A few months after Prime Minister Netanyahu assembled the most right-wing government in Israeli history at the end of 2022, Alison Speri wrote an article in April of 2023 for The Intercept that begins with the story of Masafer Yatta.
Speri’s “Lab of Oppression” is behind a partial paywall for The Intercept. You can access a particular number articles a month, and after that you can join The Intercept for free by adding your email address. You might or might not be able to access this article.
The story begins in Masafer Yatta. A collection of halmets in the Hebron hills surrounding Yatta, Masafer Yatta is one of many areas across the occupied West Bank where the Israeli state has for decades forced out Palestinians and replaced them with Israeli settler. The goal, as Netanyahu “stated plainly” after returning to power, “is to give the state absolute control over what he called ‘all areas of the land of Israel’ – including land widely expected to one day form the territory of a Palestinian state.”
Lab of Oppression is a story of people, structural oppression, and the laws designed to oppress people. It’s a reminder that Palestinians have long faced oppression, as both whether they’re citizens or refugees under international law. Israel has done everything it has can to not implement peace agreements, and to maintain and increase modes of oppression against occupied Palestinians. The increased violence over the last fourteen months, which can’t be called a war, was precipitated by this oppression, and has allowed settlers, with state backing, to increase (undefined) all areas of the land of Israel.
A year ago Hamas fighters, along with other political factions of Palestinians, did the impossible and broke through the open air prison that is Gaza. We know that about 1,200 people died – mainly Israelis along with some foreign nationals from Asia that everyone’s forgotten about – and that Hamas and allied took about 250 people hostages back to Gaza – mainly Israelis, bu also other foreign nationals including U.S. residents.
We also know that a year ago, on October 7, 2023, Israel enacted the Hannibal Directive, “designed to prevent soldiers from being taken alive as prisoners of war – by killing many of its own civilians,” and that of the 1,200 killed last October hundreds were killed by Israeli forces.
There are a couple reasons Hamas did what it did. During his time as president Trump signed the Abraham Accords, which was designed to improve economic relations between Israel and Arab states WHILE intentionally ignoring and negating Palestinian sovereignty and the idea of a Palestinian state. Trump’s reversed long-standing policy and insulted international law by moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and his policies toward the Palestinians was to exclude them and ignore them.
President Biden has attempted to continue to strengthen the Abraham Accords, and specifically tried to get Saudi Arabia to join the accords. The Saudis are interested, but have refused – last summer, before, and over the last year – unless the Israelis recognize a a Palestinian state and Palestinian right to self-determination.
A second reason is that there are 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, and every one of them is a political prisoner. This number of prisoners is from June, 2024; a year ago it was still over 5,000 Palestinians. Hamas thought that by taking hostages, they’d having bargaining chips (people) to trade to get Palestinians out of prison. It’s been a successful method before.
We know that Hamas offered to free all 250 prisoners in exchange for the Israeli army not entering the Gaza Strip, and that they offered this on October 9 or 10 of last year. Reporting on this in The Times of Israel, Gideon Allon suggests that for months Netanyahu has rejected a peace deal because it’s politically detrimental to him.
Most Arab states are hesitant to say anything or maintain anything other than tepid peace deals the status quo with Israel, and the Saudis don’t say anything other than not joining the Abraham Accords. Non-state Arab groups have become involved with the Houthis in Yemen successfully blockading the Gulf of Aden leading to Red Sea, despite years of a civil war in Yemen, and Hezbollah in Lebanon began exchanging a small arms battle in Israel’s north.
That changed in the last month when Israel assassinated the leader of Hamas, who was was in Iran, paying respects to the sudden death of Iran’s president in an airplane crash. Assassinating enemies, during war or peace, is an extreme tactic. In September, 2024, Israel assassinated the leader of Hezbollah in a carpet bombing campaign of Beirut, and, a few month later assassinated the likely next leader of Hezbollah, also killed by a bomb.
In Israel’s bombing campaign against Lebanon in last month, Israel also bombed Syrian troops on the border of Lebanon and at the same time killed members of the Iranian army. It’s clear that Israel has also been using the Dahiya Doctrine, which calls for “massive, disproportionate force and the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
In response Iran has launched two measured attacks against Israel, using mostly drones to attack military bases and army structures.
