Palestine and Israel: Give to all their daily bread

What is Palestine, now exploding at the Gaza/Israeli frontier? It is a crossroads of three continents. There a braided river of Canaanites, Philistines, Samaritans, Jebusites, Jews and more have been interbreeding and religiously converting for millennia. They also bear traces of succeeding empires: Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Tartar, Crusader, Mamluk, Ottoman, British, and Zionist. Much about the place persists, however, unchanging as flatbread from an ancient taboon oven. That’s Palestine.
 
Like flatbread, resistance to empire is ingrained by legendary struggles: of Maccabees, of Fedayeen, of that rebel Yeshua himself. To Palestinians, Zionists from Europe had no more right to colonize Palestine and impose apartheid as Brits and Boers did in South Africa. Nor, for that matter, as Europeans to ethnically cleanse Native Americans and thrive off African sweat.
 
Americans now lament our conquests and mitigate our victims’ modes of resistance by recalling our own crimes. Did Natives wipe out whole white families and mutilate blue-coated corpses at Little Big Horn? Well, we massacred women and children at Wounded Knee, spurred the Trail of Tears, kidnapped Native children, robbed Native lands and resources, and were faithless in all treaties with First Peoples.
 
When it comes to Palestinians, we disregard a comparable past. Geopolitical exigencies, media cowardice, political opportunism, and incessant Zionist propaganda have combined to devalue Palestinian human rights and demonize advocacy in their defense.
 
While powerful states concoct solutions based on self-interest, the ongoing Naqba, or catastrophe that began with the terror-driven 1948 expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians to create a majority-Jewish Israel, continues. Since 1967, Israel has imposed the longest military occupation in history, blockading Gaza, executing journalists—including American—killing hundreds of mostly peaceful Palestinian demonstrators at the Gaza/Israeli perimeter, rigging a court system to forbid Palestinians from building or improving homes, demolishing thousands of homes built despite that rigging, proliferating illegal settlements, protecting settler violence (including destruction of ancient olive trees), building giant walls on Palestinian territory, imposing checkpoints impeding normal movement, imprisoning children without due process, frustrating every non-violent protest by Palestinians, and maintaining what Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli Human Rights organization B’Tselem call the “crime of apartheid.”
 
Like the Israeli occupation of Palestine, refugee camps that house 1.5 million Palestinians across the region are unsustainable. Bourj el-Barajne, the peaceful and well-run Palestinian camp in Lebanon where my spouse and I befriended a loving family, now shelters thousands of Syrian refugees. Longing for their human rights of return after seventy-five years in crowded camps breeds desperation and bitterness.
 
B’Tselem kept score of the killings from year 2000 to last month: 1,330 Israelis, 10,649 Palestinians. I am horrified by any notion that Israelis should suffer as the Palestinians do, as in the wanton bloodletting by Hamas a few weeks ago. My Palestinian and Jewish friends alike are weeping. Both sides must know: what flew in bygone Jericho is now proscribed by international law.
 
Tragically, instead of recoiling from the primrose path of unconditional aid and support for Israel, U.S. politicians are doubling down on a road to hell as Israel doubles down on war crimes. U. S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken quickly replaced his tweet on X, “We urge all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks,” with boilerplate “Israel has the right to defend itself.” “[I]t’s time to be cruel,” declared Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Knesset member Ariel Kallner called for a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48.” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza Israel, denying them water, food, and fuel. Israel is bombing apartment buildings, mosques, refugee camps, schools, clinics, crops, and hospitals in Gaza, according to B’Tselem.
 
Israel ordered 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza, including those hospitalized, in incubators, old, or disabled, to abandon northern Gaza within 24 hours and head to the unsafe south, an aggravated “forcible transfer.” Relentless bombing has now killed over 9,000 Gazans, almost 3800 of them children, all named by Hamas and verified by AP, Save the Children, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Al Jazeera, and your own eyes. These are clear war crimes, punishable by the International Criminal Court. Stats current 11/3/2023.
 
It's time to end the age of emperors and colonists who treat indigenous subjects as barbarians unworthy of human rights. We must insist that our politicians be bold and reject the illegal proclamations and actions of Israeli leaders. Demand a cease-fire on all sides and the release all hostages. Give to all, Jews and Palestinians alike, their daily bread, their equal and inalienable human rights from the river to the sea.