We are a long way from Israel, Gaza and Lebanon. Yet we are numbed by the recurring news photos of crumbling buildings, people carried away on stretchers—and in body bags. Monday night on television, along with the bombs and rockets to and from Lebanon and Israel, two young women, one an Israeli Jew and one an Arab from the West Bank, say that there has to be another way. The two women lead peacemaking organizations, each in her own country.
I have never been to Gaza, but I was in Lebanon once, in 1966, almost 60 years ago, when it was the Paris of the Middle East. When people snow skied in the morning and water skied late the same day; when Arabic, French, English, Armenian, Turkish and other tongues were jabbered on the streets and in a “money bazaar” where one could buy, sell, and trade currencies from around the world; where the American University in Beirut nurtured a diverse academic community from across the Middle East. It was a place where Sunni and Shia Muslims lived alongside Maronite Christians, Ladino-speaking Jews, and Druze – a cosmopolitan and international city.
Over the course of a half century, I’ve watched Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Iran—other places I visited long ago–dissolve from afar. Often with misguided or downright stupid American involvement. Not ten years after I left the region, Iran fell to the militant Shiites after our bungling relationship with a discredited Shah. And ten years after that, Malcom Kerr, then president of American University in Beirut and father of basketball coach Steve Kerr, was assassinated. More recently, I watched ancient Aleppo in Syria destroyed by a cancerous war that jumped from Iraq across the region.
Mine is one small voice from a distant village in Eastern Oregon in the United States of America, but I join the two young peace-making women and the doctors and nurses, 45 of whom signed an open letter asking for the US to abide by our own laws and withhold further shipments of arms to Israel and promote an arms embargo on all countries in the region.
Israel under Prime Minister Netanyahu is becoming an international pariah. As he individually assassinates and bludgeons Hamas and Hezbollah enemies one by one, non-combatants are killed by the hundreds and thousands. Our own country is bound up in his delusional ambition of killing people, down to the last enemy.
War and censorship in Gaza and Lebanon have not brought peace and security to Israel, and should not be tools to keep him in office. Peace must be promoted one voice at a time, until there is a chorus of doctors, journalists, senators, congressmen, congresswomen, and individual citizens from towns and cities across this land loud enough to overwhelm the years of guilt-ridden support — the failure to aid European Jews prior to World War II — of a country gone rogue.
Israel is clearly in violation of the Geneva Convention of 1949, which it signed onto, which expressly protects medical staff who are not taking an active part in the hostilities, as well as children and families attempting to take shelter.
Israeli soldiers have bombed hospitals and targeted health care workers. It has committed atrocious acts of barbarity upon families sheltering in place, and killed journalists who were clearly identifying themselves.
Israel has become an international pariah,
Yet, many Americans who identify as progressive are silent.
I wonder what benefit you believe Israel would receive by targeting health care workers or journalists? I don’t understand what you think that would accomplish? It certainly wouldn’t degrade Hamas, which is their obvious objective. Wouldn’t doing that only bring them bad press / publicity? Or do you just feel that Israel is inherently evil?
I’m also wondering if you are aware of the fact that Hamas strategically imbeds its command & control centers inside or below schools and hospitals for protection? Using their own people as human shields to deter an attack and having the PR benefit of accusing Israel of attacking a school or hospital is a pretty diabolical strategy, don’t you think? Your comments persuade me that it seems to be working pretty well.