DID YOU KNOW?

BENEVOLENT UNCLE SAM

ISRAEL'S SUGAR DADDY


We talk about the USA bankrolling Israel. But the gates to hell (for the Palestinians) were opened by the British.

I realize many of us are tired of hearing about what goes on in Gaza/Palestine. Eventually news about these beleaguered people will be blotted out until another bloodletting occurs. I am aware that I do 'go on and on' about this issue, refusing to let go, like a dog with a bone.

There are two images I shall always remember. Since 1987, they have forever been engraved upon my psyche.

We were at the demonstration in London in support of the Intifada some years back. (The First Intifada from 1987-1993 was an uprising against Israeli Occupation where 1,100 Palestinians throwing stones were killed by Israeli soldiers.)

While some hotheads (you find them at any demonstration) were yelling rabid anti-Israeli slogans, I observed a family walking in front of us. The hijabed mother was holding the hand of her 9-10 year old son and the father had his little girl on his shoulders. They were saying, (crying?) just loud enough for us to hear - Palestine (they pronounce it as Pales-teen), Palestine, Palestine and they never stopped that anguished call. God forbid that any of us, in this post WWII 'enlightened' era - brown, white or black or of any rainbow colour; Christians, Jews, Muslims, Taoists, Confucianists, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Bahais, atheists, humanists and pagans - have to go through the ordeal and oppression of the Palestinians.

Also around that same time, on British TV, I watched a grieving Palestinian mother crying out her agony, " I have more sons at home. Allah hu Akbar!" as they buried her suicide bomber son. I am not a mother. I will never know her pain and her sacrifice. But I can relate to the sense of injustice and the helplessness.

Those two images keep on haunting me.

And to Abdul Hamid's and Kamisah's grandchildren, great-grandchildren and all the rest of his progeny I want to leave these notes and information because ignorance and laziness is a major cause of apathy. It is in no way adequate but this will have to do, coming from an old woman's experience and observations living in the belly of the whale.