Since October 1st, 72 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army and 10 Israelis have died from stabbings. The Israeli army has issued at least 14 demolition notices to Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank and has demolished three houses in Jerusalem and another in Hebron (middleeastmonitor.com).
While the stabbings receive a great deal of coverage in the corporate media, the actions by the Israeli military go virtually unreported. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported on Nov. 1 that 2,617 Palestinians have been shot and wounded by live and rubber-coated steel bullets.
In addition to the use of live ammunition, Israeli forces are using collective punishment against whole communities, a war crime under international law, in response to stone-throwing acts of resistance by young people. On Oct. 30, Israeli forces raided the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, firing tear gas and flash grenades down narrow streets and into homes. Israeli soldiers speaking in Arabic over a public address system said, “Inhabitants of Aida, we are the Israeli occupation forces, if you throw stones we will hit you with gas until you die. The children, the youth, and the old people, all of you – we won’t spare any of you”.
Starting earlier this year, settlers and the Israeli government raised the campaign across occupied Palestine to remove Palestinians from their homeland, with particular focus on Jerusalem. This has been done through “legal” and illegal means. One legal mean, still illegal under international law, comes in the form of demolishing Palestinian homes that had initiated construction to expand living quarters that lacked proper building permits. All the while it is almost impossible for a Palestinian to get a permit granted by the occupying Israeli authorities to expand living quarters on ever-shrinking land available to Palestinians.
The illegal means are for Zionist settlers to show up at the house of a Palestinian family with Israeli soldiers and forcibly evict Palestinians on the spot and then move into the home permanently. Maan news agency documented on October 29, a Palestinian family of six was prevented from entering their home by settlers in a housing compound in the Batan al-Hawa area of Silwan in East Jerusalem. The Israeli police showed up on the scene backing the settlers. This eviction/occupation is the latest by settlers, which over the past year expands the illegal Israeli settlement from 10 to 35 families. With this latest takeover there are about 500 settlers living amongst 45,000 Palestinians.
In Nablus, settlers attacked farmers harvesting olive trees in late October, just months after Israeli settlers set fire to a house on July 30 in Duma, a small village within the district, burning a toddler alive, and killing the mother and father of the Dawabsha family (maannews.com).
Not surprisingly, the Palestinian people have responded to the latest escalation by the Zionist government and settlers. Mass demonstrations and rebellions have swept across occupied Palestine with the breadth of the response being labeled a new intifada by some. Young Palestinians, who have lived their entire lives under genocidal conditions that they see are getting worse, have turned their outrage into individual acts of retaliation by stabbing Israeli soldiers and civilians.
From the headlines in the capitalist media, in particular the U.S. corporate media, one would think that the Israelis are just responding to violence brought against them with titles like “Palestinian shot dead in attempting stabbing,” and “Jewish Man Stabbed in Israel by Palestinians as Violence Continues.”
When one reads the corporate media in the United States, the Zionist state of Israeli is repeatedly referred to as “the only democracy in the Middle East.” It has been said that “a lie told often enough becomes the truth.” The phrase could could not be more accurate regarding the lying nature of the imperialist media than when talking about the media’s coverage of the struggle in Palestine and the nature of the Zionist state of Israel.
According to the Prisoner’s Affairs Authority, a Palestinian organization which monitors Palestinians held by the Israelis, the Israelis have arrested 800 youth in the month of October, which more than the 700 to 800 children arrested annually by the Zionist military.
While the Israeli army carries out war crimes, the Israeli Knesset is passing decrees that also violate international law. On July 21, the Knesset passed a bill that makes stone-throwing a crime punishable by 20 years in jail. The bill provides a 10-year sentence for a minor arrested for stone-throwing. Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked was quoted upon passage of the bill, “A stone thrower is a terrorist and only an appropriate punishment can be deterrent, punitive and just.”
The bill has taken collective punishment to the family level, by also denying the family of a youth arrested for stone-throwing access to the national healthcare system for the entire duration of the child’s imprisonment.
Despite the best efforts of the Zionists to force them to leave their homeland, the Palestinian people remain steadfast in their resistance. Progressive people around the world should stand with them against the U.S.-backed Zionist occupiers.
Long Live Palestine!
