Humiliation and Child Abuse at Israeli Checkpoints

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Humiliation and Child Abuse at Israeli Checkpoints

Strip-Searching Children

By ALISON WEIR
Israeli officials have been regularly strip-searching children for decades, some of them American citizens.
While organizations that focus on Israel-Palestine have long been aware that Israeli border officials regularly strip search men and women, If Americans Knew appears to be the first organization that has specifically investigated the policy of strip searching women. In the course of its investigation, If Americans Knew was astonished to learn that Israeli officials have also been strip searching young girls as young as seven and below.
According to interviews with women in the United States, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli border officials periodically force Christian and Muslim females of all ages to remove their clothing and submit to searches. In some cases the children are then "felt" by Israeli officials.
Sometimes mothers and children are strip-searched together, at other times little girls are taken from their parents and strip-searched alone. Women are required to remove sanitary napkins, sometimes with small daughters at their side. Sometimes women are strip searched in the presence of their young sons.
All report deep feelings of humiliation. Many describe weeping at the degradation they felt.
"I remember crying and pleading with my mother," Gaza journalist Laila El-Haddad recalls of an experience when she was 12-years-old, hoping that her mother could convince the Israeli official to allow her to keep her undershirt on. But parents are unable to shield their children, El-Haddad and others report.
"They had machine guns," El-Haddad explains. "We just had to submit." El-Haddad, who holds a Masters degree in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, believes that the intention of the strip searches is to humiliate Palestinians so that they won't return to Palestine.
Oregon attorney Hala Gores remembers being strip-searched at the age of 10. Her family, Palestinian Christians from Nazareth, were leaving Israel because of Israeli discrimination against Christians. Gores has never returned to her family's ancestral home in Nazareth, she says, in part because she does not want to repeat the experience of having no control over what is done to her.
The Israeli policy appears to target only Christian and Muslim children, and is equally applied to those with Israeli citizenship and citizenship in other countries, including native-born Americans. There are no reports of Jewish children being strip-searched.
New Jersey stand-up comedian Maysoon Zayid describes being strip-searched at Ben Gurion Airport when she was "seven, eight, nine years old" on family trips to visit her parents' original home in Palestine. On her most recent trip in July 2006, Maysoon, an American citizen, had her sanitary pad taken by officials in Ben Gurion Airport. When the search was completed, she says, the Israeli official in charge, Inbal Sharon, then refused to return her pad or allow her to get another.
Zayid, who has cerebral palsy and was sitting in a wheelchair, was then forced to bleed publicly for hours while she waited for her flight.
Zayid, a former class president and yearbook editor at New Jersey's Cliffside Park High School known for her irreverent comedy routines and strong personality, describes sobbing uncontrollably. "No one spoke up," she remembers. "There were several women, including the woman who was pushing my wheelchair, none of whom said a word."
When she boarded her flight, Zayid recalls, "The flight attendants looked at me in disgust." She told them what had happened, and the attendants then gave her some of their own clothing to use.
In addition to taking her sanitary napkin, Israeli officials also confiscated medication that Zayid is required to take when flying. As a result, she vomited repeatedly throughout the 12-hour flight.
Zayid, who founded a program for newly disabled Palestinian youths ­ many of them permanently disabled from attacks by Israeli forces ­ was so depressed by her treatment that she determined never to return. "But that's what they want," she says, "They want us to get to the point where we don't go back." She says that she is already planning to return to her volunteer work in the West Bank.
Israeli practices vary and seem to be applied randomly, from elderly women to small children. In some instances women are taken into a room alone and are left sitting naked for hours. At other times they are strip-searched in groups, their clothes thrown in a pile. When they are finally allowed to get dressed, they describe having to rummage through the heap of clothing, naked and barefoot, to find their own garments.

