and their military against unarmed and
non-combatant Palestinian has continued daily. Of
course we must not forget about the hundreds of
roadblocks and dozens of military checkpoints in the
West Bank that prevent people from attending school,
going to work, or visiting family. 

Of course the media is generally complicit to
uncritical reporting. Most of their information comes
from the Israeli government itself and few reporters
leave Israeli proper or Jerusalem. During my three
6-week visits to the West Bank, foreign journalists
were rarely seen. This should not be a considered a
surprise. Israel regularly refuses journalists (as
well as all foreign citizens and human rights workers)
from traveling to Palestinian areas. Israel believes
that part of its war with the Palestinians is a public
relations war. Israeli officials actually speak openly
about their need to control the way the conflict is
represented in the United States and Europe. People
who get all their news about the conflict from the
mainstream media in the United States and Europe will
never be able to understand this conflict. Without
searching for alternative news sites that cover the
events that occur there, most people in the “west”
misunderstand the conflict as a “war between two
peoples” or “Israeli response to Palestinian violence”
without understanding the basic fact that the
Palestinian people live under a harsh military
occupation by a foreign army - an occupation which
today is the longest running in history.