Human Trustees

I ended my last post by referring to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem’s 2021 press release declaring that their nation was committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories. This was the subtitle, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: this is apartheid.”

In fact, they were referring to a United Nations convention from November 1973 (Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid) which was drafted, debated, and signed by many nations—all with reference to the South African white supremacist regime which turned the majority black population into second-class citizens and routinely trampled on their civil rights, causing them great suffering. The word “apartheid” is an Afrikaans word—a language developed by the original Dutch settlers—meaning “apartness,” or “segregation.”

If you click on my link to the B’Tselem organization, immediately you’re confronted by a gigantic title filling your page: “OUR GENOCIDE.” Go to that specific page, read it, but especially watch the just-under-8-minutes video. To describe it as “powerful” is an understatement. Coming from people who were raised in the shadow of the Holocaust—the greatest of last century’s genocides—this documentary is simply bone-chilling. And it ends with this call, “People and governments must use every means available under international law to make the Israeli government stop the genocide in Gaza now.”

The key role of international law

This is why my second post referenced the United Nations and the gradual coming together of international law. “Genocide”—a word from Greek roots meaning “the killing of a race, tribe or people,” was first recognized by the UN’s General Assembly in 1946, and later was ratified in 1948 as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Though only 153 nations to date have ratified the Genocide Convention, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has repeatedly emphasized that all nations are “bound as a matter of law by the principle that genocide is a crime prohibited by international law” (from the UN page on genocide).

The legal definition of genocide contains two elements:

1. 1. 1. A mental element: the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such; and
      2. A physical element—any one of the following:
         1. Killing members of the group;
         2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
         3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
         4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
         5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The most difficult element to prove in a court of law is the “intent” component. But in this case, it is rather obvious. Ask the Gazan people who in the last two years have been herded like rats marked for extermination—bombed, starved, mostly cut off from clean water, electricity and fuel, and then killed by Israeli snipers when on their way to or at food distribution sites.

Also, make sure to ask Italian lawyer and academic Francesca Albanese, who was mandated by the 47-member UN Human Rights Council in May 2022 to research the actual conditions of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (Gaza and West Bank). The first woman in this job, she was given a three-year term as Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, and then given another three-year term in April 2025.

Watch her introductory remarks as she delivered her extensive report to the council (“Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967”) on July 3, 2025. The subtitle is a short excerpt from her talk: “Israel is responsible for one of the cruelest genocides in modern history.”

For all her hard work, Albanese must have felt gratified by the approval and gratitude of the council; but she also paid a heavy price for it. Just after her talk, she was personally sanctioned by the Trump Administration (see her remarks as she was interviewed by the Associated Press about this). She will not be able to visit her daughter in the US, and can have no financial interactions with American banks.

An article in The Hill documents Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s calling on the UN Human Rights Council to fire her and quotes from a message on X in which he announces, “Today I am imposing sanctions on . . . Francesca Albanese . . . [her] campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated.”

So what did she say in her report (read it here as a pdf, but the UN page I cited above has a good summary)? Her central thesis is that Israel’s settler colonial plan began with the 1901 founding of the Jewish National Fund (a land-purchasing corporate entity), which “helped plan and carry out the gradual removal of Arab Palestinians, which intensified with the Nakba [1948 Palestinian “catastrophe”], and has continued ever since.” But this process of colonizing Palestinian land—dispossessing Palestinians of their land and replacing them with Israeli colonies—accelerated rapidly after 1967, and it was aided and abetted by global corporate interests. In her words,

“The role of corporate entities in sustaining Israel’s illegal occupation and ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza is the subject of this investigation, which focuses on how corporate interests underpin Israeli settler-colonial [projects]—the twofold logic of displacement and replacement aimed at dispossessing and erasing Palestinians from their lands. It discusses corporate entities in various sectors: arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction companies, extractive and service industries, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities and charities. These entities enable the denial of self-determination and other structural violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, including occupation, annexation and crimes of apartheid and genocide, as well as a long list of ancillary crimes and human rights violations, from discrimination, wanton destruction, forced displacement and pillage, to extrajudicial killing and starvation.”

In other words, this longstanding project of settler colonialism has kicked into high gear under the most far-right government in Israeli history. It plans to expel Gaza’s two million people and do the same, as far as possible, to the West Bank. And as I write this, the stakes couldn’t be higher: Israel has begun its assault on the last remaining urban structure (Gaza City) and famine has officially been declared in the Gaza Strip.

