‘Hope has been genocided’: Mennonite Action activists from Central Pa. recount trip to West Bank

• By Jaxon White / LNP | LancasterOnline

Nick Martin woke in Nazareth, Israel, to a message blaring across his phone screen in the early morning hours of June 13.

He rolled over in his hotel bed to check the notification, but the text was written in Hebrew, a language the 36-year-old Lancaster city resident couldn’t read. He entered it into a translation app.

“It was a preemptive shelter-in-place message,” Martin said. Checking the news apps on his phone, he saw reports that Israel was bombing an Iranian nuclear facility.

The Lancaster Stands Up co-founder was already two weeks into a trip that took him across Israel and into the West Bank. He was there with Melanie Yoder Salim, of Manheim Township, and a delegation of eight other Americans from Mennonite Action, a national organization advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza.

They landed at an airport near Madaba, Jordan, on June 3 and crossed the Israel-controlled border into the West Bank the next day. Their group then traveled by car to Bethlehem, Ramallah and Hebron to meet with refugees and activists who oppose Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and annexation of land in the West Bank.

The night of the emergency warning, Martin and Yoder Salim were sleeping in Nazareth before they planned to connect with some other traveling activists in Jerusalem the next day.

“Some people had windows open and could hear air raid sirens happening, and you could hear the fighter jets flying over,” Martin recounted.

Yoder Salim, 53, slept through the emergency messages, partly because she was wearing earplugs. She got out of bed when her roommate woke her.

Quickly, Martin said, the group realized staying in Israel could cut off their return via Jordan if the border were closed. Within six hours, Martin, Yoder Salim and the group were in Madaba, about halfway between the border and the airport in Amman, Jordan’s capital.

Later that same evening, Martin and Yoder Salim stood on the roof of their hotel and watched streaks of bright lights carving through the night sky, heading west toward Israel.

Each light was a missile fired by Iran in response to Israel’s earlier attack — initiating a conflict that officials estimate killed more than 900 people in Iran and at least 28 people in Israel before the June 24 ceasefire was established.

“You’re safe, but you also have never felt that lack of safety in that way before,” Yoder Salim recalled. “As an American, I’ve never witnessed missiles.”

Martin and Yoder Salim cut their trip short and returned to the U.S. They had gone overseas to learn about people’s experiences in Palestine and network with like-minded activists who oppose the violence Israel has allegedly committed against Palestinian citizens. Since their return, they have kept in contact with many of the people they met.

Martin and Yoder Salim said the experience recommitted them to continuing their activism at home. On July 16, they told their story to more than 125 people gathered in a gymnasium at Landisville Mennonite Church and spoke about their experience in an interview afterward.

Mennonite Action is a national organization that was formed in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel that saw more than 1,200 people killed and 250 kidnapped. Its members oppose the United States’ funding of Israel’s war efforts in Gaza, as well as advocate for a permanent ceasefire in the region.

According to a report from Gaza Health Ministry last month, more than 55,000 Palestinians have been killed and 127,000 wounded in Israel’s response to the 2023 attack. More than 850 Israeli soldiers have died since the conflict began, including those who were killed in the initial attack.

‘Our life is under fire’

Martin and Yoder Salim told the Landisville audience about visiting multiple Palestinian refugee camps, including the Aida Refugee Center on the northern outskirts of Bethlehem. There, they visited the Lajee Center, which provides women and children in Aida with education opportunities.

“People trusted this place. They came to it every day,” Martin said. “They saw it as a place of refuge, even though the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) would raid it constantly.”

Part of the reason it was raided so often, according to Martin, was because the Lajee Center flew a Palestinian flag on its roof. Despite pressure, Martin said organizers refused to lower it.

Martin and Yoder Salim recounted conversations with multiple refugees and community activists in Aida.

One man, an amateur photographer, told them his home had been raided by IDF soldiers more than 50 times, so much that he said he keeps the front door to his home unlocked because he grew tired of replacing it each time the soldiers knocked it down.

That man also said he was shot in the face with a rubber bullet while photographing a group of IDF soldiers. And after seeking medical treatment at the local hospital, he said, he returned home and was beaten by those same soldiers.

Another man told Martin and Yoder Salim about how Israeli settlers have pushed Palestinians out of the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills.

“ ‘The army is more and more aggressive,’ ” Yoder Salim said, reading from a quote she had written and credited to the man. “ ‘They shoot immediately. Really, our life is under fire.’ ”

Yoder Salim said that man was arrested by IDF soldiers just four days after they spoke with him, though she said they learned he was later released.

In Ramallah, a part of the West Bank just over 10 miles north of Jerusalem, Yoder Salim, Martin and the other American activists met a researcher from Amnesty International, which last year accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Human Rights Watch issued a similar accusation in November.

