We may be this or that in any number of categories. Categories of race, culture, belief, gender, sex, and so on and so forth. Yet we all bleed, all of us. Turk and Armenian, Palestinian and Israeli settler, Pakistani or Indian, and the same is true across religions and cultures and linguistic groups and so on and so forth. So we are all Palestinians in this universal sense, that we are the same species and the same in so many fundamental ways.
So what do we do with this commonality, with this sameness, with this principle of applying the same rights to all of us, all of our fellow humans? We embrace it with some hope and some zeal.
Who benefits? Those who need it the most the most, but all of us benefit from substantial justice for all.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
PALESTINIANS IN THE STREETS OF MINNEAPOLIS-ST PAUL MINNESOTA
A few years ago my son wrote a letter to the editor at the school newspaper at Washington University, St. Louis. He titled it, "We all are Palestinians" and I liked the article but I was curious about the title.
I thought he was making a humanistic argument. He also emphasized the privilege of intellectual elites. I think he was saying we have a responsibility, a special responsibility due to that relative privilege.
Looking at the rubber bullets, tazers, pepper spray, percussion grenades and flash bombs being lobbed at thousands of peaceful protesters last week I suddenly came upon another understanding of that pregnant phrase, "We all are Palestinians". I realized that the streets of St. Paul were not entirely unlike those on the West Bank of Palestine/Israel. American citizens are being repressed like Palestinians are repressed at the Republican National Committee.
The kind of brutal repression we see in Israel directed at the Palestinians looks curiously like that taking place on the streets of Minnesota. Meanwhile, the ten percent of the residents of New Orleans who remained during the simultaneous hurricane are subject to a repressive martial law not unlike that imposed on the occupied territories.
We may or may not be Palestinians but we are more and more being brutalized just like they are whenever we step out and try to be citizens. Of course the repression in Palestine is still far worse and far more universally applied.
I thought he was making a humanistic argument. He also emphasized the privilege of intellectual elites. I think he was saying we have a responsibility, a special responsibility due to that relative privilege.
Looking at the rubber bullets, tazers, pepper spray, percussion grenades and flash bombs being lobbed at thousands of peaceful protesters last week I suddenly came upon another understanding of that pregnant phrase, "We all are Palestinians". I realized that the streets of St. Paul were not entirely unlike those on the West Bank of Palestine/Israel. American citizens are being repressed like Palestinians are repressed at the Republican National Committee.
The kind of brutal repression we see in Israel directed at the Palestinians looks curiously like that taking place on the streets of Minnesota. Meanwhile, the ten percent of the residents of New Orleans who remained during the simultaneous hurricane are subject to a repressive martial law not unlike that imposed on the occupied territories.
We may or may not be Palestinians but we are more and more being brutalized just like they are whenever we step out and try to be citizens. Of course the repression in Palestine is still far worse and far more universally applied.
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