Open letter from Hebron
Photograph: Jeish / ISM Palestine
The Old City of Hebron used to be a bustling market place, full of stalls selling fruit, meat and other sundries. Today, it stands as a shadow of its former self. When I walked down the main road this morning, the shops were all boarded up, and the only signs of life were the bored-looking soldiers standing guard at the military checkpoints. I am currently serving as a human rights monitor for the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Israel and Palestine (EAPPI) in the West Bank, which is part of Palestine and is under the occupation of the Israeli military.
Many of you will have been watching with horror the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza over the last two weeks. According to the latest UN figures, over 1,400 people have been killed since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge. Most of those killed have been civilians, including 252 children, whilst over 4,000 people have been injured. Gaza is part of occupied Palestine and is home to 1.8 million Palestinians – but just 40km away lies Hebron, in the other (geographically separate) part of occupied Palestine.
The West Bank has been occupied by Israel since 1967. This small portion of land that runs alongside the banks of the River Jordan is home to 2.5 million Palestinians and 500,000 Israelis. It is a volatile place, but, for the most part, life goes on – albeit with the possibility of violence never too far away. There are also innumerable challenges for Palestinians livings in the West Bank: they are often denied their basic human rights. That is why I am here – to observe, monitor and report on the human rights violations that are commonplace in the occupied Palestinian territories.
I am working in Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank. The heart of the city is home to around 30,000 Palestinians and around 800 Israeli settlers – and relationships between the two communities are perhaps more strained here than anywhere else – Hebron is of great religious significance to both Israelis and Palestinians because it is home to the Ibrahimi Mosque (also known as the ‘Cave of the Patriarchs’) which is the fourth holiest site for Muslims and the second holiest for Jews. This makes it flashpoint for
intercommunity violence.
My job as a human rights monitor is varied. We get up very early in the morning and walk alongside Palestinian children on their way to school. We do this because they often face violence and intimidation from Israeli settlers and the Israeli army. By being present, we hope to reduce the likelihood of violence, and also to document any incidents that do occur. The information we collect is used for advocacy purposes: the information is passed to NGOs (Israeli, Palestinian and international) and foreign governments.
There are often violent clashes in Hebron – these usually follow prayers on a Friday, but recently, in light of the tension in Gaza, they have been breaking out more frequently. It’s hard to imagine the things I see on a daily basis taking place on Mare Street or the Kingsland Road. When I return to Hackney later in the year, I know I’ll be grateful for the fact that my daily cycle to Old Street from Clapton will be free of military checkpoints.
Being here in Palestine, I have also realised how powerful individuals can be in countries like the UK. We can all do something about what is happening here. It is important that human rights monitors are here on the ground, but it is perhaps more important that the information we collect is used back home to inform the public, the media and government about what is happening.
Venables is interesting not for what he says but what he and his ilk like to ‘conveniently’ leave out! Leaving aside the virulent anti-Israel policies of the EAPPI, for whom he is working, Hebron used to have a large Jewish quarter till 1929, going back 4000 years. Then 67 Jews (mostly women and children and students) were massacred in a violent Arab Pogrom (there was also one in Safed at the same time) and the remaining 435 Jews had to be escorted away to Jerusalem by the British police, never to return (remind you of anything? Syria, Iraq, Arabs butchering Arabs and various minorities today?); ethnic cleansing, Palestinian style. I use the words carefully as the Jews had lived in Hebron since the time of Abraham, until the Arabs colonised and stole it in the 7th century.
In 1967, following Israel’s defensive war against attempted extinction by the Arabs (6 Day War), the children of the survivors and relatives of victims of the Pogrom returned with others and re-setted in the old Jewish quarter which the Pals had demolished and left as a ruin like the Warsaw Ghetto. I would say that such a return was a liberation of Jewish land and poetic justice, no? Any enmity those Jews feel now is due to the horrific murders they endured on several occasions SINCE 1967 by local Arabs who wanted them OUT again. Those days are over; we live where we wish in Israel, not least in a City that holds one of Judaism’s most holy sites.
