There’s so much to say about American politics and politicians that even I, as a true believer of the democratic system and for all the values it claims to promote, have lost all faith in our system.
Our government is morally corrupt, bought and paid for by foreign interests and corporate clientele. And that dictates the political conversation.
Our political dissent against America’s complicit in the human rights violations in Gaza and West Bank in the form of freedom of speech is being curtailed by corporate America like Meta and Google, and of course the military-styled police, called on by our educational institutions the very institutions who do a good job of teaching critical thinking, but God forbid should you exercise that critical thinking.
And, to ensure our political dissent is bound by law, the House passed an “anti-terrorism” bill H.R.6408 requiring the IRS to strip non-profits of their status if deemed to be supporting "terrorism". Now, it is already illegal to fund terrorism anyway, so this new law is all about censoring any support for the Palestinian cause in the guise of “anti-Semitism". You can listen to the The Committee on Ways and Means for yourself here. And if you have not been paying attention to this bill, you should and I urge you to read this article by The Guardian.
America is no better than Georgia in which the country’s parliament overrode a presidential veto of the “foreign influence” law which requires media, NGOs and other nonprofit groups to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad. This Georgian law was swiftly condemned by various American government representatives when these same people voted for H.R. 6408.
What hypocrites. American authoritarianism in both parties and Trump, a convicted criminal, is not even in office yet.
In the past few months I’ve seen horrors upon horrors unfolding in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. A father sniped by IDF while holding his daughter’s hand walking down the street, in Gaza pieces of human remains picked up by children for burial, a 10-year old boy’s will to his family and the world, too many heart-breaking please to stop the bombing from children, women and men, and a man holding up the body of a child, decapitated. Yes, unlike the fake claims by Israeli organization Zaka of 40 decapitated babies (and repeated as truth by Blinken and Biden), this is real, on video. (Similarly, just as African Americans have been calling out police brutality toward them for decades, nobody believed them until it was documented on video).
All this horror with Biden’s fake “red line” which regardless of Israel’s atrocities never seems to cross, and Nicky Haley’s signing on an American bomb with the message “finish them” leaves me speechless. Mulling over a post I saw: Are you more appalled by Trump’s “grabbin a pussy” comment or by Biden’s role in America's complicity in the genocide of Palestinians?
American politicians are just war mongers. Peace can only come through a political solution. Every policy expert knows that. Even Hamas has agreed to lay down its arms in return for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The South African militant arm of the African National Congress did just that with the freeing of Mandela from jail and the demise of the apartheid regime which the U.S. government supported.
In the meantime, 146 out of 193 countries now recognize the State of Palestine, and America is becoming a pariah state.
Just like the upheaval against the South African apartheid regime by people of conscience in America, this too will be a successful upheaval. I may not have faith in the American political system, but I do for its future with the thousands of Americans protesting, and especially the moral compass of Generation Z.
Onward and upward…
Ani Zonneveld,
President & Founder
