GENOCIDE IN GAZA

Oct. 31 – I am returning to this page that I started about a week ago, couldn’t finish, and picked up again 3 days ago. It seems like each day of horror changes what I want to say, but can’t find the words for. I had counted out the vitamins I would need for 23 days, packed the gifts in the carry-on bag, along with a couple of things I had been asked to bring, and decided on which shoes to take for the olive picking days when the terrain would be rough and full of thorny underbrush. Everything was ready for the final packing when October 7 happened. I waited two days before writing my Palestinian friends asking if I could still come. Only their “no” could keep me away. Then the airline cancelled all flights into Tel Aviv, the olive picking program cancelled, and Israel closed all West Bank cities and roads. Had I already been there, I would not have been able to go anywhere and would have been a burden to my friends. I had plans, two months in the making, to be in Palestine from Oct. 12- Nov. 2. As in previous trips there, I hoped to hear and report on people’s personal stories of their lives under occupation, and their expectations for the future. My other motivation was to be with “my family” in Nablus, whom I hadn’t seen for four years. And now they and other close friends are in danger. For the first week, I felt an immense grief – not just for my friends but for the people of Palestine who are being murdered by the thousands. And for the fact that my government, using my money, is paying for this genocide at this very moment, bombing their homes and even their hospitals and places of shelter. This genocide is being justified because Hamas started the war, and committed atrocities killing 1400 Israeli Jews, most of them civilians. There are many facts we will never know about this attack by Hamas, but we do know that there are at least a 1000 Jewish families in grief and millions more in fear of another attack. Their sense of security is shattered, and their loved ones gone forever. Another thing we know is that this war started with a tank bursting through a fence. We know the fence was thought to be impenetrable and was meant to keep Palestinians living in Gaza from leaving Gaza. We know that Israel controlled the fence and its few points of entry and exit, and severely restricted who and what could pass in either direction. Some 18,500 day laborers were granted permits to work inside Israel but not to live there. Some 400 trucks were allowed into Gaza every day to supply a bare minimum of daily necessities like food, water, building materials, fuel , and medicines. A very few Gazans who needed to leave for specialized medical care actually got out; some of them only when they agreed to be collaborators with Israeli security. This fence was all about Israel’s supposed security. A few of those who applied for permits to access medical care in Israel did not want to give exit permits except for a few thousand day-laborers to work inside Israel, in construction or farm work. In addition to that restriction on movement, Israel also controlled what products could enter Gaza, such as food, fuel, medicines, construction materials and water. And what farm produce could leave Gaza to be sold in Israel. Israel also controlled Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline, limiting how far out fishermen could go, and definitely forbidding escape by sea. The only airport was destroyed long ago. where Gazan fishermen could cast their nets, which also meant no one could escape Gaza by sea. Gaza had no airport and thus no control over their airspace. Gaza became known as the largest open-air prison in the world, a bare 24 miles long and 6 miles wide, with 2.3 million inmates. Finally, we know that Palestinians in Gaza have been screaming to a deaf world about their conditions since 2006, when Israel declared their newly elected government a terrorist organization and looked for new ways to undermine them. In 2007, Israel sealed the borders and the international community went along with their propaganda about the evil Hamas government. Let me say here, that my West Bank Palestinian friends never liked Hamas’ politics nor its theocracy, but recognized that they gained popularity by providing schools and clinics where they were lacking, and at times seemed like the only organized resistance to Israel’s control. For sixteen years Hamas has asked the international community to intervene to end collective punishment, which is illegal under international law. Their cries were not heeded. To the contrary, Israel, with U.S. funding, has repeatedly bombed the open-air prison with devastating loss of life and infrastructure: in 2008-09 (Operation Cast Lead), 2012 (Pillar of Cloud), 2014 (Protective Edge), 2018 attacking the nonviolent Great March for Return, 2022, May (Break the Wave), and August (Breaking Dawn). Even the Palestinian Authority, which the international community recognizes as the legitimate government of the West Bank, has done nothing except collaborate with Israeli security. What should Hamas have done to free its people? We who believe in nonviolence should have an answer. I don’t. When I saw the image of a Palestinian tank breaking through the fence, I cheered. That was before I heard the reports from the Israeli side of the slaughter of civilians, including youth at a music festival. I didn’t want to believe it. I have had to face that these murders happened. At the same time, It is more than possible that many executions were committed by non-combatants who saw the broken fence and entered Israel, driven only by a thirst for revenge. We will never know what the Hamas military command (the Qassam Brigades) told their armed forces to do or not to do. Regardless of their intentions, Hamas used violence. And regardless that international law allows colonized people to use weapons to fight for their rights, it does not allow targeting civilians. And regardless that killing civilians is a war crime, 90% of the casualties in today’s wars are civilians. “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” We humans seem unwilling to learn that lesson.