School Walk-Out Protest

Informed, effective engagement in politics should be encouraged in people of all ages! But I sincerely doubt that skipping class to march to the bakery is going to be very effective at making changes in international geopolitics. Perhaps there are local, actionable issues that motivated young people could identify as meaningful to them? Weighing in on issues that you can actually hope to influence is far more rewarding and inspiring than waving a sign in Eastsound trying to change the behavior of foreign governments. It’s plenty frustrating just trying to change the behavior of our county government!

The war could end tomorrow and the killing stopped if Hamas, a declared terrorist organization, releases the United States and Isreali hostages and agrees to the only possible feasible solution, two nations that respect each other’s borders.

Hamas instigated this war, slaughtering some 1,200 innocent victims. I personally don’t relate to public protesting for Hamas and the current government of Palestine being the message to send for world peace.

Just one person who spent four years the Middle East’s opinion.

The Orcas High School pro-Peace walkout today was nothing short of incredible, with the young adults who proudly displayed their energy for ending the genocide in Palestine spreading a wave of solidarity amongst the community members who were there to support them.  The highlight for me at the event was meeting a local Palestinian family and seeing their beautiful daughter / grandaughter dancing in her traditional dress.  I look at each of these students differently now, and I honor them for taking this bold step, for their unselfish actions.  I hope that this awareness, that which some fear, I hope that it will continue to spread throughout our community.
  
One doesn’t have to live in the Middle East to know the history of the region anymore than one had to live in Iraq, VietNam, Central America, or any number of the many resource rich, poor countries that the U.S. has either sent it’s young men to die in, or sponsored a proxy war in, in order to see behind the veil of deceit, misinformation, and propaganda coming from the U.S. government via mainstream news sources like MSNBC, CNN, and the NYT’s, etc. that continues to this day.

This isn’t “killing,” this isn’t a “war,” this is the wholesale slaughter of a largely non combatant civilian population comprised mainly of women and children.  Tell Hamas to lay down their weapons?  They already tried that when Palestine laid down their arms and signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, and look at what that got them.  When it comes to peace negotiations, the Palestinians have exhausted every option with the Israelis.  Israel has never respected any international agreement, any U.N. resolution, and they have certainly never in any way, shape, or form respected anything even remotely resembling borders, (what planet are you from)?  Israel has had more U.N. resolutions enacted against them than any other country in history, and is currently in standing violation of over 100 U.N. Resolutions related to the occupation of Palestine, (Military Court Watch 1967-2016– https://www.militarycourtwatch.org/page.php?id=w5Vc8BWPAQa401322A5Bh8sJaEXA ), and, (U.N. Watch 2022 UNGA Resolutions on Israel vs. Rest of the World from 2015-2022). 

Today, day 222, marks the point where 35,173 Palestinians, the vast majority of them women and children, have been slaughtered by Israeli ground troops, snipers, tanks, helicopters, jet airplanes, missiles, bombs, naval vessels, landmines, and booby traps, (with countless thousands of victims still under the rubble), in addition to 79,061 injured, and over 5,000 (mostly non combatants, and most being held without charges), languishing and being tortured and abused in inhumane conditions in Israeli detention centers, with more mass graves being found almost daily (with many of the victim’s hands and feet bound and showing signs of torture), and now an entire, mostly muslim, population that’s being staved to death with many of them dying of disease and untreated injuries in the bombed out remnants of what was once Gaza.  This is not a war… this is genocide.

Hamas didn’t instigate this genocide, the genocide didn’t start on Oct. 7, and it will only stop when U.S. taxpayers quit funding it.  Under international law Palestine has every right to defend itself from Israel’s occupation, including with the use of armed force, (https://www.cjpme.org/fs_236).  Original figures cited over 1,400 innocent civilians murdered in the Oct. 7 attack, but Israeli social security figures reveal that there were 695 Israeli civilians, and 373 Israeli security forces murdered on Oct. 7, with a number of both the civilian and military personnel murdered by responding Israeli troops using the Hannibal Directive… and with all of them being murdered on stolen Palestinian land, (https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social-security-data-reveals-true-picture-of-oct-7-deaths). 
  
This didn’t start on October 7.  Today represents the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” a phrase referring to the systemic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians when over 400 Palestinian villages and towns were wiped off the map, over 750,000 people were forcefully displaced from their homes, with over 10,000 murdered by invading Jewish Zionist para-military groups and militias, and with Israel taking control of nearly 80% of what had previously been known as the Palestinian Territories.  Nearly every Israeli town and city in Palestine today is built on top of the ruins of a former Palestinian village.
  
This didn’t start on October 7– “In the West Bank, between the start of 2023 and December 12, Israeli forces had killed 464 Palestinians, including 109 children, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than twice as many as in any other year since 2005, when the UN began systematically recording fatalities. This included unlawful killings stemming from Israel’s regular use of excessive lethal force and some cases of extrajudicial executions.  Israeli authorities also held 2,873 Palestinians in administrative detention, without charge or trial based on secret information, as of December 1, according to Israeli Prison Services figures. This figure marks a three-decade high, according to the Israeli human rights group HaMoked.  During the first half of 2023, the Israeli government approved building 12,855 new housing units in settlements in the occupied West Bank. This is the highest number the Israeli group Peace Now, which has systematically tracked plans since 2012, has ever recorded. The transfer of civilians into occupied territory is a war crime.  During the first eight months of 2023, incidents of settler violence against Palestinians and their property reached their highest daily average since the UN started recording this data in 2006: an average of three incidents per day as compared to two per day in 2022 and one in 2021. This included rampages by mobs of settler in Huwara and Turmus Ayya. That rate increased to over five incidents per day after October 7.”  (Human Rights Watch world Report 2024 https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/israel-and-palestine ). 

