A historic night of horror for Palestine and Palestinians

It is night as I write this post in Philadelphia. I’m watching Al Jazeera’s non-stop live camera feed from Gaza and coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza. I’ve been posting comments on LinkedIn to articles published by humanitarian organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the like. Comments like these:

Comment 1 Comment 2

I want to remind you, dear reader, that if the suffering of Palestinians had been prevented, that they had not been herded into an open-air prison and deprived of their homes and their livelihoods, the attack on Israel would not have occoured. I do not like war, and I don’t like killing, but what can be reasonabily be expected to happen when an entire people are treated this way by an apartheid state and the world sides with the apartheid state? As I said in one of the comments linked above: To borrow a phrase used by MLK, Jr. in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, this was a “negative peace” without justice. This is no surprise to anyone who has a nose for injustice.

There is never a good reason for ethnic cleansing. There is never a good reason for genocide. There is never a good reason for the collective punishment of a people or economic class. What is being done by Isreal, with the backing of the West and with money and arms from the United States is a set of war crimes. A genocide. “A land without a people for a people without a land” was a total lie. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many, Israel should not exist as an apartheid state, and the people whose homes were expropriated in the 1940s should be repatriated - and given their land back. More immediately, Israel must stop or be stopped from paving Gaza. And I want my taxes to pay for social programs here in my country, and stop paying for Empire and for proxy wars in the Middle East and Europe, and anywhere else.

I have a lot of opinions on this Empire we are in, and I’ll be posting more! :) #FreePalestine