No peace without boycotts, sanctions, and divestment (BDS)

What has been largely missing so far is a global consensus to act on established international laws—and applying in particular the UN Apartheid and Genocide Conventions in this case. The United States is already feeling the heat for its unconditional support of Israel’s genocidal war. The International Criminal court (ICC) issued last year arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant “for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity” over its war in Gaza. The chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, had also issued arrest warrants against two Hamas officials, both of whom have now been assassinated by Israel.

In response, the US State Department sanctioned Karim Khan and four other ICC judges in March 2025. Ignoring the UN human rights chief who had ordered the US to withdraw its sanctions, the Trump Administration doubled down on its position in August, and it sanctioned two more judges and two more prosecutors, including a French judge, Nicolas Guillou, the one who had authorized Netanyahu’s arrest warrant. France, in turn, expressed “dismay” and joined the ICC in its condemnation of the sanctions, stating that imposing such sanctions was “in contradiction to the principle of an independent judiciary.” The ICC itself complained that they constituted “an affront against . . . the rules-based international order and, above all, millions of innocent victims across the world.”

What is the main takeaway from Albanese’s report? What are her recommendations for ending this genocidal war? Let me just cite the first three, which are addressed to member states:

1. 1. 1. To impose sanctions and a full arms embargo on Israel, including all existing agreements and dual-use items such as technology [Israel has used Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon for cloud backup, AI tools, face recognition, and surveillance analysis] and civilian heavy machinery [Caterpillar, HD Hyundai, and Volvo excavators], which has been used to demolish Palestinian homes and recently to raze whole sections of Gaza, even burying thousands of Palestinians, including, allegedly, many only injured.
      2. To suspend/prevent all trade agreements and investment relations, and impose sanctions, including asset freezes, on entities and individuals involved in activities that may endanger Palestinians.
      3. To enforce accountability, ensuring that corporate entities [a list in the hundreds] face legal penalties for their involvement in serious violations of international law.

Here is the last one, addressed to all of us: “The Special Rapporteur urges trade unions, lawyers, civil society and ordinary citizens to press for boycotts, divestments, sanctions, justice for Palestine and accountability at international and domestic levels; together we can end these unspeakable crimes.”

I posted a piece in 2019 urging readers to join in some way the international movement of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS). The first official international conference to promote BDS as a means to achieve a just peace in Israel-Palestine was convened in Ramallah, West Bank, in 2007. We’ve come a long way since then. The international protests against Israeli atrocities in Gaza over the last couple of years attest to that.

Just last week, Mondoweiss, a Jewish American website (“News & Opinion about Palestine, Israel & the United States”) published a piece entitled, “International Court of Justice Finds That BDS Is Not Just Legal, But Obligatory.” Israel’s frantic efforts in the last couple of decades to shield itself from the potential onslaught of the growing BDS movement seem to have paid off: “countless laws and policies are now on the books across the U.S. and the broader West, trampling on core constitutional principles and internationally guaranteed human rights.” But the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion last month that turns the tables on the Israeli/American rhetoric:

“In its historic ruling, the ICJ found that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is entirely unlawful, that Israel practices apartheid and racial segregation, and that all states are under a duty to help bring this to an end, including by cutting off all economic, trade and investment relations with Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In other words, as a matter of international law, all countries are obliged to participate in an economic boycott of Israel’s activities in the occupied Palestinian territory and to divest from any existing economic relations there.”

The current Israeli government is not denying its plan is genocide, though of course, it doesn't use that term. Have a listen to the leader of Israel's National Religious Party who has also been Netanyahu's Minister of Finance since 2022. The two clips are on Judge Napolitano's Judging Freedom's podcast and his interviewee is University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer (starting at minute 14:14).

Let’s hold on to hope

In January 2025, six nations from the Global South convened in The Hague, Netherlands, to form a new block “in defense of international law and solidarity with the Palestinian people” (Columbia, South Africa, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal, Bolivia, Cuba and Honduras). The Hague Group, as it is called, express their mission in these words,

“The choice is stark: Either we act together to enforce international law or we risk its collapse. We choose to act, not only for the people of Gaza but for the future of a world where justice prevails over impunity. Let this moment mark the beginning of a renewed commitment to internationalism and the principles that bind us as a global community.”

