Just about the time I signed off on a statement condemning “the aggression being carried out by the Israel Defense Force,” I received an invitation to join the African Heritage delegation to Israel/Palestine. While the two actions came from different places, they definitely are not mutually exclusive.
African Americans for Justice in the Middle East and North Africa (AAJMENA) urged President Obama to intercede to end the slaughter of innocent Palestinians in Gaza. The recent attacks on the Palestinian people and the continued illegal occupation of their land by Israel are indefensible.
Israel attempted to justify its Sunday attack on a United Nations school in Gaza, but it was a clear and blatant violation of international law. Israeli artillery shells slammed into buildings that were sheltering 3,000 displaced people, killing at least 10 innocent people and injuring dozens more. The Israeli government knows the locations of the U.N. facilities, yet they are under fire.
To give the reader the lopsided nature of this conflict, more than 1,800 Palestinians – mainly civilians – have been killed in nearly four weeks of fighting, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Nearly 70 Israelis, almost all soldiers, have been killed. Hamas can’t possibly compete with the sophisticated weaponry of Israel. Thousands have been injured and a reported 50 percent of Palestinians have been displaced because of the volatile situation.
Most polls show a global indignation of Israel’s role in the region except for the United States. Israel is the top beneficiary of U.S. aid (aka our tax dollars) to the tune of about $3 billion annually, which has subsidized about 25 percent of the country’s annual defense budget in recent years. This unconditional aid and political support make it almost impossible for the U.S. to interject itself as a neutral mediator.
Consider this scenario: Party A and Party B are in a dispute. Party C comes in to mediate the dispute but is a good friend of Party B. I don’t think Party A will feel confident about the process or the outcome of such negotiations.
Yet, the U.S. government keeps sending its representatives to barter peace and seem mystified about why it doesn’t happen. After all, isn’t it a world leader, a financial powerhouse that is respected by all? The U.S. government’s answer to these questions always is yes, exposing their myopic and uninformed view of a changing world.
I would like to visit Gaza and the West Bank, but there are already some truths that I know sitting at a computer in St. Louis. Jews and Palestinians are at the heart of fighting for peaceful co-existence in the region and are in coordinated action all over the world. The U.S. needs to look around and see that they are the only true allies of the Israeli state and explore why that is. The kind of sanctions that the U.S. puts on other countries who are guilty of similar atrocities against civilians must be implemented. The Israeli armed forces would look very different minus U.S. dollars. For example, they may have to thrown firecrackers back at the Palestinians.
U.S. citizens do have a special role to play in this conflict. The Obama Administration needs to hear from us that we don’t want our hard-earned tax dollars used to finance Israeli apartheid.
For local people who don’t feel like they know about the conflict and can’t travel to the region, there’ll be events you can attend. There you can talk with both Jews and Arabs about the situation.
To quote from a paragraph in the AAJMENA statement:
“Only through a just peace agreement that recognizes the right of the Palestinian people to national self-determination will the predictable cycle of violence end; a violent cycle, which is the outcome of Israel’s long-standing, illegal occupation – and Gaza blockade – that we, the tax payers of the United States, have sanctioned and funded.”
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