Rachel Corie and Other Heroes

I spent quite a little time lately at a website called "Americans Who Tell the Truth." It's a portrait gallery of some 275 American writers, artists, and activists who have been courageous enough to express viewpoints and report facts beyond the usual sheepdip we have all been taught to absorb.

The portraits are all painted by an artist named Robert Shetterly. Each is accompanied by a short narrative bio of the subject.

The gallery includes names we would all recognize, such as Edward Abbey, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King.

There are others I wish more people recognized, such as "people's" historian Howard, Zinn and CIA torture whistle-blower John Kiriakou.

The comic Dick Gregory is in there. Also Winona LaDuke, Helen Keller, and Woody Guthry.

One of the most interesting people in the gallery has been dead for 19 years. That would be Rachel Corie, who, in 2003, was run over by an Israeli bulldozer. She was in the way of the bulldozer driver's assignment, which was to destroy the home of a Palestinian family.

I've never been a big fan of martyrs. And I'll be the first to admit that I myself don't possess the courage or commitment to do what Rachel did. Nor I would I recommend it to anybody I know. 

And yet, for reasons I'm unsure of myself, she would be the first person in that gallery I would encourage anyone to check out,

Here's a link to the gallery:

Americans Who Tell The Truth

Four-Minute Statement In Favor of a "Cease-Fire in Gaza" Resolution 

I gave the little statement below to the Carbondale, Illinois City Council on

Feb 27, 2024. The Council voted not to pass the resolution.

The Statement:

I urge this Council to pass a Resolution calling for a Ceasefire in the Middle East. 

The U.S., as you may know, GIVES – not LOANS, but GIVES -- Israel 3 to 4 billion dollars a year, year after year. There are conditions, of course, on this.  The biggest is that Israel must use the cash to purchase bombs, tanks, machine guns, and war planes from U.S. manufacturers. As one observer recently said, “the object is not so much to win wars, but to have them never end.”

Regarding Gaza specifically, the Jewish-American writer, Tom Englehardt, recently asked this:

QUOTE:

“I mean, honestly, given the historic suffering of Jews, who the hell kills untold thousands of children in a 25-mile-strip of land; attacks every hospital in sight; … cuts off food, fuel, and water to more than two million people; causes massive deaths …; destroys more than half of that area’s housing; and leaves untold thousands of Gazan civilians starving to death and with untreated illnesses of all sorts 

— and, after all of that, still isn’t faintly done? Somehow — yes, call it the hidden Jew in me — I take offense at that.” CLOSE QUOTE

The current Israeli war crimes are said to be in response to a terrorist action by Hamas last October 7, in which around 1200 innocent Israelis were killed. That action was by definition also criminal. But much more significantly, it was one hundred percent predictable.  You cannot treat any group of people as the Palestinians have been treated for 70 years and not expect violent blowback. 

 

The current destruction of the Gaza strip is really just an intensified continuation of Israeli actions since 1948, when three-quarters of a million Palestinians were violently driven from their homes by Israeli militias.  

And, just yesterday,  Israel announced plans to move ahead with 30,000 Israeli-only so-called settlements on land in the West Bank of the Jordan River, where Palestinians have only just recently had – or soon will have --their homes bulldozed, their olive groves burned, their citizens imprisoned by the thousands without charge and with no guaranteed due process.

But we are not even asking anyone to take a side. Just stop sponsoring this insanity before it gets even worse.

 Nov 23,2024

I am switching this over to a (mainly) Current Events blog. Need something, somewhere, to express facts and opinions about, as Caitlin Johnstone says, "the End of Illusions."

We could start by noting that this past week the U.S. used its veto power to shoot down a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The actual vote was 14 in favor of peace, one (the U,S,) against peace.

The current violence in Gaza is, of course, not a real war, but a one-sided genocide featuring -- in addition to the usual bombing -- starvation and disease inflicted intentionally by the powerful side against the indigenous people who have been forced into a small fraction of the land they lived on for at least several centuries..

U.S. weapons-makers are the biggest beneficiary of the violence. The weapons have included two that are generally considered illegal under international law: white phosphorous and cluster-bombs,

More in the immediate future.