Israel continues injustices against occupied Palestinians

The respected Israeli Uri Avnery writes every week about events in his country.


He fought in the so-called "war of independence" on the side of Israel and was a highly respected member of the Israeli Knesset.

It is not comforting to read his constant witness to the ongoing injustices perpetrated on the Palestinian population by the Israeli occupiers.

Lately he wrote about the recent visit of President Obama and his contrasting attitudes when he visited Israel and the West Bank.  Every word right in Israel, but in the Palestinian occupied West Bank, a different story...


"He told his Israeli audience to “put yourselves in the shoes of the Palestinians”. But did he do so himself? 

Can he imagine what it means to wait every night for the brutal banging on the door? 

To be woken by the noise of bulldozers approaching, wondering whether they are coming to destroy your home? 

To see a settlement growing on your land and waiting for the settlers to come and carry out a pogrom in your village? 

 Being unable to move on your roads? 

To see your father humiliated at the road blocks? 

To throw stones at armed soldiers and brave tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and sometimes live ammunition?
 
Can he even imagine having a brother, a cousin, a loved one in prison for many, many years because of his patriotic actions or beliefs, after facing the arbitrariness of a military “court”, or even without a “trial” at all?
 
This week, a prisoner called Maisara Abu-Hamdiyeh died in prison, and the West Bank exploded in rage. Israeli journalists ridiculed the protest, stating that the man died from a fatal disease, so Israel could not be blamed.
 
Did any of them imagine for a moment what it means for a human being to suffer from cancer, with the disease slowly spreading through his body, deprived of adequate treatment, cut off from family and friends, seeing death approaching? 

What if it had been their father?"