This article written by our intern Ryan Biller from the USA.
On a June afternoon earlier this year in northern Israel, I spotted Chanamel Dorfman, the chief of staff of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. I watched from afar as Dorfman ambled away from his security detail, undid his belt, unzipped his pants and urinated near a spot where five Palestinians had recently been killed. It was then that it dawned on me that something in this corner of the Mediterranean is very, very wrong.
As the rest of the summer played out, the picture became clearer. I witnessed the unjust eviction of a Palestinian family in Hebron; the funeral of a 2-year-old Palestinian boy shot and killed by Israeli soldiers; a Palestinian woman assaulted by a group of teenage Jewish settlers; and a joint effort by settlers and soldiers to attack Palestinian motorists after Shabbat.
All that I saw seemed incongruent with the narrative propagated by both the US and Israeli governments. Palestinians aren’t inherently bad, and the Israeli government is not free of blame.
Shortly after my stint in the West Bank, I spent several weeks in South Africa, learning about the country’s dark history of racism, where black South Africans were marginalised and treated as second-class citizens. After this, Israel seemed to me to be functioning as an apartheid state. Indeed, rights groups such as B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have all said that Israel has passed the legal threshold for description as an apartheid state.
Unlike South Africa, though, Israel and Palestine have no Nelson Mandela. The calibre of leadership needed to unite a people at odds is rare in this turbulent part of the Middle East. To the contrary, Israel has its most right-wing and religiously conservative government in the country’s history.
I had left the so-called Holy Land with a cold knot in my gut. The tension across this contested piece of real estate was too palpable to ignore. Although I didn’t know what was coming, I got the impression that the social, political and territorial schisms that etched the region were of seismic proportions.
Then came 7 October. Hamas broke out of Gaza with a surprise attack that killed 1,400 Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to make the Palestinians in the enclave pay, claiming that Israel’s vengeance would “reverberate for generations.”
Since then, the Israeli air force has dropped around 12,000 tons of high explosives on Gaza, killing over 8,500 Palestinians, 3,500 of whom were children. Residential areas have been pulverised and entire families have been eviscerated. The hellfire rained down on the territory, a mere 365 square kilometre speck of land, unfolded against the backdrop of a complete electrical blackout imposed by Israel, and a tightening of the 16-year blockade, causing Gaza’s healthcare system to collapse.
Trapped in Gaza, Palestinian children are under attack by air, sea and land – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]Partly to the credit of citizen journalism and the world’s accessibility to mobile phone footage on social media, the situation on the ground has been made clearer than Israel would have liked. As the world watches, many global leaders have started to condemn Israel’s offensive, while Netanyahu, with his back covered by his American allies, maintains a resolute stance that the conflict in Gaza is far from over. There’s no ceasefire on the cards as I write.
The killings in Gaza have drawn widespread international condemnation, with Jordan, Colombia, Chile and Bolivia severing diplomatic ties and expressing strong disapproval. Former Bolivian President Evo Morales labelled Israel as a “terrorist state” and accused Netanyahu of war crimes and genocide, as if to emphasise further the deteriorating global perception of Israel’s actions. More nations may very well follow suit in the coming weeks. Even the director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber, has resigned, citing the UN’s inability to stop “a genocide unfolding before our eyes.”
The UN General Assembly’s resounding approval of a resolution for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas signifies growing international pressure for de-escalation. Israel’s military endeavours don’t seem as convincing to a growing number of outsiders looking in. Netanyahu may struggle to justify prolonged war so long as video and photographic reports of the horrors in Gaza continue to be circulated.
Moreover, Israel’s bombardment has triggered attacks by militias from neighbouring countries, such as missile and drone strikes by Yemen’s Houthis, and missile attacks from Lebanon and mortar launches from Syria, demonstrating the escalating regional unrest. This all underscores the self-inflicted damage to Israel’s security and its eroding support and credibility on the world stage, prompting concern from the UN that this may cascade into a wider regional conflict involving Iran.
Violence in the West Bank is also escalating. In the occupied West Bank village of Wadi As-Seeq, near Ramallah, a distressing incident was detailed by Hagar Shezaf in Haaretz. On 12 October, soldiers from the Israel Defence Forces and illegal settlers tortured three Palestinians, which included handcuffing, physical assault, stripping, photography, urination and extinguishing cigarettes on their bodies. A soldier even attempted to insert an object into the rectum of one of the victims.
The Six Day War in 1967 resulted in Israel gaining control of and occupying the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. This prompted prominent Israeli intellectuals like author Amos Oz, organisations like Peace Now, the UN and various world governments, including some European nations, to warn that occupation would create moral degeneracy within Israeli society; hinder sustainable peace efforts by perpetuating cyclical violence; corrode Israel’s ethical standing on the world stage; and ultimately jeopardise national security by incubating hostility both internally and abroad.
Unjust settler and soldier violence in the West Bank, coupled by the unbridled bombardment of Gaza by a fanatical Israeli government, suggests to me that such premonitions are beginning to bear bitter fruit.
As the bodies keep piling up in Gaza, I reminisce fondly of being less downhearted in Johannesburg’s Apartheid Museum. I think back to the hopeful words of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and their calls to unite South Africans and end the cycle of violence; to create one South Africa, free of racial segregation, where peace reigned supreme. Then I remember that June afternoon, as Chanamel Dorfman urinated on a spot where five Palestinians had just been killed.
I am reminded that Israel has no Mandela types at the helm, but a regime imbued with an alarming sense of far-right demagoguery and jingoism. What happens next, I do not know, but I must say that I agree, resoundingly so, with Netanyahu’s claim that what is unfolding now in Gaza will be felt for generations to come, by both Israelis and Palestinians alike.