I need to report on last night's tour of Brooklyn by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. First at an Arab-American church, then at a Park Slope church. 20 people in the first event, 100 at the second. Cold night. "You are there," as we say in the news business.
2 speakers. One a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer, Diana Buttu. One a religious guy from South Africa, Eddie Makue. Good pairing. David Wildman of the Campaign introduced. He said the Campaign had made the determination two years ago that they were now going to characterize the occupation as apartheid in their activist efforts in the U.S. This was not just marketing but a recognitioin: That the systematic discrimination between one people and another based purely on identity, creating sharply different conditions for the two peoples, was/is/will be apartheid.
At the Park Slope church, the Jewish religious issue was a theme. Makue: "There are people in Israel who believe they are the chosen people, and they have theological justification to occupy the land." Buttu: Yes let us talk about "the theological underpinnings of apartheid." Wildman: You have a "law of return for one people" and a "right of return" that is not honored for the other people. I'm saying, This was good stuff.
A Jewish woman in the audience got very upset. She rose at the end and said, almost shaking, that the words "the chosen people" were being thrown about with respect to occupation. "I respectfully ask you to leave that discussion to Jewish theologians and to the Jewish community."
Darling, I can't honor your request. I need the general community to talk about Jewish ethnocentrism– at the same time as they are talking about the theological basis of Islamic jihad. I want Jews to interrogate our legacy of superiority, 400 years after Baruch Spinoza teed the issue up in Amsterdam. I want Michael Walzer, my former professor of government, to openly explore the conditions of the occupation and the abuses of Palestinians as a follow-on to his brave and beautiful statement at Yivo that we have done a heckuva job for 3000 years governing ourselves but a bad job governing others. I don't want us to govern ourselves so much. Nor others. I like the legal framework of the U.S. with respect to minorities, including the Head Mutt, Obama. And a good thing that a black South African and a Canadian Arab are moving thru our country talking about it all.
The feline really has departed the gunnysack.
