Changing American minds

Guest: Salam Qumsiyeh, a young woman living in Palestine, whose visit to the US is being sponsored by the Reformed Church of Woodstock, talks about her life as a Christian Palestinian living in the occupied West Bank.

Salam talked about a time in Palestine when Jews, Christians and Muslims lived side by side and got along. "Jewish Palestinians?" I asked.

Salam stated that Palestinians had lived there for 2,000 years, just changing religions as various invasions befell the land. Could that be true, I wondered. Then it was the British and American colony building that tore it all apart?

A war between the Shia and the Sunni was prompted by a similar imperial invasion. And the US dominance of Saudi Arabia led to the rise of Wahhabism, the Taliban, and the collapse of our World Trade Center. Using religious and ethnic conflicts to subdue an occupied country has been around for a long time. Why don't we see it as the root cause of the Israel/Palestinian conflict?

Salam was joyous to be in the US. She told me that changing American minds is the only way that Israelis will change theirs and grant equal rights to all. That's what keeps me going, and maybe keeps you going too. Someday, Palestine will be free.

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Risking your life to get an education

GUEST: Libby Frank, member of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and long-time activist with the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom, talks about counter recruiting in the nation's public schools.

Libby, Eli and I had a good discussion of counter recruiting in the public schools since all three of us have had experience in it. Eli and I went into the schools with a local group called Dutchess Peace http://www.dutchesspeace.org. We worked the cafeterias, came to parents' nights and talked in classrooms. Our best activity was handing out flyers as high school students were leaving at the end of their day. Almost every student took them, and often thanked us. Sometimes we had a number of veterans with us, and that always made for interesting discussions.

We only did it at inner city schools like Kingston, Poughkeepsie and Beacon. Those were the only schools that have sidewalks right outside that students used. The suburban schools have parking lots and almost everyone goes home on a bus or in a car. We had a right to be on a public sidewalk, but not the right to be in a school parking lot.

The recruiting problems, however, are almost all in the inner cities. White, more privileged students rarely pick the military since they can afford other options. Hence, the recruiters spend most of their time trying to recruit people of color. That is what we found anyway. And the recruiters were restricted from roaming the halls and cafeterias in the suburban schools as well. Inner city schools seemed to believe that Blacks and Latinos were lucky to have the military as an possibility. At Poughkeepsie HS, an Army helicopter would land on the football field, a spectacle that more privileged parents would never have put up with.

So counter recruiting is mostly about race. If you are poor and Black, then the military will make a man out of you teaching you how to kill for the empire in some foreign land. If you are a more affluent white, then you don't have to risk your life to get an education, healthcare or a paying job.

Our nation's schools are as unfair as our prisons. Both presidential candidates are warmongers, eager to build up the military and show American's might to the world. Neither would ever question the fairness of having a military made up of the nation's poor, Black students.

Greensboro and Poughkeepsie

GUEST: Gary Kenton, political activist and former co-host of Activist Radio, returns to the Vassar College airways to talk about progressive movements in his new state, North Carolina.

What a pleasure to have Gary back on Activist Radio. It was a one time event since he lives in North Carolina these days.

Gary, Eli, and I talked about race relations in Greensboro, comparing them to Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County. The fact that we in the north live in such segregated areas really diminishes white people's chances of having meaningful talks with Blacks about race and privilege. Not so, Gary tells us, in Greensboro where races are more mixed and the city has a long history of promoting these types of discussions. 

So is the current debate about Dutchess County's new jail just a way to avoid actually talking to Blacks about what really matters? Of course, the jail is a criminal waste of money, especially since it is being built after so many social services have been slashed or done away with. Progressive whites can all agree on this. But does this logical analysis take the place of genuine conversations with Blacks on race in America? 

Racism is America's disease, so embedded in our history and culture as to almost be invisible. The cure will only come when white American can accept our individual responsibility for perpetuating this system of oppression. 

To the Editor:

Sadly, Israel has become a rogue nation and a pariah state to much of the international community. Human rights abuses, military occupation, illegal settlements, home demolitions, brutal invasions (resulting in the deaths of over 500 children), and a cruel blockade that causes food and water shortages for more than a million Palestinians all contribute to Israel’s isolation in the world. 

Of course, Israel needs to be criticized and Israel needs to change. Any government (whether it be China, Saudi Arabia, Hondouras, or the US) needs to be criticized when repeatedly violating human rights and inflicting humiliation and suffering on innocent peoples. The state of Israel could not commit any of these abuses without the $3.5 Billion of US taxpayers dollars that go to Israel every year. 

Clearly, it is not anti-semitic to criticize the policies of the government of Israel. The sad truth is that Israel’s policies and actions have generated a worldwide backlash of antagonism and hatred towards Israel. And tragically, Israel’s policies and actions incite and provoke those who are genuinely anti-semitic. 

I would encourage Americans who truly care about the future of Israel to advocate for changes in Israeli policy that would promote real peace and justice for all. The future is indeed bleak for an Israel bent on maintaining an apartheid, colonial, settler state. The future Israel may not look like a Zionist dream, but hopefully, it will be a peaceful and just nation inhabited by both Jews and Arabs. 

Eli

Islamophobia is an imperial disease

GUEST: Ellie Bernstein, filmmaker and political activist, will talk to us about her latest documentary "The Impact," that explores Islamophobia around the world and how some governments use racist fears to target and frighten Muslims.

The assault on Muslims continues in the Western World. Many of the European countries as well as the US have established colonies in the Middle East, and the result has often been devastation and widespread carnage. Millions more have been displaced in these imperial wars.

To justify these crimes in the Middle East, the Western countries have encouraged a virulent racism towards Muslims, both in the occupied countries and in their own homelands. Islamophobia is an imperial disease, and the most vicious of all the occupying countries, Israel, practices the crudest form of racial prejudice towards it's millions of Palestinians.

Not to be outflanked by human rights campaigns in the US, Israel has poured money into making Americans fearful of Islam and of the Muslim people in their midst. The cancer that is Israel has metastasize in America, leading to physical attacks on Arabs and threats of deportation.

Ellie Bernstein's film will explore how far Western countries have come in destroying their own freedom of speech in the name of profit and political hegemony. It is a terrible price we all must pay for war crimes committed in our name.

Support Ellie's film at: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-impact#/

The violence of love

GUEST: Alexis Stoumbelis, executive director of CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, talks about neoliberalism and how it destroys lives in Latin America.

Archbishop Romero taught me more about US foreign policy than any history course I had ever taken. He spoke from the heart to the US Empire. Please stop arming and training the death squads in El Salvador. 

But there was no human being to talk to, and the good archbishop was murdered by a sniper while saying Mass in a chapel in San Salvador. Not by any sniper, of course, but one trained in the US at the School of the Americas. 

Read the archbishop's words, and then about his life. There are good people all around the world who take the most insane chances to promote the "violence of love." And then there are the princes of darkness who preach "the violence of hatred." We who live in the empire must come to recognize that our leaders are the latter, and that the crimes they have done in our name are too disturbing for most to even contemplate.