Avoiding the news coming from Palestine and Israel lately has been extremely hard. I have been mostly reading articles and listening to coverage on the radio, but I eventually decided to watch BBC International one early morning for a while before my son woke up.

By the time my son was awake, a short documentary about Israeli activists volunteering at a small Palestinian village in the Hebron area was on. The documentary showed some homes of a Palestinian family being demolished by the Israeli army because the nearby Israeli settlement complained about the smell of cooking coming from these homes. Since these Palestinian homes are considered illegal by the Israeli government, the houses were bulldozed and destroyed. My son had an immediate reaction, and looked at me with his jaw open.

This is not a unique or unusual story in Palestine. It was clear that my son was confused and did not understand what was going on. I turned off the TV and offered this example: Imagine if Canada occupies Minnesota with its army and moves its citizens here. (His first response was, "Minnesota is too big, they can't just take it!") The Canadian government then says to us that we are living here illegally and we have to leave to make room for its own citizens. Now we need to take that to court, but since we are not citizens of Canada, we do not have any civil laws to protect us, and only Canadian military laws apply to us. With no legal help, we are unlikely to avoid losing our home, a home we have lived in since long before this occupation.

This is exactly what has been happening to Palestinian homes in Jerusalem and the West Bank since 1967. In its February 2021 report on West Bank demolitions and displacement, the U.N. Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated that the average number of houses demolished by Israeli authorities has increased by 65% in 2021 compared with the previous year. According to the report, more than 435 people, including 172 children, lost their homes in February alone. Systematic removal of an ethnic group is the definition of ethnic cleansing, an international crime.

When I was in college, the Israeli army enforced a curfew on my university and the town I was living in. This was not like the recent curfew orders we had in the Twin Cities. The Israeli army imposed the curfew on the entire town and university to search for some specific students. One of the students it was looking for had lived in my apartment months prior to my moving in. My roommates and I were told through megaphones to leave the apartment and sit outside on the ground. One of the soldiers searched the apartment using me as a human shield, one hand grabbing me from the back with a pistol in the other hand. Once the search was finished, I was ordered to sit on my bed for interrogation, and I thought: This is how I'm going to die.

This tactic is known as collective punishment. There was no way for me to sue the commanding officer or the army. Of course, I did not have legal representation under Israeli civil laws, since Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza are ruled by military order. The Palestinian society pays the price collectively if anyone causes any type of disturbance, even through nonviolent resistance. We have witnessed this during nonviolent demonstrations against the separation wall Israel has built in and around the West Bank, Jenin camp in 2002, Kfar Qasim and Rafah in 1956, Sabra and Shatila in 1982, and Gaza in 2014 and today. Just to name a few.

Palestinians have absolutely no rights under Israeli law, no avenue for reparations and no protection from persecution. Palestine is a human-rights issue. It was never OK to have Jim Crow laws in the United States, so why is it OK for my family in Palestine to live under similar laws? And why are we OK with funding it and defending it?

Without honestly asking these questions and holding the Israeli government accountable, there will never be a just resolution.

Ashraf Ashkar lives in St. Paul.