May Palestine Become Free Soon

During the 1967 Six Day War, my youthful ignorance and gullibility made me completely swallow pro-Israeli propaganda regarding that conflict, plus the overall glorification of Tel Aviv’s purpose relating to Palestinians. I remember a paperback book, Strike Zion, which prominently appeared on newsstands, extolling especially the Israeli military, while thoroughly demonizing Arabs.

I’ve since become a passionate supporter of Palestinian independence, based on irrefutable evidence that Israel, for many cruel decades, has built its own state via an ongoing genocidal effort to extirpate Palestinian rights and sovereignty by means not unlike how European colonists took America from its indigenous people.

In Gaza today, Jews having historical ties to the horrific Holocaust, are ultra-hypocritically delivering sudden mass death, violent injury and harrowing fear to trapped multitudes just as Hitler did with the Warsaw Ghetto.

There are sites on the Internet, such as GlobalPost, where one can view grotesque photos of the ensuing human carnage that most media deem too graphic — or too damning against Israel — to publish.

If blowing up children frolicking on a sunny beach or bombing a rehabilitation facility for the disabled doesn’t spur your moral outrage, consider this:

As reported in the London Independent, a Danish journalist videotaped Israelis gathered on a hilltop in the border city of Sderot, sitting in plastic chairs and eating popcorn, cheering as their army’s shells exploded against the night darkness in Gaza, with its dense civilian population. CNN correspondent Diana Magnay also reported the story, receiving threats for doing so.

Israel’s shameful, unequivocal barbarism must be stopped.

The Palestinians definitely deserve a unitary, unhindered homeland.

With the help of international outrage manifested in a coordinated global boycott, divestment and sanctions aimed at outlaw Israel, may that homeland come into existence soon!

Dennis Rahkonen, from Superior, Wisconsin, has been writing progressive commentary with a Heartland perspective for various outlets since the '60s. Read other articles by Dennis.