Tamir: “It was necessary for there to be no place for them to return to, so I mobilized all the engineering battalions of Central Command, and within 48 hours I knocked all those villages to the ground. Period. There’s no place to return to.”
Lev Tov: “Without hesitation, I imagine.”
Tamir: “Without hesitation. That was the policy. I mobilized, I carried it out and I did it.”
from Haaretz’s investigative research
Attacks on Palestinians have intensified during the holy month of Ramadan again – they resemble what we saw last year.
And the year before.
And the year before.
Thankfully, as I’m writing this, Gaza is not being bombed by Israel as intensely as last year. There were bombings, yes, but they haven’t turned into another war on Gaza – not that a complete siege is not devastating the people of Gaza every day.
I had already released seven episodes on Palestine – and a number of articles, which you can all see here – and, honestly, have been reposting a lot of this recently because the topics of my pieces are sadly still relevant: apartheid, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, media silence, etc.
But there is one overarching theme that came to mind recently. An exploding head moment if you will.
It’s something that I have partially covered but it’s time to cover it more directly. To have an episode on just that.
It’s the topic of erasure.
In my episode, I talk about the very beginning of that erasure – the creation of the state of Israel – as well as how erasure presents itself in the media, and how it seems to be at the core of the state-sponsored violence we have seen in Jerusalem: in raids and attacks on the worshipers in Al Aqsa.
Before I proceed to my episode, here are some examples of that violence.
State-sponsored violence is not a byproduct of the system. It IS the system, so it doesn’t spare anyone. That includes the disabled:
And it includes journalists, too:
Added on May 12, 2022:
Yesterday, Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran journalist working with Aljazeera, was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper as Israeli forces attacked a group of journalists covering its state violence in Jenin, Palestine.
This is another example of brutal policies aimed at erasure: not being afraid to target anyone who attempts to document oppression in Palestine.
This violence is not a byproduct of a system. It IS the system itself.
I also encourage you to notice the erasure of any context – or, as I name it in my episode, of the subject (the doer) of violence in the mainstream media, like this article in The New York Times that since it was published has changed its title from this one:
And now, as promised, my episode.
If you find it interesting and if you think someone else would benefit from listening to it, please share it.
Not for me – for our Palestinian friends.
Resources to check out:
- Institute for Middle East Understanding
- Defense for Children International – Palestine
- Breaking the Silence
- Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs
- Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic co-releases report assessing prosecutions of apartheid-era crimes
In case you’ve missed it, here’s a beautiful video of Palestinian worshipers peacefully pushing the Israeli Occupation Forces away.
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