Francesca Albanese was invited to Bogota, Columbia, for a two-day emergency meeting of the Hague Group (July 19-20, 2025). In her address, she urged these leaders to “hold tight” to hope, as she does. She senses “a historical turning point” is underway. “Palestine’s immense suffering has cracked open the possibility of transformation.” First, “the narrative is shifting”—away from Israel’s right to self-defense “toward the long-denied Palestinian right to self-determination—systematically invisibilised, suppressed and delegitimised for decades.” And second, “we are seeing the rise of a new multilateralism: principled, courageous, increasingly led by the Global Majority.”

Even in the United States, the narrative is beginning to shift. USA Today published an OpEd by B’Tselem’s spokesperson Yair Dvir, “I’m Israeli. The world must stop our government’s genocide in Gaza while we still can.”

In the next post in this series, I will say more about what people of faith are doing in this country to stop the genocide in the Palestinian territories. And among these, American Jews are the most active and effective.

Postscript: As soon as this was written, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the largest global organization of genocide scholars, passed a resolution stating that Israel is indeed committing genocide in Gaza. And this, according to the criteria set forth in the UN convention on genocide. Notably, with over 50,000 children either killed or injured, with “the widespread attacks on both the personnel and facilities needed for survival, including in the healthcare, aid, and educational sectors”; and the dehumanizing statements by Israeli leaders characterizing all Palestinians as enemies and their intention to “flatten Gaza” and turn it into “hell.” Finally, there is a clear intention to ethnically cleanse the territory. Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is still researching the case brought to its attention by South Africa in 2023 that Israel is committing genocide.

Most would have predicted that the first American president to call himself “born again” (hence, evangelical Protestant) would be a staunch defender of the state of Israel. As you will remember from my first post in this series, a large majority of evangelicals are “Christian Zionists,” and therefore unsympathetic to any call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This couldn’t be further from the truth in Jimmy Carter’s case.

Carter was ahead of his time. One of his campaign promises was to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, so he studied the positions of his predecessors and United Nations decisions on the issue. In this 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he lists some of the things he learned while still on the campaign trail:

“Our nation’s constant policy had been predicated on a few key United Nations Security Council resolutions, notably 242 of 1967 (Appendix 1) and 338 of 1973 (Appendix 2). Approved unanimously and still applicable, their basic premise is that Israel’s acquisition of territory by force is illegal and that Israel must withdraw from occupied territories; that Israel has the right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries; that the refugee problem must be settled; and that the international community should assist with negotiations to achieve a just and durable peace in the Middle East. More specifically, U.S. policy was that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza were ‘illegal and obstacles to peace.’” (p. 39)

All this should ring a bell with you from my second blog post in this series on human rights and international law. The founding of the UN in 1945 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights three year later became the foundation for the many conventions and treaties that have followed, which now comprise international law. The above quote shows that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East in 1977 when Carter took office paid deference to international law and, in particular, to UN resolutions 242 and 338. And he had no intention of changing that. In fact, he was the only American president to declare repeatedly that his foreign policy would be based on human rights.

The road leading to the 1978 Camp David Accords

On the first page of his autobiography at 90 (A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety), Jimmy Carter quotes his vice-president Walter Mondale, “We told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace.” Then Carter adds, “We championed human rights” (pp. 1-2). He certainly strove to do so. In the case of Israel and Palestine, and only a few weeks into his presidency, Carter made this very controversial statement, “There has to be a homeland for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years” (Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, p. 39). Then, in this same passage, he comments, “This would be the first move toward supporting a Palestinian State” (p. 39).

You have to understand that, even today, mentioning any kind of settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem is to ring the death knell of any peace talks. The Oslo Accords of 1993 considered both the status of Jerusalem and the settlement of Palestinian refugees to be the two most contentious issues, and therefore to be left for the final stage of negotiations—which, we now know, never came. Yet Resolution 242 “affirms the necessity . . . for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.”

God must have heard Carter’s prayers. Just two weeks on the heel of that bombshell statement on Palestinian refugees, President Sadat of Egypt came to Washington. Carter recalls,

“Sadat told me plainly that the was willing to take bold steps toward peace, all of them based on the prevailing U.N. Security Council Resolutions. We discussed some of the specific elements of possible direct negotiations in the future: Israel’s permanent boundaries, the status of Jerusalem, Palestinian rights, and—almost inconceivable at the time—free trade and open borders between the two nations, plus full diplomatic recognition and the exchange of ambassadors” (pp. 39-40).

