“Where did we get to? Well – a lynching attempt in Bat Yam, because the passengers in the car were Arabs.” These are the words of Israeli Knesset member Zehava Galon, leader of the Meretz party.
Galon was referring to Israeli MK Itamar Ben Gvir’s continued incitement to violence against Palestinians. Last week, on October 12, Ben Gvir led a group of Israeli settlers in raiding the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem. What’s more, he has been charged with over 50 crimes, and has already been convicted in eight cases, including once for providing support to a terrorist organization. However, this has not stopped Ben Gvir from running for Israeli elections and coordinating his media strategy and campaign with the rightwing Likud and other parties.
As Jews around the world observed Yom Kippur, a crowd of Israeli worshipers overturned a car with Palestinian passengers and assaulted them. This is not the first time Israeli mobs attack Palestinians in Israel. While there are many documented cases, one in the same area as today’s attack happened last year where an Israeli mob attempted to lynch Saeed Mousa, who barely survived.
Lynching, murders, and assaults against Palestinians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory are not new. They also take place in parallel to calls for the death of Palestinians made by Israeli parliamentarians and legislators, many of whom are themselves West Bank settlers.
Calling for the slaughter of Palestinians, and chanting “your village should burn,” are also commonplace — far more than what many media outlets and pro-Israel groups and individuals would have you believe. The misinformation and negation of the Palestinian lived experience is well planned and budgeted for by the Israeli government and its settlers.
But lynchings are just the tip of the iceberg, and the U.S. should not stand for it. The only logical, and legal, solution is to cut off U.S. aid to Israel for its continued and state-sanctioned grave human rights violations, in accordance with the U.S.’s own laws.
Israeli crimes are “normal” for apartheid
The extrajudicial killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh gained widespread attention internationally. A recent report by Forensic Architecture and Al-Haq’s Forensic Architecture Investigation Unit found that Shireen was intentionally killed by an Israeli sniper, even though the Israeli government initially blamed Palestinians for her death. Most mainstream media parroted the Israeli government’s talking points, without any journalistic due diligence, including the basic foundation of journalistic integrity — fact-checking.
How are the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli sniper and violence and incitement by Israeli legislators and settlers related?
A few weeks ago, Israeli MK Itamar Ben Gvir — who has praised mass-murderer Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994 — spoke to high school students in Ramat Gan, some of whom hosted a rally protesting his appearance, only to be drowned out by a counter-protest of Ben Gvir supporters, who shouted “your village should burn.”
As chilling as this chant and other similar calls for the killing and burning of Palestinians are, these dangerous calls for the death and erasure of the Palestinian people were made by high school students who are on the helms of being conscripted to the Israeli army — the army responsible for Shireen’s death.
Israeli soldiers and settlers work in unison against the Palestinian population. These actions have been documented over many years, including in an in-depth article in 2021 detailing how Israeli settlers uprooted Palestinian fig and olive trees and attacked a school, including destroying its solar panels while Israeli soldiers “covered for them by gunfire” and pointed settlers where to go. In 2015, thirteen-year-old Ahmad Manasra from Jerusalem survived a lynching by Israeli settlers while Israeli police stood around and refused Ahmad any medical attention, despite his critical condition. In the same year, 18-month-old Ali Dawabseh and his parents Riham and Saad were burned inside their home by Israeli settlers, who then danced while later stabbing photos of him at a wedding, chanting “Ali was burned.” The settlers were not apprehended by Israeli police, who watched them outside of a courthouse.
In 2014, Israeli settlers abducted sixteen-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir from his Jerusalem neighborhood and then burned him alive. Though eventually prosecuted, Israeli police immediately created propaganda and spun lies to whitewash the crime in an attempt to prevent domestic and international outrage.
There are countless more crimes, all of them more egregious than the last. But what all of them have in common is that they are not the actions of individual settlers, but the systemic result of a settler-colonial apartheid regime that is predicated on the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population. This is not only a violation of international law, but also a violation of American laws.
The U.S. should implement its own laws
How is this related to us as Americans?
As Americans, we give Israel $3.8 billion worth of unconditional military aid every year, yet we do not enforce accountability mechanisms already in place, including those set forth in the Leahy Law. The Leahy Law states that we will not provide funding “… to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”
The second statutory provision to the Law, under the Department of Defense, states that the Secretary of Defense has the responsibility to “…ensure that prior to a decision to provide any training, equipment, or other assistance to a unit of a foreign security force full consideration is given to any credible information available to the Department of State relating to human rights violations by such unit.” The Law is in place, and it is our responsibility to ensure that it is enforced, as the United States has done in other countries. Israel cannot continue to be the exception.
Not all hope is lost, though, in pushing for accountability and justice and ending human rights abuses, including the state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings of children in Palestine. Congresswoman Betty McCollum introduced H.R. 2590, or the Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act, in 2021.
This is another accountability mechanism that, if adopted and enacted, would prohibit Israel from using U.S. tax revenues “on the military detention, abuse, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention; to support the seizure and destruction of Palestinian property and homes in violation of international humanitarian law; or on any support or assistance for Israel’s unilateral annexation of Palestinian territory in violation of international humanitarian law.” H.R. 2590 has over 30 signatories and is one sign of hope that Palestinian children will be able to live a life of equality and justice.