Jewish Holocaust Survivor
While these policies largely target Palestinian and Palestinian-American women and children, some non-Palestinian Americans also report being subjected to strip searches by Israeli officials.
St. Louis resident Hedy Epstein, whose parents and extended family perished in Nazi camps, and whose story is featured in the Academy Award winning documentary "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport," reports being strip searched three years ago following her participation in nonviolent protests in the West Bank. Epstein, who was 79 at the time, describes being forced to bend over for an Israeli official to search her internally.
The strip searches appear to be illegal under numerous statutes. The Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory, prohibit: "Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" and specifically emphasize: "Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour"
Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states: "No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy"
In the US, such policies would appear to violate child abuse statutes. The state of Utah, for example, defines Child Abuse as: "Any form of cruelty to a child's physical, moral or mental well-being." The Encarta Encyclopedia defines child abuse as "Intentional acts that result in physical or emotional harm to children."
While the If Americans Knew investigation focused on practices concerning women, many interviewees reported frequent random strip-searching of males as well; including American citizens, children, and the elderly.
While the practice is widely applied, many people find it too humiliating to speak of. One 68-year-old Christian businessman, who had been stripped naked at Ben Gurion airport in 2006 before being allowed to board his flight to return home, had never revealed his experience to his family until he learned of the If Americans Knew investigation. He then explained to his daughter why he had previously told her that he might never return to his original home, now in the state of Israel.
Christians, a thriving community that made up approximately 15 percent of Palestine's population before Zionist immigration and the creation of Israel (Muslims were 80 percent and Jews 5 percent), have now dwindled under Israeli occupation to approximately two percent of the total population.
Israeli spokespeople and sympathizers have bristled in recent months at the title of a book by former President Jimmy Carter, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid." In reply, Carter has emphasized that the Israeli "apartheid" he is describing is limited to the West Bank and Gaza. Many analysts have disagreed with Carter, providing evidence of pervasive discrimination within Israel itself. The If Americans Knew finding that Israel has been routinely strip-searching non-Jewish citizens of Israel would also indicate a wider policy of Israeli discrimination.
Since American taxpayers give Israel over $8 million per day, the Council for the National Interest, a Washington DC-based lobbying organization, is organizing a campaign to call on Congress to demand that Israel end these policies.
"We are extremely upset to learn that Israel is using American tax money in ways that degrade and humiliate women and children," says CNI President Eugene Bird. "We call on all Americans to help us on this campaign."
The organization urges people to begin contacting their Congressional representatives immediately, and to disseminate the video report by If Americans Knew as widely as possible.
Alison Weir is executive director

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The Impact of the Conflict on Children

118 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 934 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000.

Click chart to enlarge. Source: Remember These Children.

“The majority of these [Palestinian] children were killed and injured while going about normal daily activities, such as going to school, playing, shopping, or simply being in their homes. Sixty-four percent of children killed during the first six months of 2003 died as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks, or from indiscriminate fire from Israeli soldiers.”

- Catherine Cook

Source: These numbers are from Remember These Children, a coalition of groups calling for an end to the killing of children and a fair resolution of the conflict. (View the complete list of the victims, which was last updated on May 7, 2007.)
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UNICEF Video - Palestinian Children caught in conflict -
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Chart – Attacks on Schools
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Booklet – Do Palestinians Teach Their Children to Hate?
OrganizationsDefence for Children International, Palestine
Remember These Children
Children of Shatila


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From Haaretz ,an Israeli newspaper

DF probes soldiers' use of Palestinian human shields
By Amos Harel, Haaretz CorrespondentIsrael Defense Forces' criminal investigation division is probing soldiers' use of Palestinians as human shields during raids in the West Bank town of Nablus. The investigation will include the questioning of senior officers, and could have repercussions in the next round of general staff appointments.

The affair began over three months ago, when foreign television crews filmed IDF soldiers forcing Palestinians to search their neighbors' homes for militants, in case the wanted gunmen should open fire. Some two years ago, upon completing a long and drawn out legal debate, the High Court of Justice decided to outlaw the use of Palestinians as human shields, as it endangers their lives and violates their basic human rights. The IDF has since pledged to refrain from doing this, though from time to time there have been recorded incidents of such behavior.

After the last incident was released in the media, the Military Advocate General ordered the military police's criminal investigation division to launch a probe into the incident. The investigation has so far revealed that some of the IDF units operating in the West Bank have continued to use Palestinian human shields despite the IDF's explicit policy against it. Senior officers are to be questioned on suspicions that they knew of these violations and allowed them to continue.


