THIS RIGHT HERE is happening RIGHT NOW. This is Israel.

Last updated on: May 14, 2024 at 8:21 pm by Kathryn Shihadah

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THIS RIGHT HERE is happening RIGHT NOW. This is Israel. 2024-05-14T20:21:56-04:00 Kathryn Shihadah

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The US is shelling out a fortune to get humanitarian aid to Gaza and providing billions in military aid to Israel. And our leaders inform us that Israel and the US have “shared values.”

I don’t know about you, but these are NOT my values:

On Monday May 13 in the Palestinian West Bank, close to 100 Israeli settlers blocked a convoy of aid trucks that were headed for Gaza. They then dumped the contents of the trucks on the ground – food for the people of Gaza who are in the midst of a manmade famine – and damaged nine of the trucks.

by Save_Palestine via Pixabay

A single truck carries many tons of aid, and the people of Gaza are in desperate need.

According to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, the incident lasted for hours, in the presence of Israeli forces who did not intervene – at least not in a timely way.

Eventually, four people were arrested in the incident. Again, close to 100 people were present.

Thousands of aid trucks are reportedly waiting at the southern border of Gaza, where Israel has made it extremely difficult to pass, employing complicated and arbitrary procedures. Israel has on multiple occasions fired at individuals waiting for food aid (once killing over 100 at one time). The Israeli military has also attacked food aid convoys and those who accompanied them several times. Additionally, Israeli citizens have blocked a border crossing for weeks with no meaningful attempt by Israel to reopen it.

In mid-March, Israel promised to “flood” Gaza with aid, but has failed to do so.

Below are a few short clips of the incident:

US citizens: these are the Zionist colonists your tax dollars sustain while they destroy the aid you also pay for, all so their military can commit a genocide your government denies pic.twitter.com/PWVxtwEMoB

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 14, 2024

Israeli settlers are, by default, Jewish. Sometimes, as in the above tweet, settlers are called “colonists.” Some people consider this word controversial – not because it may or may not be true, but because some parties’ perspectives are historically inaccurate.

Nearly all Jews left Palestine nearly two millenia ago, and nearly all the Jews who have returned in the last century are part of a population that is displacing the indigenous people of the land (750,000 Palestinians were exiled at the founding of Israel).

Settler colonies require a continuous process of land annexation, whereby native inhabitants are removed and settlers are brought from elsewhere to occupy the land.

What distinguishes the settler-colonial state from other states that “merely” appropriate land, is that a settler-colonial state can only exist by claiming sovereignty over land that is has taken by force from its native inhabitants.

That is , the settler colony relies on eradication and erasure of native populations, including not just their bodies, but also their culture and history. This is precisely what Israel has been doing since before its founding in 1948.

Below is another clip in which a child is participating in the destruction of food from the aid convoy. His actions (and those of his proud parents) are contributing to the starvation of people in Gaza.

An Israeli settler films his family crushing food meant for starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip under their feet at an Israeli checkpoint south of occupied Hebron in the West Bank. pic.twitter.com/n8QrYDiR7q

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) May 14, 2024

It is worth mentioning that the government of Israel has illegally built around 280 settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are home to more than 700,000 illegal settlers – including the ones in these videos. Israeli settlements and settlers on Palestinian land are a violation of international law.

Settlers, moreover, have a history of violence against Palestinians, often with the assistance of Israeli military forces. Even the United States recognizes the illegality of Israeli settlements under international law.

Below is just one more example of recent Israeli violence against Palestinians, as they set fire to humanitarian aid trucks. All of the food and other aid in these trucks was lost.

This violence targets not Hamas, but the entire population of Gaza – it also targets the remaining Israeli hostages being kept in Gaza.

While Palestinian babies and children die of starvation, israelis set fire to the humanitarian aid trucks en route to #Gaza; nothing made it in pic.twitter.com/dV2QUy56AO

— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) May 14, 2024

These are the actions of the people that many Christians call “God’s chosen people,” taking food from starving children instead of feeding the hungry.

These are the actions of the government that self-identifies as the “Jewish State” (although 20% of its citizens are not Jewish) – a state that US taxpayers are spending about $20 million a day to support. A state whose “values” we supposedly share.

I can think of a lot of other things to do with $20 million a day, not the least of which is caring for the unhoused and veterans.

What would you do with $20 million a day?

As I recently wrote, I have for the time being washed my hands of Christians who refuse to engage with the issue of Palestine, and for now (at least until the end of this horrific war) I will be writing about the significance of what is going on “over there” from a global and historic perspective.

I’m here for anyone who cares to have an intelligent conversation about reality, instead of living in a silo of confirmation bias.

I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter. I write about the Palestine-Israel issue regularly, and other issues relevant to progressives or those considering becoming progressive. If you would like to comment on this post, please pop over to my Facebook page. All of my posts are there and open to constructive comment. I welcome your thoughts.

If you are interested, here are some of my earlier posts on the Palestine issue:

Posts about my Gazan family (in chronological order):