And how come Islam claims it as its 4th Holiest site? It was a Jewish City and the Arabs merely claim the Jewish patriarchs/matriarchs buried there to cement a political colonisation of Jewish land, 3000 years after the Jews lived there – quite unbelievable and you lot swallow it!!!
The military checkpoints that Venables winges about are there to protect Jews from screaming mobs of Pals with intent to murder – for which they have a long track record, but was stopped after protection for the Jews was stepped up 20 odd years ago. Thank God for the IDF. If Venabes wants to monitor human rights, he should try to find out who murdered the three Jewish teenagers in July and started the war in Gaza, more or less. Or maybe he can go to Sderot and Ashkelon and live in an air raid shelter for a few weeks and interview traumatised Jewish kids who think an air raid shelter is their bedroom for the last 8 years. One-sided anti-Semitsm , wrapped in peaceful sounding words, would be putting it mildly about him and his fellow Jew haters. Wolves in sheep’s clothing!
It is now emerging that Hamas have been filmed using hospitals and schools as shields and that at least 800 of the 1900 dead in Gaza are Hamas terrorist men. So the Israelis are being proved correct and Hamas stand accused of war crimes. It also emerges that 160 Pal kids were killed building the tunnels into Israel over the last 5 years (Journal of Palestine Studies – anti-Israel but this time telling the truth about Hamas) – and that Hamas POWs revealed under questioning that the tunnels were to be used this coming Rosh Hashana (Sept 2014) in a spectacular invasion by up to1000 terrorists to massacre as many Israelis as possible in a suicidal attack. We know that more israeli dead would make you lot feel better but……
Venables should transfer to Iraq and Syria and see where the REAL genocide is – Arabs killing each other and anyone else they do not like on a scale which makes Gaza look like a skirmish. Wonder why his attention is on Jews? What do you think??
@Martin Sugarman
Zzzzz. Do put a sock in it!
I guess killing innocent kids is okay for you or killing kids ffs?!
I see how you’ve strategically avoided anything about Israel and have conveniently blamed Arabs or Muslims in general.
The World has woken up to Israel’s bullying tactics and it genocide.
You can say and do what you want but the reality is Israel is a occupying state that has terrorised Gaza and the Palestinians for decades.
You seem to forget there’s a lot of Anti-Islamic feel too, so this whole emotional crap about anti-Semitism doesn’t wash any longer.
The Zionist PR machine isn’t working no more, deal with it!
Dresdan – aside from the fact that your post is typically abusive – that’s what anti-Semites resort to when they do not have an argument; and the fact you do not answer ONE of my points, I can only remind you that;
1.The Jews are the indigenous inhabitants of the land from the River to the Sea – and no further – but are willing to share with the Arab, Imperialist , Colonialist thieves who stole it, because we are a humane and just people – SO LONG as the Pals sign up for a just and permanent peace.
2. The Pals make such outrageous demands from Israel that Israel can never accept (eg all Pals to return to Israel to the 5th generation when the UN definition of a refugee is he/she and the children – no further); they ignore the 1 million Jews expelled from Arab lands – where we lived for 1500 years BEFORE Islam – who now mostly live about 4 million plus in Israel – so there has been a fair exchange of population as in Europe after WW2 where millions were also displaced, and India 1948; they want East Jerusalem when a. Jerusalem was built by the Jews (King David in 1000 BCE approx); the Jews of Yemen are being expelled as we speak and going to Israel – a community in Yemen since the time of King Solomon about 900 BCE;Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority since 1840; the Jewish quarter was raised to the ground like the Warsaw Ghetto by the Nazi Pals 1948-67 when they illegally occupied it after ethnically cleansing the Jews after 3000 years of life there.
