“It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.” -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nowhere in the Occupied Territories exemplifies why Israel is being tagged an “apartheid state” better than the Palestinian city of Hebron. There, 130,000 Palestinians live under periodic curfew so that the 450 Jewish settlers in the Old City can go about their business undisturbed by the sight of the Arab residents; 85% of the city’s water supply is reserved for Jewish settlers, leaving the majority Palestinian population to ration the remaining 15% among themselves; and Israeli conscripts in the IDF find, on being posted to the city, that they serve, not as protectors of Jews from Arab attackers but as a force that protects (or fails to protect) the Arabs from the Jews.
(From USA Today, 4 Sep '01.
Click to enlarge)
I want to let you know about one of the first experiences I had in Hebron in my second week of service in the city...While guarding the sukka on David Hamelekh Street, near Gross Square, during minha services, two Arab children came out of the casbah. Seven worshippers from inside the sukka pounced on them, and I and my buddies had to separate them. The ruckus continued and we all suffered the settlers' fists in our faces and other parts of our bodies, as well as curses and shouting. Those who suffered the most violence, slurs and curses were the Israeli police stationed in the city. Their main target were the Druze and Bedouin as well as the people of The International Presence in Hebron. Innumerable times I have been forced to intervene between the settlers and them.
The attacks, vandalism, and racist slogans are only a drop of what the Arabs of Hebron suffer daily. These actions have turned us, combat fighters, from protectors of Jews from Arab attackers to a force that protects the Arabs from the Jews. Often I've heard settlers complaining that we prevent them from beating up Arabs, breaking into their shops and vandalizing their property. And thus, they say, we do not protect the Jewish interests in the city. And I innocently thought my job was to preserve the Jewish and Israeli law in the city. -- From the letter of Y.[name withheld], an IDF conscript posted in Hebron, cited in Ha’Aretz on 23 January 2003.
Scott Weinstein, a member of the Montreal-based Jewish Alliance Against the Occupation, recently visited Hebron while working with the Palestinian Red Crescent as a Registered Nurse. He reported:
I am shocked by what I am witnessing in Palestine… I am shocked because witnessing the oppressive reality of simple everyday life under occupation is beyond words and images. What is so frightening is that Israeli domination of Palestinian life is so undramatic. It is a quiet, yet unrelenting Israeli takeover of Palestine, acre by acre, house by house. It is, as Hanna Arndt described: the 'banality of evil'…
Yesterday I visited Hebron in the West Bank. The day remained quiet… Situated in the centre of Hebron, a major city, is a small extension of the Jewish settlement Qiryat 'Arba that starts in the suburbs… Army lookouts dot the Palestinian neighbourhoods - several are built on the edge of a Palestinian cemetery. They guard the settlement like a gated community, and rescue settlers who get caught outside attacking unsuspecting Palestinians.
'Neo-Nazi' hate graffiti by the Jewish Defense League is spray-painted in English in the cemetery: "Arabs to the Gas Chambers". A Palestinian mother holding her two year old tells us that her 12 year old boy while playing in her garden, was hit on the head with a rock by a settler. He survived. She shows us the "Kill All Arabs" spray-painted on her front door...
Indeed, the most striking aspect of Weinstein's report is the accompanying photographs (courtesy of CPT) of settler graffiti in Palestinian neighbourhoods, including such charming sentiments as:
Weinstein spoke with one Arab resident who explained that there was no point erasing such slogans, "because they will just put it on again".
Palestinians in East Jerusalem have already gone through the same experience of neo-Nazi graffiti painted on their homes and businesses, and have learned a novel way to get rid of it. The issue was brought to the attention of the Israeli public in January 2003, when Shabtai Gold snapped this "Arabs to the Crematoria" photograph, which ran in Ha'Aretz:
Ha'Aretz commented that this kind of graffiti pops up quite often in the streets of Jerusalem, and the municipality seems in no hurry to remove it. But local activists have come up with a sure-fire way of getting the city authorities to take racist graffiti seriously:
Leftists have found that the slurs remain on the walls a long time so to hasten the city's action against them, they've found a chilling, but effective way to get them removed - they paint a swastika beside it.
Apparently, the swastika makes the graffiti offensive enough to be erased, while the sentiment that the swastika embodies - that of sending people of another race to the gas chambers - doesn't. Genocide against us = Bad; Genocide against them = OK.
First they came for the Arabs, but I was not an Arab, so I said nothing.
Then they came for the "Oslo Traitors", but I was not an "Oslo Traitor", so I did nothing. Then came the foreign workers, but I was not a foreign worker.
And then they came for the protesters, but I was not a protester, so I did little.
Then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me.
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