General Discussion

Last edited Sat Aug 2, 2025, 06:13 PM - Edit history (1)

I got an up close and personal view of the terrible way Israelis treat Palestinians when I visited there in 1981. I had just completed 3 years of Peace Corps service in a small African nation that bordered on South Africa, the old apartheid South Africa. During that time I met a number of white South Africans who were in exile and working to change their country into an actual democracy. (If you were around and aware of the situation you would have heard apologists for RSA claiming they were the only democracy in Africa, sound familiar)? I met even more white South Africans who supported apartheid. To generalise those whites had a paternalistic attitude towards the Africans. "They are like children." They don't want the responsibility of running things." They are much happier than 'your Blacks' in America", etc. Again, if you remember the whole world was either boycotting RSA or imposing sanctions or even banning them from travel due to the harm inflicted by apartheid. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not apologizing for that system, it was awful. I had a friend badly injured by a package bomb sent by the SA Security Services and I knew another young man killed by them trying to sneak north across the border.

Before visiting Israel and the Occupied Territories on my way home I, like the majority of Americans in 1981, thought of Israel as a bastion of freedom for survivors of the Holocaust (true) and a plucky little country that held off the Muslim hordes that were trying to drive them out. Instead I was absolutely appalled by the treatment meted out by Israelis towards Palestinians. Armed settlers swaggering down the street pushing aside elderly Palestinians, police detaining us and then hauling us in because we didn't have our passports on us in Jerusalem. Many conversations with Israelis telling us how much they hated "the Arabs" and wanted them to either leave or die. Listening to off duty IDF kids laugh about breaking into Arabs houses in the middle of the night just to mess with them. I NEVER witnessed physical assaults by or heard remarks and stories like that from the reviled white South Africans.

Six months later we were in Beirut when Israel invaded, bombing the entire city, hitting EVERY SINGLE HOSPITAL, all of them boldly marked with a Red Cross or Red Crescent on their roofs. They attacked civilian convoys which had been given clearance to drive to Syria, killing a number of people who were fleeing for their lives.

So yeah I've been wise to their atrocities and just plain evil ways long before October 7th. Give a listen to this former CIA official as he tells a story about how a friend of his was treated by Mossad.
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnewsvideo/comments/1jac4va/former_cia_agent_explains_why_the_cia_dislikes/