Palestinian Courage, and the Silence of Our Friends

We are all brothers and sisters, and all children are our children.

The United States has murdered between 20-30 million innocent people since World War II, and not one US president or official has ever been held accountable. Unfortunately, these numbers only tell part of the story, and do not include the millions of Native Americans, African Americans, Japanese civilians, and countless others whose lives, and ancestral connections, were also destroyed by the US Empire. Like millions of others, I will never forget. And I will march, sign petitions for accountability, inform others, and do my best for the rest of my life in our collective fight for truth and justice.

Despite the genocidal, and mass murdering history of the United States, somehow, Israel’s US backed GENOCIDE in Gaza, feels even more personal, and obscene (in the last 6 months the US backed Israeli military has murdered over 35,000 Palestinians, including more than 15,000 Palestinian CHILDREN). Perhaps it is because I visited Israel, and a few Palestinian towns many years ago. Or maybe it is more about bearing witness online, minute by minute, to Israel’s ongoing insanity of targeting and MURDERING CHILDREN. It may also have a lot to do with growing older, and hopefully, wiser too, and recognizing that killing and destroying is what America does best. I am not an expert, but I have been following this story for over 15 years and I know that the weight of 75 years of oppression, and a brutal Israeli military occupation plays a significant role too. And then there are the stories of Palestinians. My God, the stories. My brother died when I was ten years old and it messed me up for big chunks of my life (I was in and out of therapy for over 20 years). Imagine multiplying that type of loss by 100, or 200! How does anyone survive that? How many times have we heard stories of entire Palestinian families being massacred in one night, or a single bombing? Or Israeli soldiers indiscriminately murdering Palestinian civilians, including children, and referring to it in a joking manner as “mowing the lawn”? Or the same Israeli soldiers, in their infinite ignorance, wearing T-shirts with a pregnant woman in the cross-hairs of a rifle, and the slogan “1 Shot, 2 Kills”? Or the thousands of Palestinian children who have had body parts blown off, and limbs amputated WITHOUT anesthesia? These children are our children, and they too teach us the meaning of the word courage, as do Palestinians everywhere. People like activist Moataz Salim, who regularly confronts members of Congress, after losing more than 100 family members in Gaza, and Nahla Al-Arian, a Palestinian Grandmother who has lost more than 200 relatives due to Israel’s murderous assaults, and yet still shows up at protests to speak out against Israel’s US backed GENOCIDE. And others like Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian academic who wrote the beautiful poem below, and was sheltering 15 children in his Gaza apartment before he was murdered by Israeli forces. Or the Palestinian doctor who was asked why he wouldn’t leave (he had the option). He said, “I didn’t go to medical school for 30 years to abandon my people.” He was killed. And of course, all of our Palestinian brothers and sisters who are living and dying under Israel’s occupation, and ongoing GENOCIDE too. They all give new meaning to the word courage.

If I Must Die, by Refaat Alareer
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up
above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale

I once naively thought that a genocide was unlikely to ever happen again due to the evolution of our species, and the growing smallness of the world. I then became informed, and politically active around 9/11 (thank you Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky), and I started to notice an inverse relationship between the level of my activism, and the number of friends and family in my life (e.g., my father disowned me multiple times, and I was no longer even a long shot to be invited to parties). I lost even more friends, and close relationships, when I went entirely plant-based, and adopted a vegan lifestyle. I only share all of this because I have discovered that speaking out against Israel’s US backed GENOCIDE in Gaza, takes the art of being “cancelled”, to a whole new level with regards to employment, friends, and even family members. Thankfully, I know that I am not alone, and that there are untold others who are experiencing far worse, and doing far more, in the struggle for truth and justice. Again, none of this compares to a GENOCIDE, and the unimaginable horrors that our Palestinian brothers and sisters, and other members of our great “human family”, are enduring in at this very moment. Their courage continues to leave me speechless.

Why are so many Americans Silent on Israel’s US backed Genocide in Gaza?