Israel now has the war it has always wanted. It’s able to claim it’s under attack by all it’s enemies and it’s able to cry – incorrectly – that the world is anti-Semitic and that’s why it’s attacking Israel. Israel ha always wanted, especially under Netanyahu, a war with Iran.
Violence – physical and structural – against the Palestinians has been going on for a little more than a century.
A year after the most recent attack on Gaza began, it’s long past time to destroy the system of oppression and neglect the Palestinians face.
Starting on September 16,1982, Palestinians refugees, along with Lebanese civilians, were attacked by a right-wing Lebanese militia, in coordination with the Israeli army.
They were in the refugee camp Shatila, Lebanon, and the adjacent neighborhood of Sabra; located southwest of Lebanon’s capital city Beirut.
How did they Palestinian refugees end up in Lebanon? Al-Jazeera staff, writing in “Sabra and Shatila massacre: What happened in Lebanon in 1982?” remind us that ‘the refugees were victims of the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, fleeing the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias as Israel was formed.’ About 100,000 Palestinians fled to Lebanon in 1948, permanently becoming refugees of war.
Al Jazeera, providing a brief background, says the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization], an umbrella of Palestinian political parties created in 1964, moved its base of operations to Beirut after it was pushed out of Jordan in 1970. The PLO, Al-Jazeera says, was created “with the aim of liberating Palestine through armed struggle.” Non unlike Hamas, which was created with the to liberate Palestine through armed struggle during the First Intifada.
In 1969, Al-Jazeera, continues, as result of an Egyptian-brokered agreement between the PLO and the Lebanese army, the PLO’s Armed Struggle Command assumed control over the 16 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, enabling it to carry out operations on Israel from southern Lebanon.
Here, Al-Jazeera begins to get to the history that led to the massacres in Sabra and Shatila. Skipping the causes of what led to a civil war, the article continues that a Lebanese civil war broke out in 1975, mainly between the Lebanese Front (LF) – a coalition of right-wing Christian Maronite parties backed by Israel and the United States – and the Lebanese National Movement (LNM), a coalition of secular leftists, pan-Arab Sunni and Shia Muslims, and the PLO.”
In 1982 Israeli forces, led by then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, invaded Lebanon. Israeli forces “laid siege to Beirut and heavily bombarded the city.” The PLO was headquartered in Beirut. Here, the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) provides information missing from Al-Jazeera’s description of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. The IMEU adds that “under a ceasefire deal negotiated by the administration of US President Ronald Reagan, the PLO evacuated Lebanon by early September with written assurances from the US that the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians they were leaving behind would be safe.” However, Al-Jazeera continues, “the multinational force that arrived after the PLO’s withdrawal from Beirut on September 1 was supposed to stay for 30 days. However, they pulled out early, on September 10.”
The IMEU continues, “On September 14, the leader of Israel’s proxy Lebanese militia, the Phalange, was assassinated after being elected president of Lebanon by parliament in a move orchestrated by Sharon and Israel’s occupying army. His death was a severe blow to Sharon’s plan to install a Christian puppet regime in Lebanon that would do Israel’s bidding. The next day, the Israeli military broke the ceasefire agreement and invaded West Beirut, surrounding Sabra camp and Shatila. Simply, as Al-Jazeera, puts it, “Israeli forces then allowed the Phalange, who blamed the PLO for Gemayel’s death, to enter Sabra and Shatila and carry out the massacre.”
What do we mean by massacre? In the 43 hours of killing between September 16 and September 18 the Lebanese Phalangists killed 2,000-3,500 people – mostly Palestinian, but also Lebanese women and children. Many were raped and mutilated, and buried in mass graves.
The IMEU provides the information that “Almost immediately after the killing began, Israeli soldiers surrounding Sabra and Shatila became aware that civilians were being murdered but did nothing to stop it. Instead, the Israeli military fired flares into the night sky to illuminate the darkness for the Phalangists, allowed more Phalangist fighters to enter the area on the second day, and supplied bulldozers that were used to dispose of the bodies of many of the victims.”
