41 Democratic congress members have signed a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, condemning Israeli’s demolition of a West Bank village and demanding to know whether U.S. equipment was used. The letter was led by Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan.
“Creeping annexation cannot be a policy that the U.S. government supports if we wish to see peace in the region,” reads the letter. “This single act was the largest Israeli displacement of Palestinians in four years, behavior only made possible by continued silence from the American government. This is a grave humanitarian issue that demands your immediate attention and our collective condemnation.”
On November 3, while the world was focused on the U.S. election, Israeli forces destroyed the homes of almost 80 Palestinian Bedouins in the occupied West Bank. Fatima Abu Awwad was one of the Palestinians whose home was demolished. “They didn’t leave anything untouched,” she told Mondoweiss’ Yumna Patel. “Our homes, our livestock pens, our bathrooms, our water tanks, solar panels, everything. They destroyed everything. It was cold, windy, and rainy, and we had nowhere to go, nowhere to protect ourselves and our small children
“I feel like I’m destroyed inside,” she added. “Look around at what happened to us, how would you feel? We have nothing left.”
In addition to Rep. Mark Pocan, the letter’s signatories include Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA), Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (MA), Rep. Betty McCollum (MN), Rep. Ro Khanna (CA), and Rep. Joaquin Castro (TX), who is currently running to become the new chair for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Pompeo is scheduled to visit the occupied West Bank winery of Psagot this week, making him the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit an illegal Israeli settlement. Last year, he annulled a State Department legal opinion which deemed West Bank settlements “inconsistent with international law.” That ruling came in response to an appeal from the owner of the Psagot winery.
This is basically evil. This is showing utmost cruelty to people who are helpless, and unable to defend their property. This is taking advantage of America’s unwavering support for a despicable occupier, who hurts these people, on a daily basis. It is good for these Democrats to demand an explanation for America doing nothing, and saying nothing, when their no.1 charity case goes out of control and breaks international laws. The big question is, what is pompous Pompeo going to do about it. I would guess nothing. He seems to have aspirations to run for President next time, and will never go against his good buddy Netanyahu and zionists. Right now he is spending tax payer money and globetrotting around the world, with his wife, to make nice with other nations.
“Pompeo is scheduled to visit the occupied West Bank winery of Psagot this week,”
“Something’s Rotten at This Settlement Winery – and We Don’t Mean the Grapes”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-something-s-rotten-at-this-settlement-winery-and-we-don-t-mean-the-grapes-1.8162261
“The specific settlement that Secretary Pompeo reportedly decided to honor by visiting its winery, Psagot, is built on privately-owned Palestinian land, which the government of Israel seized years ago for “security purposes”, and then re-purposed for the sake of constructing a settlement.”
https://peacenow.org/entry.php?id=36904#.X7RHB-WSnIU
Lest we forget: “Canada Park”
Before dawn on June 6, one day after Israel launched the 1967 war, “three villages in the fertile Latrun Valley [under Jordanian administration in accordance with the 1949 armistice agreement with Israel] that had defied capture in 1948…were totally razed by Israeli bulldozers, their residents scattered without concern for their future. Beit Nuba, Imwas [the latter believed by Christians to be where Jesus first appeared after his resurrection] & Yalu lay just across the frontier on the West Bank, about fifteen miles northwest of Jerusalem, & obstructed a direct route from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. The 10,000 or more residents had been ordered out without explanation, given no chance to rescue their possessions except for what they could carry, left to wander without shelter or food or water.” They were never permitted to return. (Donald Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days That Changed the Middle East in 1967, Amana Books Brattleboro, Vermont, 1988, p. 290)
Even though the inhabitants put up no resistance, the three villages were demolished on the direct orders of Yitzhak Rabin, Chief of Staff of the Israeli army. Several of the villages’ elders who were unable to walk without assistance were killed by falling rubble as Israel’s bulldozers demolished their homes.
What transpired when Israel attacked, seized, ethnically cleansed and demolished the three villages is well documented in “Memory of the Cactus,” a 2008 documentary film directed by Hanna Musleh & produced by the Palestinian human rights organization, Al-Haq.
The land on which Beit Nuba, Imwas & Yalu once stood is now, thanks to tax-deductible donations to the Canadian chapter of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), known as “Canada Park,” a recreational area where Israeli Jews frolic and picnic and their government plants trees in the name of Canadians who have provided Israel with financial or other support.
Amazingly not single one of the 73 Palestinians — including 41 children, owns a mobile phone that recorded the supposed “village” as it stood before, or what happened during the dastardly deed.
The Democratic party currently needs both its left wing and its moderate wing and though theoretically alignment with this village against the command given to these soldiers need not be a left wing versus moderate wing battle, it is. And one imagines that netanyahu will try to avoid actions like this one once biden moves into the white house, unless his purpose be to sabotage the democratic party.
Long range I think those who favor a one state solution should favor israeli citizenship for those who live in the west bank, but until that is the policy of the leadership of hamas and/or fatah, it will be more like a taunt than a policy. meanwhile those who espouse a one state solution are not espousing israeli citizenship but deconstruction of israel and citizenship in some mythical future state and this undermines their believability. just as in south africa mandela wanted voting rights that’s what the palestinians must claim: voting rights and until now the one state movement is not asking for voting rights it’s asking for a new reality overnight and not a slow evolution to a new reality. so if you favor one state, you should favor asking for the vote in Israeli elections.