Meanwhile, Menachem Begin replaced Yitzhak Rabin as prime minister a month later. Carter immediately did some research on Begin (recall that he had masterminded the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1948). This was the first time since Israel’s independence that the Labor Party lost an election to the Likud Party, and it signaled a much more conservative and hawkish position toward any potential peace process: the starting premise now was that Gaza and the West Bank will never be ceded to the Arabs. After all, Begin won election on being a “fighting Jew.”

Carter was pleasantly surprised during Begin’s first visit to Washington that he seemed “quite willing to pursue some of the major goals” he had discussed with Sadat (p. 42). Then Sadat, that November, “made a dramatic peace initiative by going directly to Jerusalem.” His public speech was in Arabic (he was anxious above all to convince his fellow Arab leaders). Because of the symbolism of the visit, the speech thrilled the Israelis and impressed Western leaders. Moderate Arab leaders were more cautious in their appraisals, while Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan and Palestinian leaders called for his assassination (which came four years later).

Carter’s working relationship with Begin soon became strained, however, especially after Israel invaded Lebanon in March 1978 and “used American-made antipersonnel cluster bombs against Beirut and other urban centers, killing hundreds of civilians.” This was in response to the PLO killing 35 Israeli tourists, but Carter called this invasion a completely disproportionate reaction, and furthermore, an illegal use of U.S. weaponry (they had been given solely for defensive purposes). Carter initiated a UN Security Council Resolution condemning Israel’s invasion, which was passed unanimously, and Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon.

But Carter struggled to move peace negotiations forward that spring and summer. Then, as he puts it, “[m]y next act of one of desperation”:

“I decided to invite both Begin and Sadat to Camp David so that we could be away from routine duties for a few days and, in relative isolation, I could act as mediator between the two national delegations. They accepted without delay, and on September 4 we began what evolved into a thirteen-day session, which involved teams of about 50 on each side. My aim was to have Israelis and Egyptians understand and accept the compatibility of many of their goals and the advantages to both nations in resolving their differences” (p. 45).

“Begin and Sadat were personally incompatible,” recalls Carter. He had to ferry back and forth, night and day, but his own dogged endurance paid off: “it avoided the harsh rhetoric and personal arguing between the two leaders” (p. 46). Several times, however, “either Begin or Sadat was ready to terminate the discussions and return home,” but Carter, who spent time with each one talking about their grandchildren, managed to get them back to the negotiating table.

There were unexpected breakthroughs, too. A meticulous semanticist, Begin surprised Carter in his insistence that the final text should read “full autonomy” for the Palestinians. Several key members of his team won him over on more than a few sticking points. On the Egyptian side, Sadat was the most eager to push through the most comprehensive possible peace treaty. Thankfully in the end, both sides fully honored Resolution 242 and most of Sadat’s early wishes for a wide-ranging Israeli-Egyptian peace deal came to fruition.

I mentioned that Carter was ahead of his time. Much of what transpired in the 1978 Camp David Accords served as the foundation for the 1993 Oslo Agreement between Israel and the PLO.

Carter called Israel’s military occupation “apartheid”

As the Israelis built the “security barrier” in the early 2000s—purportedly to keep suicide bombers from coming into Israel (it was partially successful on that score)—encircling the West Bank but also stealing about 9 percent of Palestinian land to protect some of the largest Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. Carter’s chapter on this is entitled, “The Wall as a Prison.” In its second paragraph, he comments,

“Their presumption is that an encircling barrier will finally resolve the Palestinian problem. Utilizing their political and military dominance, they are imposing a system of partial withdrawal, encapsulation, and apartheid on the Muslim and Christian citizens of the occupied territories. The driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa—not racism, but the acquisition of land. There has been a determined and remarkably effective effort to isolate settlers from Palestinians, so that a Jewish family can commute from Jerusalem to their highly subsidized home deep in the West Bank on roads from which others are excluded, without ever coming in contact with any facet of Arab life” (p. 189-190).

Already in 2002, Archbishop Desmond Tutu published an article in the Guardian with the title, “Apartheid in the Holy Land.” He came away “distressed” from a recent visit there, because it reminded him so much of how his black people were treated in South Africa. He explains, “I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.”

