The key to changing Middle East policy is to hear more from real people, not ideologues or Richard Holbrooke. Yaser Wishah co-owns the Xpress Fuel and Lube in Olathe, Kansas. Yesterday the Kansas City Star bravely published his Op-Ed, which begins:
Chinese government from returning to America. Or if an American
traveled to Iran and was then forbidden from reaching an airport to
come home.
This happened to me at the hands of Israel, supposedly America’s closest ally in the Middle East.
I
am a U.S. citizen and small-business owner in Olathe. I am also a
Palestinian born in Gaza. I traveled to Gaza last December to care for
my ill father. Israel trapped me there for four months.
Notice the comments section is pretty balanced. It includes someone saying wisely of Rachel Corrie's death in 2003: "She might have been 110 lbs, any one of those Israeli soldiers could
have picked her up on their back and carried her out of there but
instead they ran her over with a multi- ton armoured bulldozer."
On Sunday, The Star also published a wonderful piece by Scott Canon about Wishah's ordeal, including the fact that he had to wait three months in Egypt before getting in to see his father, who is 90 and half-blind. Canon tells this American story:
At 23, he turned to the United States as a path to a better life. He
obtained a student visa to study languages in Houston — something he
can’t imagine happening in this post-Sept. 11 age — and he gradually
made himself into an American.
He eventually ran out of money for
school and found work buying, selling and repairing cars. Wishah
married an American woman and divorced. In 2002, a friend enticed him
to move to the Kansas City area to run a gas station and repair shop
while they bought and sold cars on the side.
I love my country. We respect the rights of minorities, including Jews like me, and even Palestinians.
"I love my country. We respect the rights of minorities, including Jews like me, and even Palestinians."
what country would this be? sure as hell not the one that i am in – amurderka
tell sami al-arian and the thousands of others in prison because jews or racist whites hate them.
RE: "I love my country. We respect the rights of minorities, including Jews like me, and even Palestinians."
Quite a few large urban areas in the USA no longer have a white majority. In another 40 years, it's projected at current trajectories, that the entire USA will be majority non-white.
Remember what Truman said about underdogs, once they get the power.
And he wasn't even thinking about the ethnic reality aspects of the Russian Revolution, but merely about Zionist presssure on him to recognize Israel (He actually crossed out the words "Jewish State" on his letter of recognition and subsituted "Israel"), which he characterized as lacking all sense of proportion…
Is there no logical basis at all to fear of an Obama presidency?
Having said that, I will still vote for Obama over McCain–there's always hope…
If our country respected its Palestinian-American citizens would it let them languish in Gaza for four months & refuse to go to their assistance? This is a ROUTINE occurrence for Palestinian-Americans.
My husband hasn't been home (Gaza) in 10 years. His dad is ill and has never even seen our 8 y.o., his only grandson.
We bought airfare for the 5 of us to Egypt last year, but were never able to enter Gaza, as the border was sealed.
We know full well that if my husband gets "stuck" in Gaza, he is on his own. Years of living in the West Bank in the mid-90s taught us one thing: regardless of my husband's US citizenship, in the eyes of Israel, once a Gaza dog, always a Gaza dog.