“People are motivated by the desires for privilege, for power, for profit. Those are not shocking revelations. Anyone who’s had any experience in life knows these things.” – Author & Professor Norman Finkelstein

Philosopher, and activist, Simone de Beauvoir, once wrote that “the main scourge of humanity is not ignorance, because the ignorant often have excuses, but the refusal to know.” I continue to be amazed by how many likable American parents I have met over the years, who believe that their children are the “be-all and end-all”, and are therefore owed a lifetime of opportunity, wealth, and privilege, regardless of the destructive implications. Somehow, a large number of Americans (of all ages), are “unable” to make the connections between the COSTS of living a life of privilege, power and profit, and its impact on everyone else on the planet. It blows my mind how so many Moms and Dads, who are educated and “successful”, can worship their own kids, yet still REFUSE to extend any compassion, or LOVE, for other children both at home and overseas (especially the millions of Palestinian kids who are under siege at the moment via guns, bombs and starvation, as they continue to be targeted, and murdered, by US and Israeli military forces). And guess what, those “other” kids who they choose to ignore or suppress, are just as bright, talented, and beautiful as their own children (if not more so, ten times over). This mentality reminds of Dr. King’s “Drum Major Instinct” sermon, where he talked about people’s “desire to be out front, and “lead the parade”, and how this can lead to “snobbish exclusivism” and “tragic race prejudice”. As per Dr. King, “Do you know that a lot of the race problem grows out of the drum major instinct? A need that some people have to feel superior…and to feel that their white skin ordained them to be first.” Dr. King urged his audience to “Keep feeling the need for being first”, but be “first in LOVE.” According to the MLK, Jr., Research & Education Institute, “King used Jesus’ own life as an example of how the priority of LOVE could provide greatness. In his biographical sketch of Jesus, King preached that Jesus owned nothing, and when public opinion turned against him, he was called a “rabblerouser” and a “troublemaker” for “practicing civil disobedience”. King notes that, although by worldly standards Jesus was a failure, no one else has “affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life.”

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” – Edward Abbey

For many Americans, being decent, and first in LOVE, is not an objective. They believe that they are indeed good, and the best and brightest, so to feed their ego, and justify both their sense of entitlement, and their unrelenting desire to own and control as much of life as possible (a Doctrine of Discovery type of madness). In my experience, far too many “older” Americans (Post-War, Boomers, and Gen Xers), don’t want to know how many beings suffer and die due to their choices, nor do they care much for the truth, and how many times they are proven wrong. This mentality is of course unsustainable, and presents a major problem, as most of the wealth holders in the United States are older, white, and ultra-conservative (a disproportionate number of the wealthiest Americans are also highly active politically). Thank God for the younger generations, and student activists who provide hope for us all (if you are keeping score that would be Gen Z, and Millennials), although they too may one day succumb to the temptations of capitalism, and a superficial culture that worships extreme wealth at all costs. Unfortunately, for peace activists, most wealthier Americans don’t concern themselves with truth, justice and genocide, they only care that their profits are maximized, to the exclusion of everything else (while other Americans are kept either dumbed down, scared, or distracted).

As per Daniel Berrigen, “But what of the price of peace? I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm…in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans—that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. “Of course, let us have the peace,” we cry, “but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.” And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs—at all costs—our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost—because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war—at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.”

The people who are supporting Genocide, are the same people who are attacking free speech, and supporting the brutal police crackdowns on those who are protesting against GENOCIDE. Columbia University, in a move that made no sense except to those in power, announced that all students who protested the GENOCIDE in Gaza were suspended, even though the NYPD (who have been completely out of control of late), announced that the Pro-Palestinian protesters were peaceful. In other words, if you support GENOCIDE, you will not be suspended by Columbia University! Despite its admission that all of the student protesters were peaceful, the NYPD still arrested roughly 300 of the “peaceful” protesters, and refused to let them re-assemble (the NYPD also denied water and food to the student protesters who were arrested).

