Yesterday the liberal Zionist group J Street spoke out against harsh Israeli measures in East Jerusalem and the West Bank following the “abhorrent murders of four Israeli civilians in two shocking attacks on Friday and Saturday.” But its report was imbalanced in a way that would surely offend many Americans. The four Jewish victims were all named, in the second paragraph:
there is no justification for the cold-blooded murder of Eitam and Naama Henkin, who were ambushed last Friday while driving with their four young children in the West Bank. The stabbing attacks that killed Aharon Bennett and Nehamia Lavi on Saturday, in which Bennett’s wife and young child were also wounded, were equally heinous.
It wasn’t till the fourth paragraph that the organization even mentioned the two Palestinian teenagers killed by Israeli forces Sunday and Monday. And J Street did not mention the Palestinians’ names: “even today we have seen two Palestinian teenagers killed in clashes with Israeli security forces.” One was Abdel Rahman Abdullah, 13, the other Hutheifa Suleiman, 18. And the J Street statement didn’t say that the Palestinians were killed in illegally occupied territories that are supposed to form the Palestinian state.
This is why some young people are anti-Zionist. Because Zionists explicitly place a higher value on Jewish lives than Palestinian ones, on lands 5000 miles away from the U.S.
When the Henkins were killed in their car deep in the West Bank last week, J Street issued a statement saying it was “saddened and appalled,” and nowhere described the West Bank as occupied, or said that the victimized family were settlers, illegal under international law. And J Street issued no statement about two extrajudicial executions by Israeli forces that have shocked the world: the killing on September 22 of 18-year-old Hadil al-Hashlamoun at a Hebron checkpoint, and the killing on Sunday of Fadi Alloun, 19, as he was chased down by a Jewish mob in occupied East Jerusalem.
And by the way, J Street probably needs to follow such a racially-based policy, in order to get the support of American Jewish Zionists. J Street’s problem is shared by the wider Jewish community.
Yesterday’s J Street statement also opposes the outrageous Israeli policy of house demolitions for the families of those accused of terrorism. Yet it includes a kind of blank check: “Strong measures within the law should be taken to ensure security.”
Thanks to Max Blumenthal.
CNN’s breaking news yesterday had a segment on the kurtuffel yesterday, leading it off with notice of the attempted murder of “a Jewish woman”–the one who got a knife in her back–nothing at all about any Palestinian murdered or maimed, child or adult. Nothing about what this latest violence was about in terms of direct linkage, although CNN did mention, eventually, in a sort of throw away line, that young to middle age men had been banned from worship. Nothing about it happening in land. Nothing about the occupation, or settlement building. Nothing about home demolitions of family homes as collective punishment.
J Street rushes in to be the new AIPAC. Is anyone actually surprised?
How can J Street be called liberal? How can the adjective liberal be applied to any kind of Zionism?
There are no “settlers” who are civilians as far as I’m concerned. There are no “settlers” who can claim ignorance as to the reality of the IDF treatment of Palestinians as part of the military occupation.
“Settlers” who form lynch mobs, who attack Palestinians and destroy Palestinian property, who wave assault weapons and demand more land be appropriated “for Jews”, have lost any right to safety and security as far as their being in the occupied Palestinian West Bank goes.
I’d rather only see the IDF personnel as well as the Border Police and Shabak/Shin Bet types actually buy it, but right now it’s a case of blood for blood. It’s always been a case of blood for blood.
Something’s coming, I think, as far as this goes. It’ll become more readily apparent if things get worse.