Your Hamas friends in Gaza are a Fascist Islamist group who terrorise the Gazans and where elections have not been held since 2005 and Israel’s evacuation; they did vote them in and now they have got what they maybe did not want, like the Germans voted in the Nazis. Hamas are allied to ISIS who are going about butchering Christians, Yazidis AND any Moslems they do not like.
Any civilians killed tragically in Gaza have been killed inadvertently as explained above; Israelis all deeply regret this. But half the dead are military age men and that concurs with what Israeli intelligence says – they targeted terrorist men, but who used their kids as human shields. And you have nothing to say about this? Hang your head in shame and all those who agree with you.
None of this has to do with Islamophobia; most people are reasonable; many Moslems have come out and condemned Hamas and other such groups. Good for them. And your final remark about Zionist PR – so you think this all a matter or PR? Most intelligent people would say it is a matter of fact, not how you spin it. Wake up, and if you need some more history lessons, just get back to me.
Dear Martin,
You are wasting your time trying to educate the uneducated -Dresdan? Have you thought of the connotation of his name?
The only group of people Dresdan and others like him are interested in are the Pals. Why because of Israel is involved. Their hatred for Jews is such, that siding for Pals even when the truth is staring them in the face, is a wonderful way to mask that hatred, they are standing up for an oppressed people.
Yes they are oppressed, but by the people they voted in. They can vote them out? Why isn’t this happening? This is a democratic way of doing things?
I was in Israel when the rockets were flying over, if the Israelis did not have the Iron Dome, thousands of Israelis would have been killed. Women and children amongst them.
Dresdan would you and your friends be speaking up for the innocent Israeli/Jewish children. I doubt it.
I can now relate to how people here in the UK felt during WW2, constantly running to air raid shelters and hearing sirens morning, noon and night. Their world turn upside down, but then Dresdan, this would not matter to you, as this time it was Jews who were running and what does their life matter?
Why doesn’t Dresdan and his friends ask their Pals/Hamas friends, why, when Israel was letting cement through to build schools, hospitals and homes for their people, they took the cement and built tunnels. Last year when the EU is giving 2.6 billion to the area, they took the money and bought rockets to kill Israelis?
Why are they not asking the EU and other Governments, to ask Hamas to account for the money? There are people in the UK who need the money, for hospitals, schools and homes.
Hamas should clearly be made to give the money back, as they did not use it for what it was intended for, but used the money for purchasing weapons.
Hamas built the tunnels enter Israel, like the rats they are. To come out of their holes and murder innocent Jews, take pot shots at them, similar to when Jews were in concentration camps, and Nazis used to shoot them for sport.
Dresdan you and your friends, should accept the fact that those they are now gone. Jews have the State of Israel and it is a thriving democracy the only one in the area, as the news is now showing the world. It has a right to exist, much to the dismay of you peddlers of hate.
Israel did not cause this encounter, I was there when it started, endless rockets in populated cities, let’s see if any Government in the West would accept this, or any people.
Hamas put their rocket launchers in built up areas, school and hospitals. Hamas and their friends who are now running rampant in the area, the people you take pride in defending have no respect for human life or humanity.
The words Human Rights have no translation in their language, no meaning.
However, Martin what you and I have written will not make a blind bit of difference to Dresdan and his friends, because they are driven by their hatred of Jews and being anti Israel is a wonderful way of expressing it, with fear of sanction.
I hope one of two fair minded people will read it and start asking the wonderful Hackney North MP to question where all the money being poured into Gaza is actually going, where is the audit trail?
I agree with the above comment Hamas has totally
disregarded the sanctity of life.Their attitude towards
the citizens of Gaza has been very upsetting.they have let down the people who voted for them.Hamas
has deliberately positioned civilians in the midst of danger unprotected .Why? Hamas has to take responsibility for their decisions and their actions.Hamas has to behave in a responsible way and protect its citizens not use them as “fodder” .
