Israeli Apartheid Week 2014
February 17, 2014
Israeli Apartheid Week this year is February 24 through March 2. IAW is the annual event to educate Americans about the reality of the situation in Israel/Palestine. Some events are planned across the state include film showings and panel discussions. Since the week overlaps with the end of African American History Month, there are also events planned to celebrate both African Americans and Palestinians.
Educating Americans about Israel/Palestine has always been an uphill battle. The facts have been out there, but the media, academia and government have ignored all but a single narrative. I believe, like Alison Weir, that Americans are good and ethical people, and if they just knew the facts, they would never tolerate the inhumane treatment of Palestinians. The journalist Alison Weir founded the website ifAmericansKnew.org, a wealth of facts, statistics and reports about Israel and Palestine.
Like most American Jews of my generation, I grew up in a liberal Zionist household. My parents were Holocaust survivors and I never questioned the predominant narrative about the Middle East “conflict” until the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps. Because I didn’t understand why Palestinian refugees were living in Lebanon I was forced to ask some uncomfortable questions and come to even more uncomfortable conclusions.
After reading just about everything I could find on the topic I finally went to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in 2008 to see the situation for myself. I thought my reading would have prepared me for what I would encounter, but I was shocked by a 28-foot high wall bisecting Palestinian villages; checkpoints preventing Palestinians from getting to work, schools and hospitals; farmland appropriated and destroyed to make room for illegal Israeli Jewish-only colonies; graffiti on walls wishing for the death of “Arabs” by gas chamber. The situation is unlivable for Palestinians, which is of course, the idea. Zionists want all the land with none of the wrong kind of people on it. If life is unlivable, Palestinians will choose, so Israelis hope, to live elsewhere.
MORE...
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2014/02/17/israeli-apartheid-week-2014-0
