Your turn: End US aid to Israel. End the occupation

After over seven decades of Israeli abuses including land theft, home invasions, murder, rape, jailing without cause, and more, Hamas responded brutally on October 7, 2023. No question that this was a war crime. And no question that this came after the systematic 76-year reign of apartheid upon Palestinians.

Violence begets violence.

Note that the dozens of non-violent demonstrations by Palestinians in protest against Israeli abuses were also met by Israeli violence ... with little to no public outcry from the US government — and with little to no consequence for Israeli brutality and repression.

Silence begets complicity.

American tax dollars, weapons and influence are in service of apartheid and genocide in Palestine/Israel. Congress budgets $3.8 billion a year to enable this horror. Israel has demanded that we pay all of that at the beginning of each year, allowing Israel to earn interest on this money, while we, running a deficit, pay interest on same. We have no such arrangement with another nation.

As President Biden and our Congress consider continued support for Israel, and as a majority of Americans express their desire for Israel’s genocidal assault upon Palestinians to stop, we ask this question: How is it possible for Israel — with only 0.1% of the global population, universal healthcare, and an unemployment rate usually lower than America’s — to receive such unchallenged aid?

One major reason is AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which according to OpenSecrets, directs significant amounts of cash to members of our Congress through AIPAC’s allies and friends. AIPAC-related ‘donations’ to Congressional campaigns totaled over $7 million in 2023, (as well as $3 million in lobbying expenses), the goal being to keep Israel’s interests front and center.

There are currently between 600,000 and 700,000 Israeli settlers living in at least 250 illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The development of these settlements required the forced displacement (often brutal and deadly) of Palestinian families and the illegal takeover of the land their ancestors have farmed for generations. (The United Nations Human Rights Office published a report stating that the establishment of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem amounts to war crimes under international law.)

Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have responded with 2,000-pound bombs, tanks, artillery, troops and snipers targeting civilians, hospitals, mosques, churches, schools, and homes.

Aid workers, journalists, doctors, nurses, people gathering for food distribution have all been targeted. Many of these weapons are produced and provided by our government.

This is genocide. It is the most photographed and documented genocide in recent memory. We are witnessing it as it happens. And it is happening with the complicity of our own government. Christian pastors in Gaza and the West Bank are begging us to end our complicity and stop the genocide.

A common charge raised against critics of Zionism and the Israeli government is antisemitism. But, Israel is no more “equivalent to Judaism” than the U.S. is “equivalent to Christianity.”

The occupation of Palestine has been a colonizing project with a religious cloak, just as were Western European colonial efforts under the ruse of Christianity.

This horror must end.

We call for all U.S. aid to the state of Israel to cease. U.S. support for Israel is a foreign policy liability; a hindrance to our national security.

Almost all of the global South, once under the heel of Western colonialism, recognizes that this is nothing less than apartheid. We cannot afford, either morally or practically, to feign blindness to what most of the world sees plainly.

The occupation of the Palestinian people has produced three generations of Palestinians born under trauma, repression, racism, and fear.

The occupation is a crime against humanity, a sin against God, a stain upon the United States, and a violation of the best in any religion.

End U.S. aid to Israel. End the occupation.

Submitted by Robert Hillenbrand as a joint effort of: Pamela and Robert Hillenbrand, David Jones, Fred Miller, Susan and Scott Mount, Debbi and George Reed-Savory, Kenn Stork and Neita Webster, all of Rockford.

The authors are members of a local study group formed over concerns surrounding the Palestine/Israel conflict. The group met twice monthly for three months to study the formation of Israel in Palestine, U.S. and Western European interests in West Asia/North Africa and related matters.

Robert Hillenbrand is a retired pastor who served six parishes over 30-plus years. His last parish was First Presbyterian Church, Rockford, from which he retired in 2010. He has been a Rockford resident since 2003.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Your turn: End US aid to Israel. End the occupation