With a heavy heart over Gaza

DURING THE past several weeks, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. I visited the camp back in 2009 during my trip to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). I vividly remember with a broken heart how camp leaders described the psychological damage done to the children following the 2002 Israeli massacre at the camp.

We were told about children who refused or were unable to sleep for fear of Israeli helicopters bombing them in their homes while they slept. We were told about 14- and 15-year-olds wetting themselves in school because of how traumatized they were. I've thought about all this as I've seen the horrors of the current Israeli onslaught on Gaza unfold day after day.

What's happening in Gaza by most accounts is worse than previous Israeli assaults there in 2006, 2009 and 2012. An all-too-common and utterly heart-wrenching theme is the reporting of entire families being virtually wiped out. The numbers--eight, nine, 12, 18, 25 members, including 17 children, of individual families--are almost beyond one's ability to comprehend.

This latest episode of Israeli war crimes, like the previous ones, is being played out in front of a global audience. The atrocities being committed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are being documented by doctors and human rights groups who are witnesses to the slaughter. Videos showing the death and destruction of Gazans of all ages are viewed by millions and are leading to mass actions of protest by people all over the world who are making their voices heard.

Whether it was a young man looking for relatives who was repeatedly shot and killed by an Israeli sniper or four young boys playing soccer on a deserted beach who were targeted and blown up by an Israeli gunboat, the theme remains constant--the lives of Palestinians, regardless of age, are worthless to the Israeli forces being sent to destroy them.

In order to fully understand what is occurring, it is necessary to put this onslaught, this massacre, into the larger context of the ongoing illegal Israeli occupation, and in the case of Gaza, the illegal siege and blockade. During my trip to the OPT, a trip that did not include Gaza, we saw firsthand the impact of the occupation on virtually every aspect of Palestinian life.

WE SAW the true face of the occupation in Hebron in an old woman who, despite living across the street from the cemetery where her loved ones were buried, is forced to walk more than a mile to pay her respects because the street that separates her home from the cemetery is a Jews-only road.

We experienced it walking through the streets in Hebron below a wire netting that is necessary to block the rocks and feces thrown down on them from the Jews who live above them. Sadly, the netting was not nearly as effective at blocking the verbal abuse that was hurled down upon the Palestinian citizens of Hebron.

We saw it in the faces of the old and the young in the Dheisheh refugee camp located just south of Bethlehem. There, like in Jenin, we met people over the age of 60 who had spent their entire lives inside the camp as refugees. We saw it in the faces of people stranded for hours at a time at the various checkpoints that dot the West Bank. These checkpoints are designed to make the lives of Palestinians even more impossible.

At the infamous Qalandiya checkpoint, we met students who told us they were forbidden from even bringing pencils through. This was confirmed by students at Birzeit University, near Ramallah, who told us that it was impossible for them to make it to class on time due to the checkpoints. Many were therefore forced to spend what little money they had renting rooms with many other fellow students as it was the only way they could be close enough to school to make it to class on time.

At Birzeit, we were told of the horrors of administrative detention, a policy that arrests Palestinians without charge or trial for periods up to six months. What makes it worse is that when the six-month period is up, Israeli authorities can simply renew the six-month period, and the cycle continues on and on, with Palestinians, including many students, spending years in detention without ever even being charged with a crime.

Just as the occupation dominates life for Palestinians in the West Bank, the siege and blockade choke the life out of the people of Gaza. It is for this reason that the inhabitants of Gaza, despite suffering constant bombardment and slaughter from Israel, continue to support the resistance, regardless of whether or not they are supporters of Hamas. The consistent message from the people of Gaza has remained defiant, and that message is that as long as the siege stands, the resistance must continue.

Their demands have always been the same, and that is for the crippling siege to be lifted so that the people of Gaza can have access to food and water, medicine and medical supplies, and other necessities that they have been denied for years on end. Palestinians in Gaza have access to water for just three hours every three days and have power for between only four and eight hours a day.

The siege must be lifted so that they can have the freedom of movement to escape what has been accurately described as the world's largest open air prison. For far too long, the besieged of Gaza have been denied the most basic of human rights, suffering what many describe as a slow and calculated death at the hands of Israel. If the conflict ends with Gaza still under siege as it has with the previous assaults, then nothing will change, and it will simply be a matter of time, perhaps another year or two, before the next assault by the occupying Israeli military forces takes place.

