A sorrow and a pity. That the New York Times and CBS are not Every Day banging the tocsin of freedom, that august American media institutions do not have the character or ability to say what Haaretz reminds us, Israel/Palestine is Jim Crow. Yael Sternhell, writing a piece that should be on the front page of the Times. And writing it lonely: For Israeli society is against Sternhell in her call for support of Palestinian freedom. I’m told this is a landmark piece inside Israel, Sternhell is a former news anchor and the daughter of Zeev Sternhell.
We, the Jews who live in Israel, participate each day, each hour, in the denial of basic rights to Palestinian citizens, in the perpetuation of the settlements and the occupation. We’re in a similar position to that of many whites in the United States in the 1960s.
Most of us find it hard to support the Palestinian struggle for independence, whether out of laziness, indifference or a basic loathing of those we’ve been told all our lives are a necessary enemy. Most of us find it hard to stand up to the story told by the government and most of the media that the Palestinian declaration of independence is a disaster for Israel, exactly as most whites in the South saw the granting of voting rights to blacks as the end of civilization.
Most of us find it hard to believe that it’s possible to live together in peace, just as those whites in Alabama found it hard to imagine life in a free society in which members of all races have the same rights.