AdvertisementThe investigation has begun to radiate onto the upcoming round of appointments in the general staff. In the past, Brigadier General Yair Golan, the commander of the forces in the West Bank, has been mentioned as a possible candidate to replace Major General Gadi Shamni as the prime minister's military secretary. However, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi decided that Golan would not be among the candidates for the job. Though it is believed that Ashkenazi didn't really want to appoint Golan to the post in the first place, sources in the IDF believe that the investigation has eliminated Golan's chances of getting the promotion. In an official response, the IDF spokesman told Haaretz that "the appointment has not yet been decided and we don't intend to discuss the matter until a decision is made."

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• June 5, 2007 New UN map charts West Bank reality

By Sharmila Devi and Harvey Morris in Jerusalem
Financial Times
A new map of the West Bank (see below), 40 years after its conquest by Israel in the Six Day War, gives the most definitive picture so far of a territory in which 2.5m Palestinians are confined to dozens of enclaves separated by Israeli roads, settlements, fences and military zones.
Produced by the United Nations’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, it is based on extensive monitoring in the field combined with analysis of satellite imagery. It provides an overall picture officials say is even more comprehensive than charts drawn up by the Israeli military.
The impact of Israeli civilian and military infrastructure is to render 40 per cent of the territory, which is roughly the size of the US state of Delaware or the English county of Norfolk, off-limits to Palestinians.

The rest of the territory, including main centres such as Nablus and Jericho, is split into isolated spots. Movement between them is restricted by 450 roadblocks and 70 manned checkpoints.
The UN mapmakers focused on land set aside for Jewish settlements, roads reserved for settler access, the West Bank separation barrier, closed military areas and nature reserves.
What remains is an area of habitation remarkably close to territory set aside for the Palestinian population in Israeli security proposals dating back to postwar 1967.
The process of enclosing the civilian enclaves has accelerated in the years since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in 2000, and the reintroduction by Israel of its military rule even in areas previously under Palestinian Authority security control.
A network of roads designed to ease the movement of Jewish settlers limits access between Palestinian enclaves. A secondary network being built would allow Palestinian limited movement via tunnels, bridges and trenches.
Diplomats say the effect of the infrastructure changes would be to formalise the de facto cantonisation of the West Bank. Some 450,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and occupied east Jerusalem and settlements have grown by at least 5.5 per cent a year compared with less than 3 per cent among Palestinians.
The map is one of a number of documents whose publication has coincided with Monday’s anniversary of the 1967 war. Amnesty, the rights group, issued a report that accused Israel of a land grab in the West Bank and called for urgent action to address “widespread human rights abuses committed under the occupation”.
The Israeli justice ministry branded the report as “one-sided, immoral and riddled with mistakes”.

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NEWS Politics:
Israel Kills Palestinian Boys, Steals Organs for Transplants
AL-KHALIL (IRNA) - The Zionist state has tacitly admitted that doctors at the Israeli forensic institute at Abu Kabir had extracted the vital organs of three Palestinian teenage children killed by the Israeli Army nearly ten days ago.
Zionist Minister of Health Nessim Dahhan said in response to a question by Arab member of the Zionist Parliament 'Knesset', Ahmed Teibi, on Tuesday that he couldn't deny that organs of Palestinian youths and children killed by the Israeli forces were taken out for transplants or scientific research.
"I couldn't say for sure that something like that (taking out the organs) didn't happen."
Teibi said he had received credible evidence proving that Israeli doctors at the forensic institute extracted such vital organs as the heart, kidneys, and liver from the bodies of Palestinian youths and children killed by the Israeli Army in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Israeli authorities normally detain the bodies of martyred Palestinians for a few days without any explanation.
The Israeli Army on December 30 killed three Palestinian boys, aged 14-15 near Khan Younis in unclear circumstances.
The army issued conflicting reports on the killing, while Palestinian sources charged that Israeli troops murdered the three unarmed boys in cold blood.
The bodies of the three boys were handed over to the Palestinians for burial on 6 January.
However, shortly before burial, Palestinian medical authorities examined the bodies and found out that the main vital organs were missing form the bodies.
The Israeli media have nearly completely ignored the affair.

Israeli Occupation Authorities Illegally Harvesting Organs of Palestinian Children

by Saira Soufan

"Rabbi Ginsburgh asked rhetori-cally: 'If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to dave him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has an infinite value', he explained. 'There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life'."