Martin called Hamas’ 2023 attack “deplorable and awful” but said “there’s no excuse” for Israel to commit genocide.

Israeli officials have repeatedly denied the accusations, arguing that its military forces have avoided causing unnecessary harm to Gaza civilians and infrastructure.

The researcher told the American activists stories about Israeli soldiers bulldozing farms in Gaza and children struggling with their education, as many schools have been closed or destroyed.

“She asked us if physical survival counts as survival,” Martin recalled, later adding, “She told us that hope has been genocided.”

Though the West Bank has not seen the same level of armed conflict as Gaza, there has still been a spike in violence, Israeli military operations and unspecified terrorist attacks there, according to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. The United States has issued a “Do Not Travel” advisory for Gaza, and a “Reconsider Travel” advisory for the West Bank.

“Basically, everyone we met with (in the West Bank) told us that they felt hopeless, that they were afraid that what was happening in Gaza was coming to them next,” Martin said.

A complex history

The Gaza Strip is positioned between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea and shares a border with Egypt, while the West Bank is landlocked between Israel and Jordan. Both are Palestinian territories that the United Nations considers occupied by Israel, a country established in 1948 after a post-World War II U.N. partition plan proposed separate Jewish and Arab states.

The region is considered the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, and Israel’s formation displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Disputes over land and sovereignty have remained a focal point of the long-running hostilities between Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

Martin and Yoder Salim are hardly the first county residents to travel to the region since the ongoing conflict began.

Rabbi Jack Paskoff of Congregation Shaarai Shomayim in Lancaster has traveled to Israel about 20 times over the last four decades and three times since the 2023 attack. He said describing Israel’s response to the attack with words like “genocide” sabotages the efforts of activists striving for peace.

“They’re inflammatory,” Paskoff said. “They don’t really help us solve a problem.”

Paskoff said Hamas, an Islamist militant group that governs Gaza, started the current conflict with its assault nearly two years ago. He also said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “partially to blame for how long this has gone on and how it’s gone on” and that Israel officials have “lost sight of the end game” in Gaza.

Hamas, deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union, claims that Israel is occupying Palestinian land.

Paskoff said a ceasefire in the region must be tied to a release of the roughly 50 hostages remaining in Hamas’ custody. Then, and only then, can the parties work toward peace.

For long-lasting peace, Paskoff said he supports the efforts of grassroots organizations looking to build dialogue and cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians, pointing to The Friends of Roots, Amaltikva and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.

Paskoff said the U.S. has a vested security interest in defending Israel, and that it shouldn’t stop arming the country. Still, Paskoff said America must hold Israel accountable for how those weapons are used.

Congress approved more than $14 billion in emergency military aid for Israel after the 2023 attack, largely in the form of air and missile defense support. And the U.S. continues to provide further military support toward Israel’s efforts in Gaza.

Back at home

Martin and Yoder Salim said they hope Lancaster County’s congressman and Pennsylvania’s two U.S. senators would reconsider their unwavering support for Israel.

None of the three lawmakers – Rep. Lloyd Smucker and Sens. Dave McCormick and John Fetterman – responded to a request for comment on this story, but each issued multiple public statements voicing staunch support of Israel following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

Around the first anniversary of the attack, Smucker, a Republican who joined a congressional delegation that traveled to Israel in 2017, said the U.S. “must continue to support our great ally, Israel. In Congress, my commitment to our nation’s ally will not waver. I stand with Israel.”

Smucker has the backing of the pro-Israel super PAC American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC has given Smucker tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations since entering office in 2017, most recently receiving $500 on June 25.

Many of Smucker’s arguments fall in line with what other Republican lawmakers have said about Israel in recent months, including first-term Republican McCormick.

And Democrat Fetterman has established himself as one of Israel’s biggest defenders in Washington. While some Democrats have criticized Israel, saying it has gone too far in its retaliation against Hamas, Fetterman has continued to back Israel.

Fetterman’s record on the Gaza war drew specific scrutiny from Martin.

“I voted for Fetterman,” Martin said. “And he won’t be getting my vote again because he doesn’t recognize the humanity of Palestinians, and I just find that deeply disturbing.”

Martin and Yoder Salim told the crowd that much of what they witnessed in the West Bank is rooted in authoritarian practices, which are on the rise in the U.S.

Mennonite Action Lancaster has joined several protests over the past few months, including June’s “No Kings” rally in Binns Park. The organizers said they will continue to participate in demonstrations.

“If we allow genocide to be normalized, then other forms of ethnic cleansing can be normalized,” Martin said. “And so the fact that there are mass detention facilities being built in the U.S. and rising violence here feels intrinsically connected … to rising violence in Gaza and the West Bank.

“If we make that allowable, it can happen anywhere,” Martin added. “And for that reason, we have to organize against authoritarianism here.”