Dear Friends,
In 2017 I went along with a small team of U.S. veterans and Miko Peled, a Veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to the West Bank to see for ourselves the reality on the ground. Four of us on that trip were Jewish. We traveled all over the West Bank. Wherever we went we were treated with Palestinian hospitality. Not so the IDF and armed Israeli settlers, who we saw teargassing and oppressing Palestinians in their own villages. We saw the huge walls constructed by Israel that broke apart Palestinian villages, farmland and even families. The arrogance and cruelty was appalling. We also got teargassed and shot at with rubber bullets as we joined nonviolent Palestinian protests. We were physically attacked by armed settlers in Nabi Saleh.
I listened to the roundtable today (May 17th) as the tragedy in Palestine was discussed. How interesting that no one refers to the house demolitions and expulsions of Palestinian families in Jerusalem that basically started this current bloodletting. One of your panelists commented on the history back in 1948. I would suggest you educate yourselves a bit deeper to get to the roots of this ongoing tragedy. I’m a Jew and I took the time and trouble years ago to educate myself as to the history beyond the mythology promoted by Israeli Zionists and also here in the U.S. by many in the media and government.
As a veteran, I have a number of close friends who served in the IDF, like Miko, who will give a story that differs from the superficial official public narrative, a view from the inside, as many Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan vets also give us about their wars.
Meanwhile our country supports a globally recognized apartheid state of Israel with more than $10 million every day ($3.8 billion/year) and political/diplomatic cover in the United Nations and other international forums.
I suggest you read the General’s Son by Miko Peled.
If you would like to have Miko as a guest to get another perspective, it could probably be arranged. Here’s a video of Miko exposing some myths on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhNf__kYviY
Thanks for everything you do. I’ll be interested in a response.
Tarak