The United Nations passed a resolution declaring the massacre a genocide.
The IMEU and Al-Jazeera both confirm that no one was ever held accountable for the massacres. Al-Jazeera mentions that “In February 1983, the UN commission found that “Israeli authorities or forces were involved, directly or indirectly in the [Sabra and Shatila] massacres,” and the IMEU adds that “
In particular, Defense Minister Sharon bore responsibility for the massacre. He planned and initiated Israel’s unprovoked invasion of Lebanon, cultivated the Phalange as an Israeli proxy, and did nothing to stop the massacre when told about it until forced to by the Reagan administration.
While the Phalange carried out the massacre, they were an Israeli proxy, armed and funded by Israel. Israel’s occupying army was in full control of Sabra and Shatila and sent the Phalangist fighters into the camp knowing full well their hatred of the PLO and history of atrocities against Palestinian civilians.
Every years Palestinians worldwide remember the Saba and Shatila massacres. Writing on the thirty-eight anniversary of the massacre, the Arab-American Discrimination Committee (ADC) wrote “the Sabra and Shatila massacre remains one of the most symbolic events in the history of the Palestinian people and their plight. The massacre demonstrates the tragedy of the Palestinian refugees, who have been dispossessed from their homeland for over 70 years. This tragedy is an example of the need for a just settlement of the refugee issue based on the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, which affirms the right of return for Palestinian refugees.”
The ADC notes that the anniversary follows the recent anniversary of the Abraham Accords – the agreement to “normalize” relations between Israel and Arab countries. The Accords – pushed through under President Trump, and still supported by President Biden, who hopes to expand the Accords, “whitewash the occupation of Palestine and ignore the human rights violations of the Israeli apartheid regime. Human rights violations that include the very massacre that we are remembering today.”
The Palestinian BDS National Committee, writing today, echoes, the ADC’s words: “This massacre is a stark reminder of Israel’s ongoing violent massacres, displacement of Indigenous Palestinians, and its denial of our refugees’ right of return.” The BDS movement website has specific calls to actions to undo the ongoing genocide and attacks on Palestinians rights.
This is a brief summary of the massacre on Sabra and Shatila, Israel’s quest to control and/or subjugate Lebanon, and a denial of Palestinian rights. For a more complete version I suggest reading Noam Chomsky’s magnum opus, The Fateful Triangle..
Aysenur Eygi’s killing in the West Bank by Israel on September 6, as she engaged in a nonviolent protest protecting Palestinian land from land theft and encroachment by illegal settlers caught the world’s attention. Even members of Congress responded, as well as Vice President – and nominee for president – Kamala Harris, who called the death “a horrific tragedy that never should have happened.”
Not all members responded, and some don’t seen to be concerned with the death of not only tens of thousands of Palestinians using weapons provided by the U.S. government, but also with the death of U.S. citizens – as long as the death comes by the hands of an ally.
Remembers to thank elected officials who call for accountability, and to call out the rest, and demand they represent us. You might right something like the following to your elected officials who haven’t taken action.
Dear Representative,
I’m writing to you as a constituent about the death of Aysenur Eygi.
Aysenur, a U.S. Citizen, and a recent graduate of University of Washington was fatally shot in the head by Israeli forces in the West Bank on September 6.
I’m asking that you join your colleagues in Washington – Senators Murray and Cantwell, Rep. Jayapal – and beyond in calling for a thorough, independent, investigation into Aysenur’s death. President Biden and the executive branch are waiting for an investigation by Israel, but Israel never conducts investigations; they perform cover-ups.
Israel never conducts investigations; they perform cover-ups.
Please work with your colleagues to determine whether Aysenur was killed with a weapon provided to Israel by the United States. Further, please work with the FBI to determine whether the Justice for Victims of War Crimes Act (18 U.S. Code § 2441) applies in this case. All domestic and foreign actors that contributed to the Aysenur’s death should be held accountable.
Aysenur’s death was not the only recent death of U.S. citizens, other foreign nationals, or Palestinians killed while peacefully protesting recently in the West Bank.
I ask that you call for an investigation and and push for accountability.
Thanks again for your representation.
