Our Middle East shame
Imagine, if you can, that American extremist groups, supported by the U.S. Army, are doing today what they did in the 1800s: driving Native American tribes from their ancestral homes, burning their villages, imprisoning or killing the men and beating their children. Those who take up arms to resist are hunted down and shot.
We look back on the “trail of tears” and the massacre of women and children at Wounded Knee with shame. We cannot imagine that it could happen today. Our current standards of decency and justice would demand a stop to such inhumanity. Or so I would hope.
And yet, we stand by as our proxies in Israel, funded by the American taxpayer and supplied with American weapons, commit those same acts of injustice. Israeli troops stand by as settlers burn native Palestinian homes, blow up and deface their places of worship, beat their children, close their schools, tear up their crops, steal their livestock and imprison their leaders.
Yes, Israel is consumed with rage over what happened on Oct. 7, 2023, just as Americans in the 1800s were enraged by Native American attacks on settlers that were encroaching on Indian Territory. Perhaps Israelis will look back on this time with the same shame that we Americans feel for our darker history. In the meantime, we should not be complicit in their inhumanity.