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Another reason why so many people are being cancelled for speaking out against Israel’s US backed GENOCIDE in Gaza, is because most Americans are grossly misinformed. How much does US corporate media (CNN, FOX, MSNBC, NY Times, ABC, CBS, etc.), dumb down Americans? According to PEW Research Center, nearly half of Americans don’t know if more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis over the last 6 months of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. For the record, conservatively, over 35,000 Palestinians have been MURDERED by the US backed Israeli forces in the last 6 months, including more than 14,350 CHILDREN! According to the Israeli military, 1,139 Israelis have lost their lives during that same time period (many were killed by the Israeli military itself). We also hear a lot from legacy media about Israeli hostages held by Hamas (Israeli citizens, in their infinite lunacy, are now marching against Netanyahu’s government in an effort to free the Israeli hostages held by Hamas, with zero concern of Israel’s US backed Genocide in Gaza). According to journalist Stephen Semler, Israel is holding over 3,661 Palestinian hostages (many of whom are children), compared to just 132 hostages held by Hamas. The US corporate media has once again been masterful at lying, and downplaying the numbers of Palestinians massacred, while exaggerating, and blatantly lying about far fewer Israeli deaths. As per FAIR.org, “We’re now seeing the impacts of the reality that corporate media, as well as corporate-funded universities, will always side with official power—as they present students sitting quietly in tents in protest of genocide as violent terrorists. But the fact is, we’ve been seeing it for decades, as corporate media spin narratives about people of color as both violent and lazy, and the socio-economic status quo as the best possible option, even as millions of people increasingly recognize that it means a terrible life for them.” Israeli lobbying groups like AIPAC and the ADL are a big part of the disinformation campaign too, as they have been complicit in Israel’s mass murder campaigns for decades. What is AIPAC? As per Jay Saper of Jewish Voice for Peace, “The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, uses millions of dollars and racist smear campaigns to ensure Congressional complicity in the Israeli’s government’s genocide of Palestinians.” AIPAC is a fanatical Pro-Israel lobbying group with deep pockets (AIPAC expects to spend over $100 million buying off US politicians in the 2024 elections). According to John Mearsheimer, Israeli lobbying groups like AIPAC, and the ADL have made “Herculean efforts to shut down criticism of Israel, especially its murderous policies toward the Palestinians in Gaza.” which of course is a “direct attack on the First Amendment, and thus a direct attack on core American values”.
Click here to learn more about how the US corporate media whitewashes GENOCIDE from Krystal Ball.
Click here to learn more about AIPAC from Jewish Voice for Peace.
Click here to learn more about the equally awful ADL.
Click here to learn more about the ADL’s attacks on Peace organizations.
Click here to learn more about AIPAC from the If Not Now Movement.
Click here for the history and meaning of Zionism.

Why are Americans Misinformed?

Six corporations control 90% of the media in the United States.
US corporate Media = State Media
Try these sources for news that is a lot closer to the truth:
– DemocracyNow.org
– CODEPINK.org
– FAIR.org
– TheIntercept.com
– JACOBIN.com
– JewishVoiceForPeace.org
– Mondoweiss.net
– ElectronicIntifada.net
– TheGrayzone.com
– MintPressNews.com
– CommonDreams.org

“If you’re faithful to the values of Truth and Justice, it must inevitably come to pass that you’ll be ostracized, or, in the current idiom, cancelled.” (Norman Finkelstein referencing French philosopher and novelist Julien Benda)

I am sorry for the length of this blog post, but before I continue, I just have to share a few thoughts on “Genocide Joe”, as the US backed Israeli military prepares to massacre more Palestinians in Rafah. For the record, US President Joe Biden, is a mass murdering psychopath, who should be viewed as one of the most monstrous genocidal maniacs in history (let’s not forget too that he was one of the architects of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, which according to Brown University, killed millions of innocent people). Genocide Joe has been a chronic liar throughout his career, and is also the top recipient of any active politician of AIPAC money (well over $1million). Joe Biden has had the power to stop Israel’s GENOCIDE at any time, but instead has chosen to not only be complicit with GENOCIDE (the evil of all evils), but co-belligerent too (co-belligerent is a new term for me, but it means “actively fighting alongside someone”, and not just aligning yourself with that person or group, as can be the case with complicity). So yes, Genocide Joe Biden has been a war criminal for decades, and now he has committed additional crimes against humanity, and is responsible for a GENOCIDE. Again, if Genocide Joe Biden, and his team of sycophants, were held to the same standards as the Nazis at Nuremberg, they would all be hanged.

Matthew Hoh is a disabled Marine combat veteran for peace, and a senior fellow with the Center for International Policy. He does terrific work, and had this to say on the subject of Joe Biden and the US Empire: “The White House is also trapped because this relationship with Israel is structural. Even if Joe Biden was to wake up tomorrow and end this by calling Netanyahu and saying it’s over, you’re not getting anything else from us, well, the next day, Congress would begin to impeach him. I mean, so it’s a structural issue where because we have this system of LEGALIZED BRIBERY, the Israeli Lobby is able to control our political system, just in the same way that Big Pharma does, and Big Ag does, and the banks do, and the US Military Industrial Complex does. So yeah, I mean I can see this escalation continuing to happen, and then of course, you have the dangers of where does it go, and it’s not hyperbole to talk about World War III…Since 1991, according to the Congressional research service, the United States has been engaged in 250 military operations overseas, so you can look at it that way. In the sense of the wars since 9/11, according to Brown University’s Cost of War Project, the United States has had troops in combat, in close to 20 countries, I think it’s 18 or 19. So, in the last 20 years, we’ve had kids, or young men and women in foreign countries killing or being killed.”
Click here to learn more from Matthew Hoh.

