Unwashed faces of the Third World

December 14

 

GUEST: Chisato Kimora, member of the a joint Harvard and Yale and student group, that along with community members from New Haven, disrupted the famous Harvard-Yale football game to protest the genocide in Gaza.

Chisato Kimora, Yale School of Law

Chisato was a delight to interview. Her determination to hold her law school accountable for the genocide in Gaza was extortionary. When push came to shove, she was willing to risk her career for doing the right thing. The distance between her idealism and the jaded support for Israel in our Congressional class is simply astounding. 

Chisato and many others were willing to disrupt one of America's most holy rituals, the Harvard/Yale football game to make a point about Gaza. How could all those well fed and privileged football fans enjoy their masculine combat when images of 6,500 starving children were being held in their faces? It was an atrocity! An assault on American's values happening in the heart of the empire!

Don't Harvard and Yale represent the epitome of our national life? The best education and credentials money can get you into. If our holy sites like these can't be protected from the unwashed faces of the Third World, what can?

 

Supporting genocide when the price is right

December 7

 

GUESTS: Jewish and labor union constituents question Congressmen Pat Ryan on his unwavering support of apartheid Israel, and on his recent vote to describe any criticism of Israel as antisemitism.

Antisemitism bill chips away at free speech

A couple of very large rallies in the Hudson Valley has Congressman Pat Ryan running scared. He won a close race for his seat in Congress, and once there has become a dependable supporter of the genocide in Palestine. He has all sorts of reasons for his pro-Israel statements. His wife is Jewish, as are his children. In public, that is about all he talks about when the issue of Palestine comes up. That and how Israel has a right to defend itself. Of course, apartheid and genocide has nothing to do with the right to defend one's own country. 

At a public meeting, I asked Ryan about the money he gets every year from the Israel Lobby. He denied getting any money at all. More recently, he has said that the contributions he gets from Israel are "insignificant." And yet, research done by the website Open Secrets tell a different story. In fact, their data bank makes interesting reading. Israel is spending tens of millions on Congress, all obscured by various pro-Israel groups in the US. Representatives like Pat Ryan are being paid quite well to look the other way while 6,500 Palestinian children are massacred.

I was lucky to get this recording of Jewish and labor groups questioning Pat Ryan. They don't give him much wiggle room, and why should they? Ryan is a member of a class that supports genocide when the price is right.  

 

The second catastrophe of the Holocaust

 

November 30

 

GUEST: Ellen Davidson, member of Jewish Voice for Peace, Veterans For Peace, and contributor to the NY based Indypendent as well as Mondoweiss, talks about her trips to the West Bank and the meaning of apartheid.

Calling Israel an apartheid state

Ellen is a long time activist for Palestine. She uses her considerable writing and newspaper production skills to publish Peace & Planet News, a Veterans for Peace publication. I met her in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom March. About 1,500 members from all over the world waited in Cairo for permission to go into Gaza, permission that never came.

We stayed busy anyway, organizing courses on apartheid and Palestinian liberation. We also stopped the traffic in Tahrir Square, a breathtaking experience when we sat down in front of eight lanes of traffic. You can see what happened to us in a documentary I shot: "Still in Cairo."

So Ellen is one of those people who has worked for social change most of her life. She is Jewish, and considers her work for Palestine to be in the best traditions of Jewish activism and social justice.

How is it that the state of Israel seems to have thrown out all that history of leftist change to become a nationalist state modeled on fascism? Or is the creation of Israel the second catastrophe of the Holocaust?

Pat Ryan has always done what he was told

November 23

 

GUESTS: Two Palestinian women ask their House Representative Pat Ryan to call for an immediate ceasefire, and to oppose the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.

Democratic Socialists of America key player

How gratifying it was to hear two bright, young Palestinian women educating Representative Pat Ryan. He doesn't know much, of course. All he does is repeat stale Israeli talking points, while throwing in references to his own Jewish children. What an amazing example of PEP (progressive except for Palestine).

