Oh No! Rubio Is Concerned About Settler Violence. Now What?
Mr. Rubio, you are 'concerned' about violence that you are funding and arming. If you were truly concerned, you would find a way to put an end to to it with sanctions. But you and all your predecessors have made do with long years of hollow, made-in-America concern, while Palestinians pay in blood
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is concerned about settler violence. And according to him, he thinks the Israeli government is also concerned about it. If that's the quality of the intelligence available to you, Mr. Secretary, then I too am concerned. Very concerned. Either you know nothing about Israel or you're being disingenuous, it's not clear which is worse.
The Israeli government is not concerned about the settler violence, it's behind it. It wants this violence because it serves its purposes, and it encourages the army to stoke it. You should know, Mr. Secretary, that in the eyes of the Israeli government, and of many Israelis, the criminals of the settlements are the heroes of our time. Of course they are doing nothing to stop them.
And you, Mr. Rubio, if you were truly concerned you would find a way to put an end to this violence. One painful sanction, and no more violence. But you and all your predecessors made do with being concerned – long years of hollow, made-in-America concern. Therefore, you are also behind this violence, funding and arming it.
Instead of relying on the reports of your crackpot ambassador – it isn't clear how he can serve under you while being convinced that Israel should stretch from the Euphrates to the Nile, perhaps you share his delusions? – watch Jeremy Diamond's exemplary report on CNN Friday.
There you will see how concerned the Israeli government is. There you will see Israeli soldiers behaving like storm troopers, even toward foreign journalists. Soldiers of the Jewish jihad with a "Messiah" patch on their uniforms. All of Judea and Samaria belongs to the Jews," one explains gleefully as his fellow soldiers threaten with their guns and detain Diamond's crew. The soldiers admit that what they are doing to the Palestinians is personal revenge for the death of Yehuda Sherman, a settler from a violent outpost, under entirely unclear circumstances.
These soldiers have commanders and these commanders have a government, and they all stand behind the pogroms. Their commander, Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, behaves as if his job is to protect the rioters. He has not court-martialed a single soldier. He, they and many of his officers are "from the same village," in the words of Naomi Shemer's hit song from 1969, with the same apartheid-portending kippa. And not by chance.
The concerned government took care to increase the number of religious Zionists serving in the IDF Central Command and the Civil Administration. When his soldiers steal flocks of sheep from wretched peasants, the general yawns. When his soldiers clear areas to enable settlers to murder peasants with impunity, Bluth is bored. Did you know, Mr. Secretary, that the Border Policemen who killed a family in their car won't even be questioned? Is this how you think a concerned government looks?
Who is concerned? Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, heads of the crime family known as the settlers? We are talking about an Israeli Ku Klux Klan, Mr. Rubio, supported by the government and the army against a backdrop of sickening public apathy. Israelis care only about the reputational damage this violence causes to their state, as if that is the main thing. Look at the battered face of Abdullah Daraghmeh, 75, in the hospital groaning in pain from the beatings of the settlers, in Diamond's report. Only the KKK could beat a helpless old man like this, almost to death.
This violence has a purpose: to expel the Palestinians from their land. As simple as that. The American inaction constitutes complicity in the crime. Have you heard about the occupation? Tell your president about it, in his language. Ask him if he knows "Who are those guys?" and explain to him that the settlers are motherf---ers and the occupation is a "big problem" that only the United States can fix. If you explain it to him like this, maybe he'll understand.
He can solve this problem, easy peasy. Without "boots on the ground," without B-2 bombers – just pressure and sanctions, as the U.S. knows how to do. And then you and your president will be surprised at how quickly this rotten enterprise will collapse. Only then will we have a new Middle East, and perhaps even a total victory.