Saturday, May 31, 2008
What does Israel have going on?
Years ago, during the first Intifadah, when Israel closed Palestinian schools, I wrote to the National Education Association, an organization to which I've belonged for twenty-nine years, encouraging them to protest this outrage. I received no reply to my letter, but I did receive a reply from my state association, the Federal Education Association, and for simply the courtesy of a response, I was grateful. In those days, Palestinians were so happy to receive a mere acknowledgement, and I am ever beholden to Jack Rollins, who was the president of Federal Education Association then.
Of all the crap to come out of the occupied territories recently; i.e., sick kids, whose lives are sustained because someone uses a hand pump to provide them oxygen, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera . . . what most shocked me from the panoply of outrages against humanity, was the story which told of the eight students in Gaza who would not get to study abroad on a Fulbright Scholarship because the occupier would not grant them visas.
And I think of my dear Samira, who is so bright; one of her teachers raves that she's the best web designer he's ever seen, and I think about how outraged I would be if this motivated and intelligent kid couldn't go to school because she couldn't travel from Germany, where we live, to the US, where she hopes to pursue her chosen field of graphic design and advertising.
And I can only come to the logical conclusion why it is in the interests of the Zionists to deny Palestinians higher education.
And as a parent, and as an educator, I am f***ing incensed. What does Israel have going on that in order to sustain itself it acts in a manner unbecoming the rankest of barbarians? What does Israel have going on that it denies the fundamental human right of education to the people that it ethnically cleansed from their homes? If Israel had anything going for it, it wouldn't barbarically subdue the indigenous people on the land it usurped. Israel has nothing going on, and as long as I have a breath in my body, and as long as I am free to protest its barbarities, I will expose it for its crimes against humanity.
Israel doesn't want kids to get an education. Think about it, folks.
Of all the crap to come out of the occupied territories recently; i.e., sick kids, whose lives are sustained because someone uses a hand pump to provide them oxygen, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera . . . what most shocked me from the panoply of outrages against humanity, was the story which told of the eight students in Gaza who would not get to study abroad on a Fulbright Scholarship because the occupier would not grant them visas.
And I think of my dear Samira, who is so bright; one of her teachers raves that she's the best web designer he's ever seen, and I think about how outraged I would be if this motivated and intelligent kid couldn't go to school because she couldn't travel from Germany, where we live, to the US, where she hopes to pursue her chosen field of graphic design and advertising.
And I can only come to the logical conclusion why it is in the interests of the Zionists to deny Palestinians higher education.
And as a parent, and as an educator, I am f***ing incensed. What does Israel have going on that in order to sustain itself it acts in a manner unbecoming the rankest of barbarians? What does Israel have going on that it denies the fundamental human right of education to the people that it ethnically cleansed from their homes? If Israel had anything going for it, it wouldn't barbarically subdue the indigenous people on the land it usurped. Israel has nothing going on, and as long as I have a breath in my body, and as long as I am free to protest its barbarities, I will expose it for its crimes against humanity.
Israel doesn't want kids to get an education. Think about it, folks.
