If you ever need a simple explanation for your friends about conditions in Palestine, please watch a short video we ran this week of Basil al-Adraa, a journalist and activist in Masafer Yatta, communities in the occupied Hebron Hills that Israel is seeking to bulldoze to make way for settlers and soldiers.
Basil’s narration is so calm and terrifying — it makes your blood boil. He sleeps with his shoes on because Israeli raids are so common in the middle of the night, he doesn’t want his feet to get cold as he stands around in the night with other villagers. Because the soldiers don’t even give them time to put their shoes on.
Basil’s young sisters are traumatized by such experiences. Basil himself witnessed his father being brutally beaten when he was 9 because he refused to take his sheep off land that settlers were trying to steal. And Basil was beaten in March as he filmed similar treatment of a Palestinian shepherd by Jewish settlers.
“There I stand, I document, I see the tears of the children and the mothers,” Basil tells Ghousoon Bisharat and Thomas Dallal of our “What’s the Story?” team.
Of course such atrocities by messianic Zionists have been documented for decades… The monstrosity of the situation is that our leaders can’t call for depriving Israeli soldiers of financial aid.
Senator Ed Markey got his job thanks to the work of progressives, but now he’s progressive except on Palestine; he speaks of “all sides” contributing to the “spiral of violence,” and can’t name Israel.
And liberal Zionists offer lip-service opposition to the ethnic cleansing of Masafer Yatta but can’t say, Cut off the funds.
Or the State Department offers empty language about “dignity” for both Palestinians and Israelis when it is quizzed about the stripping of a three-year-old Palestinian boy at a cage-like checkpoint, an incident widely publicized in Palestine but of course unreported in the American press.
Or the State Department offers empty language about “dignity” for both Palestinians and Israelis when it is quizzed about the stripping of a three-year-old Palestinian boy at a cage-like checkpoint, an incident widely publicized in Palestine but of course unreported in the American press.
Abu Akleh is not the first American to die at Israeli hands with no protest from our government. This week marked the 55th anniversary of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, which killed 34 sailors. No consequences for that attack either… Here’s a good account of the political coverup.
We sure have a lot of work to do; thanks for your help.
