Alice Walker recently traveled to Gaza to witness firsthand the devastating misery being endured by the Palestinian people. All this misery is courtesy of our U.S. tax dollars, which fund every Israeli bomb, every Israeli bullet, every brick in the apartheid wall, and every minute of the vicious, murderous blockade of desperately needed supplies, including food, drink, medicine, and all the basics of life now being denied to the people of Gaza. A videotaped interview of Ms. Walker is up in three parts on Youtube. I haven't actually had time to watch the full interview myself yet, but I know that the great author has a quite different take than mine. For instance, according to this posting at Behind the Lines, she doesn't acknowledge the Palestinians' right to wage an armed liberation struggle. She also declines to support the Boycott/Divest/Sanctions movement. Yet by going to Gaza she has shown courage. It takes guts for a U.S. author to do so. She's done something similar in the past for Cuba, traveling there and speaking out against the U.S. blockade of that country, but Palestine is an even harder issue given how vitally important the maintenance of the Israeli garrison state is for continued U.S.-imperialist control of Middle East oil. I hope to get the time to watch this interview with my best attention soon.
Meanwhile, radical member of the British parliament George Galloway and Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic, author of Born on the Fourth of July, are traveling the U.S. raising money for the Viva Palestina convoy to Gaza. This project aims for as many people as possible to join Galloway and Kovic in bringing 500 trucks full of desperately needed humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Here's Galloway at last month's fundraising event in Brooklyn, which brought in over $75,000.
