Commentary by Rev. J Mark Davidson
This has been the worst summer in decades for the Palestinian refugees barely surviving in the Jenin refugee camp. In June and July, Israel unleashed devastating military strikes, terrorizing Palestinians, killing 15 people including women and children, and injuring over 200. The rationale was to root out “terrorist infrastructure.” U.S. government officials lined up to back these actions, repeating the familiar mantra that Israel has the “right to defend itself.” What happened in Jenin was not “self-defense”; it was state terror. Jenin has no terrorists; it has freedom fighters resisting a 56-year military occupation. Jenin was not a skirmish in “the war on terror;” it was a merciless military beat down of a much weaker, totally outgunned opponent.
American-made Apache helicopters— “flying tanks”—fired missiles into residential buildings in densely-populated areas. A cognitively challenged Palestinian woman was killed when an Israeli missile we paid for was fired directly into her residence. The military invasion destroyed an alreadydegraded civilian infrastructure, leaving families without power and water possibly for weeks. This was collective punishment imposed on the entire Jenin refugee camp because it is a stronghold of resistance to the occupation.
The right to resist occupation, including armed resistance, is enshrined under international law. Bulldozers turned their streets into “crumbs.” Israeli soldiers fired off tear gas cannisters in the local Palestinian hospital, rendering the emergency room unusable, and blocked medics and ambulances from attending to the injured. Perhaps the cruelest thing: 3,000 Palestinian residents of Jenin, already refugees from the displacement they suffered in 1948, were forced to flee the violence, becoming refugees again. Many said this reminded them of the catastrophic displacement of the Nakba when they were first driven from their homes. Imagine the trauma. This on top of the larger disturbing context of rampaging settlers setting fire to Palestinian villages, and Israeli far-right officials using genocidal language about wiping out Palestinian communities, killing more. Israel’s actions in Jenin violated the Leahy Law, which forbids US military aid to be used to violate human rights. They also appear to meet several of the conditions of “crimes against humanity” under the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, including murder and “inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.” Our bipartisan foreign policy sends $4 billion in unconditional military aid to Israel every year. We are complicit in all of this.
Israel declared victory, and hopes this brutal attack will be a knockout blow. But as the director of the Jenin theater said, “These actions will only serve to breed a new generation that will carry the torch of resistance passed down by those who came before them, as we do today, and as our children will do in the future. It is a relentless pursuit, driven by the aspiration to reclaim our land and restore the dignity of every human being.” What is needed is a serious attempt to address the underlying problem—one people seeking to take another people’s land and use it exclusively for themselves—and forge a viable political solution. It’s long past time for American citizens to demand an end to the Israeli government’s violent domination of the Palestinian people. A just and lasting peace is possible in Israel/Palestine. Three things will hasten it: 1) robust support for full, equal rights for Palestinians and Jews, 2) the enforcement of U.S. laws such as the Leahy Law, which prohibits the use of U.S. military aid to violate human rights, and 3) an end to U.S. diplomatic shielding of Israel at the United Nations when it violates international law.
Rev. J. Mark Davidson is Executive Director of Voices for Justice in Palestine