© Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
In America, the richest nation in the world when measured by raw GDP, children are getting sick from living by open pools of raw sewage. This was one of many shocking findings by the United Nations late last year, following a two-week investigation into extreme poverty in the US.
The UN report was issued last December by a team of investigators who visited California, Alabama, Georgia, Puerto Rico, West Virginia and Washington DC.
"The United States is one of the world's richest, most powerful and technologically innovative countries; but neither its wealth, nor its power, nor its technology is being harnessed to address the situation in which 40 million people continue to live in poverty," wrote Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
Comment: The two situations are hardly equivalent. Slave traders stole people and brought them to America as slaves. Jews invaded Palestine and stole their land and intimidated them into leaving their homes.