As I write this, more than half of Gaza has been destroyed by the current Israeli assault. Due to the blockade that severely restricts the importation of building and construction materials, many structures destroyed during Operation Cast Lead more than five-and-a-half years ago have yet to be rebuilt.

I DON'T pay much attention to conspiracy theories. The things we already have documented evidence of are more than enough to terrify us, yet throughout this entire nightmare, the Israeli government has covered up the truth about what led to this latest assault on Palestine. The cover-up surrounding the abduction and tragic murder of three settlers has been a crime in and of itself.

What we do know is that Israeli intelligence forces knew that the three Israeli teens had been killed within the first day of their abduction. Yet, they carried out the charade of trying to rescue them with a military engagement called Operation Brother's Keeper. What followed was an 11-day rampage through the West Bank that saw the killing of at least five Palestinians as well as the arbitrary arrest of more than 500 Palestinians, including virtually every Hamas leader in the West Bank.

In addition, the IDF engaged in a massive campaign that saw them loot, pillage and destroy countless Palestinian homes--all this being done while their leaders, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, constantly spewed the most disgusting rhetoric, thereby inciting the violence that followed.

Ayelet Shaked, a member of Bennett's ultra-right Jewish Home Party in the Israeli Knesset, recently referred to Palestinian children as "little snakes" and said that every Palestinian was an "enemy combatant." Sadly, the vile sentiments expressed by the political leaders of Israel seem to reflect the sentiments of a majority of their constituents. Their call for Palestinian blood was answered by the shocking kidnapping and murder of 17-year-old Mohammad Abu Khdeir, who was burned alive on the morning of July 2 while he was on his way to the local mosque for morning prayers.

Finally, after more than a month of claiming that Hamas was responsible for the kidnapping but without providing any evidence to support this claim, a BBC reporter has revealed that Israeli police spokesperson Mickey Rosenfeld told him that the kidnappers were a "lone cell" that was not operating under orders from the Hamas leadership. Rosenfeld also said that "if kidnapping had been ordered by Hamas leadership, they'd have known about it in advance," according to the reporter.

This is a direct contradiction of what the Israeli establishment has said--for example, Netanyahu asserted, "Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay." Yet, the damage was already done, and the justification Israel sought by waving the war flag around the deaths of three illegal settlers was achieved. For the past three weeks, the people of Gaza have been massacred by an occupying force hell-bent on inflicting as much death and destruction as possible.

EVENTS LIKE this--and the apartheid conditions that Palestinians are forced to live under--have many on the Israeli left increasingly fearful that the state of Israel is more and more resembling Nazi Germany during the 1930s. This opinion, which many Palestinians and their supporters have held for years now, is even expressed by some who survived the Nazi Holocaust.

Reports of bands of thugs beating Arabs and leftists opposed to the occupation while chanting "Death to Arabs, death to leftists" and "Throw all Arabs in the gas chamber" leaves me with an ominous chill. On my visit to the OPT, it was easy to see why these comparisons are drawn. We witnessed Jewish-only roads and special license plates and IDs for Palestinians. Even Palestinian citizens of Israel are denied many of the basic rights that Jews enjoy, and now they are forced to take loyalty oaths to a government that has systematically denied them of their basic rights for more than 65 years. Added to this is the continuous construction of illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land and the destruction of Palestinian homes and land at an ever-increasing pace.

This latest slaughter has allowed us to see another parallel with recent history, specifically the sham cease-fire agreement concocted between Israel and the anti-Hamas Egyptian government that came to power through a coup. Two weeks ago, they proposed a deal that would put an end to this latest round of killing, but which would leave in place the siege and blockade of Gaza and provide absolutely no relief to its 1.8 million inhabitants.

They did this without consulting Hamas, knowing full well they could never accept but giving Israel political cover to justify more air strikes and a ground invasion, thus intensifying the wholesale slaughter of Gaza. This deadly charade is reminiscent of the 2000 Camp David Summit when all the blame for failing to come up with an agreement was placed at the feet of Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat.

U.S. President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak knew that Arafat could not accept the terms of the Camp David agreement, which would have forced massive concessions on the part of the Palestinians but demanded virtually nothing of the Israelis. Yet both leaders placed all the blame for the summit's failure at his feet. Clearly, this has been a recurring theme for as long as the "peace process" has existed.

