John Buttrick of Concord was a UCC Global Ministries long-term volunteer working in media coordination and communication strategy for Kairos Palestine in Bethlehem, Palestine, from 2013-2015. In 2010 he lived for three months in the occupied Palestinian territory as a volunteer in the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel. These views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of EAPPI-US and Global Ministries or the WCC. He can be reached at johndbuttrick@gmail.com.
In August, there is no mercy from the blazing sun or the blade of the bulldozer. We stand with a Palestinian farmer, looking at the ruins of his farmhouse which had stood on the crest of a hill in Palestine only an hour earlier. For nine years it has given him shelter while tending his fields. He speaks despondently, “The soldiers just came… I did not receive any notification that they were coming today. There were 7 jeeps with 35 soldiers and the bulldozer.”
Below the ruins of his farmhouse was the remains of a building that had sheltered farm animals. It too had been a victim of the IDF bulldozer. As we stood looking at the pile of rubble, reality flared like burning rays of the sun scorching our backs, “those with coercive power are free to bulldoze the powerless into useless rubble.”
The thirty-five-year-old farmer stood apart for a few minutes, standing tall but with a disguised sadness in his eyes. Someone asked him if he would rebuild? He replied, “no, I am tired.” And the sun continues to beat down on him and his village with many more demolition orders.
From July 13 to 15, President Biden visited Saudi Arabia and Israel. He met with the political, military and economically empowered people. However, there has been little information on interacting with Palestinian leaders. He may not see Palestinian people facing the bulldozer blade.
In contrast, at the beginning of August 2010, I and other internationals were greeted, “welcome,” by the sharif of the Palestinian village where we would stay for the next three months. We were volunteers in the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). We had been invited to accompany the villagers in their daily life and monitor their struggles passing through the Israeli barriers in the Palestinian Territory.
One barrier separated the villagers from their farmland. Other Israeli checkpoints restrict access to schools, work, medical care, worship, and family visits. Our phone would ring at 2 a.m. alerting us to Israeli Defense force (IDF) soldiers in the village. Homes were invaded. We listened to the families tell about being interrogated, having their homes searched, and waking their teenage sons, often taking them away to unknown places without explanation. We witnessed surprise mobile checkpoints and had tea and sweets in a Palestinian home while the IDF camped on the roof of the home.
We often hear U.S. elected officials declaring, “Israel and the United States have shared values.” President Biden would surely dispute some of those shared values if he visited these Palestinian people. The personal stories he would hear would also be consistent with some statistics from the UN:
Movement is limited by 85% of the separation wall that runs through the West Bank. Approximately 630 thousand Israeli settlers in 150 settlements have been established illegally in the West Bank since 1967, also 128 “outposts.” There are 593 Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints obstructing Palestinian movement in the West Bank, most of them aimed to protect Israeli settlers. From 2011-2021 conflict-related deaths numbered 3,572 Palestinians, 198 Israelis; including 806 Palestinian children and 14 Israeli children. Israel controls and meters 85% of Palestinian water sources.
Our country does not share the values revealed in these statistics.
And yet, in 2016, the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding giving $38 billion in military aid to Israel over 10 years. The annual foreign military assistance from the United States, $3.3 billion, represents about 20% of the Israeli military budget, according to the Congressional Research Services (CRS). Israel cumulatively received $243.9 billion in inflation-adjusted U.S. foreign assistance between 1946 and 2019, making it the largest recipient of American foreign aid since World War II.
Substantial foreign aid standardly requires a showing of need. The reality is, Israel’s per capita gross domestic product is $51,430.08, similar to that of France and Great Britain. The U.S. military aid to Israel is equal to around $1,700 a year for every Israeli family. Jerome M. Segal, writing for the Baltimore Sun, reports, Israel’s economy typically grows at over 3% a year. U.S. aid is 1% of Israel’s economy. Without U.S. assistance, just the amount of the annual expansion of Israel’s economy would cover the lost aid several times over. Therefore, Israel does not need our financial military assistance. It can support its military budget on its own.
Not only does the U.S. give military aid to Israel that is not needed and finances actions incompatible with U.S values, the aid also finances treatment of Palestinians that violates international law. After David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, The United Nations General Assembly established the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP).
It was mandated to advise the General Assembly on a program to enable Palestinian people to exercise their inalienable rights, including the right to self-determination without external interference, the right to national independence and sovereignty, and the right to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced. CEIRPP’s mandate has been renewed annually. Israel ignores this mandate. The Palestinians live under the authority and administration of the Israeli military.
It is time for President Biden to have an honest conversation with Israeli leadership about its values, the financing of its military, and its violations of international law. An honest conversation will discuss the rift in the shared values between the U.S. and Israel. It would review military aid based on the standards of need, the ways to affirm friendship, and the ways the U.S. is complicit in the military oppression of the Palestinian people. It would seek ways for Israel, a member of the United Nations, to comply with the international law in its relationship with the Palestinians.
Until this conversation happens, the United States must discontinue military aid to Israel. Aid only enables a cost-free, permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Military aid weakens Israel’s independence and its vision to be a democratic nation. It contributes to an uneasy connection between financial aid and friendship. And, perhaps, ending support for military oppression of Palestinians will make it possible for the 35-year-old Palestinian farmer to find rest, stand tall again, and rebuild his home.