Understanding Gaza, Sderot and Najd

BY ED FELIEN

Two months ago Southside Pride published a report by David Tilsen about his trip to Cairo and his attempt to participate in a peace march through Gaza to commemorate the horror of the Israeli attack on Gaza the year before in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed.  Last month we published an article by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) outlining important facts about the sraeli/Palestinian conflict from the Israeli perspective.  JCRC says over 10,000rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza since 2001.

Most of those rockets were aimed at the Israeli town of Sderot.  Those attacks were the reason given for the Israeli bombardment and invasion of Gaza.  This would be a good opportunity to examine more closely the history of Sderot and its relation to Gaza.

Wikipedia states the basic facts in bald simplicity:  "On 13 May, 1948, Najd was occupied by Jewish soldiers from the Negev Brigade as part of Operation Barak. The inhabitants were expelled and fled to Gaza, and the village was then completely destroyed and leveled to the ground. In 1951, the town of Sderot was built over the village lands."

The Palestinians have been forced from their homes and imprisoned behind the high wall of a ghetto.  Their lands and fields were given to newly arrived Kurdish and Persian Israeli immigrants.  Sixty years later the former residents of Najd continue to resist this forced evacuation, theft and imprisonment.

The continual rockets and mortar have caused trauma to Israeli school children; disrupted the economy as businesses move out; wounded hundreds; and have killed 13 residents since 1951.  Israelis are beginning to leave, and the population has declined from 10 to 25 percent.

The conditions are horrific for Israelis and Palestinians.

The Goldstone Report accused the Palestinians of war crimes for firing rockets into civilian populations, but, as the Goldstone Report and others have noted, the Israelis have exacted a reprisal 100 times as severe.  In Gubbio, Italy, the central square is named Fifty Martyrs.  A visitor might think that this refers to some medieval incident, but it refers to a Nazi reprisal in World War II.  Italian partisans killed the two leading Nazis in Gubbio, and the Germans rounded up 50 people at random and murdered them.

There is a mausoleum where their bodies are interred, a monument to remembrance.  It is just as unlikely that the world will forget the monstrous reprisals the Israelis exacted upon the Palestinians in Gaza.

The incident should have a strange and distant echo for people in Minnesota.
The Sioux Uprising of 1862 cost the lives of 400 to 800 settlers and ended
with the mass hanging of 38 Sioux warriors.  Wikipedia: "Throughout the late
1850s treaty violations by the United States and late or unfair annuity
payments by Indian agents caused increasing hunger and hardship among the
Dakota. Traders with the Dakota previously had demanded that annuity
payments be given to them directly (introducing the possibility of unfair
dealing between the agents and the traders), but in mid-1862 the Dakota
demanded the annuities directly from their agent, Thomas J. Galbraith. The
traders refused to provide any more supplies on credit. Thus, negotiations
reached an impasse as a result of the bellicosity of the traders' representative, Andrew Myrick, who suggested that the Sioux could eat grass or their own excrement if they were hungry.  On August 17, 1862, five American settlers were killed by four Dakota on a hunting expedition. That night a council of Dakota decided to attack settlements throughout the Minnesota River valley in an effort to drive whites out of the area."

Most interesting about these two incidents are the striking differences.  Lincoln executed 38 Native Americans as punishment for the murder of 400 to 800 settlers, a ratio of one to ten or one to 20, while the Israelis killed 1,400 for the deaths of 13, a ratio of more than a hundred to one.  But an even more important difference is that while the Native Americans thought they could drive the settlers back and thoroughly underestimated the population of the settlers, it seems to be the Israelis who are underestimating the population of the Islamic nations that surround Israel.  It seems inevitable that at some point the Islamic nations will unite militarily, and they might as well demand a new round of reprisals.

Certainly we agree with the JCRC: "We can only hope and pray that the brutal
tactics of terrorists come to an end and that every man, woman and child in
Gaza and in Israel can live in peace and security. We continue to work toward the realization of two states living side by side, a safe and secure Israel and a free and democratic Palestine."

Unfortunately, the hopes and prayers of the JCRC are not matched by actions of the Israeli government.  Just this week, while Joe Biden was on an official state visit to Israel, they announced the construction of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem in violation of treaties and agreements.  Once again, the Palestinians believe the Israelis are taking their land.  Bradley Burston, the senior editor of
Haaretz, the largest Israeli newspaper, asked, "Why would Israeli officials degrade Israel by humiliating the vice president of the United States?"

The Palestinians believe the Israelis are trying to drive them into the sea. And most of the people in the rest of the world agree.

We must speak out.  We cannot be silent.