Gaza: It's Hard To Be Indifferent

King of the beasts in Florence, 2023

I had a traumatic experience when I was eight or ten years old. I was walking out near the woods behind Stafford Elementary School when a scene captured my attention in the bramble at the edge of the woods. Three teens were assaulting a fourth. I'd heard screams and out of curiosity altered my course to get a closer look at what was going on. 

At that time we always differentiated between "the big kids" (teenagers) and "us". The guy lying on his back made eye contact with me and began calling out for help. I was between 50 and 100 feet away, trying to process what I was seeing. The youth on the ground had evidently been stripped because his underwear, pants and shirt had been throw up into the branches of the tree above him. Of the three teens who were standing, two were holding the fourth down, and the leader of the pack appeared to be whipping the captive one on the groin area with a fistful of branches. This last one turned and made eye contact with me, making a direct threat if I said anything.

Over the course of a lifetime I have met several people who witnessed violence and did nothing other than regret later that they either didn't intervene or didn't say anything. It's a hard experience to process. 

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The above story came to mind when I think about what is happening in Gaza. Can we really watch this horror and say nothing, do nothing? 

Here is an excerpt from Chris Hedges' substack that was published yesterday: 

Gaza is a wasteland of 50 million tons of rubble and debris. Rats and dogs scavenge amid the ruins and fetid pools of raw sewage. The putrid stench and contamination of decaying corpses rises from beneath the mountains of shattered concrete. There is no clean water. Little food. A severe shortage of medical services and hardly any habitable shelters. Palestinians risk death from unexploded ordnance, left behind after over 15 months of air strikes, artillery barrages, missile strikes and blasts from tank shells, and a variety of toxic substances, including pools of raw sewage and asbestos. 

Hepatitis A, caused by drinking contaminated water, is rampanr as are respiratory ailments, scabies, malnutrition, starvation and the widespread nausea and vomiting caused by eating rancid food. The vulnerable, including infants and the elderly, along with the sick, face a death sentence. Some 1.9 million people have been displaced, amounting to 90 percent of the population. They live in makeshift tents, encamped amid slabs of concrete or the open air. Many have been forced to move over a dozen times. Nine in 10 homes have been destroyed or damaged.   

I find the devastation in Gaza is heartbreaking. Yet, here in the U.S., life goes on, tra-la-la. From the beginning it seems there was nothing any ordinary citizen could do to persuade our government leaders to stop sending bombs.

Apartment blocks where families lived, schools, hospitals, universities and even places of worship have been obliterated. This destruction extends to cemeteries, local shops, and offices, leaving the community without vital structures that support daily life. 

One article I read mentioned the economic toll on Gaza. I couldn't imagine any kind of organized economy in the midst of this rubble. According to Hedges, unemployment is nearing 80% with the gross domestic product plummeting by nearly 85%. Here is an October 2024 report from the International Labor Organization that puts this in perspective.

Then there's the ban on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Israel has cut off a critical lifeline. This agency, which predicted that clearing the rubble will take 15 years, had been one of the few sources of basic humanitarian supplies, food, and services for the people of Gaza. 

Again, what disturbs many of us is this feeling of helplessness about it all. 

As for the future, what next? It's not going to be a cakewalk. 

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Source and stimulus: The Chris Hedges Report

Notes from the Julian Assange Saga

Does the American public have a right to know what its own government is up to and has been up to these past many decades? Apparently not, when you look at how the government stomps down any reporter who strives to shine a light on what our veiled government entities--FBI, CIA, NSC, Homeland Security--are doing under cover of darkness. 

This week, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was put on trial in England after having taken refuge for a number of years in the Ecuadorian embassy. What follows here are some quotes that I extracted from Wikiquotes and Twitter yesterday.

“It is impossible to correct abuses unless we know that they’re going on.”
—Julian Assange

"That's what a journalists job is, to hold those in power, elected politicians and everyone else to account, we have got to protect journalists"  
--Jeremy Corbyn speaks to @SkyNews On Assange

"The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war.”  
--Julian Assange speaking in 2011

"He should be given a medal -- he is contributing to democracy.”
--Noam Chomsky on Julian Assange

"To every political leader and journalist making and writing speeches: You can't save Navalny. You *can* still save Assange. If you're silent here, when and where you can actually influence the outcome, you were never standing up for principles—you were just hoping for applause. x.com/Snowden/status…"
--Edward Snowden

“Their fear of Assange and malice toward him tells us that the WikiLeaks documents were real. Anyone who read them had their world view changed forever. Guessing and knowing are two different things.”

"As they lecture us endlessly about human rights in other countries, the Biden administration is trying to kill journalist Julian Assange for the crime of embarrassing the CIA. His wife Stella joins us from his extradition hearing", sad but very true!”

“It's crucial to untangle facts from politics in the Assange case. Yes, there were allegations that the CIA discussed actions against him, but that shouldn't overshadow the debate on press freedom. Assange's actions have raised complex questions about journalism and national security. While he may have broken the law by aiding hackers, the severity of his penalty should be assessed fairly. We need to consider the impact on freedom of expression and media accountability.”
--Quantica

The contradiction of people screaming of the  treatment of Alexei Navalny say nothing over the treatment of Julian Assange. Wonder why that is?

--Eric Pistey

Why punish julian assange who is only the messenger of truth, he is not the perpetrator of the crimes committed by the USA who is trying to cover up their crimes by attempting to shoot down the messenger to sweep their crimes under the carpet and out of view.

--Sweet Jennet

“This is not justice; never could this be justice, the verdict was ordained long ago. Its function is not to determine questions such as guilt or innocence, or truth or falsehood. It is a public relations exercise, designed to provide the government with an alibi for posterity. It is a show of wasteful vengeance; a theatrical warning to people of conscience.”

—J. Assange

“A Society that prohibits the capacity to speak in truth extinguishes the capacity to live in justice.”

—Chris Hedges

“The New York Times reported that Assange’s lawyers contend that the U.S. is prosecuting him for political reasons. That is correct. Assange very publicly shamed the U.S. government. And the U.S. government does not stand for humiliation. (Just witness its treatment of Iran for over 40 years because of the hostage crisis.) For that, Assange has been hounded, falsely accused, tortured, prosecuted and threatened with 175 years in prison. The same fate awaited whistleblower Edward Snowden, had he not had the sense to flee to a place the U.S. could not follow, namely Russia.... Had Assange died in Belmarsh prison, or should he, that would be fine with the United States, because there’s one thing the U.S. military and national security state will not tolerate and that is publication of their crimes abroad, in other words, the truth.“
—The Atrocious Prosecution of Julian Assange, by Eve Ottenberg, CounterPunch, (19 February 2021)

WikiLeaks and Assange have done more to expose the dark machinations and crimes of the American Empire than any other news organization. Assange, in addition to exposing atrocities and crimes committed by the United States military in our endless wars and revealing the inner workings of the Clinton campaign, made public the hacking tools used by the CIA and the National Security Agency. their surveillance programs and their interference in foreign elections... And WikiLeaks worked swiftly to save Edward Snowden, who exposed the wholesale surveillance of the American public by the government, from extradition to the United States by helping him flee from Hong Kong to Moscow...

—Chris Hedges

Related Links

How Much Did WikiLeaks Damage U.S. National Security?

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