PALESTINE WILL FREE US ALL

 

                                                                

                                                                   

There has been little news in the mainstream media recently about the increasingly dire situation in Gaza. The genocide has been overshadowed by the massive No Kings demonstrations, the courageous resistance to the brownshirt tactics of masked ICE agents used on immigrants and citizens alike and now, a war between Israel and Iran that could easily go nuclear.

Meanwhile, Israel’s pitiless assault on the civilian population of Gaza continues. The starvation has not ended. The bombing is relentless. There are daily reports of Israeli occupation forces and the mercenaries guarding the “humanitarian” food distribution points slaughtering desperate Palestinians seeking sustenance for their families. Even the lucky few who escape alive with supplies are denied the fuel or water needed to cook them with. Israel’s genocidal intent is obvious, yet Western media still cannot call this evil by its name.

Most joined the Palestinian solidarity movement in response to the genocide. Over 600 days later, it has now entered its final stage. No hope for an end is in sight. For some, it has become unbearable to continue to bear witness to the suffering.  It is understandable that they can no longer look at the horror, but we cannot unsee what we have witnessed.  We owe it to every Palestinian, living or dead, to continue the struggle to build our movement for Palestinian liberation. Furthermore, we owe it to our children and to future generations.

The outrage in response to the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestine has created an historical opportunity to free humanity. We have an obligation to seize it. Palestinian freedom and resistance to fascism in America are two aspects of the same cause: liberty and justice for all. It is estimated that 3.5% of Americans attended demonstrations on No Kings Day. Imagine the effect it would have had on fascists if half of them had been wearing keffiyehs!

In this moment, our only options are to continue the struggle for Palestinian freedom, recognizing that our own liberty depends on it, or to submit to the psychopaths who are behind the genocide and allow ourselves to become their next victims. They are already coming after us. We have seen their goons on the streets of LA, and campuses across the U.S.

Trump is not the cause of the decline of what passes for democracy in America. He is the result of it.  And he is right about one thing: The enemy is among us. They always have been. They are the economic elite. The plutocrats. The oligarchs. The globalists, who profit from war. The American aristocracy, in league with their counterparts abroad to monopolize the resources of the entire world. The self-styled Masters of the Universe. They are individuals so wealthy that their only goal in life is to acquire enough power to control us all.

They are people who have abandoned all that makes us human. Governments are the tools by which they wield their power, the U.S. being the center of an empire that aspires to world domination. They are psychopaths who hide behind corporate charters, having gained control of enough of the judicial system so that corporate executives have no personal accountability except for maximizing profit for Wall Street shareholders. Politicians are their tools, whether they are used wittingly or unwittingly.  The CIA, FBI and DHS work for them. To an alarming degree, so do the police.

Corporate control of the mainstream media has led to our being conditioned to think of war and other forms of violence as normal, even inevitable. It is not true. Violence is always a choice, and government violence serves a purpose for those who hold real power. We have been blinded to the nature of how power operates in this country, lulled by the false claim that we live in a democracy. We do not, and we never have.

The Constitution created a republic. We are told we live in a “representative democracy” but if that is true, who does Congress represent? The Bill of Rights was an afterthought. The principal purpose of the Constitution was to protect property rights, including the right to own humans. Now corporations are regarded as people with constitutional rights that are sacrosanct, while the civil rights of humans are trampled with the blessings of the Supreme Court.

The struggle must continue. As the darkness grows before we see the light, let us remember that King reminded us that we engage in this work out of love. When we let ourselves be overwhelmed by anger or depression, we forget that ultimately, it is compassion that brought us to the struggle. Compassion is a manifestation of love. We must keep that in mind as the violence of the oppressors and the suffering of their victims tests our ability to stay focused on why we have joined the resistance.

Paraphrasing Dr King, it has never been more apparent that tolerating injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. There will be no justice in the world until there is justice for Palestine. If you have only been an observer, now is the time to get active.

Normalize protesting genocide. Show up at demonstrations wearing a keffiyeh, regardless of the cause of the day. Have the courage to speak about what you know to those who don’t want to look for themselves or just wear a T-shirt or button expressing what you know to be true. Write letters to the editor if you are lucky enough to live where local newspapers still provide a public forum.

For humanity’s sake, just show up.

LIVE THE WORLD YOU ARE TRYING TO CREATE

                                                                    




However hard we try to deny or forget it, we are facing twin existential threats: the climate crisis and nuclear war. These are not unrelated. Wars are fought for resources, none more important than fossil fuels. They create prodigious amounts of greenhouse gases, and divert money that could be spent on climate mitigation and creating a just transition away from fossil fuels We cannot address the climate crisis until we end war.