Today I send the following message about Friday’s (July 19) ruling by the International Court of Justice on the “Legal Consequences Arising From The Policies And Practices Of Israel In The Occupied Palestinian Territory” to my Representative, Senators, and to President Biden.
Dear Representative,
As you know, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) confirmed on July 19 in it’s ruling that Israel must immediately end it’s occupation of Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. This includes ending the siege of Gaza, which our government must also immediately stop supporting.
The full ruling, summarized in Ha’aretz, a leading Israeli newspaper, says that:
- Israel’s ongoing presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is deemed illegal.
- Israel must end its presence in the occupied territories as soon as possible.
- Israel should immediately cease settlement expansion and evacuate all settlers from the occupied areas.
- Israel is required to make reparations for the damage caused to the local and lawful population in the Palestinian territories.
- The international community and organizations have a duty not to recognize the Israeli presence in the territories as legal and to avoid supporting its maintenance.
- The UN should consider what actions are necessary to end the Israeli presence in the territories as soon as possible.
As your constituent, I ask that you take action now to support the ICJ ruling, and work with your colleagues to enforce this sensible injunction from the Court. Ending the Israeli occupation will help move us toward the necessary peace in the Middle East, and help Israel flourish as a democracy.
___________________
There’s a lot missing – intentionally. The ICJ ruling is non-binding, but it’s directed at part at other UN bodies with a strong moral push behind it. These are the finding, and they can’t be avoided in the UN General Assembly or Security Council.
It’s important to keep message to representatives short, and ask them to take some action. Write to your Representatives.
It’s time to share another letter to my representative. It’s always important to be kind, and to ask for something – usually support or rejection of legislation. Right now I just want to know when is “enough is enough” for my Israel-supporting Representative. I asked for a response, which I don’t expect to receive.
Please remember to write to your Representatives and express your views. They’re supposed to at least make some effort to represent us. I try to send messages frequently, but I also want to know what they’re responding to and I always save the messages I send in a word document. …
Dear Representative _____,
I’m a concerned constituent writing to you ask where your “red line” is. Biden said his red line was if the Israeli forces attacked Rafah. Where do you draw you “red line”. When is the use of U.S weapons used to kill civilians too much for you?
Please speak out now to demand an end to genocide, before the U.S government becomes more complicit.
Thanks again for your representation,
I’ve had a month Horribilis, quiet unlike the Queen’s Annus Horribilis in 1992.
Ishould’ve seen this coming. A couple weeks ago my browser quit on me. It gave me warnings that the browser was no longer supported and out of date but I ignored it and I was complacent. I thought that everything would be OK.
This was on my 10 year old Mac computer, which I thought was supported by everything and everything looked fine. Using Firefox, I realized that Canva was no longer supported for my work and I tried to install the extension to Firefox. This destroyed my whole Firefox, because I didn’t have the operating system to support it (and, it turns out, not enough space to upgrade the operating system).
I trued to switch over to Google Chrome which is a terrible idea if I’ve ever seen one. I also lost the links and tabs and resources and passwords for life and work that I’d used over the last ten years.
In the end I got a new computer. I gave my ten year old Mac to a friend who says he works with friends to refurbish computers and go to Mexico to provide kids with computers. The other option was to send it to electronic recycling.
I thank Firefox – and Kaspersky for keeping my thirteen year old Windows 7 running – for being able to sync tabs and save the information websites I want saved.
I’m still trying to teach my word computer to accept the password for WordPress to edit the website for work, but at least I have a new computer that accepts the password, and I can use Firefox instead of the useless Google Chrome.
Things might be different if the media reported the news of Palestinians killed in the most recent Operation by Israel in Gaza the way the Ha’aretz reported the news of the deaths of two Israeli soldiers.
Beginning with the statement that the Israeli military announced the death of two soldiers, Yaniv Kubovich and Ofer Aderet of Ha’aretz, the new article specified that the soldiers died in combat in central Gaza. Before telling us that the soldiers had been killed in Gaza, we’re told the names of the dead Israeli soldiers – Ido Aviv and Kalkidan Merhari – and what cities they came from.