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https://merip.org/2022/10/changing-attitudes-towards-zionism-among-american-jews-an-interview-
“Changing Attitudes towards Zionism among American Jews—An Interview with Zachary Lockman,” by Lori Allen and Zachary 10/11/2022 Lockman, 10/11/2022EXCERPT:
“Zachary Lockman is Professor of Middle Eastern studies & history at New York University & a long-time MERIP contributor & supporter. He has authored a number of books & articles, including Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, & the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954, with Joel Beinin (1987),Comrades & Enemies: Arab & Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (1996) & Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (2004; second edition, 2010). Lori Allen is a reader in anthropology at SOAS University & author of A History of False Hope: Investigative Commissions in Palestine (2020). Allen interviewed Lockman on the changing attitudes towards Zionism among American Jews. This is the first of a two-part series.
“Lori Allen: Why do you think the changing attitudes towards Zionism among American Jews is a topic worth talking about?“Zachary Lockman: It’s mainly younger American Jews who are shifting. I think there has been a sea change. Slow, much delayed, not as advanced as we might like it to be, but I think one can see it, & it shows up in opinion polls.
“Lori: Maybe it would be useful to lay out what you see as the predominant attitudes among Jewish Americans towards Israel historically. Who slept better knowing there was a Jewish state in the world, as Peter Beinart sums up a certain kind of commitment?[1]
“Zachary: Many ancestors of today’s American Jewish community came during the period from 1880 until immigration was shut down in 1924. Several million Jewish migrants came along with all the Poles, Italians, Ukrainians, Hungarians & everybody else in that mass outpouring from Europe. Most of these people were largely working class or lower middle class for the first generation or two. The Zionist project, which emerges in roughly the same period—1880s, 1890s—was not of great interest to them. The percentage of Jews leaving Europe who chose to go to Palestine was minute—one or two percent of that vast outpouring. (cont’d)
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“Most of these people were largely working class or lower middle class for the first generation or two. The Zionist project, which emerges in roughly the same period—1880s, 1890s—was not of great interest to them. The percentage of Jews leaving Europe who chose to go to Palestine was minute—one or two percent of that vast outpouring. The vast majority went to the United States, Latin America or Western Europe. For the first couple of generations, there were Zionists within the American Jewish community, but it was very much a minority camp. There may have been a vague sense of sympathy among some—especially as conditions in Europe got dramatically worse in the 1930s—but Zionism didn’t seem particularly relevant to the lives of most American Jews.
“Segments of the American Jewish community were actively hostile to Zionism. Into the 1930s & 1940s, Reform Judaism was formally opposed to Zionism because it saw it as undermining the place of American Jews in the United States, which was still tenuous due to, among other issues, anti-Semitism & economic problems.
“With the second, third, even fourth generations of descendants of these migrants, Zionism became more prominent. And of course, the Holocaust had an impact.
“There was also an effort by the Zionist movement to appeal to American Jews. The Zionist movement understood—by the late 1930s & early 1940s—that their relationship with Britain was breaking down, that the United States would emerge as a superpower & that they needed to build support there. After the Second World War, the US had the world’s largest Jewish community by far, which was increasingly well established economically & politically.
“There was a growing sympathy for Israel in the 1950s & 1960s, but it wasn’t very tangible. American Jews were donating money to Israel, buying Israel bonds & having a general sympathy, but it still seemed very distant to most American Jews who were coming into their own in America as a community. One measure of that is the fact that not many American Jews visited Israel, & the numbers emigrating there were very small. While there’s a sense of connection, a sense that Israel is an answer to the Holocaust, there was no sense of obligation that American Jews should go live there or do more than express support….)
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It is money and politics in the US that allows Israel to continue its apartheid policies. Campaigns for pro-Israel are financed by wealthy Jews whenever a progressive or pro-Palestinian runs for office. The Leahy law is never implemented. When politicians start doing the right thing instead of doing whatever it takes to stay in power this may change. Maybe when pigs fly. Disgusting, blame the US, the only power that can change any of it. Nothing in the media about Israel’s continuing apartheid, nothing really about their refusal of arms to Ukraine. It is all about support of Israel always, in Israel and outside of Israel as well. Other countries should take a lesson.
But members of Congress are also afraid of being “attacked” by an Israeli mob.
One might argue that International Law and the Leahy Law are the very reasons that the White House and Congress have had absolutely no interest in pushing for open and independent investigations into murder of American citizens like Shireen Abu Alkleh or the terrorizing and deaths of 7-year-olds and 80-year-olds, or the repeated indiscriminate bombing and slaughter in Gaza, and why they are always so quick to embrace and accept sham IDF findings and willfully parrot blatant Israeli lies, talking points, and outright propaganda.
This is because, like Israel’s violations of the Geneva Conventions and their nuclear weapons program and nearly 50 year violation of the the US’s own International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act, the US government knows that ANY serious and independent investigations would find Israel guilty and they would have no choice but to implement US law and withdraw billions in funding and arms sales to Israel.
It’s the same reason, the administration will do and say everything and anything to distance itself from the increasing number of legitimate findings of Israeli Apartheid. Any official investigation would find Israel guilty and trigger US laws and actual accountability,
These laws have created an unofficial UNSC, Executive, and Legislative branch policy of maintaining plausible deniability through obfuscation, obstruction, ambiguity, rhetoric, and a complete lack of any investigations, because ANY clarity would mean immediate legal action and accountability under US law for Israel and that is simply NOT allowed.
So instead of investigations and accountability we can only expect hollow press releases, platitudes, appeasement, and outright propaganda for the foreseeable future.