An international gathering
conversing with a Palestinian family and a couple from Ireland
I love fall weather in Chicago, but I am sorry to see the warm weather depart that brings people out on the street where conversation can be had.
Last Saturday I was displaying a new sign in downtown Evanston when I was met by a couple from Ireland on a tour of the US, pleased to see me protesting but disappointed that so little protesting was to be seen in this country. I told them of my disappointment that though I have been demonstrating for almost a year and had hoped that others seeing it is possible would do as I am doing, it has not happened.
After the three of us had been conversing for a while, a Palestinian family of three came along to join us. It is a very pleasant thing to connect with people who are quite aware of the ongoing atrocities of Israel and outspoken in opposition. The woman from Ireland has a close relative who has been working in the Irish parliament for several years to get that country to boycott products from the West Bank. It is a difficult task as the US, doing the wrong thing, would surely punish Ireland for doing the right thing.
A passerby was happy to take this picture of our group.
It’s great to speak with people fully informed about what Israel is doing. I have had people ask me what country the flag represents. I have had people ask me what Zionism is or ask me to tell them why there is a problem in Israel/Palestine. It is too easy for Americans to ignore what our country does abroad, this case in particular since the US is not acting for its own good, but at the direction of a tiny state with 1/40th of our population. The 1% rules exemplified by AIPAC and we the people must get our country back
I would be proud if all you see in the picture were Americans. Almost two years of slaughter with full US support and much of the citizenry remains silent.
w/ certitude, clif; this is a book i intend to purchase when the audio version emerges, as my visual apparatus is severely compromised to read it in its entirety.
i'm benumbed by your lifelong friends' intractability re. palestine and the facility w/ which they can be propagandized, even at the expense of suborning friendships you might have assumed were worthy and enduring. clearly, they were not. their moral clarity has been compromised, or was absent in the 1st place. such slippery manifestations of character and integrity seem the norm. at 84, i have been blinded over multiple decades by such deaRths of honourability and commitment to finding veracity in the public demesne by my putative 'friends'. these are not the sorts of friends one should be seduced into relying on for support.
i suspect, clif, that most americans, even soi-disant 'recent immigrants', are too overwhelmed by their own exigent needs, or too enervated from their quotidian chores, or too propagandized by their respective MSM ambits, or too mesmerized by their electronic devices and social media, or too saturated w/ netflix entertainments, or too medically compromised... etc... to give a sweet-flying-fuchen about the rest of the planet's tribulations, particularly those of the palestinian victims of zioisraeli, US, y-UK, EU genocidaires' decimations. most americans could not descry where palestine is on a rand mcnally map. nor would they care.