News Release

Will Palestinians “Be Likened to the Sioux”?

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SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS, [email] [Twitter
Sharif Abdel Kouddous is a Democracy Now! correspondent based in Cairo, now in Gaza. See his reporting, including about how protesters from Tahrir Square in Cairo got into Gaza.

JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN, [email] Loewenstein is faculty associate in Middle East Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has spent extensive time in Gaza including witnessing attacks. She just wrote the piece “Death in Gaza, Déjà Vu,” which states: “Aerial strikes now soar into the hundreds and every non-combatant person is at risk. It is becoming more and more difficult to cover up the fact that the civilian population of Gaza, the families, children, shopkeepers, street vendors, pharmacists, doctors, construction workers, teachers, journalists, and others are not the ‘collateral damage’ in an angry war against ‘militants,’ ‘terrorists,’ and primitive rockets. Rather they are themselves are the primary targets. They are the ones who must be culled from the land. The ‘militants’ are merely the means to their demise. … Events could still go … quietly, and Palestinians will be likened to the Sioux.”

VIJAY PRASHAD, [email] Author of “Arab Spring, Libyan Winter” and “The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World,” Prashad is chair of South Asian history and director of international studies at Trinity College, in Connecticut. He recently wrote the piece “The Agonies of Susan Rice: Gaza and the Negroponte Doctrine,” about how the U.S. blocked any action on Gaza by the United Nations Security Council.

Also, see his new analysis of the region in The Real News’ “The Qatari/Egyptian/U.S. Agenda and the Israeli Attack on Gaza,” which breaks down the interests of the U.S., Gulf States and Israel in Gaza as well as Syria. Says Prashad about the Palestinians: “They are, I don’t think, willing to lie down before the plans of the Qataris, which might line up with the plans of the Israelis. I think they [Qataris] are exaggerating their ability to throw their money around and erase the Palestinian project.”