When you live in America, especially in one of the Southern States it is rare to hear anyone criticize Israel.
In the Heart of Dixie you get the occasional "the Jews don't believe in the baby Jesus!" but this is usually overlooked by the fact that there is an Old Testament Pentateuch/Torah connection.
In the U.S., the dominant Judeo-Christian beliefs and total fear, suspicion and disdain of Islam coupled with the lack of knowing any real, live Muslims means one side can easily dominate the conversation when nasty conflicts break out in in the Middle East.
This was my life until I moved to California and actually met some real, live Palestinians.
Along the way I also met some real, live Iraqis, Iranians, Afghans and Egyptians who have become close friends and respected academic colleagues. But this post isn't about them so I'll not digress further.
My daughter's best friend when we lived in northern California was a girl whose father was Palestinian and whose mother was American.
They had family in Jordan and would go to visit there in the summertime. The family was able to get Jordanian citizenship and when I asked why they didn't get Palestinian citizenship I was treated to a bitter laugh and intense look from their mother.
I had a lot to learn.
At grad school in Monterey I became friends with Amer Shurrab.
His family story would horrify me and inspire me to do research on the Mavi Marmara flotilla and Gaza region.
In 2009, Amer's two brothers and father were returning home to Kahn Yunis one night when IDF soldiers fired on them.
His father begged the soldiers to let an ambulance through for his sons but they would not and told him if he moved they would fire on him.
One of the brothers died on the spot and the other bled to death through the cold night. After 20 hours, the father was eventually able to get help.
While this was going on, Amer, who was in the U.S. was calling the Red Cross, human rights groups and reporters in a desperate plea to get help to his family.
From a New York Post article about Amer's family:
"Asked about the incident in Kahn Yunis, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces said, 'The IDF is unable to reconstruct and investigate every single event that occurred during the intense fighting, and cannot confirm or deny every claim made by Palestinian and other organizations.'"
In short, the IDF could not be bothered to investigate why soldiers ambushed and opened fire on unarmed civilians who were returning to their home.
Amer showed me photos of bullet holes from where the IDF had fired into the walls of his family's home.
Sometime later when we met for lunch I noticed that he was sad and quiet and when I asked him what was wrong he told me that his father had recently died.
I didn't know what to say so comfort him. Doing so seemed impossible.
I would later watch him give a presentation at our school and break down when it came to talking about his brothers.
Despite all of this he advocated for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
I wondered at his strength in being able to do this. I don't think I would be able to.
From 2007 to the present Israel has maintained a blockade of supplies entering into Gaza and this ongoing control has led to food insecurity, lack of access to clean water, lack of access to building materials to repair homes destroyed during Operation Cast Lead, and stunted growth as well as numerous health issues in Palestinian children.
In 2010, Israel's Navy intercepted a group of boats in international waters and killed nine people on board the largest ship known as the Mavi Marmara.
The stated purpose of the flotilla was to break through the naval blockade and take humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
The boats were shadowed by the navy before they ever got into Israel's territorial sea and long before the raid they had changed course to head north and away from the Israeli coast.
At about 4:30 a.m. the Israelis scrambled the radio communications between the boats and sent out jet skis and helicopters with armed commandos.
According to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea they had no right to take these actions while the ship was in International Waters.
Later post mortem reports would find that two of the victims aboard the ship had bullet wounds in the top of their heads, meaning they were shot dead before the commandos had even landed on the deck of the ship.
Israel's P.R. machine sprang to life claiming that those on board were Islamic extremists and that they found weapons aboard the ship.
They showed grainy photos of people on board the ships fighting the military members.
The fact that the military had no legal right to be on the ship was left out of the narrative for maximum emotional effect.
In reality, those on board the ships were a mixture of activists and human rights workers from various countries.
The "weapons" found were the knives located in the ship's kitchen and a ceremonial sword that was kept below deck.
The ships were forced to dock at an Israeli port and the passengers were made to sign incriminating statements about themselves written in Hebrew.
They were then deported back to their home countries.
Col. Ann Wright was aboard one of the boats in the flotilla (the Rachel Corrie) and when she visited my school I was able to get a first hand interview of what happened to her.
