“If you justify violence at all, you justify it for all” Lawrence A. Feinstein
A couple of mornings ago, in my regular routine of reading news, a story stopped me cold. I had to write about it and see where it would take me. Although, a few of you are kind enough to read my stories, every now and then, I wish I was a writer with a huge following, because words can be very powerful and they always have been. Before getting any further than reading the news I’m about to share, I wished I was important, because of the story I hadn’t even written yet.
The daughter, infant grandson, and son-in-law of Refaat Alareer—a renowned Palestinian poet assassinated last year in an Israeli airstrike—were killed last Friday in a bombing in Gaza City. “I have beautiful news for you. I wish I could tell you in person. Do you know you have just become a grandfather?” Shaima Alareer wrote to her slain father before she, her baby, and her husband were killed.
A decade ago, poet Refaat Alareer wrote, ”I want my children to plan, rather than worry about, their future, and to draw beaches or fields or blue skies and a sun in the corner, not warships, pillars of smoke, warplanes, and guns.”
I just started crying and crying, feeling helpless and confused. I am a Jew and not a very good one, but I am not an Israeli. How can it be that thousands of children have been killed as part of the retaliation for Hamas’ Oct 7th brutal incursion across the border from Gaza to Israel?
I could waste your time and mine by talking about how that part of the world was arbitrarily divided up into nation-states that never existed before the British decided to play monopoly with tribes and gods, in place for thousands of years. They didn’t see that part of the world the way it saw itself. Today, I really don’t give a shit about any of it, except for the creation of the State of Israel and its ramifications.
Here were a people that suffered a kind of brutality that is nearly impossible for you or I to understand. Pretty much, every country, including our own, turned their backs on these people, a pariah, living testimony to our brutality, the basest parts of our human imperfection.
What the hell happened between then and now? God bless my people, we have the ability to thrive, no matter the historic hand we’ve been dealt. When your bible, the one you wrote, states you are the Chosen One, it becomes a problem. All Gods seem to have ego issues, at least that’s how their followers write it and see it. I grew up in Queens in NYC, not long after THAT war and I felt the contagion of being Chosen.
Our impact on this country far outweighs our numbers and has had enormous weight in inflating Israel’s significance in their incredibly complicated world. I used to have wonderful conversations with my old friend, Alex, an Iranian by birth and a rebel by nature. When I went off on the miracle of Israel, he was quick to point out that if you gave any country the billions we did to any other, it would be an Israel. A dose of reality punctured my pride.
US empowered Israel for its own selfish purposes, inflating Israel’s feeling’s of self-importance, crushing their humility for having survived the worst torture imaginable. Truth be told, they have been our pawn in that oil laden part of the world. We turned them into the aggressors they have become.
Growing up, I remember there being Jewish beach clubs, because we were not allowed in the existing ones and the samefor so many other club-like entities. I worked at one for several summers, too.
Let me tell you, the folks here, who think abortion is a crime, have never liked my tribe. They support Israel for selfish reasons and don’t give a shit about its people. The bias against Arabs and their Muslim faith is right up there and even worse, because of skin color, as much as their “heathen” religion, disdained more than Judaism! However, we do love them for their oil.
If we had grown up here as slaves, we would be standing with our black brothers and sisters. I wish both of us understood that a whole lot better than we do, but we don’t and that is incredibly sad. I apologize. I know that is an aside, but far be it from me to give a shit. However, we are on the subject of bias, so it’s not that crazy either.
The campus unrest and violence of the 60’s and now have a great deal in common. The 60’s weren’t only about an unjust war, but also civil rights, the latter pretty much ignored, when looking back. The Black Panthers were a force to be reckoned with and Dr. King’s voice was loud and clear on campuses everywhere.
Today, it is about an unjust war and Human Rights. Back then, it was more organic. Today it is partially driven by social media, with messages that are often a tragic distortion for political purposes, injecting anti-semitism into the equation, where it has no place, other than an incendiary one. Even the protestors calling themselves Pro-Palestinian twists the purpose, at least to me, breeding a kind of confrontational posture, when they are against the war, first and foremost.
Today’s protests are about putting an end to the war and the suffering of the Palestinian people. It is about genocide, a word my people know better than most. In two words, it is ethnic cleaning, make no mistake! Over 100 journalists have been murdered by Israeli forces, in a concerted effort to kill the truth of the horror in Gaza. The only solution is a Two State Solution or an endless war and enflaming terrorism.
Speaking of words, in this country, the word freedom is an illusion. Just like the 60’s were, we are not free to disagree with the policy of our government. The power of young people should never be underestimated. They were right and they are right. The future belongs to them, not old white men.
It was the story of Refaat Alareer that forced me to write this. It is about our country being guilty of providing the weaponry being used to decimate a people, with a legitimate right to a place of their own, the State of Palestine. Human beings forfeit their humanity, when they refuse to recognize the rights of other human beings.
The transition from victim to oppressor and back again is a seamless transition, an indelible, historic lesson we all refuse to learn. The cycle of violence is a timeless dance we have been doing forever. We are to blame.
This is who we are. The only antidote is loving compassion and we refuse it, again and again and again. Started this story a couple of days ago crying and ending it crying.
Today, May 4th is the right day to share this story. On this date in 1970, the National Guard fired on protesting students at Kent State, killing four and injuring eight others.
When will it ever end? Real tragedy is not when right and wrong collide, but when two rights do.
It is about human rights, not one right over another. There is no justification for inhumane treatment, not even as a response to it. It is the cause that needs fixing. It is never how, it is always why.To me, when it comes to violence, there is no right and wrong, there is only wrong, even as a response to it.