Informed Comment - Jul. 6, 2014

Bring Back our Children: Palestine-Israel Children’s Crusade by the Numbers

 Israel itself has a long history of capturing and sometimes of killing Palestinian children and youth.

By Juan Cole

The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people and the conflict it produces has in the past week taken on a horror-film aspect, as reprisal killings against children and teens have proliferated. But these killings and clashes did not begin with the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli youth a week ago. Rather, Israel itself has a long history of capturing and sometimes of killing Palestinian children and youth. In all the ideology and ethnic rancor, it is important to remember we are talking about real human beings here, not statistics. And above all, real, cute, children and teenagers, who aren’t there any more, leaving a hole and an ache in the hearts of parents and of whole peoples.

It was predictable that the far rightwing Israeli government’s massive land theft and push to settle squatters on Palestinian land, and its torpedoing of John Kerry’s peace initiative, would produce another round of violence. While Palestinian militants also bear some blame, the lion’s share of responsibility here rests with the Likud Party and its often even more rabid coalition partners.

Although the two populations are about the same size– 6.1 million Israeli Jews and roughly 6.1 million Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza– the Israelis kill and detain many times more Palestinians than the reverse. Since January of 2009, Israelis have killed 575 Palestinians, while Palestinians have killed 28 Israelis. The Israeli narrative is that Palestinians are violent and Jews are victims, but this statistical result undermines that narrative, indeed, reverses it. Turns out Palestinians are mostly victims and Israelis often behave thuggishly toward them. Israelis point to thousands of small rockets coming out of Gaza in the past decade, but neglect to mention that they mostly don’t hit anything and have caused only a small number of deaths. They don’t go on to recognize that Israeli jets routinely bomb Palestinians in Gaza and they really do kill people with their thousands of bombing raids– lots of people, mainly non-combatants and including significant numbers of children.

The news that Palestinian Muhammad Abu Khdeir, age 16, was kidnapped from his father’s shop in East Jerusalem and then doused with gasoline (including in his mouth) and then set on fire and burned alive (presumably by militant Israeli squatters on Palestinian land) is just as creepy as last week’s horror story about the killing of three Israeli youth by, presumably, Palestinian militants (though there is no evidence Hamas in specific was behind it).

Then the Israeli police compounded things by arresting Abu Khdeir’s cousin Tareq, an American who whose trip to Palestine was a reward for earning straight A’s. Israeli police beat and stomped on him so badly his own mother called him “unrecognizable.”

Here are some numbers, Harper’s style, to put these events in context:

Number of Palestinian children Israel has arrested since 2010: 3,000

Palestinian children arrested, detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military detention system each year: 500-700

Percentage of these arrested Palestinian children who have been subjected to physical abuse and/or torture: 75%

Percentage of arrested Palestinian children who face Israeli military trials: 25%

Number of Palestinian children killed by Israelis since 2000: 1,500

Number of Israeli children killed by Palestinians since 2000: 132

Number of Palestinian children now in Israeli jails: 200

——-

WATCH: CNN Report on Brutal Beating of American Teen Tariq Khdeir by Israeli Forces

Read More

Top Ten Most Distasteful things about Romney Trip to Israel

Posted  Juan Cole

The trip of Republic Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney to Israel is in bad taste for lots of reasons.

1. He is holding a fundraiser at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. It is distasteful for an American political candidate to hold a high profile fundraiser abroad, implying a commitment to a foreign country as a means of reaching out to American interest groups (in Romney’s case, Christian Zionists among the evangelicals and the minority of American Jews who would be willing to vote Republican).

2. It is distasteful that Romney has broken his pledge of transparencyand declared the fundraiser off limits to the US press.

3. It is distasteful that Romney won’t explain why he has abruptly gone back on his word, and closed the Jerusalem event to the press.

4. There is a convention in US politics that you don’t criticize the sitting president, even if you are an opposition politician, while on foreign soil. Romney clearly intends to slam President Obama while in Israel.

5. It is distasteful that Romney is clearly holding the event in some large part to please casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who first bankrolled Newt Gingrich and now is talking about giving $100 million to elect Romney. Adelson is a huge supporter of far rightwing Likud Party Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and published a free newspaper in Israel to support all things Bibi all the time. Adelson is under investigation for allegedly bribing Chinese officials in Macau in reference to his casino empire there. Since Adelson is potentially an agent of Chinese influence and is a partisan of one of Israel’s most rightwing parties, Romney’s indebtedness to him is disturbing.

6. It is distasteful to have Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu interfering in an American domestic election by openly favoring Romney over Obama.

7. It is distasteful that Romney is promising his donors in Jerusalem a war on Iran. When George W. Bush promised his pro-Israel supporters a war on Iraq, it cost the US at least $3 trillion, got hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, destabilized the Gulf for some time, cost over 4,000 American soldiers’ lives, and damaged American power, credibility and the economy. As Nancy Reagan said of drugs, so US politicians must say to constant Israeli entreaties that the United States of America continually fight new wars in the Middle East on their behalf: “Just say no.” Instead, Romney is playing war enabler, and that abroad!

8. It is distasteful that Romney will not meet with Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestine Authority, who actually was elected by Palestinians, but only with an appointed and toothless ‘prime minister’ known for cooperation with Israel’s Likud.

9. It is distasteful the Romney will not commit to a two-state solution within 1967 borders or demand Israel cease illegal squatting on and unilateral annexation of Palestinian land. If he is going to this Middle East hot spot, why doesn’t he visit a Palestinian refugee camp so as to understand the nub of the dispute, instead of hobnobbing with the uber-rich in Jerusalem.

10. It is distasteful that he is holding the fundraiser in the King David Hotel, which was famously blown up by the Zionist terrorist organization Irgun in 1946, in a strike that killed 91 persons and wounded dozens, many of them innocent civilians. Irgun leader Menachem Begin (later a leader of the ruling Likud Party) hit the hotel because there were British security offices there, which were tracking violent organizations like his own, during the British Mandate period of Palestine. He maintained that he called ahead to warn of the bombing, but that is just propganda to take the edge off the deed– who in 1946 would have taken such a call seriously? When current Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and other Likud leaders attended a commemoration of the bombing, the British Foreign Office sent over a sharp note of protest. I guess Romney is not finished with insulting London.

Read More