This isn’t a war, this is ethnic cleansing, this is genocide, and it’s happening at the hands of both the Israeli military and the illegal settlers on a daily basis– (IMEMC 5/15/24-Israeli Colonizers Attack in Hebron, Nablus, Soldiers Shoot a Palestinian https://imemc.org/article/israeli-colonizers-attack-in-hebron-nablus-soldiers-shoot-a-palestinian/ ).
  
Hamas, who came on the scene in the late 80’s is a militant organization that is an offshoot of the Islamic Brotherhood.  Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people as a populist political party because of the failure of the Palestinian Authority to protect the Palestinians from the Israelis.  Hamas’ declaration to destroy Israel is no different than Israel’s long-standing declaration to destroy other Islamic countries in the middle-east, (including Palestine).  Even though Hamas has been declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. and it’s western colonialist allies, (just as Israel and the U.S. have been declared terrorist organizations by other countries around the world), Hamas is not on the list of groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations Security Council.
  
Speaking of terrorist organizations– let us not forget America’s first terrorist, John Brown, a fierce abolitionist, once considered a martyr by northerners and a terrorist by southerners, who is now, 200 years later celebrated by the U.S. government.  And, Nelson Mandela, a S. African hero, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, the global symbol of peace and freedom, immortalized for his struggle to end apartheid for S. Africa.  He too, at one time was considered a terrorist (by both the white S. African Govt., and the U.S. Govt.), with the latter keeping him on their terror watch list until 2008.  George Washington was considered a terrorist by the government of Great Britain but a freedom fighter by the American people.  It should also be noted that the U.S. has supported their fair share of freedom fighters, with the Mujahideen (Osama bin Laden) being one of them.  There are many examples throughout time of oppressed people resisting their oppressors.  From the slave uprisings in ancient Rome, to the Jews using tunnels in the Warsaw Ghetto, to the French resistance fighters during WWII.  Oppressed people throughout history have risen up to their oppressors using armed resistance.  “The world asks the Palestinians to suffer in silence, without protest, without resistance.  That’s why the world only pays attention when violence breaks out.  Unconscionable violence.  Unconscionable violence that is deplorable.  Unconscionable violence for which Israel, as the oppressive occupier is ultimately responsible for.  Do you condemn resistance in the name of liberation?” (From, Do you condemn armed resistance?).

“Choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot move forward.  Then, if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence.”  Nelson Mandela 

Israel is not our friend… Israel has never been our friend. From the time Israel launched an unprovoked attack attempting to sink the USS Liberty, the flagship of our naval fleet, in international waters in 1967,  murdering 34 U.S. sailors, and injuring 171 more, (The Day Israel Attacked America – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx72tAWVcoM), to the times they’ve been caught spying on us, to the times we’ve caught them interfering in U.S. political elections, to the times they’ve been caught stealing nuclear materials from us, up until today where there exists a convenient business relationship between U.S. Congressional members and the Israeli lobby’s super-PAC (AIPAC), who bribes our elected leaders with millions of dollars in political campaign donations every year, (including 37 Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election).  Bribes which result in political favoritism ensuring that U.S. taxpayers pay the Israeli government an average of $3,800,000,000 per year, this resulting in a cost to Washington State taxpayers of $118,472,967 annually, (even more considering the billions more in funding that we’ve given Israel since Oct. 7, and even more considering the billions more that we’ve given Israel in terms of military armament since Oct. 7).  And all to arm a country that has illegally militarily occupied, illegally blockaded, illegally suppressed the people of Palestine, and in support of the construction of illegal settlements on stolen land, settlements that use stolen Palestinian resources (farmland, fuel and water).  These are funds which the Israeli government is required by law to then spend back in the way of arms purchases from U.S. arms dealers.  Who was it that said, “Beware of the ever growing threat of the U.S. military industrial complex?” (Where do my tax dollars go?  https://www.notmytaxdollars.org/ ). 
 
I’ve never been to the Middle East, but I would like to go sometime.  I would like to meet the people there, and view their ancient wonders, and experience their rich cultural heritage.  

Robert Dashiell and others who take this stance …. in response to “if Hamas, a declared terrorist organization, releases the U.S. and Israeli hostages” …. seriously, have you looked at the evidence that October 7th was a ginned-up event? that most of the Israeli casualties on that day were actually caused by indiscriminate use of Israeli aerial firepower? that there is a great possibility that most of the hostages are probably already dead as a result of the IDF siege on Gaza? then there is the long history of the state of Israel/Mossad acting as nothing other than a terrorist organization: the Kind David Hotel incident, the Nakba in 1948 and decades of violent takeover of Palestinian land, the bombing of the USS Liberty in 1967, and yes, I will just come out and say it: 9/11 itself) . . . . . . to put it mildly, calling Hamas a terrorist organization is the pot calling the kettle black. If you still think “Hamas instigated this war” …. look at some history. It didn’t start on Oct 7th. Watch the movie ‘Israelism’ … which came out 10 months BEFORE Oct 7th … awareness about the true history of the state of Israel (notice I am NOT saying “Israelis” or “Jews”) has been brewing for a very long time now, and given what Netanyahu said at a Security Council meeting just weeks before Oct 7th, the Hamas saw that the people in Gaza were up against an existential threat …. just as Israelis always say that THEY are up against an existential threat. One man’s ‘terrorist’ is another man’s ‘freedom fighter’, so it’s best not to throw around these labels casually. Watch this trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH-9rc4ltM