The violence in Gaza and Israel is bringing horrifying new levels of human suffering to Israelis and Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Both sides have committed heinous violations of international law, and all attacks on civilians must be condemned. But if we\u2019re serious about preventing such horrors in the future, we have to go beyond condemnation.<\/p>\n
A lesson we ignore at our peril is that oppression undermines not only the rights, dignity and lives of the oppressed but the security of the oppressors. The apartheid system that\u2019s been suffocating Palestinians for so long is now also undermining the safety of ordinary Israeli civilians. They\u2019ve become victims of the same system.<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t understand how we got here \u2014 or how to end the crisis \u2014 until we grapple with the immensity of Palestinian suffering. For us in the United States, it means confronting the role our government and tax dollars play in enabling that oppression to continue.<\/p>\n
Explosions of violence never just happen. Since 2007, Gazans have lived under siege, prohibited from leaving their open-air prison by a high-security militarized wall and platoons of Israeli soldiers.<\/p>\n
Well before the latest escalation, the transit of most goods was banned. Gazans couldn\u2019t get construction materials to repair the apartment blocks, power plants, water treatment facilities, hospitals, schools, mosques and churches that Israel bombed repeatedly \u2014 in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2018 and 2021.<\/p>\n
Emergency medical permits were often denied, leaving many Gazans to die without care.<\/p>\n
Electricity was already limited. A 72-year-old woman in Gaza told a reporter last January, \u201cIt is hard to imagine, but we used to experience 24 hours of electricity each day in Gaza; now we are lucky if we get six.\u201d<\/p>\n
Water was already unavailable except for expensive purchases from Israeli water companies. And food has long been scarce \u2014 by the age of 2, 20% of Gaza\u2019s children are already stunted.<\/p>\n
Now, that long-running siege is much worse.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called for a \u201ctotal siege\u201d of Gaza. \u201cNo electricity, no food, no water, no gas \u2014 it\u2019s all closed,\u201d he said. For Gaza\u2019s already impoverished and malnourished population, that\u2019s not just collective punishment \u2014 it\u2019s genocide.<\/p>\n
Hospitals will be unable to treat patients. Families will starve or die of thirst.<\/p>\n
Gallant is transforming an existing long-term risk of early death into an immediate, lethal threat. It\u2019s a policy consciously and specifically designed to kill innocent children, babies, elders \u2014 everyone.<\/p>\n
Human rights experts, U.N. officials, faith leaders and others have warned for years that the systemic oppression rights groups now identify as apartheid would one day be too much to stand. Resistance would be inevitable.<\/p>\n
For decades, Palestinian resistance has taken overwhelmingly non-violent forms. But the world didn\u2019t hear \u2014 or if it heard, it didn\u2019t answer. When the United Nations warned in 2012 and 2015 that by 2020 Gaza would be \u201cunlivable\u201d without a \u201cherculean effort\u201d by the international community, the world didn\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n
This time, the resistance took a violent form, including Hamas targeting civilians in horrifying and illegal ways. Those illegitimate acts must be condemned. But if we\u2019re serious about preventing violence \u2014 all violence \u2014 we need to remember they didn\u2019t come out of nowhere.<\/p>\n
We need to change the conditions from which this brutality sprang.<\/p>\n
Sending more bombs, warplanes, guns and bullets won\u2019t solve the problem. We\u2019ve been providing Israel billions of tax dollars \u2014 supplying 20% of Israel\u2019s entire military budget \u2014 for years. And we\u2019ve done it without putting any conditions on an Israeli military that\u2019s enforced a brutal siege and is indiscriminately bombing Gaza today.<\/p>\n
That must end. We also need to stop protecting Israel from being held accountable in the International Criminal Court, and we need to stop vetoing virtually every U.N. resolution criticizing Israeli violations of human rights.<\/p>\n
None of those things makes any attacks on civilians legal or morally acceptable. And Hamas\u2019 cruelty must not be used to justify more brutality against millions of innocent Gazans, half under 19 who have lived through at least five Israeli wars already.<\/p>\n
We need an immediate ceasefire right now. And we need to hold our own government accountable \u2014 including stopping Washington\u2019s enabling of Israel\u2019s oppression of Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Palestinians have been paying the price for this apartheid system for generations. In the recent attacks, innocent Israelis paid a massive price for that system. It\u2019s time to end it.<\/p>\n
____<\/p>\n
ABOUT THE WRITER<\/p>\n
Phyllis Bennis is a Middle East expert at the Institute for Policy Studies and serves as an international adviser for Jewish Voice for Peace. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
(This essay is available to Tribune News Service subscribers. TNS did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of TNS or its editors.)<\/p>\n
\u00a92023 Tribune Content Agency, LLC<\/p>\n
KeyWords:: f14a95bb-839b-4350-be7c-f7bafdbb520a
\nf14a95bb 839b 4350 be7c f7bafdbb520a
\nBC-ISRAEL-HAMAS-COUNTERPOINT:MCT
\nBC ISRAEL HAMAS COUNTERPOINT MCT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The violence in Gaza and Israel is bringing horrifying new levels of human suffering to Israelis and Palestinians. Both sides have committed heinous violations of international law, and all attacks on civilians must be condemned. But if we\u2019re serious about preventing such horrors in the future, we have to go beyond condemnation. A lesson we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31022,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31021\/revisions\/31022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}