‘Mistake’ May Have Led to New Tensions Between Israel, Hamas
USCPR Executive Director Yousef Munayyer spoke to Ali Velshi of MSNBC about the recent Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing atrocities that do not end even when the airstrikes are over:
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… Why are we talking about this today? We’re not talking about this today because Gaza is being bombed yet again. We’re not talking about this today because Palestinian protestors are being shot by Israeli snipers, despite posing no threat to those shooting them. We’re not talking about this today because there are millions of Palestinians that are being held in what amounts to an open air prison and being denied basic goods and services year after year. If those were the reasons why we were talking about this, we would be talking about this every day.
We’re talking about this today because for the first time in five years, projectiles were allegedly fired from the Gaza Strip towards the city of Tel Aviv—
… What I would like to point out is that in this larger discourse, this fundamental inability to view the humanity of Palestinians as equal to the humanity of Israelis is what lies at the foundation of our imbalanced policy, and [is] what has supported Israeli policy and enabled Israeli policy in oppressing Palestinians decade after decade … What’s happening in the Gaza Strip does not stop when this conversation ends. It’s constant.
On what the US government should be doing to support a just peace in the region:
It needs to begin by ending it’s complicity in Israeli human rights abuses. The United Nations put out a very important report recently about what amounts to war crimes in the shooting of Palestinian protesters by Israeli snipers. You know, we as American taxpayers, we fund these atrocities to the tune of $3.8 billion a year. That’s got to stop, and before that stops it becomes impossible to take serious an American role as a credible mediator.
Watch full video here.
