Complicity

The Independent has endorsed Salud Carbajal for re-election to represent the 24th District of California. This is an astonishing admission by the newspaper that it endorses the conduct of Rep. Carbajal and his support of the Biden administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

The hundreds of billions of dollars that Carbajal signs off on include the five months of relentless, ruthless, and targeted bombing of an imprisoned, sanctioned, civilian population by Israeli occupation forces in its nonstop destruction of Gaza, the “largest open-air concentration camp” in the world. This receives nothing but a nod of approval for the massive billion-dollar military expenditures that Carbajal endorses.

This is a shameful admission of complicity in the genocidal crimes committed by Israel. Gaza has been under illegal occupation for over 57 years by a fascist, Zionist cabal that has hijacked Judaism, when it is in fact a criminal, billionaire-funded land grab enterprise, a “colonial enterprise,” as Theodor Herzl (founder of political Zionism) wrote. The population of Gaza, 2.3 million of them, have endured (in 1948 and 1967) being removed from their homes and villages in Palestine only to be herded and locked behind electronic fences and 24/7 surveillance for 57 years!

In addition to this failure to hold Rep. Carbajal responsible for his open complicity in genocide, the Independent fails to inform readers of the candidacy of Helena Pasquarella running on a Peace platform. She openly calls for a reduction of the obscene U.S. military budget, which provides full education, housing, and health care for members of the U.S. military for a country that allows only token acknowledgement that U.S. citizens deserve housing, education, and health care as other highly industrialized nations of the global north provide for their citizens.

This is a level of corruption that allows for an “endless wars” scenario that we currently witness, as some kind of legitimate economy, despite the utter failure of all U.S. military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Congo, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Grenada, Columbia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Argentina.

The U.S. has spent billions and billions of dollars on war that only a handful of people benefit from.

You have seen as I have after more than 44 years living in Santa Barbara a deterioration of the social fabric of this community. We are grateful for the cushion that a wealthy community can provide for its less fortunate residents, but we refuse to be complicit in and participate in this genocidal campaign against Palestinians with our tax dollars. The destruction of all hospitals in Gaza, the targeting of hundreds of heath-care workers, doctors and their families, the targeting of journalists and academics and their families is no different than the behavior of Nazi Germans in Europe in the Second World War of the 1930s-40s. The bombing and destruction by Israel of all schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, and cultural landmarks is ethnic cleansing writ large.

Somehow this is okay with the Santa Barbara Independent, as you and I continue to live and breathe on unceded Chumash lands.

Please find a way to report accurately on issues of vital importance to the future of this community