GAZA: THE TRUTH ABOUT TERROR

By Shannon Joyce Prince

My blood was literally chilled when I read an Associated Press article entitled “Gaza civilians left exposed in Israeli invasion” in which Israeli military correspondent Alex Fishman is quoted as writing in the newspaper Yediot Ahronoth, “We’ll pay the international price later for the collateral damage and the anticipated civilian casualties” as though the horror of harming and killing innocent people doesn’t lie in children’s limbs being blown from their bodies as easily as dandelion spores spread by the wind, in grandmothers’ failing eyes exploding from their faces, in young fable weaving fathers and lullaby singing mothers dying in front of children who will never, ever forget, but in the unflattering press the self-righteous men and women who commissioned their deaths will face. Perhaps Mr. Fishman wrote what he did because he believes that evil can cloak itself in language, that individual lives, each incalculably precious, can be callously defined as collateral damage. Perhaps he doesn’t realize that another phrase for “anticipated civilian casualties” is premeditated murder.

The mainstream media mischaracterizes the conflict in the Gaza in order to justify the massacre of Palestinians. For example, at the time of this writing, Hamas has killed six people while Israel has killed five hundred (around three hundred of whom are civilians) and wounded three thousand more. The media assures us, however, that it is the members of Hamas who are the terrorists. I say, if they are, how much more then are the soldiers in the Israeli army? The media tell us that Hamas broke a truce between Palestine and Israel by firing rockets. This article quotes the head of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees John Ging as saying of the truce, “The people of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence … at the UN, our supplies were also restricted during the period of the ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of closure we ran out of food.” In other words, Hamas did not interrupt a time of peace – the truce was only peaceful if we have the crudest possible definition of peace – peace being the absence of violence, peace being the quiet acceptance of apartheid. What Hamas interrupted was oppression no less pernicious for being quiet.

Israel ’s violence towards the residents of the Gaza is terrorism no matter how anyone tries to pretend it is an equitable, necessary, or justifiable response to Hamas’ rockets. Violence against the innocent is terrorism, even when state sanctioned. And violence couched in the rhetoric of Zionism is religious fundamentalism as perverse as Al Qaeda’s. I have been surrounded by compassionate, wise Jewish people all my life, and I’ve been profoundly moved by the beauty and tenderness of the Torah, so I know that Israel ’s treatment of the Palestinians is far from true Judaism. The Torah forbids the “passing of children through the fire” or the killing of children in the name of religion. The Torah makes it clear that God sees the killing of children in the name of religion to be an abomination. The soldiers massacring Palestinians and the Israeli government leaders condoning it are no more Jews than the Klan members whose bombing killed the four little girls in 16th Street Baptist Church were Christians. The deaths of sisters Jawaher, Dina, Samar, Ikram, and Tahrir Balousha, killed just before the New Year by a missile dropped on them by an Israeli warplane  are no less wrong than the deaths of Denise MacNair, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson.

This massacre is not an issue of a democracy defending itself against terrorists. Israel , as anti-racist activist Tim Wise has pointed out is not a true democracy Presidents Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela as well as Archbishop Desmond Tutu have all described Israel ’s treatment of Palestinians as a system of apartheid. Nevertheless, there are calm, articulate, well educated people who are and will continue, during the next few weeks, to explain why it’s okay, or even noble, to slaughter human beings who are only trying to live with dignity – just as there were calm, articulate, and well educated people who made persuasive arguments about why it was okay to turn German Shepherds and hoses on Civil Rights demonstrators, to give smallpox infected blankets to Native Americans, and to lock anti-apartheid activists away in prisons. There will always be those who condemn those who agitate for justice, equality, and freedom. That means there must also be those of us Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, and none of the above who raise our voices in defense of those who cannot speak for themselves.

Shannon Joyce Prince is a Presidential Scholar, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, and Senior Fellow at Dartmouth College in Hanover NH. She can contacted at Shannon.J.Prince@Dartmouth.EDU