SO NOW we are once again witnessing the widespread destruction of the Gaza Strip and its inhabitants. Sadly, the only language coming out of Washington is the same as it always has been: "Israel has the right to defend itself." Israel continues to enjoy a free pass from its greatest enablers--allowing it to kill and destroy with impunity. It is only now, when a small number of Israeli soldiers have been killed, that we hear President Obama say that we must have a ceasefire.

When it was only Palestinians dying, mostly civilians, there was not a peep about the need for a ceasefire coming from anyone in Washington. With the number of dead in Gaza now more than 1,300, including more than 220 children, and climbing steadily each day as Israel continues it assault, an end to the killing is of course needed. Yet, what is needed even more than that is a long overdue accounting and reckoning of the crimes committed by the state of Israel and its chief benefactor, the United States of America.

Israel constantly boasts of its technical superiority when it comes to the precision of its weapons. It has long claimed that its "smart weapons" possess pinpoint accuracy. If indeed that is the case, then they have committed atrocities worthy of the most despicable of war criminals. The IDF has targeted and killed people undergoing surgery when the hospitals they were in were shelled. They have killed people in schools, hospitals, mosques, sports stadiums, markets, media centers, rehabilitation centers and other medical facilities, including those for the handicapped and disabled. Ambulance drivers and EMS workers have been targeted as well as being prevented from retrieving the dead and wounded leading to more senseless deaths.

An unimaginably despicable example of their pinpoint accuracy occurred July 24, when the IDF bombed a school in Beit Hanoun being used as a United Nations shelter, killing 16 and wounding more than 200. While Netanyahu has consistently blamed Hamas for using Palestinians as human shields, this worn-out argument has never been backed up by any evidence and has in fact been repeatedly refuted by one report after another. What has been verified, however, is the IDF's use of Palestinians, including children, as human shields. This policy, which they have employed for many years, was recently used during the Shejaiya massacre that saw the killing of 72 Palestinians.

Netanyahu had the unmitigated temerity recently to say that he actually cared about the safety of the people of Gaza, imploring them to heed the warnings of the IDF when they were told to evacuate. The question the people of Gaza have for him is, "Where, Mr. Prime Minister, should we evacuate to?" Where is it safe to go when hospitals, clinics, schools, mosques and homes are targeted? The wounded cannot even find refuge. Gaza, even under the best of circumstances, is a shoebox. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There is no safe haven for the besieged of Gaza.

ALL WE ever hear from our politicians is, "Israel has the right to defend itself...Israel has the right to defend itself," and "No country could be expected to live like this." This is of course unless that country is Palestine. According to virtually every major American political leader beginning with President Obama, regardless of whether they're the most ardent conservative Republican, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, or the most liberal "progressive" Democrat, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, there is no distinction when it comes to Israel.

The failure of any politician in this country to hold Israel accountable for crimes committed against Palestine is what allows them to continue to exist as the world's last remaining colonial-settler state. The outrageous influence exercised on U.S. political leaders by AIPAC and other pro-Israeli organizations is a great place to look for an answer to the question as to why the U.S. is so endlessly supportive of the racist and apartheid polices practiced by Israel.

The goal of such groups and their supporters is to relentlessly portray Palestinians as "terrorists" or "religious extremists." The effectiveness of the strategy was impressed upon me when I told people of my plans to visit the West Bank just before the first anniversary of Operation Cast Lead. Many people expressed shock that I would be going to such a "dangerous" place and asked if I was scared that I would be killed by a terrorist or suicide bomber.

It was my proud duty to inform them that the only threat we faced during our stay was from the Israelis, whether it was from a member of the IDF pointing a high-powered rifle at us at a checkpoint or a suspicious bureaucrat at the airport interrogating us as to why we had come to Israel.

The people we met in Palestine simply desired to live peaceful lives, free from occupation. The level of kindness and humanity we were shown was something I know none of us will ever forget. Having the opportunity to meet people who have had their lands confiscated, their orchards of olive trees destroyed, some of them hundreds of years old, their water stolen, their houses demolished, and their relatives arrested and even killed while they still talk of an unquenchable desire for peace and freedom will always serve as an inspiration to all of us dedicated to the continued fight for Palestinian freedom and justice.