US must take action on Israeli squatter violence (wishful thinking)
The Hill
The sound of shattering glass startles
you awake. Your lungs fill with the acrid smell of burning petrol. You
lunge out of bed, the house ablaze, your body engulfed by the flames. In
your haste to escape the inferno, you grab a blanket which you pray
holds your infant son safe from the flames. After fleeing your house, to
your horror, you discover the blanket is empty and you watch your baby
burn to death before your eyes.
This nightmare became reality for Riham Dawabshe of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank village of Duma last month, as related by her brother-in-law Nasser, when Israeli settlers firebombed her house in the middle of the night.
Today, Riham remains in critical condition
at a hospital suffering from third-degree burns covering 90 percent of
her body. Her 4-year-old son Ahmad is hospitalized as well. One-year-old
Ali perished in the arson. Her husband Saad, who suffered third-degree
burns on 80 percent of his body, succumbed to his wounds and died last
Saturday.
The Dawabshe family is the latest victim
of attacks against Palestinians and their property by Israeli settlers
who live on expropriated Palestinian land, many of whom desire the land
ethnically cleansed of Palestinians to make way for Jewish-only control
of the area. These attacks frequently injure and kill Palestinian
civilians, damage and destroy their homes, uproot their agriculture and
desecrate their places of worship.
The killing of Ali and Saad Dawabshe is
not an anomaly, but is sadly part of an organized and systematic
campaign by Israeli settlers to terrorize Palestinians. The United
Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the
Occupied Palestinian Territory recorded
27 settler attacks leading to Palestinian casualties and 35 attacks
leading to damage to Palestinian property and land in the first quarter
of 2015. In 2014, there were 110 settler attacks leading to Palestinian
casualties and 221 attacks leading to damage to Palestinian property and
land.
Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disavowed
this attack, he nevertheless presides over a government which provides
virtual impunity to these setters, rarely holding them accountable for
their actions. The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din reported
that between 2005 and 2014, more than 91 percent of all concluded
investigations of settler attacks against Palestinians were closed
without an indictment.
The State Department appropriately condemned this attack “in the strongest possible terms” as a “vicious terrorist attack.”
Since 2010, the State Department has
included Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians civilians and their
property in its annual Country Reports on Terrorism. As the State Department noted in its most recent 2014 report,
these attacks frequently are accompanied by racist graffiti and
incitement to genocide such as “Every Arab is a Criminal” and “Death to
Arabs and Christians and all those who hate Israel.”
The State Department cites a handful of
cases in which Israel prosecuted perpetrators of these attacks, but
noted that “investigations by the Israeli authorities in the majority of
such attacks did not result in prosecutions,” confirming Yesh Din’s
findings.
Despite the State Department’s
acknowledgment of Israel’s failure to hold most perpetrators
accountable, Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner expressed
an unwarranted “faith in the [Israeli] system” to bring Ali’s killers
to justice even after failing to cite an example, as asked during the
press briefing, “where actually the Israelis held these terrorists
accountable and put them in prison.”
The United States must not only condemn
terrorism. Engaging in wishful thinking that Israel will crack down on
settlers who terrorize Palestinians only exacerbates their sense of
impunity and emboldens them further. Instead, the United States must
take action, without regard to the nationality or religion of the
perpetrators, to deter and sanction all acts of terrorism.
For example, the State Department should
investigate Israeli organizations that support, advocate for or
participate in such terrorist attacks and add these organizations to the
list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. One such organization that merits consideration is Lehava, whose leader Benzi Gopstein recently justified burning down churches.
Likewise, the Treasury Department should
investigate individuals involved in these terrorist attacks and add
them to its list of Specially Designated Nationals,
a move which would freeze their U.S. assets and prohibit U.S. persons
from dealing with them. In addition, the IRS should investigate which
501(c)(3) tax-deductible, charitable organizations provide material
support to such organizations and individuals and strip them of their
tax status.
Nasser Dawabshe told
participants in an anti-terrorism rally in Tel Aviv that his
sister-in-law “Riham went to sleep wishing her baby sweet dreams and
they came and burned a family, sound asleep. A family that loved its
life and doesn’t believe in violence. … We are a people who believe in
life. And we ask the world to stand with us.” It is long past due for
the United States to do so by taking action against Israeli terrorism.
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