Opinion Editorials, June 2010

The Palestinian enslavement issue is only not black and white in the same sense that enslavement of Africans by the United States was not a complete black and white issue.  Just as Palestinians have violently resisted, so likewise there were several violent slave uprisings during the course of American history.  Otherwise, your statement represents a gross misunderstanding of the issue, which is continuing and ongoing racist genocide and enslavement of an ethnic population of people, for the "crime" of being born Palestinian, similar to the "crime" to being born black in the U.S. 
 
Many people including conservative Christians who have actually gone to Palestine and viewed the situation have come back with videos of undeniable mass enslavement in some of the worst conditions known on the entire planet.  According to the Britannica, the population of Gaza, which is walled off so people cannot leave without permission, has more persons per square foot than almost anywhere else on the planet.  There is virtually no good farmland, bad drinking water, open sewage and sporadic to no electricity; mass amounts of people have died from malnutrition and related health diseases caused by open sewage, lack of heat and bad water, as well as many Palestinians are routinely denied access to hospitals when giving birth and in dire emergency situations.

Palestinians are confined to doing the least desirable of jobs and are virtually slaves of the Israelis, similar in employment situation though worse off than so-called "illegal" aliens in this country; there is massive unemployment and Palestinians who do have jobs are often stopped at checkpoints for hours and routinely denied access to where their jobs are located outside of the confined perimeters, sometimes for days and even weeks, thus making it difficult to keep a job or otherwise, earn enough to eat. 

There is much deliberate harassment having nothing to do with the safety of Israeli soldiers, including long lines at checkpoints without cause when there is no situation to be contained.  The government of Israel in the past several years has made this situation worse and there is no signs of it willing to voluntarily change it's ways any time soon.  The ongoing "blind-sheep" support of Israel by the U.S. has significantly added to this problem and continues to do so as we speak. 
 
This information comes from a great many different people, including conservative Christians who have traveled to Gaza and witnessed the situation for themselves and I have seen several videos on the situation with footage smuggled out of the country, which you never see in U.S. media.  There is a group here in Nashville, some of who's members have been to Gaza.  I have never heard anybody who has actually been to Gaza, no matter how liberal or how conservative, claim the situation is anything less than as described above. 
 
 
Thank You, Sincerely

Richard Aberdeen
Freedom Tracks Records
615-889-1669 - 800-992-8084
richard@freedomtracks.com
www.FreedomTracks.com

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