The resistance to the war crimes being committed against Palestinians is just organizing now. Students at our campuses have led the way with encampments and speak outs. Some labor unions are also coming on board. But we haven't reached a critical mass yet to force the Pentagon and Israel to stop their wanton murders and starvations.

The genocide of Gaza has the same feeling. We are part of a criminal assault on an indigenous people, just like we were during the Vietnam War. Our leaders, hopelessly corrupted by money and power, are deaf to their war crimes and the immense suffering that they are causing.

Has the US ever stopped fighting WWII? No other country has bombed and invaded dozens of nations since the war ended. In fact, our armies have bombed or invaded at least one third of the people on this earth.

The leaders of Israel and the US are completely complicit in the mass murders. In fact, they cheer them on with 2000 pound bombs, all made in the USA.

We are living in a similar period. The people of Israel are as blood drenched as the Ottomans or the Germans. We are seeing the frenzy of their wholesale slaughter of the Palestinians on our computer screens.

Is it too late for a reform of the Democratic Party? Do we have representatives just too well paid to put up much of a fight? Too well paid by the Israel Lobby to even mention the holocaust of Gaza?

Would the people of the empire rise up and change their brutal militarism, if they knew about it? We spend almost a trillion a year on weaponry. Where do citizens of the empire think all that money going?

The draft also brought in many thousands who opposed the US attack on Vietnam. Toward the end of the 1960s, millions were marching in the streets, while tens of thousands of GIs were simply refusing to fight.

In Israel, there are separate roads as well as separate buses. Palestinians are given different colored license plates, which restrict their travel to the very poorest of roads. For racism at the very top always bring with it war crimes and crimes against humanity.

George Harris, the husband of Eliza, is a favorite character in the book, probably because he asserts his human rights even as a slave who is owned by some white man.