Insanity on Parade
Insanity on Parade:
Via Peace for Palestine
Shadows and Distortions
Thursday, May 18, 2006
....As a Jewish American, I do not want this tied to my history. This ballast, this anchor now inextricably linked to my ancestor's struggles, my dead relatives' stories. How dare we as American Jews allow this to happen. How dare we. How dare we support the ethnic cleansing in Palestine. How dare we argue over oppression hierarchy. How dare we march against the war in Iraq and keep our mouths shut on Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza. How dare we let lobby groups such as AIPAC drench our collective histories in soups of militarism, imperial domination, and snarly relationships with US weapons manufacturers and fascist politicians.
And here, as I sit in a quiet Berkeley café, I know I don't have to travel 10,000 miles to see the effects of a Nakba. It is all around us, this wrinkled, drunken beast of ethnic cleansing, its atomic particles buzzing in our ears and whispering the names of Ohlone, Miwok, Pomo, Kashaya, Yuki, Wintun. The Nakba in 1492 that spread like cancer from the far corners of the northern "American" continent is ongoing and entrenched. "Where did the Indians go?" my daughter asked me recently. When I explained that they were killed or moved to other areas of the country so that this building, or that street, or those houses could be built for the gun-carrying white settlers (I put it in more delicate terms), she turned and without skipping a beat, said "oh, just like in Palestine."
And so we go about our lives here in the occupied United States, five hundred years and millions of ghosts later, as half a world away, Palestinian children sit in the sweltering heat at the checkpoints, their flags whipping in the sandy wind and their grandparents' iron keys ringing softly as though, they too, wait to once again fulfill their right of intention and identity.
read the complete insanity here.
Nora Barrows-Friedman is the Senior Producer and co-host of Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio. She can be reached at norabf@gmail.com.
Links:
Flashpoint Archive May 2006
Shadows and Distortions: The Nakba in Palestine Audio
Via Peace for Palestine
Shadows and Distortions
Thursday, May 18, 2006
....As a Jewish American, I do not want this tied to my history. This ballast, this anchor now inextricably linked to my ancestor's struggles, my dead relatives' stories. How dare we as American Jews allow this to happen. How dare we. How dare we support the ethnic cleansing in Palestine. How dare we argue over oppression hierarchy. How dare we march against the war in Iraq and keep our mouths shut on Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza. How dare we let lobby groups such as AIPAC drench our collective histories in soups of militarism, imperial domination, and snarly relationships with US weapons manufacturers and fascist politicians.
And here, as I sit in a quiet Berkeley café, I know I don't have to travel 10,000 miles to see the effects of a Nakba. It is all around us, this wrinkled, drunken beast of ethnic cleansing, its atomic particles buzzing in our ears and whispering the names of Ohlone, Miwok, Pomo, Kashaya, Yuki, Wintun. The Nakba in 1492 that spread like cancer from the far corners of the northern "American" continent is ongoing and entrenched. "Where did the Indians go?" my daughter asked me recently. When I explained that they were killed or moved to other areas of the country so that this building, or that street, or those houses could be built for the gun-carrying white settlers (I put it in more delicate terms), she turned and without skipping a beat, said "oh, just like in Palestine."
And so we go about our lives here in the occupied United States, five hundred years and millions of ghosts later, as half a world away, Palestinian children sit in the sweltering heat at the checkpoints, their flags whipping in the sandy wind and their grandparents' iron keys ringing softly as though, they too, wait to once again fulfill their right of intention and identity.
read the complete insanity here.
Nora Barrows-Friedman is the Senior Producer and co-host of Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio. She can be reached at norabf@gmail.com.
Links:
Flashpoint Archive May 2006
Shadows and Distortions: The Nakba in Palestine Audio
posted by HRM Deborah of Israel and the Messenger of Peace at 7:47 PM
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