What he doesn't talk about yet is his yearly check from the Israel Lobby for close to $30,000. What incentive does Rep Ryan have to learn about Gaza or to consider the definition of genocide? Pat Ryan has always done what he was told, at West Point, and later during two tours in the Middle East. Congress is the same deal. They tell you what to say and do, and you collect your money. 

He has sharpened up his presentations somewhat. He no longer states that he gets no money from the Israel Lobby. He tries to "feel the pain" of the Palestinian people. He is just a good old boy trying to do what is right.

But these Palestinian women would have none of that. The result is searing and meaningful radio. For that is the way we should all treat the murder of over 5,000 children in one month. We should all be demanding that Rep. Ryan stop the genocide being committed in our names. And we should all be looking for a peace candidate to replace this Democratic Party warmonger. 

 

Class war, plain and simple

November 16

 

GUESTS: Alexandria Shaner, from Extinction Rebellion and Matic Primca, Slovenian activist and journalist, talk about what the Z Network is and how it relates to the Influential radical publication, Z Magazine, that featured the writings of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn.

Z Network

The history of the left in the US is littered with newspapers and magazines. Z Magazine is one of them. The pinnacle of radical thought in its day, it offered the writings of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn on the Vietnam War and its aftermath. 

“American imperialism has suffered a stunning defeat in Indochina. But the same forces are engaged In another war against a much less resilient enemy, the American people. Here, the prospects for success are much greater. The battleground is ideological, not military. At stake are the lessons to be drawn from the American war in Indochina; the outcome will determine the course and character of new imperial ventures.” - Noam Chomsky 

Media is where these wars are fought. Having courageous publications is so necessary, especially in times of war, when the major media in our country is always filled with Pentagon propaganda. 

Bury the empire and free the media! The US is now in perpetual war, driven by the all powerful weapons makers who buy and sell our Congress and President. Restoring our democracy has to start with overcoming our billionaire class, whose thoughts and whims often sound like the ravings of emperors in ancient Rome. It is class war, plain and simple. 

Behind this horrific carnage

November 9

 

GUEST: Talal Jabari, Palestinian journalist, award winning documentary filmmaker and managing director of Radio Alam, an Arabic-language talk radio station, talks about the current uprising against Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people.

Award winning filmmaker

Talal has been on Activist Radio before. His thoughts seem to come through the lens of his camera; there is a lot of detail to be had. And the full realization of US hypocrisy is always recognizable, right below the surface. 

How can the elite decision makers of our country be so ruthless? How are they able to support and even pay for the carnage visited on millions of Palestinian people. Do they think about those small body bags, all lined up like sardines. Five thousand of them in the first month of high tech onslaught.

Members of Congress aren't stupid; they are war criminals. And if our governmental leaders can do that to another population, what might they do to the 99 percent in the US who are not rich and isolated from life's traumas.

If there ever was a time to put ourselves on the line, this genocide of the Palestinians is it. We can watch it on our computer screens. We can read about it in our newspapers. We see the mountains of debris, with family members trying to dig through it with their hands. Can nothing touch the empire that is behind this horrific carnage?
 

 

A veteran of the IDF

November 2

 

GUEST: Mark Hammel, PhD, psychologist, Israeli citizen and veteran of the IDF during the Yom Kippur War, talks about his ideological journey to being a post Zionist, and a therapist for disabled veterans.

Explaining the Yom Kippur War

As a US veteran, I understand how a young man goes off to war with the best of intentions. He is defending his family and his country. He is doing his patriotic duty.

Once his finger is on the trigger, things look so different. There are women and children in the way. He is somewhere far from home, shooting people who might have been innocent. Suddenly, he questions how he is defending his family in a foreign country. He sees what invasions and occupations do to humanity in the Third World. He sees the slaughter he has wrought.

Now to come home, to be congratulated for all that carnage. Now to begin to live with all those memories. 

Mark Hammel knows that scenario all too well, having fought for Israel in two wars. I think that talking about war and occupation is a first step in regaining one's humanity. Mark is particularly insightful. He is a veteran of the IDF who can no longer accept apartheid.