As a Nobel Peace Laureate for his work on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Archbishop Tutu joined Jimmy Carter and other older world statesmen working for peace and human rights. In this helpful 2024 article, “Desmond Tutu: ‘Israeli apartheid worse than South Africa,’” Tutu told the Washington Post in 2013, “I wish I could keep quiet about the plight of the Palestinians. I can’t! The God who was there and showed that we should become free is the God described in the Scriptures as the same yesterday, today and forever.”

Both Tutu and Carter were pioneers in applying the concept of apartheid to the Israeli subjugation of the Palestinians. In recent years, the term has become very common, and not just in United Nations circles. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate in the New York mayoral race, uses the term freely and stands a good chance of winning his election. In another installment, I’ll mention how a majority of American Jews want a two-state solution to the conflict. But I’ll end here with a statement by the oldest and most influential Israeli human rights organization, Bet’Tselem. In 2021, they wrote a press release entitled, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: this is apartheid.”

“The key tool Israel uses to implement the principle of Jewish supremacy is engineering space geographically, demographically and politically. Jews go about their lives in a single, contiguous space where they enjoy full rights and self-determination. In contrast, Palestinians live in a space that is fragmented into several units, each with a different set of rights – given or denied by Israel, but always inferior to the rights accorded to Jews.”

In the end, for Archbishop Tutu, Jimmy Carter, activists all over the world and a great majority of Palestinians themselves, speaking truth about injustice is important, but only for the sake of working for peace and reconciliation. As you can read in the mission statement of Bet’Tselem, their goal is striving “for a future in which human rights, liberty and equality are guaranteed to all people.” I hope we all agree to this and do our utmost to make it happen.

In this third installment in my series on Israel/Palestine, I advance a bold hypothesis, one which cannot possibly be defended on scientific grounds. But I do so on the basis of my personal experience in Israel-Palestine from 1992-1996 and several visits since then, including a five-week research stay in 1999 (in Bethlehem and Hebron). I’ve also read a good deal about the issue.

I am proposing that one way to explain the violence and brutality of Zionist settlers since the 1920s and of Israeli leaders during and after the 1948 founding of the State of Israel is to see it in light of psychological research on children suffering abuse. This research shows a likelihood that these children will in turn abuse their own children if they do not get significant trauma therapy (see this 2021 article in Psychology Today commenting on a 3-decade-long study published that same year, “Intergenerational transmission of child maltreatement in South Australia, 1986-2017: a retrospective cohort study”). Here is the relevant paragraph in the Psychology Today article:

“After establishing a clear link between mothers who suffered abuse or neglect during their childhood and the likelihood of their kids experiencing the same fate, the researchers emphasize the importance of supporting survivors of childhood maltreatment early in life and into adulthood as a critical step towards breaking this vicious cycle and protecting the unborn children of future generations from maltreatment.”

That parallel is far-fetched, you might say. After all, these are mothers who suffered from traumatic mistreatment growing up and who are at least 30 percent more likely to reproduce that same behavior toward their own offspring. But then you jump to the macro level and apply something that concerns individuals to a whole people group (the early Jewish newcomers to Palestine in the 1900-1920s were from Europe—known as Ashkenazi Jews). Add to that the fact that the Holocaust didn’t happen till late 1930s-1945.

Still, I will argue, the Jews as a people endured grievous hardship, from the four centuries of slavery in Egypt  to the Babylonian exile; from the persecution under the Greek ruler Antiochus IV to the violent expulsion of the Jews from Palestine by the Romans in 70 CE (read this Jewish page, “The Four Exiles of the Jewish People”). Then from the times of the Crusades (1099 CE) to the 1930s, Jews suffered pogroms and all manner of abuse from Christians in Europe. Jews bear in their souls the pain and trauma of many terrors past.

Early Jewish terrorism in pre-WWII Palestine

The best historical work on this period was also Winner of the National Jewish Book Award—Bruce Hoffman’s 650-page Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947. Adam Kirsch’s review is entitled “Israel: The Original Terrorist State.” Hoffman’s research was based on the newly declassified documents of the British MI5. Here’s his opening summary of the book:

“From 1944 until 1947, Palestine witnessed a series of assassinations, abductions, and bombings, perpetrated by Jewish terrorists against the occupying British. During that period, some 140 British soldiers and policemen were killed, along with dozens of civilian bystanders. In the end, the terrorists got what they wanted, when Britain announced its intention to withdraw all its forces from Palestine and leave the fate of the country up to the fledgling United Nations.”

