There was a period during the Vietnam War when I lost hope for my country. The US was slaughtering whole villages at the time, and pulverizing Cambodia from the air. I was drafted and sent overseas, so I knew what our military was doing in Southeast Asia.
Many Third World Counties later, our military is again slaughtering tens of thousands, this time in Gaza. Israel is doing the dirty work, as it often does. But the world knows who this genocide can be traced back to. We supply the arms, we send Israel billions in aid, and we cover up for them at the UN. And there is so much to cover up. There are seven million Palestinians still living in their homeland, and their treatment is so disgustingly racist that most of the world now calls it apartheid.
My country, I realized long ago, is not as evil as it is just broken. There is hardly a member of Congress not being paid off by the Israel Lobby. Our weapons makers sit in the Pentagon and plan how to sell more bombs and fighter jets. Our corporate media has been pro-apartheid Israel for decades. These are all failures of a country that was supposed to be "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Would our country starve millions of children in Gaza if it were run by the people? Or for the people? This genocide is the end of an ideal we once held for our nation.
Fred Nagel
The world now calls it apartheid
