The Gaza Strips of Wrath

I wonder if the citizens now being dragged out of the Gaza Strip have ever read John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. When Tom Joad returns home to find his family has been run off their land they have to venture to California, the supposed land of promise, they have to try and scratch out a living. What these citizens need to remember is once upon a time there were other citizens who were run off their land and loaded into train cars and were taken to camps. In Grapes of Wrath the Joad’s go into several camps but are able to choose where they sleep and are actually allowed to keep their children with them. The citizens that were taken and put into train cars were not so lucky, millions of them died. The ones that survived slowly made their way to Palestine. Once they were there they found another war. It appeared that no one wanted them. No one wanted the Joad’s unless they would work all day for someone else and to earn pennies a day.
Whether or not Steinbeck had a vision of Arab citizens living in a land that is not recognized by anyone and is under the constant threat of those citizens that escaped a war of genocide I do not know.. But as much attention is being paid to the citizens of the Gaza Strip being misplaced no attention is being considered those that once went looking for a home they could call their own.

- Chris Mansel