Naturally, this was not the only factor leading up to Israel’s independence in 1948. You should add the British Empire’s decline; the fallout of the Holocaust, with the United States putting immense pressure on the British “to admit Jewish refugees into Palestine”; finally, you must factor in the Jewish success in creating the infrastructure for a state, “complete with an illegal but tacitly tolerated army, the Haganah.”

“Still,” writes Kirsch, “it is possible that none of these factors would have succeeded in winning Israel’s independence, if the Jewish campaign of terror hadn’t raised the cost of the British occupation so high.” The story is “riveting”: how the waning superpower of the day is brought to its knees by “a few thousand determined militants”—the Jewish “anonymous soldiers.” The largest of the militant paramilitary organizations that broke away from the Haganah was the Irgun. Starting in the late 1930s, its foot soldiers assassinated dozens of British officials and law enforcement officers, though Arabs remained their main targets (the latter had attacked them first), mostly planting bombs in cafés and markets.

The Irgun’s “bloodiest attack” was masterminded by a new arrival from the Soviet prisons, Menachem Begin (who later became prime minister), the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people in July 1946.

The Daleth (or Dalet) Plan

Ilan Pappé, a prominent member of Israel’s so-called New Historians, is a professor at the University of Exeter (UK), where he also directs the European Centre for Palestine Studies. His 2006 book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, documents the deliberate driving out of 750,000 Palestinian refugees from March 1948 to the armistice signed with the Arab nations the next year (see this helpful summary page by the Institute for Middle East Understanding—IMEU; see also this blog post by Ilan Pappé on the fiftieth anniversary of the State of Israel). These are the original Palestinian refugees, some of whom moved to Gaza, and others ended up in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. Another 300,000 were forced out by the 1967 war when Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights.

The official document laying out the plans for the campaign of terror that would drive out the maximum number of Palestinians from their towns and villages to make room for the coming Jewish state was called Plan Dalet. The IMEU page offers this translated excerpt from that document:

“Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously...

“Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”

Over 400 Palestinian villages were completely destroyed as a result and thousands of Palestinians left urban centers like Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem fleeing the violence. Bishara Awad, the founder and director of the Bethlehem Bible College where I taught for three years in the 1990s, tells the story of how his father was killed by a sniper bullet in what is now West Jerusalem (Jewish side) and how he fled with his mother and siblings to Bethlehem, leaving everything behind.

What about today?

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then—something I will touch on in the next couple of posts. But what is sure is that the Hamas attacks on Israeli soil in October 2023, with the killing of over 1,200 Israelis living nearby (keep in mind, though, that 300 of those were Israeli soldiers and that dozens of Israeli citizens were killed by the IDF as they had orders to use all means possible to avoid the taking of hostages) and the kidnapping of over 250 hostages, touched a deep nerve in the Israeli psyche. My wife and I learned something important in our three years in the West Bank. Foreigners who had lived for a good while in Israel told us that Israelis had founded their nation in the shadow of the Holocaust, and that their founding motto was “Never again!” That understandable cri du coeur—a vow born of trauma—goes a long way to explain, I believe, Israel’s violent and oppressive treatment of the Palestinians in their midst.

In the 1990s and up to maybe 2007, a majority of Israelis were in favor of some version of a two-state solution. Israel had an active and committed peace movement in those days. Since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 and, starting with the four “little wars” (2008, 2012, 2014, 2021) that killed 4-5000 Gazans, and then leading to the present war, that deep-seated trauma in the Israeli soul has been reactivated. The peace movement dwindled considerably since then.

The current Netanyahu far-right government represents the most radical elements of the Israeli political spectrum. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, in a speech to the Israeli Knesset in 2021, told the Palestinian members present, “You’re here by mistake, it’s a mistake that Ben-Gurion [founding father of Israel] didn’t finish the job and throw you out in 1948.”

Yet there is hope. On July 23^rd, thousands of Israelis, many of them carrying sacks of flour, marched through Tel Aviv “bearing placards with inscriptions like ‘Starvation is a War Crime.” That the peace movement is starting to stir again can only be a good sign. May it spread!

Especially as follower of Jesus, who believes in the redemptive power of his cross and resurrection, I can pray with faith for healing and peace, not just for individuals, but also for wounded nations and peoples. The cycle of violence and abuse can be broken. Let’s not give in to despair, but work together for peace—for both nations.