US Leaders can be Described in Two Words: Terrifying Imbeciles (Norman Finkelstein’s description of Jared Kushner)

US Congressman, Tim Walberg, is the latest terrifying example of a US politician who should be fired, and subjected to a mental health evaluation. Here is Walberg’s response when asked about Gaza:
“We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid,” Walberg replied. “It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.” In Walberg’s view any aid to starving Palestinians would support Russia, Iran, Hamas, and “arguably North Korea, and China is in their too.” Representative Walberg is yet another genocidal monster who will likely never be held accountable.

More on our Brave & Beautiful Brothers and Sisters in Palestine

I am proud to say that I voted for Ralph Nader 3 times in the US presidential elections.

Here is an excerpt from one of his latest pieces:
“In 2001, the BBC reported that Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said, that “Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.” That same year, P.M. Sharon declared what Israel’s prime ministers, before and since, have striven for regarding Congress and the White House when he told former P.M. Shimon Peres (1984-1986), as reported on Kol Yisrael radio: “Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it.” Such imperiousness and violent racist remarks against Palestinians are reflected in Israeli leaders and opinion-shapers who call Palestinians “beasts,” “animals,” “subhuman,” “crocodiles,” “vermin,” and worse. With such vile pejoratives, it was easy for Eli Yishai, Israeli Interior Minister to say in 2012: “The goal of the operation [Operation Pillar of Defense] is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages…”Actually, the Palestinians have one of the highest literacy rates – 97 percent – in the world. Under dire conditions, they have accomplished farmers, physicians, scientists, engineers, poets, musicians, novelists, artists, and a deep entrepreneurial tradition carried on by the Palestinian diaspora around the world. It is no accident that Israeli bombers directly target Palestinian cultural and educational institutions in their recurrent assaults on Gaza. Israeli militarists have to degrade all Palestinians (3.2 million in the West Bank and 2.3 million in the Gaza Strip) to expel them from their ancestral lands and in so doing violently reveal the “other antisemitism” that most of the media has ignored. (See the “Anti-Semitism Against Arab and Jewish Americans” speech by Jim Zogby and DebatingTaboos.org). Degrading rhetoric makes it easier for Israel to reject outright, a 2002 peace proposal for a two-state solution by the 22 countries of the Arab League that is still on the table.”
Click here to learn more from Ralph Nader.

“At this point, you are either advocating for Palestinians, or you are a sociopath.” – Author Susan Abulhawa (referencing a tweet)

This is another heartbreaking poem that reminds me of the power of words. Fady Joudah is a Palestinian American physician, poet, and translator. He was born in Austin, Texas, and grew up in Libya and Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Joudah shared this story of Palestinian writer and nutritionist Hiba Abu Nada:

“Hiba Abu Nada, 32, wrote and published her final poem ten days before Israeli bombs killed her and many others on October 20, 2023, in Gaza. She had a B.A in organic chemistry and a master’s degree in clinical nutrition. In her short life she managed to publish one novel, Oxygen is Not for the Dead. The speaker in Abu Nada’s final poem is an inner I, probably the voice of God welling up inside. Here is an excerpt:

I shelter you
and the children who
are sleeping
as chicks in the lap
of their nest
they don’t walk
in their dreams
because death
towards the house
walks
I shelter you
from wound and woe,
and with seven verses
I shield
the taste of orange
from phosphorus,
the color of clouds
from smoke…

Gift laden with dew. Hiba Abu Nada wrote her final post on social media ten days after she wrote her final poem, hours before she was killed. The movement between the two texts is haunting, unforgettable. The God within and the God above:

“Each of us in Gaza is either witness to or martyr for liberation. Each is waiting to see which of the two they’ll become up there with God. We have already started building a new city in Heaven. Doctors without patients. No one bleeds. Teachers in uncrowded classrooms. No yelling at students. New families without pain or sorrow. Journalists writing up and taking photos of eternal love. They’re all from Gaza. In Heaven, the new Gaza is free of siege. It is taking shape now.”

Enough. Enough. I want to be happy, happy with my things, as Ghassan Zaqtan wrote, “happy because I have my hand,” “happy and thrilled that my hand, which called to you / or touched you / is still with me.” And that you’re still with me. I want to be happy with my voice and its foolish joys. I want to tell my children, what? What will I tell my children? What will you tell yours?”
– Fady Joudah

“Israel is a lunatic state.” – Professor and Author Norman Finkelstein

Most Israeli Citizens Seem to be Crazy Too

It is not just the genocidal Israeli government that is insane, but also the majority of its population. The award winning Israeli journalist Gideon Levy shared three things that need to happen for Israel to be able to live with the occupation:
1. Israelis must feel that they are the chosen people.
2. Israelis must see themselves as the victims
3. The dehumanization of Palestinians, which obviously you can’t really be okay with what Israel is doing, unless you see Palestinians as less than human.

