Terror over generations creates more terrorism. U.S. must be on the side of peace

We as a nation must stop supporting Israel’s war on Palestine.

Yes, Israel has a right to defend itself. It seems, though, that Israel’s notion of defense is preemptive: eliminating as many Palestinians as possible before the rest of the world intervenes.

I remember when the United States provided El Salvador’s corrupt government with dollars, napalm, bombers, and CIA training in torture techniques, for making war on its own people. The State Department leaned on U.S. news media not to report any of this, but eyewitness reports trickled through. One of these testimonies, from a man who’d been kidnapped from his village by the Salvadoran army, detailed the process by which the army turned terrified captives into brutal soldiers. A boy would be tortured for several hours while soldiers and other captives watched. A few days later, physically recovered but still traumatized, humiliated, stripped of human dignity, he’d be offered a chance to torture someone else. Most accepted, hoping thus to regain their sense of selfhood.

I tell you this story because of what it explains about Israel and Palestine.

Make no mistake, I wholeheartedly condemn the actions of Hamas. Terrorism is wrong, punishing the innocent for others’ sins. Sadly, it’s an understandable response to ongoing abuse. Terrorism is born of terror; violence is rooted in helpless rage.

Too many of the grandchildren of the Jews imprisoned or slaughtered in the Holocaust have turned victimhood into cruelty. Even 30 years ago, I read of the Israeli checkpoints restricting Palestinians’ movements within their own country: of soldiers, bored and resentful at the provincial posting, taking it out on people who couldn’t fight back; of elders kicked and spat upon; of a pregnant woman forced at rifle point to crawl in the dust before being allowed through to see her doctor. Imagine being that woman’s toddler son, witnessing his mother’s treatment. Consider 30, 40, 70 years of such abuse, creating terror and rage, creating terrorists. Hamas is the living mirror of Israel’s careless cruelty.

1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas last October. Israel in response has killed some Hamas fighters – and tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children, wounding many more; attacked every hospital in Gaza; forced as many people as possible over the borders into nations that lack the capacity to receive them – and are also under attack from Israel’s military; denied safe passage of food and medicine; fired upon aid convoys. Aid workers use the acronym WCNSF, “Wounded Child, No Surviving Family.” Only after most of the rest of the world condemned Israel for deliberately starving Gaza, did Israel permit an aid airdrop. Israeli soldiers accompanying trucks carrying food then fired upon and/or crushed under their trucks the people waiting for that food, killing 115 and wounding almost 300 more.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, illegal Israeli settlers continue to terrorize and murder their Palestinian neighbors – and a visiting American boy – in order to seize their land too.

Even Israeli citizens are not safe from the state’s brutality. When the families of the hostages gathered to demand a ceasefire, they were met with fire-hoses. Protesters against the illegal settlements in the West Bank are attacked by settlers with the government’s tacit approval. Some Israelis, and their current government, believe Israel will only be safe when every Hamas fighter is dead – or maybe even when every potential Hamas fighter is dead. That would explain all the children slaughtered and starved to death in Gaza: dead babies will never join Hamas.

But even if Israel were allowed to keep killing civilians, while retaining its stranglehold on Palestine and expanding its illegal settlements, Hamas would not die, because terror will always breed terrorism. The only way to weaken Hamas is to deny it the endless supply of injustice and outrage that feeds it. The path to peace in the Middle East is a free Palestinian state, whose people will be too busy rebuilding their lives to expend energy on harming others.

Israel insists on retaining control of Palestine. In fact, it begins to look to many of us, including growing numbers of appalled Israelis themselves, as if Israel means to claim all of Palestine for its own.

That cannot be allowed to happen. It’s past time for the US to stop providing military aid for Israel’s war on civilians, to stop blocking UN resolutions and opposing ceasefires. It’s time to throw all the weight of America’s international influence behind the creation of a free and independent Palestine.

Alison Slow Loris is a writer, caregiver, and grocer who lives in Bremerton. She stands in twice-monthly peace vigils with Women in Black, an international group founded by Israeli and Palestinian women standing together in a silent call for peace. For more information, email KitsapWIB23@gmail.com.