US must confront Israel over West Bank violence

It is not just Israeli and Palestinian actions that are fueling the surge of violence in Gaza and the West Bank. It is also the conduct of American officials, who are failing to confront, challenge and stop the Israeli policies that are helping the violence spread.

America is Israel’s biggest political and financial supporter. Critics often call Israel “America’s 51st state,” a political expression that some pro-Israel activists describe as antisemitic. But, these days, everything that challenges the Israeli government’s violence is “antisemitic.”

Who is going to speak out against the wave of violence that is spreading through Palestinian West Bank areas like Bethlehem, East Jerusalem and Ramallah and in predominantly Palestinian cities like Nazareth?

Those who have previously spoken out have found themselves punished when it comes to their reelection, with voting no longer decided by concerns over the economy, faltering education or rising domestic crime. The only concern seems to be a candidate’s views on Israel.

Just this week, prominent African American congressman Jamaal Bowman lost his Democratic primary election to rival George Latimer, who received more than $20 million in funding from pro-Israel political action committees.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is bragging that all 224 candidates it backed with funding and political mailers won their primary races this election season. The price for this funding is that they support and not challenge Israel’s war against the Palestinians.

Those who have previously spoken out have found themselves punished when it comes to their reelection. 

Ray Hanania

That may be one reason why Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week posed for pictures with Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister who the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has accused of war crimes in Gaza. This meeting sent a message of encouragement to Israel.

The Blinken-Gallant meeting also weakened the subsequent comments made on the growing violence by US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield . She told the UN Security Council that the world cannot “ignore the situation in the West Bank.” The world is not ignoring the Israeli violence in the West Bank — America is.

Violence by armed Israeli settlers against Palestinian Christians and Muslims in the West Bank has been ongoing ever since the land was occupied in 1967. But violence surged in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, which took about 1,200 Israeli lives and provoked the punitive carnage on Gaza by Israel’s military, which has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians.

If the Biden administration wants the violence between Israelis and Palestinians to stop, or at least slow down, it would help if it sent a consistent and strong message against all violence, not just that carried out against Israelis.

Rather than trying to walk a political tightrope between the international rule of law and violence by Israel’s extremists, America should be speaking out just as strongly against Jewish settler attacks against Palestinians as it did against the Hamas violence of Oct. 7.

Both sides, Palestinians and Israelis, have engaged in violence. But there is one significant difference between the two that cannot be ignored. Israel is a powerful country with a formal military structure, accompanied by heavily armed militias of Jewish-only settlers, and it occupies and controls the Palestinians.

Technically, the Palestinians have no independent government. They are controlled by Israel. Even before Oct. 7, Hamas was tightly encircled in the Gaza Strip by Israel’s military, creating what many described as an “open-air prison.”

While Israel responds quickly and overwhelmingly to any violence by Palestinians, its own military is often complicit in attacks by settlers.

In the wake of Oct. 7, Israel sealed off the West Bank, imposed curfews and arrested and beat Palestinian civilians — men, women and children. There are thousands of Palestinians incarcerated without trial, making them hostages to Israel’s hypocritical government.

While Thomas-Greenfield walked a fine political line, others at the UNSC meeting expressed greater alarm. 

Ray Hanania

Israeli military units have launched waves of raids, killing hundreds in cities and villages in the oppressed West Bank, while giving armed Jewish settlers the freedom to roam and engage in assaults.

According to the UN, more than 500 Palestinians, including 133 children, have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7. Another 5,000 civilians have been injured by Israeli army fire, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

While Thomas-Greenfield walked a fine political line, others at the UNSC meeting expressed greater alarm. The UK’s Barbara Woodward expressed “concern” and blamed the violence on the continuing growth of Jewish-only settlements, which “are illegal under international law.”

If American politicians cannot stop pandering to political favoritism and start advocating for the fundamental principles of the international rule of law, the violence could spread beyond Gaza and the West Bank.

AIPAC has brought the conflict to America’s shores with its hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign donations, which ensure US public representatives favor Israel’s violent policies.

What is stopping the violence from spreading further? The failure of America to stand by the rule of law and to be fair is fueling the violence in Gaza, the West Bank and wherever else it might soon spread.

• Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist. He can be reached on his personal website at www.Hanania.com. X: @RayHanania