By Jim DeBrosse | Published by Cincinnati.com on November 11, 2024
"Once you know, you know. You can’t unknow it. And then you have to make a decision. Do you ignore the genocide and go on with your life? Or do you try to do something about it?" - Maung Zarni
While the world’s attention has been focused on the ongoing carnage in Gaza and now in Lebanon, many readers may have missed the news of increasing settler violence and land theft against Palestinians in the West Bank.
For 10 days in August and September, I traveled as an embedded journalist with a U.S. interfaith peace delegation as they crisscrossed the West Bank in a show of solidarity with the Palestinian victims of violence, apartheid and displacement.
Since the war in 1967, "Israel has been forcing thousands of Palestinians off their land, occupying and illegally using it to create settlements that exclusively house Jewish Israeli settlers," according to Amnesty International and other human rights organizations.
The 30 members of the U.S. delegation − ministers, rabbis, nuns, kohenets, Quakers and Hindu and Buddhist peace activists from across the country − witnessed for themselves what many Americans and their leaders have chosen to ignore.
The delegates visited:
- Shufat Refugee camp near East Jerusalem, where residents told the group that Israeli soldiers enter twice a day and throw tear gas at the community and sometimes shoot up houses and buildings at random.
Israel and Palestine in Middle East on contour map. Palestinian territories of Gaza and West Bank. Jerusalem and Jordan River on outline map. Theme of Israel, war, conflict. Scaliger, Getty Images
- The Al-Aqsa Mosque or Dome of the Rock, where Israeli police are allowing Jewish worship at the Muslim holy site despite a long-standing agreement prohibiting it. Some delegates were given a tour of the mosque and shown the broken interior windows and other Israeli military damages to the compound that Palestinians are forbidden to repair.
- Mt. Zion, a property near the Old City of Jerusalem owned by the Greek Orthodox Church but subjected to ongoing harassment by a group of radical religious settlers backed by the Israeli government. The school playground is regularly vandalized and Christian processions there are often violently disrupted. The settlers’ animosity is fueled by unfounded Jewish claims to the lot as the burial site of King David.
- Silwan, an historic Palestinian neighborhood located just south of Jerusalem’s Old City in occupied East Jerusalem. Residents there face demolitions, evictions, and settlement expansions by the Israeli government and settlers who hope to build a "City of David" theme park on top of the neighborhood.
- An environmental farm owned by the Nassar family, a Palestinian Christian family, who have been under continual threat and attack from surrounding Israeli settlers and soldiers. The Nassar family holds a legitimate deed to the land but has been fighting in Israeli courts to be recognized as legal owners of the 100-acre farm for 33 years.
- The family of Layan Nasir, 23, who was arrested on April 7 after some 20 armed Israeli soldiers removed her in the middle of the night from her parents’ home near Ramallah. Since then, like thousands of other Palestinians, Nasir has been held in Israeli prison without charge.
- The Naba Al Ghazai village in the Jordan Valley, where villagers say nearby settlers awaken and terrorize their children by night and scatter their flocks of sheep by day.
- The Nisiya family of Al Makhrour, who the Israeli military has barred from their home after settlers took it by force in late July. The delegates were part of a sit-in on the road to the Nisiya home dispersed by Israeli soldiers. The morning after, soldiers destroyed the family’s meeting tent.
A person tries to walk among debris following a several day long Israeli-raid, in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, September 6, 2024. REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta
One of the delegates, Burmese exile and genocide expert Maung Zarni, framed the trip from a Buddhist perspective: "Once you know, you know. You can’t unknow it. And then you have to make a decision. Do you ignore the genocide and go on with your life? Or do you try to do something about it?"
A growing number of Americans are taking action, non-violently and courageously. As Tania Nasir, godmother of Layan Nasir, told the delegation: "People like you, trying to feel, trying to help − our only hope is your anger. I pray your anger reaches your governments."
Jim DeBrosse, Provided by Jim DeBrosse
Jim DeBrosse is a freelance journalist and a retired assistant professor of journalism at Miami University.
