Guest: Amith Gupta, Palestinian rights activist and recent graduate of Bard College, talks about his work in the Rashidieh Refugee camp in Southern Lebanon.
Amith spent four years at Bard, and worked with local Palestinian rights groups to hold rallies and bring in speakers. It was gratifying to see that he hadn't left his activism at college.
His work at the Rashidieh camp helped me understand the the plight of Palestinians who are not directly under the boot of Israeli occupiers. In a sense, they have simply traded one set of guards for another. Isolated from the Lebanese community, they face a dismal future of unemployment and discrimination. Again, one is forced to think of our own native peoples, leading broken lives in squalid reservations. That is the fate that the US and Israel have chosen for the Palestinian people. And an international conspiracy of silence enables these war crimes to be committed.
When the US empire falls, history books will tally up the millions killed by American imperialism. Israel will have its place too, with its deadly mix of religion, and racism. This apartheid state will personify the insanity of greed and violence that characterized the late empire.
Who will be reading such a history book?
