Op-Ed
[Along with other intellectuals, I was asked by a New Zealand solidarity group to share a few ideas on what meaningful solidarity with Palestine entails. This talk inspired the article below.]
It is a new era in Palestine.
This new era is taking shape before our very eyes, through the blood, tears and sacrifices of a brave generation that is fighting on two fronts - against the Israeli military occupation, on the one hand, and collaborating Palestinians masquerading as a ‘leadership’, on the other.
But how do we, in Palestine solidarity communities around the world, respond to the changes underway, to the new language and to the actual unity – wihdat al-Sahat – which are reanimating the Palestinian body politic?
First, I believe that we must insist on the centrality of the Palestinian voice to any solidarity action pertaining to Palestinian freedom anywhere.
This is the perfect opportunity for Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, to exit the stage. But he will not.
Abbas’ brief visit to the devastated Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank on July 12 demonstrated the absurdity and danger of the PA and its 87-year-old leader.
As he walked, Abbas struggled to keep his balance, in what was promoted as a ‘solidarity’ visit to the camp.
I was reading about bumble bees recently — specifically, their looming demise, thanks to human greed and ignorance — and started thinking about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We should have eaten from it!
Well, we did, but then apparently upchucked everything we learned and, in the process, fooled ourselves into thinking that technology has allowed us to recreate the Garden of Eden from which we’d been banned. You might call it the Garden of Capitalism, in which humans can take what they want without consequences, forever and ever and ever. This seems to be the myth at the core of dominant global culture.
It’s something of an understatement to say that we are all awakening again today in uncharted territory. And, the rule of law prevails.
Despite his avalanche of trumped-up cries of innocence, and despite the wolf whistles on his BS, oops I mean TS channel, lets state with no equivocation there is absolutely no Divine Right of Presidents anywhere in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Classified or Top Secret documents, or even the Star Spangled Banner. And no matter how mighty his mind thinks it is, he cannot declassify any of the above.
Trump who famously once called himself a “son of God” and who brags about his long distance conversations with the divine is actually a mere mortal, a stupid and sad sack of corpulent corpuscles who pinched his rallying cries for his MAGA masses from medieval Christian European kings who once believed they were answerable to no one except God, This absurd notion of royal absolutism became known as the divine right of kings who expected and demanded total obedience from the people they ruled.
“One nation, under God . . .”
Interesting addition to the Pledge, considering, you know, the separation of church and state. I actually remember it — it was 1954. I was in third grade, and had been reciting the Pledge with my classmates every morning for several years by then. I thought it was kind of cool, getting to say “God” without swearing.
“The push to add ‘under God’ to the pledge,” according to the History Channel, “gained momentum during the second Red Scare, a period when U.S. politicians were keen to assert the moral superiority of U.S. capitalism over Soviet communism, which many conservatives regarded as ‘godless.’”
We have it on the very best but very secret source that Trump has clandestine plans to return the Statue of Liberty to the French as soon as he returns to the White House. Amongst his followers, Trump has been heard to say the statue no longer reflects our pure white values. Some also say he’s been secretly heard to confide to his Maga Mites: “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses from shithole countries like Hell we would. Thanks but no thanks."
Truth be told, Trump clearly refutes the claim that the U.S. should be the champion of the poor and the dispossessed, a nation that draws its strength from its pluralism. The true gospel according to Trump: America’s greatness is the result of its white and Christian origins. Institutions stand diluted by a stream of alien blood, with all its inherited misconceptions respecting the relationships of the governing power to the governed,”. His government is dedicated to permanently halting the unalloyed welcome to all peoples.
“Go back to where you came from.”
This is basic American politics – what I might call spiritual ignorance: a dismissal of refugees fleeing war, famine and poverty as global sludge, clogging up our way of life. So many media stories about the border – our border – begin with an unquestioned presumption. These aren’t individual humans fleeing hell and trying to reclaim their lives. They exist only en masse – basically, in the millions.
And they’re going to be nothing but trouble for us. Either they want to work for a living and, thus, claim American jobs, or they’re simply leeches, utterly without skills, simply in possession of their needs, which of course will drain our resources. Go back to where you came from!
Look what happened earlier this month, when New York City’s mayor bused a bunch of migrants out of town – oh, boohoo, too many for you, Mayor Adams? – to several hotels in Orange County, about 60 miles to the north. It just so happened, according to a bogus claim that made big news for a while, that in order for the migrants to get their living space, a bunch of homeless veterans, a.k.a, American heroes, had to be evicted.
“. . . we belong to the Earth rather than to a nation . . .”
These words stick in my heart like a wedding ring. They emanate a cutting glow, a crying wish and hope that slices to the core of me. At the same time, I feel surrounded by a cynical “realism”: Don’t be a fool. A marriage like that isn’t possible. Be grateful you’re an American. Arm yourself! We’re being invaded.
More mass killings. More bloody “normal” — not just in Texas, not just in the United States, but around the world.
Eerily, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott inadvertently reminded us of the international nature of this scourge when he referred to five recent murder victims, in a tweet announcing a $50,000 reward for the killer, as “illegal immigrants.”
Hey, this is a divided world! Were you aware of that?
There’s “us” and there’s “them” — which apparently is a viewpoint that a mass shooter shares with the governor of Texas. Abbott, of course, was inundated with flak and wound up apologizing for his careless tweet, but the reality of it won’t go away. A private belief —that someone’s immigration status matters more than life itself — suddenly went public.