letter to the editor

[Frederick Nagel]

Naming and defining some grotesque behavior often helps society deal with it. Our county is awash in the violence of gun ownership. It is in our schools, churches, and public spaces. Yet we prefer to identify and blame individuals, calling them delusional, psychotic, paranoiac or simply mentally ill. Anything to make their terrible acts and horrendous outcomes separate from our everyday lives.

Wars require that we have to work even harder to protect our illusions. We talk about the glory of Purple Hearts, and shower our veterans with "thank you for your service." All this to keep from acknowledging that we support and pay for military carnage in so many other parts of the world. We protect ourselves by making war crimes a special case rather than the unsurprising result of spending a trillion dollars each year on war.

But how do we keep this societal distance during an actual genocide? How to avoid the fact that the entire state of Israel is a bizarre and horrendous killing machine? And how to disguise the fact that the US is supplying all the bombs? The obliteration of Gaza and its two million people will forever be known as the American Genocide.

No, the worst butchery of the twenty first century is being carried out by the Siamese twins of depravity: Israel and the United States. The starvation of children and the slaughter of civilians waiting in food lines is there for all the world to see. We call this mutual eagerness to spill Palestinian blood, our "special relationship" rather than the holocaust it really is.

Fred Nagel