I totally agree that Israel has a right to defend its existence and its people and that all members of Hamas should be eliminated because of their war crimes, like their wanton killing of 1,200 innocent Israelis and their savage, sexual assaults on and tortures of live bodies.
In his commentary, “A reality,” Andy Leader claims “Israel’s people have been at war with their Palestinian cousins, formerly known as Philistines, since biblical times ….” The ancient Philistines were a people who lived on the Mediterranean coast near southern Israel today. They came to that area in two waves of migration, both from the Aegean area, around 2000 BCE and in the 12th century BCE. Around 600 BCE, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked the Philistines and killed most of them. By the fifth century BCE, Alexander the Great eliminated what was left of them. Therefore, Philistines cannot be today’s Palestinians.
After the Jewish-Roman wars of the first and second centuries CE, the Romans used the term “Syria Palaestina” for the areas known as Judea and Samaria. This phrase eventually evolved into the “Palestine” of modern times. The people living there, mostly Muslim and Christian Arabs, called themselves Palestinians.
In June 1967, the Six-Day War erupted between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Israel won decisively and captured the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. In November 1967, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 242 that required “the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in recent conflict;” “the termination of all. … states of belligerency and … acknowledgment of the sovereignty … of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries;” and “a just settlement of the refugee problem.” Although Israel did return control of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1979, it still occupies the other three regions. Consequently, Israel is still in defiance of Resolution 242, creating major tensions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Leading up to the rebirth of Israel in 1948, more than 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by Israeli militias, an additional 300,000 Palestinians were displaced by the Six-Day War, and more than 80% of Palestinians living in Gaza today have been displaced by the current war.
In 1967, Israel established two settlements in the West Bank in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. By 2017, Israel had established 237 settlements to house about 580,000 settlers by expropriating thousands of acres of Palestinian land. While Israel used its civil law to protect the settlers and their “rights,” it did not extend those rights to Palestinians living there. Instead, they were, and are, subjected to Israeli military law. While Israel provides settlers with residential buildings and services, it denies the Palestinians from having these “amenities.” The Israelis make it nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank. In other words, the Israeli government has forced thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes or build unauthorized homes which are then bulldozed. The law of occupation, however, prohibits destruction of property except for military necessary. The Israeli justification? The Palestinians had been away from there for too long. Jewish settlers have the audacity and cruelty to attack Palestinians on what was once Palestinian land. Israel has also arbitrarily excluded hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from its population registry resulting in their inability to live in, and travel from, the West Bank and Gaza. Gaza’s GPD is now significantly lower than what it was in 1994. About 70% of Gaza’s people rely on humanitarian assistance from several countries and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still inhabit squalid refugee camps.
Mr. Leader believes “Israel is known for going out of its way to minimize such tragedies” like the killing of Palestinian civilians and the destruction of residential buildings in Gaza. I have to ask him whether the deaths of more than 18,000 civilians, 70% of whom are women and children, by the military actions of the Israel Defense Force is “minimizing such tragedies.” The IDF told Palestinians living in northern Gaza to move to southern Gaza where they would be “safe.” Now, the IDF is bombing many sites in southern Gaza. Where are they supposed to go to be safe? It is a fact that the IDF is deliberately targeting residential buildings, hospitals and other infrastructure, thereby committing war crimes. It is totally irrelevant that Hamas occupied the basements of those buildings. Why didn’t the IDF initially go through the tunnels made by Hamas and fight them there?
Gaza, about the size of Detroit, is populated by about 2.3 million people. Detroit has 620,000 people. The IDF has not allowed much water, fuel, food and medicine into Gaza in violation of the international humanitarian law prohibition against collective punishment. Israeli authorities have allowed extremely unsanitary conditions to exist in Gaza because trash and garbage cannot be removed from its streets safely. Diseases like cholera have broken out there. As documented by the World Health Organization, more than 250 attacks on Palestinians hospitals by the IDF have occurred in Gaza and the West Bank. Twenty-two of Gaza’s hospitals are no longer functioning. Hospital corridors are crammed with the injured, sick and dying while morgues are overflowing. Surgery without anesthetic is common. According to WHO, the entire health system in Gaza is collapsing. While some supplies have been allowed into Gaza recently, all groups helping the Palestinian civilians survive agree it is not nearly enough. Furthermore, the U.S. keeps voting against U.N. Security Council proposals for a ceasefire in Gaza. This has all exacerbated the dire humanitarian predicament there.
A report written by Human Rights Watch titled “Israel: White Phosphorus Used in Gaza, Lebanon” in 2023, provides compelling evidence that artillery projectiles containing white phosphorus were used by Israel in the al-Mina area in Gaza City on Oct. 11, 2023. Dense white smoke and a garlic smell were detected, characteristics of white phosphorus. “Upon contact, this chemical can burn people, thermally and chemically, down to the bone as it is highly soluble in fat and therefore in human flesh.” It can “exacerbate wounds even after treatment and can enter the bloodstream and cause multiple organ failure.” “Attacks using air-delivered incendiary weapons in civilian areas are prohibited under Protocol III on Conventional Weapons.”
Starting in 1946, the U.S. has given more than $325 billion to Israel. Of the $3.3 billion of U.S. foreign assistance to Israel in 2022, only about $8.8 million went to the country’s economy while the rest, about 99.7%, went to the Israeli military. It is clear to me that Israel has committed many war crimes perpetrated by Prime Minister Netanyahu and the IDF and is a terrorist state. If I were president of the U.S. or a member of Congress, I wouldn’t give Israel any more money until Palestinian civilians are protected and given their human rights and until no more civilian buildings are destroyed. By giving these billions of dollars annually to a country perpetrating these crimes, the U.S. government has implicated itself in them.
John Klimenok Jr. lives in Plainfield.
