Innocence and Evil on the West Bank

By Jeremy Salt

It’s a horrible factor for a kid to die earlier than the guardian. On April 7 Rabbi Leo Dee misplaced not one however two of his daughters.  They have been shot whereas touring with their mom from the Jordan Valley to Tiberias.  

Driving in entrance of them in one other automotive, the rabbi solely knew one thing was mistaken when there was no response from their cell phones. The daughters, 15 and 20, died immediately.  At their funeral, Rabbi Dee requested ‘How will I inform your mom?’ Two days later, mendacity critically wounded in hospital, she died as nicely. Regardless of the circumstances, these have been catastrophic blows to a husband and father. 

Within the funeral orations, the anguished rabbi stated the killer was the product of a damaged tradition “that doesn’t differentiate between good and evil,” whereas he introduced up his youngsters to know the distinction. “The terrorist, who’s he? What did he obtain …. The place’s his future?” he requested.  

Rabbi Dee likened wrongdoing to taking cocaine:  the killer “took 20 pictures,  one for every bullet” apparently fired at his spouse’s automotive, “to be able to numb his soul”,  which is telling him ‘’you’re pure evil.’’  Those that justify the killing, on social media, are additionally numbing their souls with cocaine: “Earlier than lengthy you may justify to your self that any terrorist is justified to kill any harmless civilian.”

Rabbi Dee is an Englishman who introduced his household to reside within the West Financial institution settlement of Efrat in 2014.  Efrat is thought to be the ‘capital’ of the Etzion bloc, established in 1927, deserted in 1948 however re-established after the 1967 conflict and the occupation of the remainder of Palestine.  

Constructed on a number of hilltops between Al Quds and Al Khalil (Hebron) and connecting up with different settlements, Efrat has a inhabitants of about 12,000 settlers. It has no secular colleges, with voting patterns indicating robust help for spiritual and ‘far proper’ Jewish supremacist political events corresponding to Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Energy) led by Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich’s  Spiritual Zionist Get together.  Each have an extended historical past of anti-Palestinian racism and incitement to violence.  

Efrat has been frequently expanded over time. Because it has completed ever since 1948, the federal government has repeatedly taken Palestinian land by defining it as ‘state land’ earlier than handing it over to Jewish settlements.  In 2009, 1700 dunums (420 acres) have been taken from 4 Palestinian villages and given to Efrat. Additional enlargement of Efrat and the Etzion bloc adopted in 2011 with 1000 new properties for Efrat, Beitar Ilit, and Gilo ‘approved’ in March this 12 months. 

These developments, as strategically deliberate, convey settlement nearer to Bethlehem and reduce the town off from Freeway 60, which connects Bethlehem to Hebron and the villages of the southern West Financial institution. Slowly and intentionally, Bethlehem is being suffocated and Palestinian life on the West Financial institution additional fragmented. 

Rabbi Dee requested many questions when paying tribute to his spouse and youngsters however there are lots of inquiries to be requested of him, starting with why he introduced his spouse and youngsters to reside on occupied land within the first place. 

The world might disagree with the Palestinians that every one of Palestine is occupied nevertheless it does agree with them on the territory taken in 1967. It’s occupied within the view of the UN Normal Meeting, occupied within the view of the Worldwide Fee of Jurists (ICJ), occupied within the view of the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ), occupied within the view of the EU, and occupied within the view of practically all world governments.  Solely the US and its camp followers dissent, preferring the evasive ‘disputed.’ 

Underneath the 4th Geneva Conference of 1949, the switch of a civilian inhabitants into territory occupied in conflict is prohibited and unlawful. Didn’t Rabbi Dee not know this when he took his household to reside on the West Financial institution?  Did he not know the way harmful it will be, did he not perceive that there’s in all probability no event in human historical past when an occupied folks haven’t taken up such arms as they may need to defend themselves, their households and their land?  

In fact, Rabbi Dee wouldn’t regard the land as occupied, however relatively as land given to the Jewish folks by God and now reclaimed by them.  Within the Zionist view, these non-Jews who have been pushed off the land or who’re nonetheless there haven’t any inherent proper to be there, towards all human rights legal guidelines that say they do.  

After 75 years “the prevailing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” – because the 90 % majority Muslim or Christian inhabitants was described by Balfour in his declaration –  are nonetheless having land taken from them: once they resist with assaults on the troopers and settlers, they’re referred to as terrorists.

Rabbi Dee has the dialectic again to entrance.  The Germans occupying France referred to as the resistance fighters terrorists, simply because the British did in East Africa and because the French did in North Africa.  The supply of terror in all these conditions was not resistance to occupation however occupation itself,  and whereas settlers have been killed within the north and east Africa, by far the better variety of victims have been the occupied peoples themselves.  

The identical is true of Palestine, much more profitable as a colonial-settler enterprise than Algeria or East Africa, and thus an infinitely worse expertise for the folks of Palestine.  Dying and destruction gave the Zionists what they needed;  demise and destruction took from the Palestinians what that they had, their lives, their properties and their land.   

