Welcome to Israel
By BRIAN WOOD
Colorado Daily
May 24, 2001
In 1995, I entered through a Jewish door. The history, religion and sociology of the Jewish people became my dwelling place. Especially striking was the abuse, torture, discrimination and deportation these people experienced in many of the countries they lived. Through various university courses and personal study, the riches of Jewish collectives in history instructed and inspired my steps.
In 1998, the opportunity to visit Israel came about. Residing in Israel proper, but only minutes by car from Palestinian lands, every day was an interchange between myself, Jewish Israelis, and Palestinians. The observations afforded by this interaction enabled me to view from a spoken, but silenced, perspective -- that of vivacious Palestinians -- yet another aspect of Jewish history. These experiences with the Palestinian story provoked numerous questions for me.
In October 2000, I arrived in Bethlehem. It was the sixth day of the Al-Aqsa Intifadah. As a volunteer at a small Bible college, I watched many nights as the formidable Israeli army erratically bombarded the civilian Palestinian village of Beit Jala. From the rooftop of the Bible college, I observed numerous times peaceful or harmless stone-throwing demonstrations being abruptly halted as Israeli soldiers opened fire on these unarmed civilians. Whether live or rubber-coated steel bullets were used made little difference -- rubber-coated steel bullets are often lethal at ranges under 100 yards. The distance between the Israeli soldiers and Palestinian demonstrators was almost never more than 50 yards.
After three months in Bethlehem, I returned to the United States. As I monitored the major newspapers in Denver regarding their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as other media sources in the U.S., the realization struck me that we are dealing not only with the complete disregard for Palestinian humanity and rights by Israel, but blind, uncritical U.S. support for Israel. To be sure, the U.S. government knows the situation in the Palestinian lands well. Its continued complicity is largely facilitated by outright propaganda masquerading as "news" that appears on television screens and newspapers all across the United States. For example, after the Mitchell Committee completed its mandate to investigate the roots of the present Intifadah, one major newspaper in Denver printed an article that, from headline to final period, stated the Israeli government's position toward and disapproval of the role of the committee no less than seven times. Had the article included even half a sentence in expression of the Palestinian response to the committee, my conclusion would be different. This is not an isolated case, either.
Our tax dollars are given to Israel, the greatest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, in the range of $3-5 billion a year. The majority of this aid is in the form of a military grant. This grant is used to acquire military equipment that is then used to kill Palestinians, regardless of gender, age, or military status; bulldoze thousands of Palestinians homes; enforce ghetto status on every Palestinian town and village; poison crops; confiscate Palestinian lands; build Jewish-only settlements on these expropriated lands; force docility to Israel via starvation and the dissolution of the Palestinian economy; uproot or burn hundreds of thousands of fruit and nut trees (219,088 from October 2000-February 2001), which represents the life force of Palestinian agriculture; injure large amounts of Palestinians (14,000 from October 2000-April 2001), who are left to die slowly away from the public eye. These are only some the material losses. Emotional, psychological, and spiritual aspects are even more difficult to heal. It is with our taxes that these actions -- termed ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and racism in most any other context -- are funded.
Two days back in the West Bank now, only the unwilling do not see that Ariel Sharon's government has intensified its efforts to expand Israel at the expense of another people.
Brian Wood is a graduate of Colorado Christian University in Lakewood.
Editor's note: Life in the West Bank is a new column which will run every other Thursday in the Colorado Daily.
More at ccmep.org
