We hear often that there’s a slow-motion Nakba taking place across the West Bank. That as Netanyahu’s fascistic ministers assert the ancient “Jewish right” to Area C, more and more Palestinian villages are being choked and strangled, and their residents expelled to make way for Jewish settlers. And scarcely anyone pays attention. Because we’re numbed…
Here is the story of one such village. Three weeks ago, nearly 200 Palestinians living in Ein Samiya in the Jordan Valley abandoned their homes and put their possessions on trucks to escape the never-ending harassment and violence they had experienced for years from three extremist Jewish settlements nearby. Settlers broke their windows and stole their flocks of sheep. The Israeli army stood by, doing nothing to restrain the Jewish criminals.
A Jewish friend who was in Ein Samiya tells me it felt like watching Jews fleeing a pogrom in Eastern Europe.
Yet you hardly heard a word about the ethnic cleansing of Ein Samiya here in the United States. The Biden administration said nothing about Ein Samiya– even as it offers lip service opposition to the Netanyahu government’s annexation policies. No reporter at the State Department brought up Ein Samiya. Liberal Zionist organizations issued no statements against the outrage.
Yes, B’Tselem issued a statement. So did the Norwegian Refugee Council– which saw the school it built destroyed by the racist hooligans. Al Jazeera covered the flight. An expert at Americans for Peace Now laid out the politics: Bezalel Smotrich is in power and giving settlers “the full hand” to dispossess Palestinians.
“We are witnessing the tragic consequences of longstanding Israeli practices and settler violence,” said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The good Rabbi Arik Ascherman tried to protect the people of Ein Samiya— and afterward explained to Israelis– especially those who demonstrate for democracy– “Our hands did spill this blood!”
But politicians and human rights groups in the U.S. did not speak out. The State Department said nothing. The liberal Zionists were silent. As a pogrom unfolded before our eyes.
The question children ask at Holocaust memorials is, Why didn’t other people say anything!? Having asked that question myself as a child, I am proud to say that we covered the ethnic cleansing of Ein Samiya several times.
In Mariam Barghouti’s wrenching story from the relocated village two weeks ago, the 81-year-old elder Abu Naje Ka’abneh, whose magnificent portrait by Maid Darwish is atop this message, directed Mariam:
“Record, record. Don’t get the information wrong. I’ll speak slower, but focus and write. What happened yesterday was a neo-Nakba.”
A neo-Nakba. Record, record.
Abu Naje believes in the power of the word. And we are doing our utmost to alert Americans to the Palestinian human rights crisis.
It is a great privilege to bear witness. So, please, pass the word.
Thank you for reading,
Phil
There has long been an insensitivity to Palestinian suffering. It has become the norm, routine. “Same story”.
In spite the improvement in media coverage.
Today we see the Israeli govt. thumb their nose at America on settlements
Who is exploring possible ways to peace, or to the one state future?? Israel continues the raids.Rocks and rockets have resulted in a deeper hole…. and many deaths.
If not Mondoweiss, who?
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https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-06-12/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israel-is-an-occupation-with-a-country-attached-to-it/00000188-aaee-db59-a19a-feef8cfe0000
We’re not an occupying country, we’re an occupation with a country. The occupation is our major national project, and it has gone on for so long that we can’t imagine ourselves without it….We use security to explain the settlements too, as if there’s security in sending civilians into the heart of hostile territory, as if you can then speak with a clear conscience about the other side “hiding behind civilians,” as if preschools were weapons of war. They aren’t, but we were the first to ignore the standards….Two weeks ago about 200 Palestinian Bedouin, residents of the village of Ein Samiya, left their home. They said they left because of the children; they could no longer let them live in fear. The attacks were incessant as the police looked the other way, Israel’s finest.
As long as Philip Weiss and other US opponents of Zionism continue to call obvious genocide ethnic cleansing, which is legally meaningless phrase, the US government will fail to take legally required action against a US Zionist under US jurisdiction.