Israel shares many similarities with the United States; it is, for example, the Middle East's "only democracy." But beyond its status as an "outpost of Western values," Israel shares something more ignoble with America; something that, given the more than $5 billion the U.S. sends Israel annually, should give all Americans pause: the racist vigilantism of the Old South.
October and November are especially important months in Palestine: it is then that the olive harvest takes place. Beyond its cultural significance, the harvest plays a crucial role in the Palestinian economy, constituting the livelihood of many.
But this year more than ever, Israeli settlers, intent on colonizing the land they believe God promised them, have made the harvest treacherous and sometimes impossible for Palestinian farmers. While American and Israeli politicians talk vaguely of limited peace talks, settlers have taken matters into their own hands with the eager support of the Israeli government and, through decades of subsidies, U.S. taxpayers as well.
Settler violence begins with preventing Palestinian farmers from harvesting their olive groves. Relying on brute force, one machine gun wielding settler advised a Palestinian farmer attempting to harvest his olives to, "Leave it now. This is ours." Another settler, who acknowledged routinely shooting over the heads of farmers, said to the Baltimore Sun, "If the Palestinians don't want this price, they should start behaving."
Israel strongly supports such vigilantism. When Mohammed Abdel Fatah, a West Bank farmer, tried to harvest his olive groves, an Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldier advised him, according to the Baltimore Sun, "Go, leave, before the settlers come and kill you." A story in the Palestine Monitor relates another soldier dispensed similar counsel to a separate group of Palestinian farmers: "I will leave now and then there will be no-one to defend you against the settlers. You have to leave the area."
In at least one instance, settler violence was so severe that it resulted in the complete exodus from a Palestinian village in the West Bank, Hirbat Yanun. In attacks reminiscent of those the Ku Klux Klan carried out against black Americans, the Associated Press reports "groups of masked Jewish settlers have charged into [Hirbat Yanun], coming at night with dogs and horses, stealing sheep, hurling stones through windows and beating the men with fists and rifle butts."
When asked why it had not reigned in the settlers, an IDF spokesperson explained that the army was there to protect Israelis from Palestinian "militants." One could question who is more militant -- the settler who leaves his own nation to colonize another's, or the Palestinian whose village is raided by masked, rifle-wielding vigilantes. One could also ask why the IDF had not bulldozed settler homes or used F-16s in "retaliation." After all, such is the normal response for Palestinian attacks against Israelis.
Instead, Israel indicated what it thought constituted an appropriate response to settler attacks by issuing on Oct. 22nd an order forbidding Palestinian farmers from harvesting their olives. The IDF explained with no apparent sense of irony that it did not have the resources to keep farmers safe from settler attack.
None of this is new; Israel has long supported the violence of its colonists. Settlers realize that in the unlikely event that they are brought to trial for attacking Palestinians, they will be dealt with leniently. In 1996, Israeli settler Nahum Kurman bludgeoned to death with the butt of his pistol Hilmi Shousha, a 10-year old Palestinian boy, as the latter lay incapacitated on the ground. In order to set a precedent, a Jerusalem court sentenced Kurman to six months of community service.
What can explain such policies? Rabbi Avi Ronsky of a yeshiva in Itamar explains in the New York Times that, "we're in a war now, and they brought this on themselves." Given that the intifada is a response to a three and a half decade old military occupation, this is analogous to saying that native and black Americans "brought it on themselves" when they were killed for demanding the same rights their oppressors enjoyed.
Rabbi Ronsky's statement -- and his view of Palestinians as rightfully subordinate to Jews--is perfectly in line with official Israeli policy. Israel's chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon, describes Palestinians as a "cancer" in need of being subjected to "chemotherapy" and perhaps even "amputation." For good measure, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon describes Ya'alon's assessment as "true and correct."
But because American audiences finance its colonization effort, they must receive a more palatable image of Israel. In a recent visit to the White House, Sharon explained to his investors that "we have been facing terror for over 120 years."
This is profound, as it is Zionism that since its inception has been built on the dispossession of Palestine's native population. Chaim Weizman, Israel's first president, once noted that, "there are a few hundred thousand negroes [in Palestine], but that is a matter of no significance." Further reflecting the sort of "Western values" of which Israel is an outpost, Theodore Herzl argued that "both the expropriation and the removal of the poor [Palestinian Arabs] must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
Settler violence is just one part of a continuing effort by Israel to create a fait accompli -- amass a large enough presence on the West Bank, and an independent Palestinian state will never be possible. There is still time to avoid the final dispossession of the Palestinian people; but if this is to be done, then Americans, as the underwriters of Israel's apartheid, must take a stand.
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