justice and only justice
a brief note about the lack of peace
The stories coming out of Israel and Gaza over the weekend have been horrible. The bloodshed is appalling.
I think what saddens me the most are the humans who are mowed down by nation states for their own power. We live in a world that treats human life as so disposable.
This siege [of Gaza] has no official endgame; even an Israeli State Comptroller report found that the government has never discussed long-term solutions to ending the blockade, nor seriously considered any alternatives to recurring rounds of war and death. It is literally the only option this government, and its predecessors, have on the table. — Haggai Matar, +972 Magazine
Let us note, first, what is happening politically in the nation-state of Israel at this moment.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, has three charges of corruption against him for which he is currently standing trial. That a common enemy unites factions is a classic piece of political wisdom and that a strong man may seem necessary in times of war or danger from outside is a second aphorism. All this is to say that the embattled and problematic Netanyahu benefits politically from pounding Palestinians.
In July, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government amended one of Israel’s Basic Laws, reforming the judiciary, essentially defanging the Israeli court system of having any kind of check on the legislative and executive branches. Imagine if our former president, Mr. Trump—currently indicted in four separate criminal cases—removed the check of the judiciary on a Republican-controlled (“controlled” may be an overstatement given the House of Representatives’ current resemblance to a coup d’etat at a preschool) legislative branch. You may understand why Israelis have protested these changes vociferously throughout most of 2023.
Then said Jesus unto him, “Put up again thy sword into his place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
Matthew 26:52
A note on the sword Palestinians have been living under during the past fifty-six years of illegal occupation, according to international law.
Israel’s current state—much like South African post-World War II or the American South under Jim Crow laws—is an apartheid regime. This has been clearly stated by the UN’s Special Rapporteur for human rights in Palestine, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B’Tselem, an Israeli Human Rights organization. What this means, fundamentally, is that there is no equal protection under the law for Palestinians. Not only is there no equal protection, there is an embedded legal system of oppression that impinges upon the human rights of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank who have been living under Israeli occupation for nearly 60 years.
Mundane paperwork—building permits, travel permits (for within Palestinian’s own country), visas for spouses—all these bureaucratic minutiae are bricks in the wall imprisoning men and women in their own country. Or, creating a life so difficult and impossible, young people move abroad. Farmers and shepherds who have lived on the same land for generations are harassed. Leaving behind empty space for Israeli settlements to fill the void.
The past two years have been the most deadly for Palestinians since the Second Intifada. In Gaza, over 2 million people have been imprisoned in a 140-square-mile prison since 2005. Israel bombs Gazans’ private homes and businesses regularly, with impunity. The Israeli military has already invaded the Gaza Strip 31 times in 2023.
As of September 26, this year, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli armed forces, according to the United Nations. And another 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli citizens. In the West Bank, 38 Palestinian children have been killed so far this year.
Finally, as an American, a few things are clear to me:
First, that our country—and the European countries my family comes from—have perpetuated such horrible anti-Semitism that it led to the mass murdering of six million Jews across Europe in twelve years.
American newspapers covered the Third Reich’s persecution of Jews during Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s. In September 1938, The Catholic Worker called on the United States (and its readers) to welcome refugees from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. “Catholics must help refugees,” the editors wrote.
In June 1939, the St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Europe was denied entry to the United States. One year before the end of the war—11 years of concentration camps imprisoning and killing Jewish men and women being home—President Franklin Delano Roosevelt formed the War Refugee Board. The board issued a report on the U.S. government’s inaction that led to the wrongful deaths of millions. They titled the report: “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews.”
Second, that our country supports the nation-state of Israel in good times and in bad not out of any good principle. Or even its own desire and need to make amends for its sins of anti-semitism, discrimination, and its passivity during the Shoah. The United States supports the nation-state of Israel because of its own strategic interests: oil, nuclear power, Cold War agendas, and military might. The United States gives at least $3.8 billion in military funding to Israel a year.
It may be true that the United States owes the Jewish people support and reparations. And yet it is not true that the United States owes billions of dollars to a particular nation-state, which it offers mostly for the goals of perpetuating and supporting its imperial regime.
On Saturday, President Biden vowed military support for Netanyahu’s war, which one commentator has called adding fuel to the fire.
Palestinians in the biggest open air prison on earth are kept like animals behind fences with no clean water, electricity, hope, or dignity. In the 2014 Gaza war, an incomprehensible number of Palestinian children were killed — over 500. Just last year, 146 Palestinians in the West Bank were killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Where was President Biden when he allowed all this to happen, while arming and supporting the ethnic cleansing machine all those years? The writing was on the wall. — Rami Younis, +972 Magazine
The United States should, indeed, protect its citizens abroad, which it has vowed to do in this particular case. But Palestinian-Americans have certainly not received this same kind of protection or response from the United States government.
In 2021, the year Shireen Abu Akleh was killed, the Committee to Protect Journalists listed 45 journalists murdered. Abu Akleh was an American citizen, as well as a Palestinian citizen.
Abu Akleh’s cousin, Robert Akleh, wrote earlier this year, from Brooklyn, in the NYDailyNews: “Identify Shireen’s killer, for her and all of us.”
Over a year has passed since the tragic killing of my cousin, Shireen Abu Akleh. She lived in the West Bank. We were worlds apart. While I didn’t know her well, I had such pride when I watched her deliver the news on Al Jazeera.
Her death and subsequent events at her funeral were painful to watch and still affect me. For such a prominent media figure to be killed in broad daylight with no repercussions — while wearing a “PRESS” vest and pre-coordinating her position with the Israel Defense Forces — compels me to speak out. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has taken so many souls on both sides, and I do not seek to wander into the hornet’s nest that accompanies that debate. While all the evidence points to Shireen’s killer being an IDF soldier, I could care less what their country’s name is. I just want the killer held accountable.
Shireen was an American citizen dedicated to two things: the pursuit of justice and her love of God. The Akleh family originated in Haifa and Nazareth, a Greek Orthodox Christian family devout in their following of Christ. The Aklehs have been successful wherever we have ventured, in Israel and abroad. Good people like Shireen do not deserve what befell her. On May 12, the IDF apologized for her death but did not charge anyone for killing her. The same IDF had blamed Palestinian resistance forces for her death, then recanted — then attacked the pallbearers carrying her casket. The apology rings hollow.
The Biden administration must declassify its report on her killing. For far too long, we have allowed politics to dictate our motives in this region instead of doing what is right. Shireen was a woman who was a trailblazer journalist in the Middle East. She has inspired a generation of future female journalists. This is not a geopolitical debate. This is about achieving justice for Shireen.
Rather than living by the sword and funding swords, and condemning ourselves to death by the sword. How do we seek justice—for Shireen, for the people of Palestine, for the people of Ashkelon, for refugees—a justice that isn’t built on an eye for an eye, revenge, or retribution? Without this justice, there is no peace.
“We cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war—at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.”
— Daniel Berrigan, No Bars to Manhood