To a Skeptic: Why Sanctions VS Israel Can Work , by Andrew W Taylor

I am afraid I see that the ideology of religious/ethnic identity defines whose life and death matters. I have never seen this identity define human beings so markedly. As for "ideology" defining positions toward the Siege of Gaza, it is a very labile ideology that unites everyone from Bishop Tutu to Jimmy Carter to the UN General Assembly to me, nu ?

You as an individual may dismiss the right of the Palestinians to resist as ludicrous. I was in the ANC for a few years before Liberation Day and there were many saying the same thing about the outnumbered, outgunned Black South Africans and their resistance in the Townships. But what the naysayers didn't understand then was that the armed struggle was just one front of a many sided struggle that included the peaceful struggle in South Africa and the International Solidarity struggle demanding a boycott of South African products. Perhaps you know that the pinch of Sanctions (despite the US and Israel) helped bring South Africa to capitulation, and power sharing. The ANC won the first fair full Elections with its 2 partners COSATU and the SACP.

So now transpose these multi-layered fronts to the Palestinian struggle. Around the world a Sanctions on Israel Campaign is growing in strength. In the Streets of the world's cities, the people are now marching against Israeli Apartheid. As South Africa was a long arduous struggle on a number of fronts, so is the struggle for a Palestinian State, free of the Israeli Occupation. One thing you need not despair of, is the revolutionary patience and persistence of the world's "prisoners of starvation" and their allies in every land. Something in us wants freedom, but we seek it under a strategy. Bertholt Brecht wrote of this human project:

Forward, without forgetting
Where our strength can be seen now to be!
When starving or when eating
Forward, not forgetting
Our solidarity!

If we want to make this certain
We'll need you and your support.
It's yourselves you'll be deserting
if you rat your own sort.

Forward, without forgetting
Where our strength can be seen now to be!
When starving or when eating
Forward, not forgetting
Our solidarity!

All the gang of those who rule us
Hope our quarrels never stop
Helping them to split and fool us
So they can remain on top.

Forward, without forgetting
Where our strength can be seen now to be!
When starving or when eating
Forward, not forgetting
Our solidarity!

Workers of the world, uniting
Thats the way to lose your chains.
Mighty regiments now are fighting
That no tyrrany remains!

Forward, without forgetting
Till the concrete question is hurled
When starving or when eating:
Whose tomorrow is tomorrow?
And whose world is the world?

Bertolt Brecht