Similar motivations in Hindu Nationalists

March 21

 

GUEST: Andy Izenson, staff attorney, member of the Family Law Institute of the National LGBT Bar Association, and past president of the NYC National Lawyers Guild, talks about the enormous effect the right wing, Christian Zionist movement has on US support for Israel.  

Harvard Law School LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic

There are secrets to be revealed when it comes to the Christian Zionist movement. There are twice as many avowed Christian Zionists in the US as there are Jews in the entire world. And their organizational strength and fund raising machine makes them a menace when it comes to influencing how our country treats Palestinians in the Middle East. 

Andy explains that the Christian Zionists want all the Jews in the US to "return" to Israel because that would get rid of them here. The second reason is that Christian Zionists are essentially fascist and want to subjugate our country to a new wave of paternalism, homophobia and anti feminism. In fact, these Zionists want to put their boot heel on the necks of anyone who is not Christian, male and white. Christian Zionists have an inherent congruence of interests with the fascist Israelis. They both seek to create a theocracy based on ethnic cleansing and murder. One could find similar motivations in the Hindu Nationalist movement and with the Islamic State.

The pantheon of killers and war mongers

March 14

 

GUEST: Shahd Safi, born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp and now in Rafah with her family, talks about her work as a freelance journalist and the desperation of the Palestinian people with nowhere else to go.  (Interview from Report Gaza)

Palestinian Women in Gaza: Cruel Realities of Displacement

This talk by Shahd was recorded from Report Gaza, and was somewhat disjointed. I had interviewed Shahd last spring, but lost all connection with her. I was so happy to hear that she and her family were still alive. And her eyewitness accounts were as revealing as they had been before the Israel genocide. 

Shahd stated plainly that her goal was to escape the carnage with her family. She wasn't very hopeful that a ceasefire would ever come. To Shahd, this looked to be another Nakba, the 1948 catastrophe of ethnic cleansing in all of Palestine. She had started a GoFundMe to raise money for her escape.

Since then, I hear that Shahd and her family did escape. They had raised the tens of thousands necessary to survive. They had done something that few have been able to accomplish, and I don't blame Shahd. The pariah state of Israel may well get rid of all its six million Palestinians. Israel may get rid of all the Palestinians through slaughter and starvation, just like the Nazis did to the Jews. 

But the real difference is the role of the US. We fought the Nazis in WWII. We are in bed with the Nazis in 2024. We are sending them the bullets and the bombs. We are keeping the rest of the world from intervening. And the war crimes belong to us, as a nation. The US will take its place in the pantheon of killers and war mongers for the rest of recorded history. 

 

Toxic to the thousands of Palestinian children

March 7

 

GUEST: Ann Wright, author, retired United States Army colonel, and former US diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, talks about genocide and Palestinian liberation.

Why Would Anyone Kill Themselves to Stop a War?

Ann Wright has seen a great deal of US foreign policy up close. But she is also clear about what she didn't see in the Army as well as in the diplomatic core. She was never involved in coups or assassination attempts. And when she was confronted with ethical choices, she resigned from working with the US State Department. The invasion of Iraq was one lie too many. 

Ann brings a real sense of realism to how the United States operates in the rest of the world. Take the genocide in Gaza. She knows that our country could demand that Israel stop starving Palestinian children to death. But all our political parties are already bought off by the Israel Lobby. All our politicians can talk, but they can't really act. It is an inability caused by the ruin of our democracy, which has been sold to the highest bidder. In this case it is the hundreds of millions that come from US weapons makers and from Israel. It is a cesspool, toxic to the thousands of Palestinian children who will wither away and die in their obliterated world. 

Wouldn't it be amazing if our politician class included people like Ann Wright? Real people who refuse to murder civilians for profit.  


No escape from their demonic tormentors

There is a madness that comes from the daily view of genocide. All we have learned and all we have read stops at the barbed wire enclosure of Gaza. Inside, there are the images of Hell so ubiquitous in medieval art. For the damned, there is no pity, and no escape from their demonic tormentors.

But somehow to see this in real time breaks down the barriers of what we expect to encounter in our lives. That actual human beings could become the agents of such barbarism is just too horrible to dwell on, much less try to understand. This Hell on earth goes beyond rational thought.