(Prof. Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, "Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel", Pluto Press, London 1999, page 62)

The latest face of Israeli terrorism was revealed during a live interview with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat by Al Jazeera Television.
President Arafat has accused the Zionist apartheid regime of murdering Palestinian infants, children, and youths and extricating their vital organs for transplants.
"They murder our kids and use their organs as spare parts` Why is the whole world silent? Israel takes advantage of this silence to escalate it's oppression and terror against our people," stressed President Arafat.
During the interview on Monday, January 14th, President Arafat held up photos of the mutilated bodies of the children. "I'm not worried about myself", as the President is under house arrest, "I'm worried about the Palestinian people who have been under siege for the past 15 months."
Israel admitted that doctors at the L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir had harvested the organs of 3 Palestinian youth killed by the Israel army near Khan Younis. Attempting to cross the border between Palestine and Israel , the 15 and 17 year old boys were struck down by tank missiles courtesy of the Israeli militia.
Palestinians are in need of border crossing in order to find any menial work for pay with which to feed and support their families. The bodies of Khan Younis boys were not immediately returned for burial by the Israeli Occupation Authorities.
After 10 days the bodies were returned to their families for burial but with their organs and even their eyes removed.
This is not a new act of terrorism inflicted upon the Palestinian people. The illegal harvesting of the organs of Palestinian soldiers and freedom fighters has been documented since before the 1990's.
Upon return of the soldiers' bodies to their mourning families, the pillage of body parts is discovered during the burial process. The empty cavities have been filled with garbage such as cotton wool, garden hoses, and broomsticks, then sewn up as a result of a so-called" autopsy"
In an unusual and unpublicized event in 1998, a Scotsman, Alistair Sinclair, died under mysterious circumstances in the Ben-Gurion Airport lockup. Mr. Sinclair's parents sued the Israelis upon finding their son's heart and other organs missing. A replacement heart and organs were sent to his mother, who does not believe that these are those of her son's.
The Health Ministry officials said on January 3rd, that they have no intention of taking action against Professor Yehuda Hiss, Director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir over the retention of the harvested vital organs and body parts of the innocent children and soldiers.
Furthermore, the Health Ministry Associate Director-General Yitzhak Berlovich has displaced the investigation over the mutilation of the dead using the funds instead to renovate the building of the Institute.
The Israeli Authorities have made no apologies or in depth investigations into these incidents or others as this would appear as an admission of guilt of their terrible atrocities. Illegal harvesting of organs is an international crime and pure and simple terrorism toward humanity.
-------------------
From: Palestinian_Diary

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Suffer Palestine's Children

By Sunil K. Sharma
Early in the morning of November 22, five Palestinian children were blown to pieces by an Israeli mine or bomb as they headed to school in Khan Younis. The children were 6 to 14 years-of-age, all from the Al Astel family. It is unclear if the explosion was set off by the children tripping over or kicking the device, or via remote control.
The next day, a senior Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) official was quoted on Israel Radio as saying "a big mistake was done." The officer admitted an undercover army unit planted the device "in the area," yet evaded any explanation as to why it was planted in the vicinity of a school. Yesterday, the IDF issued its first official statement regarding the killings. An IDF investigation revealed serious flaws in the planting and operation of the ordnance. Following the usual script, the IDF feigned "sorrow over the deaths of five children." The IDF claims the device was planted in an area used by Palestinians to fire mortars at nearby Israeli colonial settlements and army positions. Israel Radio quoted IDF officials as saying the "device was meant to remain well hidden and was to be set off when the Palestinian shooters returned to the area." (quoting Ha'aretz, 11/25/01)
Israeli opposition leader MK Yossi Sarid of Meretz, responding to IDF claims that their recent operations in Khan Younis were designed to prevent Palestinian attacks, stated: "That's a targeted hit? Do you know who will pass by the area [where the bomb is planted]? It's a residential area. What kind of bombs do you place in an area where school children pass by?" (Ha'aretz, 11/24/01)
MK Ran Cohen (Meretz) has called for a Knesset committee to investigate the incident, expressing dismay that the IDF sat quietly for two days before putting out an official statement that amounts to little more than a cover-up.
MK Uri Ariel (National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu) disagreed, stating that IDF investigations take time because they are thorough. "I have faith in the IDF," he stated. "[Ariel] said that the army was is in the throes of the battle in the territories, and was busy assassinating Mahmoud Abu Hanoud [of Hamas] and so could not concentrate solely on the investigation that Cohen demanded." (Ha'aretz, 11/25/01)
In other words: we were too busy trying to assassinate a Palestinian leader to investigate our killing of Palestinian children, but now that we've taken a five-minute breather from our assassination campaign we can conclude from our thorough investigation that a regretful mistake was made. Sorry kids, we'll try to do a better job of killing the right folks next time.
The Israelis have not condemned the killings, though some officials say an apology might perhaps be in order.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, the total number of Palestinians killed since the second Intifada erupted on September 29, 2000 is 821. 16,661 Palestinians have been injured, many maimed for life. Palestinian children under the age of 18 represent about 1/4 of those killed.
The Israeli military's killing of Palestinian children is not a sometimes accidental by-product of 34 years of occupation. It is in fact a matter of deliberate policy.
In a chilling interview conducted by Ha'aretz correspondent Amira Hass, an IDF sharpshooter admitted it was IDF policy to shoot at children above the age of 12. Here is an excerpt [AH = Hass, IS = Sharpshooter]:

