Dear Friends,

CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK’S PROGRAM:

(01:49) My lunch with two Zionist friends;
(26:09) Floods, school funding, ICE raids, and Alligator Alcatraz;
(36:59) Medicaid cuts will impact elder care and rural facilities, with Di Findley;
(53:56) Iowa Hunger Summit, with Kathy Byrnes.

[First, I want to remind central Iowans of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki commemoration on Thursday, August 7th at 7:00 pm at the Japanese Bell just west of the Iowa Supreme Court Building.]

Before I tell you about my conversation over lunch with two Zionist friends, I need to share two photos. They are equally horrifying. Both show the faces of victims of attempted genocide. 

The first is from President Truman’s library, showing Jews on the verge of starvation as they were liberated from the Ebensee concentration camp in 1945.

The second was taken this month by Seham Tantesh of The Guardian, showing two starving Palestinian children.

None of us want to see such images. But to look away is to ignore our responsibility to call out genocide and do what we can to stop it. This is especially true for Americans, since our tax dollars enable Israel’s genocide.

Which brings me to last week’s conversation with two friends I’ve known for 25 years. Mostly, we dwelt on shared experiences. Biking. Art. Music. Climate change. Urban sprawl.

The conversation unexpectedly veered to Gaza. I was blown away when my friends asserted that they are Zionists. And that launched a very uncomfortable discussion.

Every time I brought up the horrors of what Israel is doing in Gaza, they deflected to the hostages.

Every time Kathy or I shared facts presented by most media, facts verified by video and first-hand accounts, they refused to accept the legitimacy of those sources.

One even accused the UN of culpability in Hamas’ horrific attack on October 7, 2023.

They regarded any criticism of Israel as anti-semitism, which I resented. I didn’t earn a degree in religious studies, learn to read the Bible in Hebrew, and spend two weeks in Israel years ago to be labeled “anti-semitic.”

I’m pro-Israel. I’m also pro-Palestine. More precisely, I’m pro-Jewish and pro-Palestinian. Nation states come and go. They serve a purpose, until they don’t. What matters is people, culture, and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Eighty years ago, after Nazi Germany’s attempted genocide of the Jewish people, the world showed deep empathy for the victims. And it acted on that empathy.

Today, the world is turning against Israel and uniting in its support for the Palestinian people. Just as in 1943, when the images coming out of Nazi concentration camps became impossible to ignore, the gaunt or bloodied faces of Gaza’s children are impossible to ignore.

It has become impossible to ignore the 60,000 Palestinians killed since October, 2023. Or the nearly 150,000 injured. Or the 1,000 shot dead while simply trying to access food. Or the 70% of all infrastructure in Gaza leveled by US-funded Israeli bombs.

This is the very face of genocide. 

The list of prominent people and organizations calling out genocide is long and growing. Pope Leo. The United Nations. Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch. Center for Constitutional Rights. South Africa and the other 13 countries that have joined its genocide case before the World Court.

There’s also Dr. Omar Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, who recently penned “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”

Bartov grew up, in his own words, “in a Zionist home.” He lived the first half of his life in Israel, served as a soldier and officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and has spent most of his career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust.

Bartov writes that by May, 2024, “it appeared no longer possible to deny that the pattern of IDF operations was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders in the days after the Hamas attack.“

Bartov reminds readers that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had promised to turn parts of Gaza into rubble. Other government leaders and military officials called for total annihilation. Nissim Vaturi, the deputy speaker of the Israeli Parliament, declared that Israel must “erase the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.“

We don’t want to admit that the people who were victims of attempted genocide 80 years ago are now the perpetrators of genocide. We don’t want to admit that a close US ally is responsible for this atrocity. We certainly don’t want to admit that every recent US administration, both Democratic and Republican, bears culpability in perpetrating this genocide.

And we don’t want to look at the images. But we must. In the faces of the two starving Palestinian children in the photo above, imagine your own children, your grandchildren, your neighbors’ children.

Let that horror and pain inspire you to contact your member of Congress — and anyone running for Congress. Insist that they call out genocide. Demand that they do what they can to stop it. Do it today. Do it again tomorrow. Do it until they listen and take action.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Dennis Kucinich: “Opposing genocide and illegal occupation is not antisemitic. It is the defense of humanity. The Israeli government’s ongoing colonization of Palestinian land, its collective punishment of a captive population, and its refusal to recognize a sovereign Palestinian people all constitute violations of international law.“

Thank you for reading, listening, and speaking out.

Ed Fallon

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