This letter is from Jordana Churchill, an educator and member of the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation, and Kate Paarlberg-Kvam, who has spent time in the West Bank as a human rights observer.
Dear Editor,
As Vermonters, we write to agree with the title of Mark Treinkman’s recent opinion piece. Facts do matter in Vermont’s discourse about the actions of the State of Israel.
As people of conscience whose tax dollars and elected officials have made these actions possible, the facts that concern us include the forced displacement of entire Palestinian villages by settler outposts, ruled illegal even by Israel’s own courts.
They include frequent harassment and physical assaults of both Palestinians and international advocates by settlers and the military, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
They include settlers attacking homes and slaughtering livestock while soldiers look on; the imprisonment of minors; and killings of Palestinians and United States citizens. These events are well-documented by both Israeli and international human rights organizations.
Facts include home demolitions. They include what Amnesty International and others have termed the apartheid wall that divides communities; the metastasizing land grabs of outposts and settlements gradually joining hands to rob Palestinians of ancestral lands.
They include the current E1 settlement project aimed at permanently splitting the West Bank in two, and the war in Gaza, which both the United Nations and Vermont’s entire Congressional delegation have called a genocide, along with humanitarian conditions that aid agencies say amount to the use of starvation as a method of war.
These have been witnessed firsthand, not only by our Palestinian and Israeli neighbors here, but also by Vermonters who have traveled on humanitarian missions, including one of the authors of this letter.
Facts matter. So, too, do definitions, especially in times of transition from one kind of conflict to another.
What is a ceasefire if Israel continues to bomb and blockade Gaza? What is peace if the process proposed by the United States includes no investigation, accountability, or reparations – and when its arbiters include leaders accused of war crimes?
What is serious debate when one side attempts to dismiss an overwhelming global movement of scholars, diplomats, activists and journalists in support of Palestinian life and dignity as Hamas propaganda?
Jordana Churchill, South Burlington, Vt.
Kate Paarlberg-Kvam, Burlington, Vt.
