Simply determined to do the right thing

GUEST: Kit Kittredge, member of Code Pink who has been to Gaza six times, talks about the "Women's Boat" that will try to sail through the Israeli blockade to expose the suffering of 1.8 million entrapped Palestinians.

Kit was kind enough to explain the heartache that is Gaza. She has made six visits there in the last decade, documenting the declines in basic services like food and drinking water that have made Gaza a living prison for 1.8 Palestinians. It is an American prison, paid for by US tax dollars, and supported by our ambassador at the UN. It is the Israelis who do the actual killing, using drones and periodic invasions. The last Israeli military slaughter in Gaza killed over 550 children by targeting schools with white phosphorus. Yet our Congress, flush with Israeli campaign donations, votes time and time again to congratulate apartheid Israel for its war crimes.

Kit helped us understand Gaza as a textbook example of the American Empire, always mouthing platitudes about human rights while promoting the savage occupation. Hitler praised how America resolved its problem with indigenous populations by fencing them off in reservations. Gaza is such a reservation, in the best spirit of ethnic cleansing and genocide. 

That America also has people willing to risk their lives for Palestinian rights is a bright light in the heart of the empire. Kit will risk her life again because her sense of justice is far greater than any sense of nationalism or self interest. History has its mass murderers like Himmler and Kissinger, but also its heroes like Gandhi and Martin Luther King. And then there are people simply determined to do the right thing with their lives. Like planning to break the blockade on the Women's Boat to Gaza.