What’s my problem with Israel? Buckle the fuck down, here we go.

Israel v. Palestine:

  • The attacks this week killed 69 Palestinians, (71 if you include the unborn twins one woman was carrying.) 
  • More Palestinians died from Israeli attacks on November 14th than all the Israeli deaths from Palestinian attacks in the last 3 years. 
  • Since 2005, death in combat makes up 0.07% of all casualties for members of the Israeli army. “Unintended injury” makes up 7% of all deaths in Palestine.
  • During the Gaza war, 74% of all Palestinian deaths were civilians.


Israeli human rights violations:

  • A report by the United Nations shows that, under current conditions, the Gaza Strip will be “not be livable” by 2020. 
  • Israel currently has plans to either jail or deport 40,000 African refugees living there.
  • Palestinians can be held for 188 days without charge, 5 times as long as Israelis. They can be held 8 times as long as Israelis without trial. 


Israeli opinion of Palestinians?

  • 75% of Israelis support segregated roads.
  • 60% believe Israelis should have preference in getting government jobs.
  • 42% don’t want to live in the same building as Arabs.
  • 42% don’t want their children to go to school with Arab children.


How’s the US treating Israel?

  • Israel holds the record for most official visits to the United States. Their current prime minister alone has visited more than all Chinese leaders in the last 138 years. 
  • The United States gives Israel $8,500,000 in aid a day, more than every country in Africa combined. 


Some more fun times:

  • In the ‘08-’09 war, a sniper from the Israeli army shot and killed a woman and her daughter who were waving a white flag with their hands in the air. He was given 45 days in jail. 
  • In 2009, Israel launched a white phosphorus mortar on a UN school, killing 2 children and injuring 12 more. 
  • In February, the Israeli police fired a gas canister at the back of the head of a French woman who was protesting with the Palestinians, hospitalizing her. They then beat a medic who tried to help her. The police’s first report to superiors said that the injury was the fault of Palestinians throwing rocks at her. 
  • In August, a 17 year old Arab in Israel was beaten unconscious by a mob of 40 to 50 people screaming “death to the Arabs!” There were several hundred witnesses, who refused to intervene. The police have security footage, but have only arrested 7 of them. One of them was quoted saying, “He’s and Arab. If it was up to me, I’d have murdered him.” 
  • On October 20th, Israel boarded a ship carrying humanitarian goods to Gaza, and then re-routed it to an Israeli port, refusing to allow them to give the aid to Palestinians.


In the words of Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai, “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages.” 

So, yeah, I’m not exactly a fan.

“We’ve seen charred bodies of dead and injured children pouring in to Al Shifa hospital of Gaza City and the other depleted hospitals around the Gaza Strip. There have been at least 50 air strikes all over the Gaza Strip so far. Deafening explosions shook us all as bombs landed close to us in the streets near the Universities -- the windows of my house were broken as a result of Israeli bombing. Huge explosions are landing all around us in Gaza City now as I write, some entire families have been injured. All the infrastructure of Gaza is coming under attack at this point -- power, water, roads, houses, farms and civilians. We can also hear the shelling of Israeli Gunships. There has been announcements of possible Israeli land invasion very soon.”

Shamikh Badra, a Gaza-based activist with the left-wing Palestine People’s Party about Israel’s strikes on the Gaza Strip

“The Strip, with its 1.48m Palestinians, is a vast internment camp, the borders of which shrink as more and more demolition takes place, and within which the population rises faster than anywhere else in the world. Meanwhile, about 7,000 Israeli settlers live in oases of privileged segregation. This is a state of apartheid. It's taken me less than a week to lose impartiality. In doing so, I may as well be throwing stones at tanks.”

—Daniel Day-Lewis, actor and three times winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor, upon visiting the Gaza Strip
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