Here is Mr. Levy’s response to a question asking if the younger generation in Israel is indeed, even more extreme than the older generations?

Gideon Levy: “I totally agree with that. It’s very interesting because usually young people go more radical than their parents to both directions. And the left is always more attractive, you know, intellectually for sure, but also morally. What we see here (in Israel) is that generation after generation, they become more ignorant about the conflict. They know nothing. They really know nothing. You will be surprised, I can assure you, any average American student in university or in college, for sure any European, knows much more about the conflict than an average Israeli. We live in denial and therefore we don’t want to know anything, not only about life in Gaza today, about the whole history, the context. The context is not present. And secondly, you know, there are so many incitement agencies which work and now we have also the social media which is very destructive and this is new so the young generation is not only NOT very promising because this combination of ignorance and nationalism is a very, very explosive one, and this will deface, and again, I must emphasize the first one, the ignorance. I am amazed again, and again, how little, there are obviously very knowledgeable young people in Israel, yeah? But the majority? They know nothing. And they want to know nothing. And they hate the Arabs.”

Mr. Levy later commented on Israeli society: “It shows where Israeli society stands today. If you express solidarity, or empathy, with the killed children in Gaza, you might be arrested in Israel. Not you might be, people were arrested just for having empathy to the killed children. But if you suggest Nazi ideas, nobody cares. That’s political correctness. This is the new Israeli political correctness. And what else can you call it if not calling it genocide? I mean, it goes without saying…I don’t see any hope from any direction. Israelis will not wake up one morning and say ‘oh this occupation, this apartheid, we don’t like it so much. Let’s put an end to it.’ This will never happen. It will only happen when Israel is punished for it. And this is not going to happen because the international community basically supports the occupation. The United States supports the occupation.”
Click here for the entire interview on the Useful Idiots podcast with the always excellent Katie Halper and Aaron Mate.

And while we are on the subject, let me just add that Israel is largely made up of mass murdering cowards (as per author Max Blumenthal, “Israeli society is primed for genocide”, with 73% of Israelis aged 18-24 identifying as right wing). How else do you explain the direct and repeated targeting of a defenseless civilian population in Gaza, that is mostly comprised of women and children (not to mention Israel’s US backed bombing of schools, hospitals, museums, aid workers, doctors, refugee camps, Palestinian journalists (and their families), as well as the intentional poisoning of Palestinian drinking water)? In the last six months, Israel and the United States have targeted, and murdered over 15,000 CHILDREN in Gaza.

In his book “Gaza, An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom”, Norman Finkelstein’s explanation of Israel’s rationale behind its 2008 assault, “Operation Cast Lead”, provides a lot more insight (Israel murdered nearly 1,400 Palestinians during the 22 day “Cast Lead” attack, including over 300 children):
“…Israel targeted Gaza to restore its deterrence capacity because it eschewed any of the risks of a conventional war. It targeted Gaza because it was largely defenseless. Its resort to unalloyed terror in turn revealed the IDF’s relative decline as a fighting force, while the celebration of Israel’s military prowess during and after Cast Lead by the likes of Benny Morris registered the growing detachment of Israeli intellectuals, and a good share of the public as well, from reality. A supplementary benefit of the high-tech, cost-free deterrence strategy targeting civilians was that it restored Israel’s domestic morale. A 2009 internal UN document found that “one significant achievement” of Cast Lead was that it dispelled doubts among Israelis about “their ability and the power of the IDF to issue a blow to its enemies…The use of ‘excessive force’…proves Israel is the landlord…..The pictures of destruction were intended more for Israeli eyes than those of Israel’s enemies, eyes starved of revenge and national pride.”
Click here to learn more about Operation “Cast Lead” from Amnesty International.

I am ashamed of the United States of America. The US continues to deny that Israel is committing GENOCIDE in Gaza, while it also provides Israel with “moral” cover, weapons, and billions of US dollars (without US taxpayer consent of course!). We know that the majority of Israeli citizens have descended into madness (no exaggeration), but why are so many people choosing to be silent or ignorant as well? I know that many Americans don’t like to read books, but choosing to be dumb, silent, or worse, is complicity. As per John Pilger, “The question begs: are the rest of us to be mere bystanders, claiming, as good Germans did, that “we did not know”?

Israel = Nazis = Evil = US “Leadership” = GENOCIDE

In the words of Aaron Bushnell, the Air Force soldier who lit himself on fire and died in protest of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza:
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”