A dear friend of mine, Diana Kimmerling, is a progressive Israeli who wrote an op-ed piece in Ha'aretz that was published today. Its subject is the massive Israeli demonstrations protesting the high cost of housing in Israel. In the article, she took Israelis to task for their willingness to organize and protest when financial issues were concerned but their unwillingness to protest the denial of the most basic rights to Palestinians. As I read her article, I couldn't help but draw parallels with the American oppression of Middle Eastern people and the silence of Americans on this issue compared to their often vocal protests against U.S. economic policies.
Every Saturday for years now, Tea Party adherents gather at a major intersection in Fort Lauderdale demonstrating for their cause. It would be easy, but wrong, to demonize them. They are, for the most part, middle class people who worked hard, saved for retirement, and played by the rules, only to have their standard of living decline precipitously because of faulty government policies. Many of the demonstrators seem to be in their late fifties or sixties, meaning that it will be virtually impossible for them to recoup their standard of living before old age and failing health make it difficult to work.
Even though I sympathize with their economic plight, I have to wonder why they were not protesting in favor of fiscal responsibility when the Iraq war was at its worst. Government and media propaganda in favor of the war was so intense, so total, that I can't blame anyone for his initial support of the war. Yet, even after the American public had learned that there were no WMD and the Bush administration had been informed of this fact by the CIA, the Tea Party supporters remained silent. They still said nothing, even after Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that the war would cost 3 TRILLION dollars, an estimate that was revised upward to 5 trillion after his book was published. This estimate includes military expenditures, lost wages, health care for the troops, increased oil prices due to uncertainty in the oil markets, and the economic growth we forfeited because money was spent on war instead of being invested. This 5 trillion, which is about 1/3 of the deficit, will no doubt grow as the war continues--and American soldiers, to say nothing of Iraqis--continue to die in this country.
Yet, the Tea Party members rose up in indignation at health care reform. I don't know enough about the subject to say whether Obama's plan is a good one. I suspect that it isn't for a variety of reasons. I am not defending a particular plan but commenting on the irony of supporting lavish expenditures on an unnecessary war that probably made Americans less safe while objecting mightily to a program, however flawed, designed to help the poorest of Americans.
Diana Kimmerling's article unveiled an Israeli reality but also a human one. I wish to commend her for seeing this problem in her own society and taking the time to speak out about it. Now it is time for me to do the same in America.
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