She said the laptops and recording equipment of those on board the ship was taken from them. At that time (2012) her own laptop had not been returned.
She said the fact that she was an American meant she received a better treatment than many of the other passengers who were interrogated.
She said when one woman was about to board her plane to return home one of the soldiers was giving her a hard time and when she started to cry they "slapped her silly."
Many of those on board spoke of being strip searched and mistreated while in confinement.
The incident destroyed Israel's previously strong ties with Turkey and lead to a U.N. review of the events titled "The Palmer Report."
This report found that Israel's naval blockade was legal.
To do so the report had to site the San Remo Manual instead of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
According to International Committee of the Red Cross:
"The [San Remo] Manual is not a binding document. In view of the extent of uncertainty in the law, the experts decided that it was premature to embark on diplomatic negotiations to draft a treaty on the subject."
Instead, current issues are resolved through customary law which is outlined in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, a document that makes no mention of the legality of naval blockades.
Also, the San Remo Manual refers to warring factions at sea, not civilians vs. an armed naval entity.
None of this is really germane to what occurred however because the flotilla was nowhere near the blockade or Israel's territorial sea at the time of its capture.
Israel's action, in my opinion, remains illegal and atrocious.
This isn't the first time Israel has attacked a ship in International Waters. In 1967 they attacked the U.S.S. Liberty killing 34 American crew members and injuring 171 others.
On YouTube I watched a video of a former female IDF soldier talking about how she had detained a young Palestinian boy for throwing rocks. After giving him a lecture she ordered her coworkers to release him. A few hours later she noticed he was still in the company of some of her fellow soldiers and found that they had detained him and burnt him with the lit end of their cigarettes.
A friend of mine who was traveling through Israel on her way back to the U.S. was stopped and questioned by security at Ben Gurion airport. That person didn't like her "attitude" so they ordered a body cavity search on her.
She said she felt helpless and humiliated while the staff conducting the search laughed.
When she tried to speak to a U.S. Consul in the country she was given a dismissive reply.
These are a few stories that do not touch on the illegal Jewish settlements that have forced Palestinians off their land or the 1947 occupation by Jewish settlers of Palestinian lands on the recommendations of the U.N.
The current crisis has raised my ire toward the political factions and religious zealots who see nothing wrong with attacking the innocent Palestinians and further dehumanizing and destroying them.
I have read editorials that say, "that's what they get for electing Hamas as their leaders."
I doubt the little children who have been maimed and slaughtered are able to grasp the concept of Hamas and, more importantly, they were certainly unable to vote for them.
Others say Israel has a right to defend itself.
But what about the Palestinians who were on the land before them?
Are they to move quietly off their lands without protest?
Do they accept their status as "less than" because some of God's chosen people believe they have a divine right to the territory?
Hamas is a group of hateful, extremists shitheads who should not be firing rockets into Israel or calling for its total destruction.
However thanks to the Iron Dome, incredible military might and billions in foreign aid from the blindly supportive U.S., Israel has been able to knock all but a handful of these rockets out of the air and then enter Gaza to act in a heavy handed and tyrannical fashion without consequences.
Every time the IDF strike's a refuge such as a school, home or hospital they do so under the claim that Hamas was there.
This excuse stunk of bullshit from the moment when the IDF slaughtered four young children playing on a beach.
This time however, there are reporters and U.N. workers on the ground to counter their claims and shine light onto the persecution of innocent Palestinians.
On the 23 of July the U.N. Human Rights Council launched an inquiry into alleged human rights abuses by Israel.
In the report, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Kyung-Wah Kang found that;
"In Gaza, 443 or 74 percent of the killed are civilians. One third of civilians killed so far are children. One child has been killed each hour in Gaza over the past two days."
An easy way of shutting down conversation about this conflict is to claim that anyone who criticizes Israel is Anti-Semitic.
To claim this is to ignore the dissenting voices of Jews and Israelis calling for peace and a workable solution to the conflict.
The fact that millions of Jews were slaughtered during the Holocaust does not grant politicians and Zionists in Israel the right to persecute and extinguish the rights of another people.
I would rather suffer an eternity in hell than claim allegiance to the sort of God who would pick favorites and rain blessings on them when they tormented others.