Sugarman, the Jews are not the original inhabitants of what we now call Palestine. The Canaanites lived there two thousand years before anyone who became called Jews. Or, are you denying the exodus from Egypt and ” Passover? ” Among several other small civilizations.
Next point. Check points. These are of character with any military state that is in occupation of a defiant occupied people. The right to resist occupation is covered in international law and by the UN. The right for the occupier to “Defend Themselves” is not.
You refuse to admit that all of Palestine is occupied by illegal migrants from Europe. That in fact this conflict started with the day in 1897 that Zionist Rabbis step foot on Palestine to check out the region for a future Jewish Homeland as requested by the Zionist movement lead by Herzl. Simple report stated, ” The bride is beautiful, but, married to another man.”
Your Nazai claims are well stated in history with their associations with Jewish terrorists in Palestine ie. the Stern Gang and others. The Warsaw Ghetto, is comparable to Gaza and the living conditions Israel has placed upon those inhabitants. The Gaza uprising by it’s ” Democratically” elected government is with in the rights of any occupied and oppressed people.
Your skewed version of history and omissions leads me to believe you have indulged in to much Hasbara Kool Aid.
Be so advised the world is watching……And, Israel is an illegitimate entity in the purest sense of the word.
BTW, where is all the Billions of Tax dollars from the US to Israel going? More Subs, F-16, Tanks, Helicopters etc…..perhaps white phosphorus?
Rob I think you are totally deluded with your facts.However, the salient issue that a violent terrorist
group is oppressing the people of Gaza cannot be
overlooked .Israel evicted the Jewish settlers from
Gaza and Gaza has been autonomous since 2005 as
evidenced by them voting in Hamas .Their government has not protected them effectively and has intentionally put them in the direct line of fire.Hamas are not bothered about the people of Gaza
maybe some day they will wake up to this fact.
Sarah, Rob has just got his facts mixed, intentionally or by accident, leave it for others to judge.
As you say, Gaza has not been occupied since 2005, but Israel is still accused of occupation.
Perhaps the slogan “Free Gaza” Rob and his friends shout at rallies and marches, suggest not from Israel but Hamas, they are being misunderstood. These rallies/marches which is attended by their Hackney MP.
The one who is oh so silent with what is happening to Christians and Yazidis in Iraq? Wonder why? However I am sure she will be turning up at Agudas Israel’s AGM and Lubavitch when the election campaigning gets on its way. However, they are her Jewish constituents from whom she needs her votes, no connection to Israelis.
He did not answer the question, his friends in Gaza was given money (our tax payers money) to build schools, hospitals etc.,, they built tunnels and bought rockets.
So are we not allowed to ask for an explanation and/or the money back, clearly they did not need it for the purpose it was intended for.
The billons of dollars poured into Israel may be used for tanks, helicopters, white phosphorus? However it is in defence of its people from terrorists who wants to destroy them, it is a sovereign state and has a right to defend her people.
Nice try Rob at turning my question around, better luck next time.
Rob, the Gazans have one very simple way of showing the world they do not want what is happening, get rid of Hamas. They voted them in, vote them out, tell the world Hamas does not speak for them. Why don’t you suggest this to your friends, advocate for it, this the democratic way is it not?
Ask yourself, these tunnels took a long time to be built, they did not appear by magic, if the Gazans really wanted peace and a solution, why did they not speak out? “Not in our name” this is what people really wanting peace would do.
Reason being, the wish to destroy a nation, purely because they are Jews.
Perhaps you can give me the origins of the Palestinians, where did they originate from? I know do you?
Have a good life Rob, you are speaking up for a very good cause, should be proud of what you are advocating the destruction of one nation over another.
Instead of advocating for a way of bringing them together, I have no elusions of what drives you on.
Poor Rob – besides the fact that I can barely understand a lot of his illiterate rant, his arrogance in telling me the history of my own People is quite astonishing. A Chinese academic once told me that except for the Chinese themselves, the Jews are the oldest recognisable national group on the planet, still living in their own Land. Quite so. The descendants of the 12 Tribes have lived in Israel without a break for 4,500 years. Please do go and read it up for yourself. It is not my job to educate you.