Most people, including many of those who have spent decades trying to eliminate the scourge of war, believe that war is inevitable. We had better get over that in a hurry unless we are prepared to face the end in our lifetimes. If there is still hope to avoid both of these existential threats, it will require Americans to wake up to the reality that their fates are inextricably intertwined with those of everyone else.

This kind of tectonic paradigm shift in our collective consciousness would a tall order on any time scale, but as Kuhn showed in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, such shifts may occur rapidly when conditions are right. The urgency of the moment requires us to assume that is possible and to do all we can to promote it if we are to prevent nuclear war and/or environmental collapse.

To create a new world, we must first envision what that world would look like before developing a strategy to get there. If we want a world where most people implicitly recognize our interdependence, we must shed our violent habits of thought. Treating politics as warfare, where those of different ideologies are "the Other," if not enemies outright, is to perpetuate the world that we want to change.

Whatever strategy we develop to achieve our ultimate goal of universal justice, we must assume that some of those who currently oppose us are potential allies. Liberals and progressives alike seem to have given up on the idea that minds can change as circumstance do. By isolating from each other, both have allowed their worldviews to diverge to the point where the seem to have nothing in common with those who view the world differently.

We must be prepared to listen and acknowledge points of commonality in our opposing worldviews in a spirit of respect if we are to create the kind of movement capable of stopping our headlong rush toward oblivion. 

I wrote the following for my local newspaper, but it hasn't been published yet. If it doesn't change your mind about the value of trying to treat the "other side" respectfully, I hope that you will at least consider the arguments carefully.



The suppression of free speech on campus took an ominous step toward fascism with the recent arrest of a nonviolent student protester in New York. This should concern any American who assumes they are protected by the Bill of Rights.

On March 8, Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent U.S. resident married to an American, was abducted by plainclothes DHS agents in front of his eight-months pregnant wife. His family and lawyer were not told where he would be taken. Eventually, they discovered he had been transported to an ICE facility in Louisiana that is notorious for detainee abuse. He has not been charged with any crime.

Khalil’s offense was that he had been a student leader in last year’s Columbia University protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Columbia has been a prime target of government pressure to suppress campus protest against US complicity in Israeli war crimes. The site of the first Gaza encampment, students there remain defiant despite draconian efforts by the university to coerce them into silence. These include mass arrests, academic sanctions including expulsion, and banning of student groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace.

Khalil’s arrest came one day after Columbia was notified that $400 million in federal grants had been cancelled. The government outrageously claims that Columbia has made insufficient efforts to combat “antisemitism.” That’s the term both the Biden and Trump administrations have used to characterize student protests against Israeli atrocities. To emphasize the message to others, 60 more universities have received warning letters that they are also being investigated.

America has seen a lot of protest in recent history, from across the political spectrum. Most complaints concern problems rooted in the corrupting influence of money in politics. The ability of corporations, the ultrarich and unregistered agents of foreign governments like American Israeli Public Affairs Committee to spend virtually unlimited amounts to influence elections has become a danger to the Republic.

Most politicians pay far more attention to the wishes of the donor class than to the needs of voters. As a result, people on both sides of the political divide demand radical change. From the rise of the Tea Party to insurgent campaigns by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, signs of revolt are everywhere. This terrifies the political and economic elites. That is why our rights are being trampled by both parties.

Active suppression of free speech is nothing new. Remember Biden’s Ministry of Truth proposal? He tried to create a State Department office that was to be tasked with determining what information is “misinformation.” Its principal purpose was to censor any evidence that the government was misleading the public in its efforts to demonize Russia after Trump “threatened” to normalize relations.

Whatever one’s opinion on Israel’s actions in Gaza and elsewhere, each of us should be concerned about arbitrary abuse of power to punish individuals who are doing nothing more than peacefully protesting government policy. If we permit this, the First Amendment rights of anyone to assemble, speak publicly, and petition the government for redress of their grievances will be threatened.

Or, as Michelle Goldberg commented in a New York Times editorial entitled This is the Greatest Threat to Free Speech since the Red Scare, “….a government this willing to disregard the First Amendment is a danger to us all.”

Ideological warfare has kept us fighting each other instead of the real enemy among us. Due to our system of privately financed elections, those of means who consistently put profit over the American people are close to destroying any prospect of representative government in the United States.

Americans must unite to save it.