What If Ahed Tamimi Was Your Daughter?

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

We put this on this blog's Facebook Page but it needs to get as much air time as possible. This is the 16 year old Palestinian girl. Ahed Tamimi whose brother was shot in the face by Israeli soldiers and who slapped one and is doing time for it.

We talk all the time here in the US, or some do, about the wonderful rights we have in this democracy. The right to free speech, a trial by a jury of our peers, the right to a lawyer etc. She is being interrogated and threatened by these men with no women present. There is no adult parent present and no lawyer. It is the US through supplying arms and cash that allow this to happen.

It is also the contributions of very wealth Jews like Adelson and Michael Bloomberg and others that allow it. American  Jews have been among the most dedicated supporters of this apartheid state.  This is finally beginning to change as in the main Jews tend to be fairly liberal.  Of course many Jews are disgusted with it and many left wing and socialist Jews are prominent in the various movements to stop it.

In so many ways the US population is isolated from the rest of the world.  Leaving aside the Christian Zionists who don't give a damn about the Palestinians because they are in Israel or support Israel because they believe their god is returning there fulfilling Biblical prophesy and hopefully they will get carried up to heaven. Many more have no clue as to what is happening there, that Ahed's home and many others is in an occupied territory and Israeli soldiers can enter their homes when they like day or night with impunity. The idea that is propagated that this land is any Jews to take because god gave it to them is absurd.

That our tax money supports this is a disgrace. It is yet another reason, along with the numerous US military ventures and the phony War on Terror that our living standards, wages and social conditions are in decline. We have to pay for this while investors in US companies like Caterpillar and the makers of WMD's profit.

For those that criticize her or her parents for encouraging her to slap an armed invader I guess that US American saying, Live Free or Die doesn't apply to anyone else fighting for their freedom.

It is shame on us as workers that we allow it too through our mass inaction.  Zionism is by its very nature a racist ideology