Maybe that is why the genocide enablers keep sending Israel more weapons while they talk about ceasefires and food shipments. Are Biden and Blinken overcome by the horrors they have wrought, or are they simply part of the devil's plan?

Maybe that is why the holy stewards of Judeo/Christian religions are so determined to look the other way. Talking about genocide isn't a very civilized thing to do, especially when some are certain to take offense. The food banks they so generously organize and oversee as part of God's work aren't really for the starving children of Gaza. And the interfaith groups they so proudly belong to, won't lift a finger to condemn the charnel house that Israel has created for the Palestinians.

That leaves the rest of us. Are we too traumatized to act when the genocide is done in our name?

Fred Nagel
 

After our empire crumbles into dust

What can one do when our government provides the bombs and the bullets for the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people? The current slaughter in Gaza is much worse than the Nakba of 1948, when Israel killed a few thousand while pushing three quarters of a million Palestinians from their ancestral homeland. In Gaza, Israel is just murdering as many Palestinians as it can. It is just an extermination.

Perhaps this slaughter is occurring because the US has encouraged such bloodletting in the past. Our country has always been there to support the worst of Israeli excesses. So machine gunning a long line of starving Palestinians waiting for food trucks is just another step in the moral depravity that our country has learned to live with.

Israel is the wayward child of the American Empire. It is the serial killer that the US has always coddled and protected, no matter what the body count has been. The horror of exterminating 12,000 children makes us all despair. Our country's parenting has created this killing machine, and all we can do is watch the children be bombed, shot and starved to death.

We can point to villains, of course. Like Senators Gillibrand and Schumer, who have grown rich from supporting Israel. We can embarrass Representative Pat Ryan for his huge, pro-Israel bribes. But that is not enough to save our souls. We are the enablers of another holocaust, and the mark of Cain will remain, even after our empire crumbles into dust.

Free, Free Palestine!

 

February 29

 

GUEST: Yakov Pipman, long time Israeli citizen who fought as an IDF soldier for three wars, talks about winning Palestinian human rights and the history of Matzpen, the revolutionary socialist movement in Israel.  

Matzpen, Israeli peace movement

Perhaps Israel could have been different. It could have been that shelter from the storm that this persecuted people most richly deserved, after the genocide of the Third Reich.

But somehow Israel got tangled up with imperialist powers, the United States and England. These victors of World War II never really stopped fighting. They plotted how to gain control over the entire oil rich Middle East, and Israel was to be their linchpin. 

But imperialist powers are always based on racism, and Israel soon learned how to abuse and punish the indigenous people of Palestine. The Nakba of 1948 is one terrible example. Three quarters of a million Palestinians were forced off their land, so that the state of Israel could become a theocracy. To get the Palestinians to move, the new state of Israel slaughtered various villages, a precursor of things to come. 

Today's genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza shows the direction of Israel from some limited form of democracy to a full blown fascist state. And for every step of the way, the US has been there to furnish the ammunition and provide the international cover in the UN. Matzpen is the history of some more progressive Jews who resisted the bloody theocracy. That resistance is now flourishing on campuses as well is in community resistance organizations like Jewish Voices For Peace. 

Join the resistance! Free, Free Palestine!

Poorly disguised kleptocracy

February 22

 

GUEST: Ann Larson, antipoverty activist and contributor to the anthology, Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the World's Richest Country, talks about how the poorly paid get by in a country designed for the billionaire class.

Ann Larson: The Cashier Philosopher

The poorly paid don't really get by. They cut corners and don't buy what their families really need. Sometimes that is healthcare and education. Sometimes it is just peace of mind.

A nation's money is a zero net gain amount. If one interest group takes more, other groups get less. If half the nation's tax proceeds go to making weaponry, why there is only half left for education, housing, medical care, daycare, etc. If large corporations get tax breaks, why the poor and middle class have to pay more. When a nation has 756 billionaires, why 50% of Americans have to live from paycheck to paycheck. 

And when the nation's working class pushes back, why the plutocracy will often support a fascist, who will keep wages low and punish dissenters. Trump didn't come out of nowhere. 

Nor did our two pro-war parties. We have troops abroad in about half the world, while our working class is the poorest of all in the industrialized nations. War and occupations abroad benefit the very rich, and penalize the very poor. Our system is not a democracy, but a poorly disguised kleptocracy, the rule by the corrupt few.