By Steven Halpern
Recently, President Joe Biden issued a formal apology to Native Americans for what he called "a sin on our soul." What is the "sin" Biden was talking about?
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland found that "at least 18,000 Native American children—some as young as 4—were taken from their parents and forced to attend schools that sought to assimilate them into white society while federal and state authorities sought to dispossess tribal nations of their land." These kidnappings ultimately caused the deaths of 973 Native American children. (Philadelphia Inquirer 10-25-2024)
In his apology to Native Americans, President Biden said that the removal of Native American children from their community to boarding schools "will always be a significant mark of shame, a blot on American history. For too long this all happened with virtually no public attention, not written about in our history books, not taught in our schools."
A protester at Biden's apology ceremony asked the question: "How can you apologize for a genocide while committing a genocide in Palestine?"
Thinking about President Biden's words of apology to Native Americans, we might consider an October 9, 2024 opinion piece in the New York Times by Feroze Sidhwa titled, "65 Doctors, Nurses, and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza?"
In this column Sidhwa quoted from 44 medical professionals who testified to treating pre-teen Palestinian children for bullet wounds in the head or chest. The 65 also testified to treating children who were starving due to the Israeli government policy of denying Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip access to food and clean water.
So, while President Biden apologizes to Native Americans for what he calls a "mark of shame," his Administration has been making the mass murder of Palestinians by the Israeli government possible with about $18 billion worth of so-called "aid." We can also speculate that of the tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered by the IDF, half of that number were children
There is another question that I believe needs to be asked. Were these isolated events, or is there a history of kidnapping of children by both the United States and Israeli governments?
Operation Peter (Pedro) Pan
After the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the Catholic Welfare Bureau collaborated with representatives of the United States government to kidnap about 14,000 Cuban children. They were transported unaccompanied to be raised in the United States in what became known as Operation Peter (Pedro) Pan. Under the direction of Father Bryan O. Walsh, Cuban parents were indoctrinated with the absurd idea that their parental rights would be terminated by the Cuban revolutionary government headed by Fidel Castro.
As in the case of the kidnapping of Native American children, these Cuban children were separated from their parents. However, in the case of most of these Cuban children, they would never see their parents again.
Operation Babylift
In the year 1975 the United States government was coming to grips with the fact that their armed forces had been decisively defeated by the Vietnamese people. However, the U.S. government ordered the military to murder over one million people in the course of that undeclared war.
In the last year of the war, President Richard Nixon ordered bombing raids of Vietnam in what he called Linebacker One and Linebacker Two. These came after the bombing raids ordered by President Lyndon Johnson named Rolling Thunder.
Apparently this mass destruction wasn't enough for Washington. So, President Gerald Ford initiated Operation Babylift. This was an effort to transport about 2,500 Vietnamese children, many of whom were orphans, to the United States. One of the planes used to transport these children crashed. As a result, 78 of the children died.
Yemenite Children Affair
In the year 1994 Rabbi Uzi Meshulam led a group of his followers to barricade themselves in a compound in the Israeli town of Yehud for 45 days. The Israeli police murdered one of his followers. Meshulam and several of the protesters served time in prison. What was this all about?
According to a Feb 20, 2019 New York Times article by Malin Fezahai, between 1,000 and 4,500 Mizrahi Jewish children were abducted in the 1950s. Mizrahi Jews left Arabic speaking nations where their families lived for many years before the establishment of Israel in 1948.
These Jews came from a different culture than the Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated to Palestine-Israel from Europe. There has been a persistent policy of discrimination against Mizrahi Jews since the establishment of the state of Israel. According to Israeli investigations, the Yemeni children were given to affluent childless Ashkenazi families.
Yet according to the Israeli Constitution, amended in 2018, the nation of Israel is supposed to be a homeland for Jewish people. A basic flaw in this constitution is that about half of the people living in Israel and the occupied territories are Palestinians who do not have equal rights.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the following statement about the abducted Jewish children. Most of their families came to Israel from Yemen. Netanyahu issued this statement after the Israeli government made several investigations as to what happened to these kidnapped Jewish children.
"The issue of the Yemenite children is an open wound that continues to bleed in many families who do not know what happened to the babies, to children that disappeared, and they are looking for the truth." (Ofer Aderet, Haaretz July 31, 2016)
Thinking about this statement by Netanyahu, we might consider the article by Feroze Sidhwa titled "65 Doctors, Nurses, and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza?" The excuse Netanyahu used for organizing the genocide against Palestinians was about his response to the October 7 raid organized by Hamas. Netanyahu consistently argued that his goal in the genocide is the release of Israeli hostages. The facts are that Netanyahu acknowledged that there are over 1,000 Jewish children who were abducted by Israeli authorities in the 1950s. To this day the fate of many of those children is unknown.
Conclusion
So, President Biden says that the kidnapping of Native American children was "a mark of shame, a blot on American history." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that the kidnapping of Jewish Yemenite children for him "is an open wound." Yet both Biden and Netanyahu have carried out a genocidal campaign to murder tens of thousands of Palestinian children.
This leaves working people living in the world only one option. This is to join with all those who are marching in the streets and demand Ceasefire Now!!!
