Tag: gaza

Open Letter to Kamala Harris

Dear Madam Vice President:

For the last several weeks I have been hard at work trying to dissuade fellow Muslims from abandoning your campaign in favor of third party candidates. I have to acknowledge that the Democrats, only slightly less than the Republicans,  have failed the Palestinians. Over the last year I have referred a few times to the Palestinians as “the Negroes of our time”, meaning that, in Washington at least, they are second-class to Israelis.

Disappointed and even angry as I am with the Biden-Harris administration, I keep harping on the point that the Palestinians would fare even worse under another Trump administration. On top of that, I emphasize that Trump is unstable, vengeful, and quite dangerous.

There are plenty of Muslims who have been saying the same thing, hoping to head off a critical number of Muslims in swing states abandoning your campaign. But our job is an uphill fight, especially  since you refused to invite a Palestinian to address the Democratic National Convention.

We have not seen enough by you to give us hope that you intend to finally get real with Israel and its oversized lobby. By assuring Israel that we will maintain its military edge over all possible enemies, we have allowed successive Israeli governments to suppose they can postpone indefinitely justice for the Palestinians. This cannot bring security for Israel.

Dominant power does not restrain itself. If we do not provide a check on  Israel, hostile forces in the region eventually will. 

This week millions of Americans saw a video of 19-year-old Palestinian man named Sha’ban al-Dalou burning alive along with his mother in an Israeli airstrike next to a hospital. The week before that, many of us read a shocking account in the New York Times of what volunteer medical workers in Gaza saw: large numbers of young children who had been shot in the head or chest, leading to only one gruesome explanation. (See: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-doctor-interviews.html.)

Unquestionably, Israel is in violation of both American and International law. It is a national shame that we continue to supply it with offensive weapons.

Of course, Hamas is also deeply complicit in this nightmare for the Palestinian people. As a convert, I consider Hamas to be a disgrace to Islam. But when America guarantees Israel a military edge over all enemies and never insists on a political solution, groups like Hamas are the logical result.

Were it any country other than Israel, I doubt that so many American politicians would have defaulted so long to the sorry excuse that if Hamas is going to keep attacking Israel and hiding in the midst of the Palestinian population, there is not much we can do.

If it were any country other than Israel, by now America would have resolved to stop obliging extremists on both sides by fueling Israel’s war machine. By now this simple reasoning would have prevailed: the only way to defeat Palestinian terrorism is by insisting that Israel end its oppression of the Palestinian people.

Israel does not need any more offensive military assistance from us. It needs to end its wars in Gaza and Lebanon, and begin the politically difficult but necessary task of relocating settlers in the West Bank back to Israel proper, and accept the Green Line as its permanent eastern border. 

In the immediate, American Muslims need to hear you articulate a truly New Way Forward on Israel and Palestine.

Sincerely,

Todd Buchanan 

Re: “Screams Before Silence”. An Open Letter to Sheryl Sandberg and Anat Stalinsky

Dear Ms. Sandberg and Ms. Stalinsky,

I am an American Muslim convert, and I regard Hamas to be a disgrace to Islam. At the same time, it is no mystery why Hamas came to be, given the unjust order Israel has imposed on the Palestinians over several decades by virtue of its military preponderance. Such power does not balance or restrain itself; hence, Hamas.

I condemn all terrorist acts committed on October 7 by members of Hamas and other Palestinian groups, as well as Israel’s disproportionate military response over the seven months since. As you know, the majority of the 35,000 victims of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s  “mighty vengeance” have been women and children.

I watched your documentary, “Screams Before Silence” (https://www.screamsbeforesilence.com/) three times through, and while the testimonies are riveting and I have to presume much if not most of the content is credible (despite what some informed critics have alleged), I do find parts of the film problematic as I specify below.* As to whether sexual violence rose to the level of “systematic”, as you hope the viewer will conclude, I am not competent to judge. 

It is unlikely that even a consensus by qualified human rights organizations will dispel the controversy surrounding the allegations. However, we must wait to see how close those organizations come in their final reports to such a consensus.

But just as it is relevant to pose the question whether sexual violence on October 7 was systematic, it certainly appears that a disregard for civilians and aid workers in Gaza by the Israeli government has been systematic. One might say the same of Hamas, but Israel has been dropping the bombs and imposing the siege. 

I believe that Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas, which will prove to be elusive and counterproductive, is a cover for what amounts to ethnic cleansing. The government would like nothing more than to rid Gaza of Palestinians to make way for Israeli settlements. If hostages are still enduring sexual violence, ending that is not a priority of the government, despite its exploiting the allegations of October 7.

In your May 6, 2024 interview by Shany Littman of Haaretz, Ms. Stalinsky, Littman asked if you are concerned that the film could be perceived as an attempt to justify the “continued Israeli attacks on Gaza”. You responded that you could not imagine how anyone could think that was your motivation.

You later said you thought the Israeli government is “sentencing us to doom”.

 In light of these remarks, I urge you to undertake a documentary addressing the violence perpetrated against Gazans and West Bank Palestinians in the aftermath of October 7. For all the reasons you both state for producing “Screams Before Silence”, the stories of victims of this mighty vengeance must be told.

Just as you were troubled by what you perceived to be denialism of sexual violence by people outside of Israel, I am troubled by what seems to be denialism by many Israelis with respect to the war on Gaza especially. I was alarmed to hear recently that most Israelis oppose humanitarian aid to Gazans. 

At the conclusion of your film, you, Ms. Sandberg, tell Ms. Stalinsky: “Anyone who watches this film can bear witness….And we can take that pain, and take that trauma and turn it into hope, turn it into commitment, turn it into conviction that we are not going to let this happen again.”

Indeed. And in the same vein we all must face what has been going on in Gaza everyday since October 7 in retribution for the horrors suffered by Israelis on that day. Israelis especially should know how their government’s war on Gaza has impacted innocent women, children, and men alike. No two people are better qualified for that task than you.

Sincerely,

Todd Buchanan

* We should be suspect of any taped confessions, because of what is not seen. What was the motivation for the alleged Hamas prisoners to “confess” to acts of sexual violence? The viewer cannot know. And at least one of the prisoners appears to have facial indications of physical abuse, i.e., a possible “black eye”.

      In a couple of the interviews, you, Ms.Sandberg, seem to be “leading the witness” with your question about whether sexual violence on October 7 appeared to be systematic. It is clear that is the answer you want.

On this point, human behavior in highly-charged circumstances, including mass violence, cannot be explained simply in terms of the presumed intentions of the actors. We know that sexual violence is endemic in warfare. In other words, there may indeed have been patterns of sexual violence without it having been intentional by the Hamas leadership. 

      Some critics of the documentary have questioned the reliability of some of the witnesses, if not most of them, and assert that their accounts of witnessing sexual violence or its aftermath have changed over time. Critics assert that some of the alleged witnesses of sexual violence did not include such accounts in their initial public statements, though I would not infer from that, if true, that their accounts were invented afterward.