May 25
GUEST: Sa'ed Zboun, Arabic
teacher at Bethlehem University and one of the founders of the
Aida Youth Center, located in a refugee camp in the West Bank,
talks about how Palestinians survive the daily violence,
trauma and humiliation directed at them.
The Aida
Youth Center
With 75 years of apartheid repression, the individual stories of Palestinians often get lost in a sea of shameful statistics. Sa'ed reminds us that there are real people in occupied Palestine, trying to make lives for themselves. The Aida Youth Center spotlights the stories of young people attacked on their way to school, or held without charges by the Israeli military. Their lives are a constant reminder that Israel can hurt them at any time it wants, and that their parents have no power to protect them. It is the tactic of military occupation and settlement, all in violation of international law and the UN Charter.
The Israeli military "have their ways to make our lives a hell" Sa'ed tells us. Even small ways to make Palestinian lives harder: the checkpoints, the night raids and arrests, the demolishing of schools for new settlement buildings, and the constant fear that one day they will come home to see their homes demolished. Apartheid is akin to genocide, the systematic destruction of a people and their culture.
The US has a lot to say about human rights when it suits the Pentagon's war plans. We read story after story about Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Iranian, Russian and Chinese racism and oppression. But our military ally in the Middle East can do no wrong. Even after decades of ethic cleansing and outright murder, we prefer to look the other way.
Much of our inattention lies with how completely our Congress has been bought off by the Israel Lobby. Millions of dollars are given to our elected leaders to praise Israel, and to defend it after another massacre has been committed. Why don't you take a peek at how much your representative gets in bribes from the Lobby. Let's make these payments an issue the next time they run for office. Let's finally take a stand against Israeli apartheid.