If you can find me a Canaanite, Edomite, etc, please do introduce me – I would like to shake their hands; fact is they have long disappeared and the ‘Palestinians’ are a made up people, some of whom are families/clans who stole the Land of the Jews in the Arab invasion of 690 AD, but most are from recent immigrations in the Turkish period from Egypt, Arabia, Syria etc – all ‘parachuted in’ to steal the Land of the Jews; and most Christian Arabs in Israel are descended from converts from the Crusader period. Most in Gaza have the surname El Masri, a name form the clans of the Nile Delta; they are NOT Palestinians. During the British Mandate 1917-47, tens of thousands of Arabs from surroundings nations smuggled themselves over open borders into Israel and then claimed later they were the ‘majority’ . If you believe them, you will believe anything. Go and read.
Oh how I wish the Warsaw Ghetto had been like Gaza – swimming, fishing, hotels, farms, arms, shopping malls, hospitals, loads of imported free food. And free to kill Jews in Israel with war -crime rocket firing. The Jews of Warsaw were starved to death, unarmed, transported away , gassed, burnt, and guilty of NO crime except they were Jews. You truly are an idiot; hang your head in shame to make such an odious and anti-Semitic comparison.
Yes Hamas were democratically elected but in 2005; no elections since so this makes them illegitimate unelected fascists, and many Gazans have seen how they have brought misery upon them; let them vote again and we will see. But of course like the Nazis, they were voted in and the Gazans have the government they asked for! Now they must rise up and get rid of them no? Hamas used the democratic process to subvert democracy – like the Nazis; and we are in danger in the west of allowing Moslems to do the same in our civilization.
You speak of tax dollars to Israel? At least they use it to advance their society and citizens. But your Arab terrorist friends merely line their pockets and buy guns with THEIR tax dollars from Europe , USA, International Bank/IMF/UN – disgraceful – we should cut them off and let the Saudis pay them from their fabulous oil revenues which they steal from us via fabulous oil profits. Do some research.
Hames/PLO/Boko Haram/Al Quaeda/Hezbollah/ISIS – all the same and a real and present threat to western culture. The screw is beginning turn though,and soon the Empire will Strike Back. Europe and America and all democratic leaders are waking up. Good.
There is nothing to distinguish Hamas , ISIS , Hezbollah , Taliban , Boko Haram from the beasts who butchered drummer Lee Rigby on a London street . It is one and the same ideology . Islamist Jihad is the scourge of humanity and Israel is a front line combatting this nihilistic death cult . Instead of condemning Israel , we should be thankful that they are resisting the relentless march of this particular strand of barbarism .
Of course the Gazan people deserve better . They are prisoners of a death cult . Shame on all those directing their ire at Israel when they should be thankful to them . It will not stop with Israel .
How right you are the West is slowly waking up to these facts maybe the UN and humanitarian organisations ,will use their high profiles to be accurate and equitable in their statements and actions
to promote and facilitate peace ,instead of providing
a platform for antisemitism .Genocide was happening
Under their noses but they ignored it until it had to be
acknowledged.Where was an emergency council meeting then? I think all reasonable people want peace and to live a satisfying life .we all have to work for peace and the way to do it is to not be engulfed by a hidden agenda unjustified hate.
Incidentally , it really doesn’t behove well for Mr Venables and the Palestinian Solidarity campaign to repeatedly wheel out the ultra orthodox extreme Neturei Karta . They number a few hundred in London and while I understand their views relating to the eradication of Israel chime loudly with the BDS / PSC factions , they are really at the outer fringes of Judaism so much so that they have been effectively excommunicated by others within the ultra orthodox and even refused burial rights in Manchester.
