it's amazing to me that you can claim to be a champion of the rights of poor homeless people and against violent police over-reaction here in santa cruz and at the same time be the champion of military violence against poor homeless people in palestine.

yes, i know. you and other racial supremacists don't believe there is such a place or people but that does not make it true.

isreal is a white nation committing oppression and attempting genocide against brown people.

it makes me and most dark skinned people angry to see interviews featuring white israelis with brooklyn accents talking about "those people" (brown arabs) trying to take our (white israelis) land.

to me it's all about, as chuck d says, "fear of a black planet."

i abhor violence. however like my native american ancestors, i, you and most human beings would employ whatever means necessary to defend ourselves from a very rich, super-armed and malevolent oppressor.

i don't think it was a good thing that apaches attacked and killed "innocent" white settlers who were seizing their lands and brutalizing their people. but what would i, you or anybody else do in that situation?

when people become desperate after seeing their parents and children brutalized on a massive scale for generations, they become willing to do anything to strike back out of their pain.

many people like to spread the insidious myth that palestinians wake up in the morning with nothing better to do than say, "oh gee, i just hate the jews so much. i think i'll go out and strap bombs to myself and kill people.

people only rise up and become violent when they have exhausted all other means, including kissing the asses of their oppressors, to get someone's attention focused on their plight.

some of the police in santa cruz may be assholes and may mistreat poor homeless people. but that kind of mistreatment is nowhere near the murderous policies of the israeli military machine, funded by the fascist, imperialistic u.s. would-be world conquerors, toward native palestinian people.

at worse the scpd may have brutalized or even killed a few poor, homeless or "colored" people.

at worse homeless people may live in fear of arrest for the night or tickets or cold uncomfortable sleepless nights in a hidden grove of trees.

these things are bad and unacceptable in such a wealthy overconsumptive society.

but palestinians face massive military attacks in their homes. their children have their arms broken by soldiers and are shot to death for throwing stones or calling names. they don't get to go to court and sue their violators. they have no legal redress whatsoever.

the people there are made homeless, not because they chose to move to an expensive area and cannot afford the local theft we call rent. but because they, their family and everyone that looks like them have already been living on a land for many generations that u.s. and european immigrants feel they have some divine right to covet as their own.

if isreal would ever just acknowledge it's crimes, apologize and make a truly sincere gesture toward real peace with the native people of that area, i believe the majority of them would respond positively.

do you think they wouldn't? are they, like bush says, some kind of peace-hating, freedom-hating mutants. that's what it seems many isreali aggression apologists are trying to make us believe.

this bullshit rap about "peace overtures" by sharon, the butcher of shatilla, is just not credible to most of the people on the planet.

he offers peace only under the heal of israeli dominance.

how the hell do you expect people to react to that? "yes, massa. tell us how far to bend over and take your domination on the plantation or reservation so's you can say we are pacified and therefore deserving of a pat on the head and mercy from military occupation in lieu of actual human rights and respect."

the support that many leftists in the u.s., europe and most of the world show for the palestinian cause is not the result of hatred of the jews, but hatred of oppression.

as a black indian i can say that I would not support, and would militantly reject african-american or native-american oppression of whites or anyone else if we were ever to gain the upper hand by means of foreign funding and intrigue.

if we truly want world peace and justice, we cannot simply ask "is it good for MY people." we are all our people.

of course there are murderers and criminals with selfish and unkind intentions among the oppressed as well as all other groups of human beings. but it is unfair and disingenuous to point to them as an excuse for condemning whole nations or peoples.

when i see photos of poor raggedy-ass palestinian kids facing down the most modern and lethal machines of death (tanks, missiles, helicopters) with stones in their hands, i don't need a political scientist to explain that they are not in it for the money or "anti-semitism."

ask yourself. what would make your own children do such things? religious dogma?

last week i watched a documentary showing the israelis building a wall around a palestinian community. ironically, the same night i watched the a heart-wrenching drama, "the pianist," where german fascist were shown building an all too similar wall around the warsaw ghetto.

i believe the nation of isreal is here to stay no matter how many arabs rant about pushing them into the sea. so let's stop acting like the perils it faces are just because folks in the middle east just don't like jews. let's honestly look at the policies of the dominant military force in that area and ask ourselves: how would we react if we were they?

palestinians or israelis....