Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Silence on Gaza Violence Troubling

Above the Palestinian open-air market in the West Bank city of Hebron, there is a metal grate ceiling. The shop owners constructed this fence-like roof to protect their wares and customers from the shoebox-sized rocks and assorted debris hurled down by Israeli settlers occupying the second and third floors of buildings from which Palestinian families had been evicted since the mid-1990s. The settlers throwing these objects are indicative of the stiff animosity between the Palestinians and Jews in Hebron.

As the burial site of Abraham, Hebron is a holy city to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Since 1967, it has been the focal point of Israel’s settlement operations. Tensions in Hebron have simmered and periodically erupted for decades as numerous acts of violence and mass murder by both sides have destroyed any form of peaceful coexistence between them.

A shop owner explained that every Saturday, protesters against the settlements march through the narrow market streets of the old city. Eggs, buckets of scalding oil, boiling water, and excrement hail down onto the unsuspecting people in the market from the settlers above. Stained and burned clothing from his shop bore evidence from the previous Saturday.

Just down the same street my guide – a Palestinian United Nations Development Programme worker – informed me that she could not escort me if I continued down the street. Evidently foreigners seen with Palestinians have been harassed and assaulted by the Israeli settlers.

These incidents illustrate some of the eye-opening experiences I had during my summer volunteering in the West Bank for the American NGO Inspire Dreams, which was founded by recent Georgetown alumni.

I personally saw that the antagonism in Hebron developed at a young age: 12-year-old settler kids chased some friends and I out of the street screaming “Visa!? Visa!? No Arabs!” I was told by an Israel Defense Forces soldier on our way out that if we had continued down the street, we would have risked being shot at by settlers.

As disturbing as the settlers’ hostility and aggression is, perhaps as disturbing is that the acts and patterns of behavior that I witnessed in Hebron and elsewhere in the West Bank go largely unnoticed in U.S. media. On the surface this omission is surprising, considering the relatively high level of attention paid to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But while the broader issue of Jewish settlements is widely covered in the United States and Western media in terms of their negative impact on the peace process, the personal relations between the settlers and Palestinians that I witnessed are somewhat overlooked.

Imagine if the realities of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories – the persecutions and dehumanizing behavior visited daily upon Palestinian civilians and foreigners alike – were broadcast on the evening news.

News outlets in the Arab countries cover events in the West Bank and Gaza in much greater depth than in the United States. This may help explain President Obama’s plummeting approval ratings in the Arab world. According to the recent Zogby International and Brookings Institution opinion poll spanning seven Arab countries, 61 percent of those polled named U.S. policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict as the single issue in which Obama had most disappointed them.

Obama’s stance toward settlements has softened since taking office. He has accepted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “temporary, partial freeze” on settlements, which are, after all, illegal under international law. Maybe if Americans knew the full story of the settlers’ treatment of their Palestinian neighbors they would call for a stronger policy against settlements from the Obama administration.

It is not only the right, but also the duty, of all Americans to be knowledgeable about events around the world, especially in regions in which we are highly invested. The cruel treatment of Palestinians perpetrated by Israeli settlers in the West Bank should be paid proper attention in U.S. media.

We must ask ourselves: Are the American people – or their government – well served by the silence surrounding the abusive treatment of the Palestinians, and the steady appropriation of their land by Israeli settlers?
 

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