I can understand the PSC need to bring on board those they believe to be ‘True Jews ‘ as it suits their agenda while at the same time deflecting charges of antisemitism .
Perhaps if the PSC weren’t in such desperate need , they would have done some proper due diligence on NK they might have discovered that NK are a far right sect who have no problem cosying up to far right extreme it’s such as the Hungarian Jobbik Party
http://www.jobbik.com/orthodox_rabbis_stand_jobbik_london
But then again who cares when the enemy of my enemy is my friend .
To Rob.
One wonder’s where you arrived at your figures for illegal European occupants of Palestine. 1) do you mean all the Palestinian territories including Israel?
the overall Jewish population of Israel today consists of 58% of Jews and their descendants who were either kicked out of the Middle-East & North-Africa or fled for their lives just before during and after the inception of ‘The State of Israel’ which was established in 1948 by the UN. Adding to that a further 20% of the population are Arab citizens of Israel both Muslim,& Christians leaving the rest is made up of Jews originating from all over the world including around a further 2% of non-Arab non Jewish nationalities from various parts of the world who claimed refugee status and are now citizens of Israel. What makes the Palestinian Arab refugees so special to all the other world refugees? My own family fled the terrible persecution meted out to us by our Arab countrymen for the only reason that we are Jews, they took their revenge on us simply because they couldn’t uproot and destroy the fledgling state of Israel in 1948. They implored the Arabs of the post British Mandate of Palestine to evacuate their homes on a temporary basis as they didn’t want them to get in the way of their battle against the small army of Jews, they promised the Arabs of Palestine, that not only would they be able to go back to their homes, they would also gain the homes of the dead or fleeing Jews. many of the Arab-muslim inhabitants entered Palestine illegally during the late 1920s. 30s. and 40s.from Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Libya, Iraq and Saudia-Arabia for a better life, better medical care and work, all this was possible by the effort and hard work put into making Palestine a better place to live by the Jews. By looking at Many Palestinian names you can easily identify from which Arab countries they originated from, Al-Musri (Egyptian) Al-Baghdadi (Iraq) Al- Yamani (Yemen) Al-Saudi (Saudi-Arabia) Palestinians have nothing whatsoever to do with the Philistines, The Philistines were an Aegean seafaring People who occupied the coastal plain of part of Israel, they originated from the island of Crete, and were conquered by the Hebrews and then disappeared some 600 years before Rome appeared on the scene. Neither are the palestins Canaanites. Palestinian Arabs were never rulers of this land, They never had a King, they never had their own currency etc. until 1967 they never identified themselves as Palestinians, the Jews who lived under the British rule were Palestinian Jews, they had their own newspapers, In Hebrew and English such as the Palestine Post, The Palestine Orchestra, etc. etc. In 1967 the PLO thought it political expedient to state that the Arab refugees were a Palestinian ethnic Group, which they are distinctly not. The Arab States have deliberately used the Palestinians as tools for the past 66 years,
Why did they not resettle them all over the Arab world, they have 22 Arab states, the Jews just have One. As Israel took in all her brothers from the Arab world, the Arabs should have followed suit.
However they didn’t, they just allowed them to fester as open sores for political reasons, which was used to ramp up anger by the Arab world against Israel and world Jewry, so as to take their peoples mind’s off their own inabilities to run their countries successfully, whereby just like under Nazi Germany, who blamed all their ill luck on the Jews, the Arab world could do the same. We the Jews of the Arab lands owned land five times the size of Israel today,
To date nobody wants to know about our plight, a Parallel plight of the Jews of the Arab speaking world, we outnumbered the Palestinian Refugees by almost two to one, however this crime committed against us by the Arabs who stole everything from us never gets a hearing at the United Nations, which is made up of over 80% of countries hostile to both Israel and the ,Jewish people. You are also one of these people.
Well written Samir , but it would be a useful exercise to educate institutions such as the UN and other organisations ,so that an authentic narrative pervades
the debate.