Albert Einstein once said that Palestinians (Jews, Christians and Muslims alike) lived in peace and worked together before the European Jews were sent to Palestine. He also said that if Jews could not co-exist peacefully with Arabs “then we have learnt nothing in 2000 years of civilisation”.
I once interviewed numerous elderly Palestinian refugees who not only had the keys to their houses, living in hope that they would one day return, but recounted how Palestinian Jews would buy fruit and other agricultural produce from them, whilst Jewish medical doctors would provide care for their families. They did indeed live peacefully together side by side.
But as Einstein predicted all that changed when traumatised European Jews arrived in Palestine in great numbers and a Naqba (catastrophe) in 1948 took place resulting in 700,000 Palestinians driven from their homes, some at gunpoint, many bombed along the way. So reminiscent of today’s horrific bombings in Gaza.
The primitive, brutal, barbaric behaviour of the Israeli military that has now been unleashed is yet another great human catastrophe; another Naqba in Gaza. These present events were preceded by the siege of Gaza for 16 years, the shooting of children on the way to school in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the detention of hundreds of children and thousands of young men with more and more daily acts of brutality and killings – not just by the Israeli military but by illegal Jewish settlers in Palestinian land. All of these tragic events for Palestinians tells us that Albert Einstein’s words were very true indeed. They apparently have “learnt nothing in 2000 years of civilisation”.
Over the past 41 years I have seen over and over again how the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice for a homeland has been defeated by a superior military force aided, abetted and funded with billion of dollars by the USA. Most Western nations, and sadly at the moment including our own, are complicit with both biased “Israel has the right to defend itself” and silence at the ongoing war crimes against Palestinians.
There have been thousands and thousands of words written about the barbarity, cruelty, and horrific behaviours of Hamas and it was indeed brutal and barbaric. But Israel’s present brutality and slaughter of innocents puts them together as bed partners. The massive rallies around the Western and Muslim world condemning Israels actions speak to this reality.
In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and after a brutal battle the PLO agreed to leave Beirut and Israeli forces withdrew to the city’s outskirts. America had given its word that the Palestinian refugees would be protected by international UN protection forces, but they too left, leaving thousands of unarmed helpless refugees in the Beirut camps. On September 14th the President Elect of Lebanon Bashir Gemyal was assassinated. Israeli troops re-entered the city and surrounded Sabra Chitala Palestinian refugee camp near the city. Then on the 16th of September they allowed the Christian Militia forces to enter the camp.
I arrived in Beirut about 15 days after the Sabra Chatila refugee camp massacre in September ’82 after resigning my WHO consultancy and secondment to UNRWA. I resigned because of that massacre and at the failure of the UN and international community to protect refugees. I was nursing many patients in the hospital in the camp who had miraculously survived. I nursed an old man with a tracheotomy after his throat had been slit, a woman who had spent two days under the slaughtered lifeless bodies of all her family, she then became completely removed from reality from that trauma. Women were raped, children, old men and women were butchered with knives and shot. The cruelty to helpless refugees for two days and two nights was horrific. This massacre of around 3,000 innocent old men, women and children was a terrible war crime yet to be acted on by the International Criminal Court. Israel’s part in it, forgotten by the West.
Robert Fisk in ‘Pity The Nation’ described the scene a follows:
“Down every alleyway, there were corpses––women, young men, babies and grandparents––lying together in terrible profusion where they had been knifed or machine-gunned to death. Each [camp] corridor through the rubble produced more bodies. Perhaps a thousand people were butchered; probably half that number again. Even while we were there, we could see the Israelis watching us. From the top of the tower block to the west––the second building on the Avenue Camille Chamoun––we could see them staring at us through field glasses, scanning back and forth across the streets of corpses. This was a mass killing … It was a war crime.”
As Fisk describes, during all those horrific events, members of the “most moral army” (Israel) in the Middle East were watching their proxy Lebanese Christian militia carry out this slaughter. With their bulldozers, the Israeli military dug a huge hole to bury those who had survived this butchery and were waiting to be murdered. The Israelis had used their flares to facilitate this slaughter. A friend who was a doctor in the hospital told me that all foreign health workers were marched past a mass of mostly women and children near this hole and reported that once outside the camp they heard screaming and prolonged shooting. They were told to remove their white coats and identification and were ‘saved’ by Israeli military who had witnessed this butchery and massacre of Palestinian refugees; they did not want Europeans killed. Much too much public outcry would have ensured otherwise. Palestinian lives did not matter. The Israeli military that can call Palestinians “animals” has form, and much of it brutal. And what about the many massacres that were committed in the early years of Israeli Occupation and seizure of Palestinian lands? So reminiscent of our own brutal massacres of Indigenous people in this country. Brutal, murderous colonial settlers alike.
In the same year in October I went with Dr Olfat Mahmoud (author of Tears for Tarshiha) to the south of Lebanon. We were visiting some relatives of hers. We stopped by Ein El Hilweh, a refugee camp of around 32,000 people. The Israeli military had invaded earlier and flattened the homes of all those people. It was like a very large playing field, it was that flat. few women and children were just sitting on the edge of the camp. Nowhere to go. So don’t think that Gaza will not be flattened. The Israelis do indeed have form and plenty of practice.
At present Gaza, according to the UN, ave 1.4 million displaced and over 4,000 killed. Of these 1,500 are children and 1,000 are women (nearly half). There are 13,000 injured with hundreds of these being children. Most of these people will again be refugees, as we know that many refugee camps have been completely bombed and are now inhabitable. Many families have lost their entire families – 18 or more in one bomb. In the Occupied West Bank some 69 people have been killed in these last few days. Why are they also being targeted? Of these, 15 are children and 14 were killed in one drone strike.
Once again Palestinians are living in tents – if they’re lucky. The Israelis say that they will finish Hamas and there is talk of getting the Palestinian Authority to “manage” Gaza. The PA which is universally loathed throughout the West Bank, is corrupt and is run by a bunch of geriatrics. Be warned. The USA smashed (under false pretences) the leaders and military in Iraq and we got ISIS. In Afghanistan, where so many lives were lost and the country almost destroyed, we now have the Taliban. Be careful what you wish for.
But I am curious. Why is it that Australia allows Australian Jews who are considered reservists to return to Israel to fight? To be part of an army that is committing war crimes, bombing churches, hospital’s, homes and now starving Gazans and flattening the homes of millions of people? Are they going to be charged on their return to Australia as people who went to fight for the Ukrainians were? I doubt it. Or are they coming back to their fine homes and peaceful country with the blood of Palestinians on their hands?
There will be an end to this present horror for Palestinians and Israelis. They will live together one day hopefully in some sort of peace after all this pain and suffering. But the USA, UK, EU and sadly our governments (both national and NSW) are doing little to advance that prospect for peace and justice. But people across Australia and the world are calling for this peace. Thousands of Australians gathered in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth calling for peace and justice; but critical also of our government’s silence and bias. Even if Western governments have lost their moral compass the masses on the street have not. The support seen this weekend around the world in rallies has been very positive and uplifting. Brutally occupying people in 2023 is no longer acceptable. The war and brutality in Gaza and the Occupation of Palestinian land and Palestinians must end.
Helen McCue
Dr Helen McCue AM is a former United Nations consultant, working in the Middle East with refugees and displaced. Dr McCue has been a strong advocate for Palestinian human rights including the rights of Palestinian refugees for over 40 years. She is co-founder of Union Aid Abroad APHEDA and co-founder of Rural Australia for Refugees (RAR). Dr McCue is the 2024 recipient of the Jerusalem Peace Prize.