On January 11, an Ohio volunteer for the interventionist group Christian Peacemaker Teams visited grazing lands of a Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills where settlers from an illegal "outpost" settlement called Havot Maon had stopped Palestinians from grazing their sheep. The settlers were being aided by Israeli soldiers, who were forcing the shepherds off their lands, and who approached the volunteer. A shocking video provided by CPT shows a group of Israeli soldiers dismissing the Ohio volunteer’s complaint that the lands are Palestinian, according to Israeli maps. The 3-minute video is shocking because it shows two of the soldiers dropping their pants to baremoon the Palestinian shepherd. They do so with calm deliberation.
These are settlements that even George Bush said "ought
to go" a week before this video was made. Obviously, the U.S. government does not care about the landgrab.
My appeal is to American Jews to try and save our religion and people from this disaster. You say it is an aberration, it’s not–this type of behavior has been licensed again and again by the occupation; and Breaking the Silence, an Israeli veterans’ group which has worked with CPT, has amply documented the moral degradation. The occupation has claimed Israel; and once-noble Commentary Magazine runs articles speaking of the settlements’ "achievement." Messianic colonialism, crude racist behavior, contempt for civil norms–this is how Zionism is working itself out. Sixty years past the Holocaust, 100 years past Herzl, 110 years past Dreyfus and the Russian pogroms, and 60 years past the ethnic cleansing, this is how Zionism has formed itself in modern history.