(AH) You haven't shot children.
(IS) "All the sharpshooters haven't shot children."
(AH) But nonetheless there are children who were hit, wounded or killed after they were hit in the head. Unless these were mistakes.
(IS) "If they were children, they were mistakes."
(AH) Do they talk about this?
(IS) "They talk to us about this a lot. They forbid us to shoot at children."
(AH) How do they say this?
(IS) "You don't shoot a child who is 12 or younger."
(AH) That is, a child of 12 or older is allowed?
(IS) "Twelve and up is allowed. He's not a child any more, he's already after his bar mitzvah. Something like that."
(AH) Thirteen is bar mitzvah age.
(IS) "Twelve and up, you're allowed to shoot. That's what they tell us."
(AH) Again: Twelve and up you're allowed to shoot children.
(IS) "Because this already doesn't look to me like a child by definition, even though in the United States a child can be 23."
(AH) Under international law, a child is defined as someone
up to the age of 18.
(IS) "Up until 18 is a child?"
(AH) So, according to the IDF, it is 12?
(IS) "According to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I don't know if this is what the IDF says to the media."
(AH) And children are from 12 down. Is there no order that between 12 and 18 you shoot at the legs and not the head?
(IS) "Of course we try to see to it that he really is over
20."
(AH) In the 10 seconds that you have.
(IS) "In the 10 seconds that I have, I have to estimate how old he is."
(AH) And in what direction the wind is blowing, and the deviation here and there, and which way he'll jump the next moment.
(IS) "Yes, but there are hardly any mistakes by sharpshooters. The mistakes are made by people who aren't sharpshooters."
(AH) And it turns out that they happen to hit the children's heads, and all this is just by chance?
(IS) "If you say you have seen children that have been hit in the head a lot, then it is sharpshooters."
(AH) So what you're saying is that our definition of children is different.
(IS) "Your definition is different."
(AH) Because for you it's someone who is 12.
(IS) "Yes."
(AH) But a child of 13 doesn't bear arms, no matter what you call him, a boy or a teenager or an adult.
(IS) "He isn't holding a gun but a firebomb, and in certain places it is possible also to fire on people who throw firebombs."

["Don't shoot till you can see they're over the age of 12," Ha'aretz, November 20, 2000]
In another article, Hass reported that a group of Western diplomats traveling from Jerusalem to Ramallah witnessed Israeli troops fire live ammunition at a group of stone-throwing Palestinian children, "even though the children were too far to pose a risk to the soldiers." "The diplomats say that shots were fired even though a long line of civilian cars were traveling past the children at the time." "[One of the diplomats] says that he saw a second soldier in the observation tower clapping and raising his hands as if in victory after his colleague fired at the children." ["Envoys say they saw IDF fire at children." Ha'aretz, July 26, 2001]
In a damning indictment of Israeli military criminality and pathology, New York Times Middle East Bureau chief Chris Hedges writes: "Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered-death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo-but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport." ["Gaza Diary: Scenes from the Palestinian Uprising," Harper's Magazine, October 2001]

