July 20
GUEST: Cheryl Qamar, social worker, committed feminist, and political activist, talks about her recent trip to the West Bank and the Aida Refugee Camp with the USA Palestine Mental Health Network. She is on the Board for Eyewitness Palestine and the Steering Committee for USA Palestine Mental Health Network.
The USA-Palestine Mental Health Network
Trauma leaves a long trail of suffering. For children living in a brutal apartheid state, the damage keeps accumulating and affects every aspect of their lives. They are stoned by the "settlers" while walking to school. They are chocked by teargas during night raids, and sometimes they are simply kidnapped from their beds to face days or weeks of interrogation. Like all Palestinians, they have no rights in the rigid theocracy of the Jewish state.
Does focusing on the children help the people of the United States realize the suffering of 5 million Palestinians under illegal occupation? It certainly does that for visitors to the Aida Refugee Camp. There, the occupation isn't very complicated. If you are Palestinian, your house might be crushed one day to make way for Jewish settlements. Your children might to dragged off in the middle of the night. Or worse, simply shot by the Israeli Defense Force.
The next time you read The New York Times, notice how much attention is being paid to the suffering of the Ukrainian people. Most likely, the stories will start with a picture of civilians suffering and houses destroyed. But in the decades long invasions and occupations of the Palestinian people, there is no outrage in the country that is primarily responsible for their suffering. We shovel billions into Israel each year, so that the apartheid state won't run out of bullets and bomb. We protect this criminal state in our media and at the UN. In fact, Israel is a colony of the US, the embodiment of the US Empire.
