April 11
GUEST: Eldad Benary, born in 1937 in Tel-Aviv, Palestine, educated and propagandized in Israel, and conscripted into the Israeli Defense Force (active and reserve for 20 years), talks about his longtime efforts to inform Americans about occupation and apartheid.+972 Magazine
It was an honor having Eldad as a guest of Activist Radio. Few people come from Israel, settle down in the U.S., and work so hard letting his friends and neighbors know about the realities of apartheid.
I took him years of reading, because it is not a simple thing to reinterpret a life spent in a propagandized society. Most Americans don't think about how many people the empire killed in Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq. They know that their country always had the very best of intentions. When wars fail and millions of civilians lie dead, we reinterpret these wars as mistakes in logic. The Vietnamese "weren't ready for democracy." We tried to make things better for the women of Iraq, but slaughtered millions; it was a "tragic mistake."
If the populations of countries could see the truth, there might be an end to wars of aggression. If Americans were like Eldad, we would study our history and not be afraid of where that takes us. Then we would then spend 25 years of our lifes informing others. Its a recipe for the end of the empire, when we the people rise up and demand that our government be remade in the best interests of all the people.
