Zionism Genocide Of Palestinian Olive Trees

Extreme hatred of everything non-Jewish seems to be ingrained in the blood of Zionist Israeli Jews. This hatred is expressed by their warmongering politicians, their terrorist army, their fundamentalist rabbis, and their extremist civilians. They spew out this hatred against everything Palestinian; people, homes, and fields. Last few years they have developed what could be called a yearly terrorist harvest ritual where they target Palestinian harvest products particularly the olive trees.

Palestine has been very well known for citrus products on its coastal line and vine and olives on its hills. Palestinians are mainly farmers, who depend on agriculture with olive production comprising about 25% of income for almost 100,000 families. Olive trees, many as old as 5,000 years, are spread all over Palestine and keep yielding plenty of olives year after year. Nearly 48% of the agricultural land of occupied Palestine is planted with 10 million olive trees; the vast majority is in the West Bank. The yearly economic revenue of the olive harvest used to total $100 million. The olive oil industry, alone, makes up to 14% of the agricultural income for Palestinians, and supports the livelihood of almost 80,000 families. For Palestinians olive tree is a national symbol of resilience, steadfastness, and attachment to the land. For the whole world an olive branch is a symbol of peace.

Yet this symbol of peace has become the main target for destruction by every Israeli especially the religiously extremist armed squatters, who forcefully occupy Palestinian land, mainly hill tops, and build their illegal colonies/settlements. During every harvest those colonizers attack Palestinian farmers, prevent them from cultivating their land and harvesting their own crops. The Israeli military has the practice of preventing Palestinian farmers from accessing their field claiming them as military areas. While denying access to the Palestinian farmers, Israeli colonizers descend on the area, and under the protection of the army they steal the Palestinian olive crops. When done, many times, they cut the trees with gas-chain saws down to the bare trunks, spray chemicals on the trees, set the whole field ablaze, and uproot the trees with their own bulldozers.

Young colonizers/settlers have developed the game of torching Palestinian fruit trees especially olive trees. They would set ablaze one small field initially to get Palestinian farmers and the fire department busy in that area, then they target a larger area far away on the other side. By the time the fire engines get to the second fire, hundreds of olive trees would have burnt.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) had reported in 2011 that the number of settlers attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties and property damage has increased by 32% in 2011 compared to 2010, and by over 144% compared to 2009. The report states that during 2011 the settlers had damaged or destroyed about 10,000 Palestinian-owned trees, primarily olive trees, which significantly undermined the livelihoods of hundreds of Palestinian families. In 2012 OCHA reported that 7,500 olive trees belonging to Palestinians were damaged or destroyed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank between January and mid October 2012. It was estimated that 2.5 million olive trees have been uprooted in the occupied West Bank. From 1976 to 1999, Israel had uprooted an estimated 1,000,000 olive trees and an additional 1,405,658 trees from between 2000 and 2006 (source: Status of the Environment , Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ), 2007). Between 2006 and 2013 another million olive trees are estimated to be uprooted or torched due to the intensifying occupiers/settlers campaign of torching olive trees every season.

This uprooting genocidal campaign against Palestinian olive trees is meant to be the first step of uprooting Palestinians, themselves, from their fields and eventually from their villages. It is meant to alter the original natural Palestinian landscape to a more foreign European atmosphere more suitable for the Jewish foreigners/immigrants.

The Zionist extreme hatred against non-Jews has extended beyond hating and aggressing against Palestinians to hating and aggressing against Mother Nature itself. The Israeli myth of turning desert into bloom is actually turning the vast green olive orchard of Palestine into a desert of ugly foreign-to-the-land colonies of cold concrete.

Source: Intifada Palestine

B.N