Dear Editor,

Let’s be clear, there are people who hate Jews. They assert that the holocaust never happened, and claim Jews cause most of the world’s problems and control global financial institutions, government, etc.  And yes, Israel has the right to defend itself.

At the same time, what is happening in Palestine today is the systematic dispossession of Palestinian rights and lands. The origins of this go back to the colonial British who once controlled Palestine and decided to wash their hands of it in the little-known Balfour Declaration of 1917. Zionist leaders in London had long been purchasing land in Palestine in hopes of establishing a Jewish homeland. According to Britannica, they won an ambiguous victory when the British gave the nod to this Jewish enclave while stating that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

In his essay, “From Declaration to Dispossession: The Theft of Palestinian Land and the Birth of Israel”, Dr M. Reza Behnam writes, “The Ordeal of the Palestinian nation – the Nakba (catastrophe)… began on November 2, 1917, with a carefully worded, guileful policy statement of the British government – the Balfour Declaration.  Although it had no sovereign rights over the land, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Arthur James Balfour, conveyed in a letter to British Zionist, Lord Walter Rothschild, that the British government would facilitate the establishment of a ‘Jewish national homeland’ in Palestine. Conspicuous in the declaration is the arrogant presumption that the British government had the right to give away one people’s land to another.” 

The world is turning its collective back.  According to Drop Site News, as of May 15, “between 8,500 and 10,000 bodies remain buried under the wasteland of Gaza. Many had hoped that a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas that went into effect last October would put an end to the Israeli military’s relentless attacks and brutal siege. Neither turned out to be true. Israel has killed at least 857 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded almost 2,500 in near daily attacks since the ‘ceasefire’, bringing the total since the start of the genocide to nearly 72,800.

Along with the continued killing, Israel has also not allowed the agreed upon number of aid trucks into Gaza and has prevented the entry of construction and recovery equipment. Emergency workers have been left ill equipped and unable to cope with the scale of the devastation.” Imagine 73,000 people killed as collateral damage as Israel carpet bombs Gaza.

Israel now occupies 70% of Gaza and has forced the refugees there (some 2 million) to occupy the remaining 30%. The total destruction of most of the buildings in Gaza is justified by the far-right cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in its quest to wipe out Hamas. One of his cabinet members outrageously called it “mowing the lawn.” Meanwhile these huddled people are left to scrape out an existence in tents surrounded by rats and destruction. 

At the same time, the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank has exploded. Barack Obama confronted Israel about its settlement policies during his time in office and suffered enormous pushback from the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC (The American Israeli Political Action Committee), one of the most powerful lobbies in the US.

Palestinians who have owned land in the West Bank for generations are routinely denied access to their crops and flocks, threatened and beaten by pro-settler mobs while the Israeli military looks on.

The Academy Award winning documentary, “No Other Land” shows the destruction of a Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank, which had been resisting forced displacement. It shows Israeli soldiers bulldozing homes in the West Bank and displacing communities that had lived there for generations.

The film records this destruction; Israeli soldiers evicting their inhabitants to enforce a court order maintaining the area as an Israeli military firing zone. The film documents the shooting of a resident of Masafer Yatta, a region in the occupied West Bank, paralyzing him. He later dies while hiding in a cave without medical help. The film ends by showing Zakaria al-Adra, unarmed, being shot by an Israeli settler in the days following the October 7 attacks.

After the film was published, Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian community leader and consultant on the documentary was shot by an Israeli settler. “No Other Land” filmmaker Yuval Abraham shared the video of the settler shooting him in cold blood. The LA Times quotes Abraham saying that “the settler ‘just shot’ Hathaleen in the lungs and identified the shooter as Yinon Levi. Levi was among the 13 hardline Israeli settlers targeted last year by international sanctions for their alleged attacks and harassment of Palestinians in the West Bank. President Trump lifted US sanctions against the Israelis in January.”

Israel is following the same displacement policy now in Southern Lebanon.

Do we stand for anything? And why does the US continue to give billions in support of a militaristic expansionist Israeli government? 

Bill Thibedeau

Gilpin Country