Stick, stones, matches, gasoline.
The technology of ethnic cleansing.
4 NOVEMBER—Settler violence continues to intensify throughout the West Bank. Let us continue to bear witness to the suffering of our Palestinian brothers and sisters and to the crimes of the “Jewish state.” Join me in this purpose.
On Saturday morning, 1 November, I received a text from my friend and contact Adnan al–Abayat, who lives in the village of Kisan, 15 km southeast of Bethlehem. He sent two videos that were then circulating in Palestinian social media. What you see in them is further evidence of the ethnic cleansing under way, a project being carried out largely by settlers with the blessing and protection of the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv.
In the first video you see cars and equipment set on fire in the village of Kafr Qaddum in the northern West Bank governorate of Qalqiya. Arson—a form of economic warfare—is routinely used to terrorize Palestinians and destroy olive groves, vehicles, businesses, and homes.
The following video shows settlers entering an enclosed sheep pen and killing lambs. This attack occurred on the outskirts of the village of as–Samu in the South Hebron Hills. The slaughter of Palestinian animals—sheep, goats, dogs, chickens, donkeys—is an attack on the economic and food security of Palestinian families and communities. This incident, which was reported in Haaretz and The Times of Israel, was unusual only in that the brutality and depravity of the act was caught on a security camera.
The erasure of Palestinians from the West Bank is not a high-tech military operation. Fighter jets aren’t dropping 2,000 pound bombs. Drones aren’t shooting civilians. Not yet.
Instead, it’s being conducted by Jewish Israeli civilians with sticks and stones, matches and gasoline, Molotov cocktails, all-terrain vehicles, and military-issue assault rifles distributed to settlers—courtesy of the United States.
This diabolic project is coordinated on every level with Zionist Occupation Forces who protect the settlers. It includes the mass arrest and imprisonment of Palestinians who are starved, tortured, and raped. It takes the form of strategic and systematic terrorism: the destruction of olive groves, wheat fields, and greenhouses, the slaughter of animals, the poisoning of wells, the beating of old people while they harvest olives, the random shooting of Palestinians of all ages. Areas of the West Bank are being turned into piles of rubble not unlike Gaza as backhoes and bulldozers demolish houses, community centers, and infrastructure.
Israel is driving Palestinians from rural communities and villages at an ever increasing pace as it steals more and more land. This won’t stop until Israel is forced to stop.
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How, you might wonder, can Israel be stopped?
First and foremost: Stopping Israel will require stopping U.S. support for Israel. It is down to us—those of us who live in the U.S. The Zionist stranglehold on our government must be broken. We must demand that our representatives quit accepting money from the Israel lobbies. Whatever we can do we must do as a matter of dignity and to preserve our own humanity—however small the effort may seem.
We do not have to—and we must not—remain passive spectators to the crimes of the Israel-U.S. empire.
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