I’ve been as moved as anyone by the liberation story that the repeal of Don’t-ask-don’t-tell represents for American gay people, and really for all of us. As I confessed when I talked about this last month, I had pretty conventional homophobic attitudes 20 years ago; and a long national education has had its good effects on me, and millions of other people who were behind the times.
I wrote about Don’t ask don’t tell because I think it is a great model for the change that I prescribe in Jewish and Israeli attitudes toward Palestinians. Today our great challenge is to accept Palestinians as fellow human beings. The bashings must stop. The hateful discrimination. The “pointless killings.” The racist contempt. We must recognize that their liberation story is also ours.
And today’s triumphant repeal of Don’t ask don’t tell reminded me of why I support the right of return. President Obama said that any gay person who left the military is free to return to it now. On NPR– a very progressive network when it comes to gay rights– they celebrated a gay Air Force major who had to leave the service when his sexuality was discovered, but who now wants to return, and lead. His rights have been affirmed, his status is being restored. Yes I know, that could be pretty disruptive. But how many will return? And the right must be honored.
I thought of the Palestinians expelled by Israel 63 years ago in the Nakba. Yes, a lot longer ago than the military personnel who may now return. Still, they were wrongly deprived of their rights, and even after the U.N. repeatedly affirmed their right to return, and several presidents demanded that Israel allow them to return, still Israel did not permit their return.
And the destruction of this right did not end the problem. No, the injustice festered and smoldered. It has animated Diaspora Palestinians for decades. It has wrecked the neighborhood, from Lebanon to Jordan. It has helped to block a peace deal, because these people were unwilling to give up the real right, affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to return to their homes.
People tell me that it’s a fantasy to affirm the right of return. It will never happen, it is Israel’s worst nightmare, the world has moved on, there is international consensus for a token repatriation, etc. And I recognize these sentiments. (My last book was about a terrible injustice in the Peace Corps 30 years ago, in which the Peace Corps freed a killer, a volunteer who had stalked and killed another volunteer, in the Kingdom of Tonga. He was working for the Social Security Administration, in Brooklyn. And I was shocked to find that nothing happened. It was too long ago for people to do anything about it. So I understand that justice delayed can be justice destroyed.)
But people also said that the idea that gay people would move freely in our society (with the ability to join what my wife jokes are our two worst institutions) was a fantasy. And it’s come to pass.
