Speak out for Humanity

A Letter to Burlington Free Press    April 18, 2001

        We are all the voices against injustice? If this situation in Palestine/Israel were happening anywhere else in the world, there would be rallies, boycotts, and protests to halt these crimes against humanity. Our government would be insisting on United Nations peacekeeping troops and observers.

        Instead there seems to be a taboo about speaking out against Israel and its apartheid regime, at least in this country. Those of us who are opposed to Israel's violent oppression and ethnic cleansing for non-Jewish inhabitants in that region run the risk of being considered anti-Semitic. Palestinians are Semites, too.

        Our news coverage and foreign policy are blatantly biased toward Israel. More than $10 billion of our tax money is being sent every year to Israel to use without accountability. Now even our own helicopter gun-ships are being used against civilian populations, a violation of the Leahy Law. We have been fooled by the media and politically pressured into silence by the tragedy of the last Holocaust. I urge all people of conscience to speak out now, so that we may avoid yet another one.

WILLIAM E. COIL

Burlington