In a report released last week, B'Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights organization, blasted what it called a "shallow and superficial" Israeli army investigation into the shooting death of an eleven-year-old Palestinian boy, Khalil al-Mughrabi.
On July 7, Khalil and twenty to thirty other children played soccer in the Yubneh Refugee Camp, in Rafah, near the Egyptian border. After they finished playing, the children sat on some mounds of sand near the border fence. Suddenly, Khalil's head burst into parts from a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier in a nearby observation post. The soldiers proceeded to unleash "intense fire" on the other children. Ibrahim Abu Susin, 10, and Suleiman Abu Rijal, 12, were badly wounded.
B'Tselem concludes: "An eleven-year-old child was killed and two children were injured for no reason. However, the army failed to open any investigation against the soldiers responsible, even though all the army officials involved in the review of the incident clearly knew that the soldiers had used lethal weapons when their lives were not in jeopardy and had violated army regulations."
B'Tselem notes that despite the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians since the Intifada broke out, "the Military Police only opened some twenty investigation files relating to the illegal use of weapons. In none of the cases were indictments filed." The report goes on to say that, "Over the years, B'Tselem has received hundreds of letters from the Judge Advocate General's office regarding events in which Palestinians were killed, injured, or beaten by soldiers. In some of the cases, Military Police investigations were opened, and in some, the Judge Advocate General's office only conducted an internal investigation. Most of the replies that B'Tselem received state that the soldiers acted properly and that no action was taken against the soldiers involved." ["Whitewash: The Office of the Judge Advocate General's Examination of the Death of Khalil al-Mughrabi, 11, on 7 July 2001," B,Tselem, 11/13/01]
Given the well known history of the Israeli military's farcical self "investigations," don't hold your breath for an honest accounting of the killing of the five children in Khan Younis.
The message Israeli troops receive from the lack of serious investigation into and punishment for military criminality is clear: you can murder civilians -- even little children -- for no reason at all, and you can do it with impunity.
True to form, the US has also refused to condemn its client's murderous actions.
US State Department spokesman Philip Reeker expressed "regret" over the latest killing of Palestinian children, saying the incident served as a "strong reminder" of the consequences of the ongoing violence. "The United States deeply regrets the tragic accidental deaths of five Palestinian children . . . when they came in contact with unexploded ordnance. It was a terrible tragedy. We understand that the Israeli army has begun an investigation into the circumstances of these deaths and we expect that investigation will thoroughly determine what happened. This incident... is a strong reminder of why both sides should do all they can to end the violence, reduce tensions and resume negotiations," he added.
And so it goes, the children of Palestine suffer, the occupation continues, Israeli state terrorism accelerates and the best that the Palestinians can expect from the US by way of Colin Powell is a PR performance that does nothing in substance to pressure our Israeli client from desisting. Instead, the US puts the burden of responsibility for "ending the violence" squarely on the Palestinians, while calling for an end to the Intifada, an uprising (however flawed) that is both a reaction to Israel's brutal occupation and the Palestinian Authority's corruption, incompetence and selling out of the cause.
To steal a quip from Palestinian writer Sam Bahour, US statements are "equivalent to that of a policeman walking past a rape victim, still pinned under her assailant, and verbally scolding both parties by advising them to work out their differences."
Israel has little to fear that its continuing rampages through the occupied Palestinian territories and the latest incident of child killings will jeopardize the staggering $3-5 billion of military and economic "aid" it receives from the US annually. Nor should Israel fear that America's vaunted "War on Terror" will extend to them. It's simply a matter of whose side you are on.
Our tax dollars at work as they say. And still we wonder why the US is the object of anger and resentment to many around the world.
Given the overwhelming US military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel, the moral imperative is on us to end our government's decisive role in Israel's ongoing colonial conquest and occupation of Palestinian lands and its people. CP
Sunil Sharma is a musician, writer and activist based in Northern California. He is the editor of Dissident Voice, a semi-regular newsletter "dedicated to challenging the lies of the corporate press and the privileged classes it serves." He can be contacted at dissidentvoice@earthlink.net