It’s the kind of thing that makes your skin crawl. I stared into my computer screen in disbelief as the photograph loaded in my browser. To each side of a huge concrete block were two workers helping the crane operator guide the massive piece into place.

The caption read, “Palestinian workers push as they lay the concrete blocks of Israel’s controversial ‘security barrier’ during construction works in the Palestinian neighborhood of Abu Dis.”

Here were Palestinian citizens of Israel helping to construct the internationally condemned colonization wall in the Palestinian territories, as contractors for the Israeli government.

I had heard of this type of thing before, that is, the subjugator enlisting the labor of the subjugated to further suppress them. History is repeated.

When I e-mailed the story to acquaintances, a Kenyan friend pointed out similar ironies from the United States and South Africa. He said, “Like the southern African—Americans, or last century’s South Africans building an economy and infrastructure used to oppress them.”

In the case of reconstruction after the American Civil War, Union general William Sherman gave plantation land away to freed slaves in 1865. When the white plantation owners came back for their land in the winter of 1866, it was black Union soldiers who were forced, by orders of President Andrew Johnson, to act as human shields as the army forcibly resettled whites. The land had just been given to freed slaves and now was being taken away for the whites by fellow blacks.

In the example of South Africa, it was the blacks who worked in the white-owned gold and diamond mines. The profits from this incredibly lucrative business were then used to purchase weapons to keep the apartheid regime in place. In addition, I looked back at Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. He tells of the African guards at his prison at Robben Island and the policemen enforcing the apartheid rules on the street. Were it not for the African labor, the racist system could not last.

This is not new to Israel either. In fact, much of the labor for the Israeli colonies in the West Bank and Gaza over the years came from Palestinians in search of livelihood.

James Bennet reported in this past Tuesday’s New York Times, “Much as Palestinian workers built many Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Arab citizens of Israel were building this section of wall even as they opposed its construction.”

Bennet goes on, “The 42-year-old man, who asked not to be identified, said that if he did not do the job, someone else would. ‘What we are doing is wrong,’ he said. ‘It’s breaking my heart. But what can we do?'”

I was taken aback by Mandela’s description of the system, specifically the land use policy, under which he lived. The Group Areas Act in 1948 required “separate urban areas for each racial group. In the past whites took the land by force. Now they took it by legislation,” Mandela said. “Under its regulations each racial group could own land, occupy premises, and trade only with in its own separate area.”

For Israel, similar effects are accomplished in the denial of building permits to Palestinians in and around East Jerusalem. Israel hopes to eventually surround Palestinian East Jerusalem with Israeli colonies, making a Palestinian capital there impossible.

Eventually, after repeated denials, the Palestinian family builds on its land without a permit, and often the home is destroyed by the Israeli military. According to the human rights group Israelis Against House Demolitions, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been made homeless in these home demolitions since 1967.

As land is confiscated in the name of security but in the effect of active colonization, the feasibility of a contiguous Palestine alongside Israel fades. The system of checkpoints, colonist-only roads and colonies makes a logistically viable Palestine increasingly impossible.

As established by numerous U.S. administrations and the United Nations, these actions often have the opposite of the intended effect.

In the next few days we have U.S. presidential hopefuls in our midst asking for our support as Iowans. This is our chance.

Ask the candidate what they will do to stop the colonization wall being constructed with our tax dollars.

Ask them to address the issues of Palestinian poverty, disenfranchisement, and hopelessness, the foremost way to stem the indefensible acts of violence perpetrated against Israelis.

Finally, ask them to support freedom for the Palestinian people as a means of justice for both Israelis and Palestinians.