Susiya 7-24-2015

24, July 2015              Susiya Palestinian residents and international supporters have launched an unprecedented round the clock vigil to halt the destruction of Susiya.  U.S. State Department spokesperson John Kirby also expressed outrage. The standoff is the latest in a decades-long fight by Susiya residents, who have been facing forced displacement since the 1980s. It’s tragic that the Jews who have suffered oppression and dispossession throughout much of their long history should now assume the role of the oppressor driving the indigenous people from their land and uprooting God’s gift to mankind - olives, grapes, almonds, peaches, figs and other farming crops.  Theodore Bikel, who played Baron von Trapp in "The Sound of Music" on Broadway and Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof," vigorously opposed the destruction of Susiya. Although he was closely identified with Israel and with Jewish life, he was also an outspoken critic of Israeli policy, especially a pending measure to forcibly relocate some 40,000 Bedouin Arabs from their ancestral lands. "One thing that is absolutely clear in my mind is that human beings cannot be treated like cattle;" human beings must be given the dignity and the respect that all human beings deserve, especially by a people who themselves—Jews—have experienced such deprivation in the past." If Susiya is destroyed and its residents expelled, it will serve as a green light for further demolitions and expulsions through the South Hebron Hills and Area C of the West Bank. This must not be allowed to happen.