Stop committing war crimes!

“The possibility of a lasting deal between Israel and the Palestinians seems as far away as ever — and the history of failed negotiations suggests it’s largely because Israel prefers the status quo.” — Nathan Thrall, journalist, and analyst on the Middle East. ( https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/16/the-real-reason-the-israel-palestine-peace-process-always-fails )

The picture on the top is the upscale high-rise apartment building in Gaza City destroyed in a cloud of fire and smoke by an Israeli airstrike. 22 people were wounded in the fireball explosion, including 11 children and 5 women. The entire building held 44 residential apartments. The building in Gaza City housing the offices of the Associated Press and other media organizations was hit by an Israeli airstrike on May 15. (Khalil Hamra/AP). The picture on the bottom is Scottsdale Arizona.

Gaza City and Scottsdale are municipalities of approximately the same size. Can anyone imagine the United States government firing rockets into the middle of Scottsdale? Yet that’s exactly what Israel did. It fired rockets into the middle of a city of 500,000 human beings. More than 200 people were killed in Israel and the occupied territories in the first week of the latest hostilities, the vast majority of them Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.

“There’s no doubt that Hamas committed war crimes in shelling Israeli civilians. But most scholars believe that Israel also committed war crimes with its attacks on Gaza that were far more lethal to civilians than attacks by Hamas….A basic principle of getting out of a hole is to stop digging. A basic principle of peace-building is to stop committing war crimes. That’s the only path to making insoluble problems solvable.” — Nicholas Kristof, NY TimeS

Both the southwest of North America and the Middle east were established by immigrants, one group from Asia, the other from Africa but only the group in the Middle East can never forget or forgive their transgressors. The Navajo have not been involved in a war for over 100 years.

The Navajo nation reservation is a native American Indian territory covering about 17,544,500 acres (71,000 sq.km; 27,413 sq mi), occupying portions of northeastern Arizona, southeastern Utah, and northwestern New Mexico. It has been…