CHOMSKY: WHY PALESTINE IS ALONE

US intellectual Noam Chomsky explains the reasons for international indifference to the suffering of Palestinians: Namely, wealth and power. The biggest economic and military power in the world, the United States, is the largest supplier of arms to Israel. It has maintained the Zionist occupation of Palestine has ‘a right to defend itself.'

As the Palestinian death toll climbed to just below 10,000, the US House of Representatives passed a motion on 3 November granting Israel an additional $14 billion in military aid. On two occasions in mid-October, the United States vetoed United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in and aid delivery to Gaza.

However, on 4 November, approximately 300,000 demonstrators—including many Africans in the United States—took the streets of Washington, DC, in the largest march held in solidarity with Palestine in US history.

Chomsky compared the apartheid Palestinians face in their occupied territories with racialised inequality in the United States. White families are about eight times wealthier than their African counterparts. The colonial nature of African people's existence in the United States means they often have limited to no access to decent food, water, housing, healthcare, jobs and education, while being twice as likely as white people to die at the hands of police and five times more likely to serve prison time.

As a country that touts itself as the shining city on the hill and chief defender of democracy, it’s a little ironic, isn’t it? Let us know what you think.