Aviv, Kuvovich and Aderet tell us, are survived by his parents. The names of his parents and his siblings are provided in the article. There’s a brief summary of Aviv’s life, culminating with his love for water sports. Merhari’s life as an immigrant from Ethiopia is described with similar summaries of his interests and his personality. The media – in this case Ha’aretz – briefly and kindly summarizes the lives of these two dead soldiers. They bring out, in journalistic prose, the humanity of the dead. They humanize the dead, and convey that they were human.
Merhari, who left Ethiopia on his on by himself on his own accord as a teenager, kept in touch with his mother Almaz and sent her money from Israel. Upon news of Merhari’s death, Almaz’ cry was “heard all the way to Jerusalem, and our hearts trembled” by account of Merhari’s niece.
Kubovich and Aderet never discuss why Israel has soldiers in central Gaza, and never mention how they died. Ha’aretz has covered the assault on Gaza extensively, and perhaps a long description of the presence of soldiers in Gaza doesn’t need to be mentioned. But it’s as though the article avoided talking about death or war, and instead tried to bring Aviv and Merhari back to life by humanize them.
Contrast this to more than 35,000 Palestinians killed by Israel over the last seven months. A few dozen were famous lawyers, journalists, doctors and others who had their stories told. Tens of thousands have been killed without mention by the media. It’s as though that if their stories were never told they don’t matter.
I recently returned from a twelve day vacation in Costa Rica. This post isn’t about Costa Rica, but about a how a vacation shouldn’t be a break from reality.
It seems unfair and wrong that I took a vacation, and planned that vacation, while Israel is destroying the Palestinians of Gaza. How is it that I’m allowed to not only have a roof over my head and an access to three meals a day, but to also leave the country and visit different places in completely safety?
Perhaps vacations are what we need to keep us sane. It’s hard to return with the same energy and passion, and it’s equally important that we use any break or vacation we take to recover the energy energy we need to dive back in with more passion.
A vacation should not be a break from reality. Done correctly, it’s a time to learn. It’s also a time to read, as any vacationer would tell you. To me, that means reading more about reality, or reading non-fiction
War in 140 Characters by David Patrikarakos, is a vignette of several people who used social media to influence war. Mainly about war and conflict in 2014, the book is about Russia’s gray war (neither war nor peace) that rose to prominence that year and about Israel’s war on Gaza (also known as Operation Protective Edge).
Besides the obvious message that Patrikarakos conveyed that social media is changing war as we know it, I noticed a pattern about Israel’s incessant attacks on Gaza.
To quote one passage from the book, to sway public opinion during the 2014 war Israel concluded that to win the war of narratives it must push “three narratives to push at all cost.”
First was the rocket threat that Israeli civilians were being subjected to; second was the tunnel threat, with Hamas burrowing deep underground and across the border into Israel, again to threaten civilian lives; third, and most important, was Hamas use of human shields as a military tactic.
These sound oddly familiar to Israel’s current attack on Gaza, and indeed the same message Israel has used successfully since at least 2014 to convince the global media – legacy media rather than social media – that Israel is under a constant threat of a ruthless enemy.
All of that sounds threatening – the rocket attacks, a network of tunnels that are now famous, and the use of human shields. Israel has convinced the policy makers of the world – wrongly! – that the occupied Palestinians have no right to defend themselves. The tunnels, now infamous, are not a threat to Israel. Before October Hamas had few, if any, “human shields” to use, except for families families of Hamas commanders Israel might target. It’s possible that at this point 70 hostages taken by Hamas in October have been killed by Israeli bombing and attacks.
One final point Patrikarakos makes is that Israel won the 2014 conflict militarily but lost the narrative war. People are able to access their news on social media and the propaganda spin Israel provides legacy media is no longer convincing people of Israel’s argument it’s always under threat of attack.
When hundreds of Israeli settlers rampaged through Huwara and surrounding Palestinian towns in the occupied West Bank on February 26, leaving at least one Palestinian man dead and hundreds of others injured, it was billed as “revenge” after a Palestinian gunman killed two brothers who lived nearby.
— Read on amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/06/15/middleeast/huwara-west-bank-settler-attack-cmd-intl/index.html
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