This is a great day in the U.S. The Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, recommended that the U.S. government end the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays in the military. From now on, he said, they should serve openly. Battalions of liberal commentators, from Chris Matthews on down, will support Obama and the Congress as they move inevitably toward liberalization for a minority that has so often been hunted in our society.
Some day let me tell you about the rationalizations I came up with to justify discrimination against open gay service in the military, back when this issue first broke into American public life in 1993. That was 17 years ago. America wasn’t ready then, I wasn’t ready then; and those who haven’t changed will have to get out of the way.
Ali Abunimah has said that white South Africa was overwhelmingly against sharing power even near the end of apartheid; but those attitudes changed.
The whites of the segregationist south were overwhelmingly against sharing power in the Jim Crow era, and those attitudes changed.
I waffle about full democracy in Israel & Palestine, a one-state solution, because though I think it’s a grand idea, I know Israelis and I can tell you that they aren’t ready for it, they think they need a Jewish state. So I offer them a kind of shelter for what is often prejudice because I fear massive bloodshed.
How long can that shelter last? As the gays in the American military example shows, the world moves forward. Disturbing ideas become familiar before long. The two-state solution once seemed radical; now it is The Paradigm– and it has only produced oppression.
Today liberal Americans should remind Israelis about what has come to pass in our society in spite of engrained attitudes. And tell them that the widespread Israeli prejudice against Palestinians as being somehow inferior or unsuited to modern society is not just unbecoming, it’s going to disappear in the rear view mirror.
