Stop Israel’s apartheid
Yesterday’s paper said Joe Biden talked to Israel’s Netanyahu but “stopped short of demanding an immediate stop to the eight days of Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket barrages that have killed more than 200 people, most of them Palestinian.”
Today’s paper says more than 200 Palestinians and 12 Israelis have died. Those statistics are numbers as usual for the bloodshed between these peoples. You see, an airstrike does a lot more damage than a few rockets.
Biden gives forceful support for Israel to defend itself from Hamas. This is an international story that Biden doesn’t understand, a David and Goliath situation, 12 to 200. If he wanted to protect civilians, what about the 200 dead and 1,400 wounded Palestinians? Our president could easily stop this from happening because he could threaten Netanyahu with cutting a billion dollars or so from Israel’s military aid which is paid for with American tax dollars and is spent mostly annihilating the Palestinian people in Gaza and destroying Palestinian homes within Israel itself.
It seems every president we have is afraid that stopping the horrendous human rights abuses that Israel perpetrates against Palestinians will be seen as anti-Semitic. This is untrue. There are many Jewish people in Israel as well as the United States who understand the yoke of daily humiliation and violence that Palestinians are subjected to under the Israeli government’s oppressive laws and extra-legal activities. Apartheid exists in Israel. Americans should see it as such and work to stop it.
Linda Greene
Spokane