The Fighting Did Not Begin on Oct. 7. Biden, Stop Funding This Genocide.
In 2018, I visited Israel, mainly to see the Biblical sites I’d heard so much about all my life. I had little interest or understanding of mid-East politics.
During my time there as we visited the Via Dolorosa; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built at the site of Christ’s crucifixion; the Sea of Galilee where so many of the New Testament stories refer to; Cana, where Jesus performed his first miracle; the Old City and so much more, the question I wrangled with was: What is a Palestinian?
Circulating all around me were people whose races and provenances, religions and social classes eluded me. To me, a biracial Asian Gen X-er from Hawaii, they looked white. They looked brown. Some wore head coverings. Some did not. Their accents, to me, sounded similar.
The Palestinian did not exist beyond a check point in some far-away place. They were all around us, their voices calling out in the morning call to prayer at a nearby mosque my first morning in Nazareth (in the West Bank). At the time of my visit, Palestinians lived next to the City of David, an incredibly important site for the Jewish, which was just starting to be excavated while I was there. They lived in the Mount of Olives across the way from the Dome or the Rock. I thought Israel would be a Jewish country, and I was surprised and impressed at how diverse Israel really was.
I had not realized how important Christ was to Palestinians, who consider him one of several important prophets. Palestinians too celebrate Christmas with Christmas-themed ads, parades, and nativity scenes, only theirs played Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas is You” on a loop.
The term Palestinian has political, racial, and religious dimensions. In the news, it usually refers to a political group, the indigenous people who resided in the area prior to the establishment of Israel after WWII, when Western powers including the US supported the founding of a Jewish state in response to Nazi atrocities against them. But if everyone agrees that there is not much of an organized state to the state of Palestine, then what exactly are we talking about when we’re talking about a Palestinian as a political identity?
Because most Palestinians are Muslim, the term has religious overtones. And because the term Palestinian is often equated with “Arab,” the term Palestinian also has racial overtones, referring to a people with a common ancestry that scientists say are genetically closely related to Jewish people.
On Oct. 7, Hamas attacked Israel, in what has been described as one of the worst terrorist attacks in history. Israel estimated that 1,200 people were killed. Following the Oct. 7 attack, Israel launched a brutal current counter-offensive against Hamas in Gaza, in which over 28,000 Palestinian are estimated to have been killed — so far. The disproportionate response was predicted by Mid-East pundits. (“How many more sons of bitches do we need to kill so Ben Shapiro is happy?” 2:43–3:33 ).
But the fighting did not begin on Oct. 7. The fighting began long before through Israel’s illegal occupied settlements of Palestinian territory. The fighting began in the unlawful takeover of homes and lives, in overnight rulings finding legal loopholes that were used to displace Palestinians from the homes they’d lived in for generations.
While in Israel, I met Americans recruited to live in Israel, part of a wave of settlers immigrating from the US and Russia.
Why purposefully augment a population when land possession was already fraught and causing violence? Why fan the flames of a fragile peace? Through its illegal occupations, which has ramped up in recent years under Netanyahu, Israel has willfully, purposefully and callously provoked violence.
This conflict did not begin on Oct. 7.
The problem is not the state of Israel. A good part of the problem may be Netanyahu himself, who is unpopular among many in Israel and who, prior to the Oct. 7 attack, brazenly attempted to reduce the power of Israel’s courts. This weekend, protesters in Tel Aviv once again rose up against their own government.
If Israel wants to attack Palestinians, for the love of God, Biden, Congress, do not spend my tax payer dollars on this genocide. Do not increase aid several times over just as Israel stands under increased scrutiny from the international watch groups for their disproportionate attacks. Don’t impotently say, “Bad, Israel!” while financing the killing. Not funding human rights abuse is the absolute minimum we can ask of the US.
The question that is not asked enough in the US media: Why is the US financing Israel?
One response often given for this answer is: the US has always supported Israel. But inertia is not a geopolitical strategy!
Another possible reason often offered: there are a lot of powerful Jews in the US who represent an important constituency. But Jewish-Americans account for 2.5% of the US population and not all support Israeli violence in Gaza. Indeed, Israelis themselves do not support continued violence against Gaza.
Is the US interested in oil, the reason at the root of so many of our conflicts in the Mideast?
Or is it to maintain “stability” in the region? Because if that is goal, the US is most certainly not achieving it! The US has already provoked violence unnecessarily, entangling the US in yet another quagmire in a place few Americans — aside from the 2.5% of American Jews with ties there — understand or even care about. Three Americans have already died in what appears to be a mix-up.
Whatever the reason for US interest in ancient Canaan, the US needs to be explicit about its goals. And if it has no clear and compelling interest in the area, for the love of God, get my tax dollars out of there.
Israel is a relatively rich country. And the case might be made that they can finance their own war.
Given Biden’s repeated calls to reduce violence, given the international outpouring of sympathy for Gazans over Israel’s aggression, given the US’s own history of disproportionate responses after 9/11, which also pulled the US into a miscalculation in Iraq and quagmire in Afghanistan, given the wider regional conflict that has already begun, for the love of God, Biden, Congressional leaders:
Stop funding this genocide.
We know from history that when an atrocity occurs, it is the bystanders who allow it to occur. Every day that passes that I don’t think about what’s going on in Gaza and don’t say something is another day when I am unwittingly okaying the US-backed killing of innocent Palestinians.
Having written this article, it is unlikely I will ever be able to visit Israel again. Travel to the country is heavily restricted, the backgrounds of visitors closely monitored. But if peace ever resumes in Israel, I encourage you to visit.
When I visited, there were mainly European tourists, a smattering of African tourists but very, very few American tourists— despite the overwhelming popularity of Christianity in the US.
If you are American, I encourage you to go to see this place to begin to understand the incredible complexity of the politics, and to understand that Palestinians are people who would like a place to live in peace just like the rest of us.