Rabbi Dee’s reflections on good and evil elevate different questions. Dangerous is the alternative of fine, not evil, which essentially is a non secular idea that strikes human habits into the demonic.  

On one of many days, Rabbi Dee’s household was being buried, Muhammad Fayez, 15, was killed throughout an Israeli assault on the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp close to Jericho. This boy – the identical age as one in every of Rabbi Dee’s youngsters –  was shot within the head, the chest and the stomach.  ‘’What will occur to our folks?” his aunt requested after his demise, to which will be added Rabbi Dee’s query directed to the one who killed his youngsters and spouse. 

“The place is your future?,” he requested, when the query he wanted to ask was ‘’The place is your future in an occupied land?” 

What will occur to ‘’our folks’’ is that whereas extra of them shall be killed by the armed enforcers of the occupation, they are going to proceed to withstand as they’ve completed ever since Palestine was handed to the Zionists in 1917.  

Palestinian tradition is not damaged, as Rabbi Dee claims however, because of the extraordinary resilience of its folks, has survived all makes an attempt to destroy it and stays vigorous and defiant.  

If Palestinians are nonetheless resisting after a century of occupation, first by the British after which the Zionists, it’s exactly as a result of they do know the distinction between proper and mistaken, between Rabbi Dee’s “good and evil,” and are combating for what they know is correct.  The good bulk of the world’s governments and other people, together with its ethical philosophers and authorized consultants, agree with them, not Rabbi Dee. 

In any case, he needs to be asking these questions of his personal folks, not the Palestinians.   What shall be their future and what will occur to them in the event that they proceed the heinous acts of which they’ve been responsible for practically eight a long time?  Can or not it’s supposed by anybody besides themselves that they are going to get away with this eternally, that there isn’t any level at which it gained’t meet up with them?   

On the day he was killed Muhammad Fayez was solely the most recent little one to be killed on the West Financial institution this 12 months.   No element was given within the media of how he was killed or who killed him. He was simply killed – finish of story, if it even was a narrative, in comparison with the mass protection of the killing of the Dee youngsters.   

In 2022, based on the Euro-Med Human Rights monitor crew, 204 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troopers, police, undercover brokers or settlers: 142 on the West Financial institution, 20 in Jerusalem, 37 in Gaza and 5 in pre-1967 Palestine.  An extra 18 have been killed “inadvertently,” in circumstances not defined by Euro-Med

The useless included 125 civilians not concerned in violence, eight ladies and 41 youngsters: different estimates put the variety of youngsters killed at 55.  The technique of killing included focused assassination, so-called “abstract execution,” air strikes and artillery shelling. The demise toll was up 82 % from 2021 and 491 % from 2020.  Already by early April 2023, an additional 94 Palestinians had been killed, many, like Muhammad Fayez, youngsters or not a lot older.

Harmless and evil, the phrases utilized by Rabbi Dee, elevate different questions.  An individual who lives on stolen land, figuring out it to be stolen within the eyes of the world, shouldn’t be harmless however relatively an adjunct after the actual fact and benefitting from it in some ways.   The argument that ‘we don’t regard it as stolen’ can be dismissed out of hand in a courtroom of regulation.  

As for evil,  Rabbi Dee applies the phrase to the killing of his personal youngsters,  however would he say the identical of the hundreds of youngsters the Zionist state of which is an enthusiastic supporter, has killed in Palestine and,  over the a long time stretching again to 1948,   in Lebanon, Syria,  Jordan and Egypt, to not converse of their dad and mom, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents and associates?  

Would he apply the phrase ‘evil’ to the pilots who fireplace missiles into residential buildings in Gaza, figuring out they are going to be killing households, or to troopers and undercover brokers of the state who homicide Palestinians in chilly blood as they lie wounded on the bottom or stop medical support reaching them in order that they are going to die?  Would he apply the phrase evil to the federal government that authorizes such actions? 

One can hardly think about it. His regional council mayor on the West Financial institution described Rabbi Dee and his household as “true Zionists.”    Within the view of “true Zionists,” there isn’t any occupation to withstand, solely a Jewish ‘proper’ to the land which the Palestinians refuse to just accept.

Accordingly, they’re answerable for their very own plight: answerable for the planes and tanks Israel sends into Gaza, answerable for the snipers firing at its folks from the fence,  answerable for the police who break into Al Aqsa and rain blows on the heads of worshippers, answerable for the assassination of Palestinians at house and overseas and even answerable for the killing of their very own youngsters.   As summed up by the US settler Golda Meir: “We are able to by no means forgive the Arabs for making us kill youngsters.” 

So, a remaining query: who is actually the product of a tradition that “that can’t differentiate between good and evil?” 

– Jeremy Salt taught on the College of Melbourne, at Bosporus College in Istanbul and Bilkent College in Ankara for a few years, specializing within the trendy historical past of the Center East. Amongst his current publications is his 2008 guide, The Unmaking of the Center East. A Historical past of Western Dysfunction in Arab Lands (College of California Press). He contributed this text to The Palestine Chronicle.