Update: Watch Death in Gaza. [Thank you, The Proletariat.]

It's way past time for silence on this issue from the progressive community.

One rarely reads of the US-supported Israeli atrocities committed in Gaza and the occupied territories. I mean what's Gaza, and are Palestinians really human beings?

They are. And what's being done to the Palestinians is an obscenity, a bloody siege described in a widely-distributed pamphlet at a 2002 demonstration as a "macabre saga of violence and methodical repression (Islamic Circle of North America)". It's unclear that if the violence and repression were to be featured on broadcast TV what the reaction would be.

This video shot last year is appalling.

Footage showing Irish Noble Peace Prize recipient, Mairead Maguire getting shot by Israeli army who opened fire at peaceful demonstrators in the West Bank village of Bilin on April 20, 2007, following the international conference on popular resistance (April 18-20, 2007). Maguire was shot by a rubber-coated-metal bullet in the leg. Maguire speaks after she received first aid. [Footage by Ana Nogueira]

Thousands of innocent Palestinians getting shot, imprisoned and killed is appalling.

I read Norman G. Finkelstein's preface, an angry challenge to Barack Obama, and then watched the video.

We need more, not less anger at what Israel (with American complicity) has now become, and what we have all become. What a travesty.

American progressives often fret that the Israel-militarism issue will split the Democratic Party, parting the way for radical Neocon dominance of American politics for generations.

But do we add our voices of condemnation and challange Israeli-American aggression and human rights violations, or ought we be silent?