Your last sentence reduced me to tears. I wish there was a way to tell these brave students that we are standing with them. Thank you for telling their stories. If any of them were my child, I would be so proud.
The weird thing is that, in this intra semitic horror show, universities are calling those who are against the slaughter of semitic people antisemites. And punishing them.
Brilliant essay; thank you, Nina! My father was a professor of philosophy and religion specializing in Middle-Eastern religions and history. He (and my mother, almost always) took over 50 groups of students, parents, and other interested locals to the Middle East between the years of 1967 and around 2000. I made two of those trips myself, and it has definitely influenced my outlook on the people and the region.
I recall quite vividly my father telling me about them touring the West Bank in the early 1970’s and seeing Israeli bulldozers flattening Palestinian homes, and them describing how the Israelis would cut down centuries-old olive trees on Palestinian lands and even salt the earth so that nothing would grow back, all in pursuit of forcing them off of their ancestral lands where their families had lived for centuries. Yes, I know that flies in the face of the (radical, far-right) Jewish proclamation that these are Jewish lands gifted by Yahweh to the Jewish people.
Just like Manifest Destiny proudly proclaims that Anglo-Saxon Europeans are ordained by God to conquer and possess the vast lands of the North American continent, never mind that there have been people living there for thousands of years. Same rationalization; different time, people, and place. But, it’s a gross conceit and a deeply racist and bigoted view by those who claim God has willed them to wipe out the existing population, whoever that may be. As if that provides them any comfort in their moral and ethical depravity.
You either believe that all people are created equal, or else the game is lost. Abraham Lincoln got that one right early on, in the 1850’s. It’s worth reading Heather Cox Richardson’s missives about Lincoln’s early revelations on the philosophy of universal equality.
Once you decide one group is better than another, then the only questions are, firstly, who gets to decide; and secondly, what happens when the deciding group changes and you’re all of a sudden on the outside rather than the inside?
Yes, it really is that simple—and all of Trump’s sycophants eventually find that their “inside” positions inevitably turn to “outside” status. As Rick Wilson so eloquently puts it, “Everything Trump Touches Dies” (ETTD).
Your last sentence reduced me to tears. I wish there was a way to tell these brave students that we are standing with them. Thank you for telling their stories. If any of them were my child, I would be so proud.
The weird thing is that, in this intra semitic horror show, universities are calling those who are against the slaughter of semitic people antisemites. And punishing them.
Brilliant essay; thank you, Nina! My father was a professor of philosophy and religion specializing in Middle-Eastern religions and history. He (and my mother, almost always) took over 50 groups of students, parents, and other interested locals to the Middle East between the years of 1967 and around 2000. I made two of those trips myself, and it has definitely influenced my outlook on the people and the region.
I recall quite vividly my father telling me about them touring the West Bank in the early 1970’s and seeing Israeli bulldozers flattening Palestinian homes, and them describing how the Israelis would cut down centuries-old olive trees on Palestinian lands and even salt the earth so that nothing would grow back, all in pursuit of forcing them off of their ancestral lands where their families had lived for centuries. Yes, I know that flies in the face of the (radical, far-right) Jewish proclamation that these are Jewish lands gifted by Yahweh to the Jewish people.
Just like Manifest Destiny proudly proclaims that Anglo-Saxon Europeans are ordained by God to conquer and possess the vast lands of the North American continent, never mind that there have been people living there for thousands of years. Same rationalization; different time, people, and place. But, it’s a gross conceit and a deeply racist and bigoted view by those who claim God has willed them to wipe out the existing population, whoever that may be. As if that provides them any comfort in their moral and ethical depravity.
You either believe that all people are created equal, or else the game is lost. Abraham Lincoln got that one right early on, in the 1850’s. It’s worth reading Heather Cox Richardson’s missives about Lincoln’s early revelations on the philosophy of universal equality.
Once you decide one group is better than another, then the only questions are, firstly, who gets to decide; and secondly, what happens when the deciding group changes and you’re all of a sudden on the outside rather than the inside?
Yes, it really is that simple—and all of Trump’s sycophants eventually find that their “inside” positions inevitably turn to “outside” status. As Rick Wilson so eloquently puts it, “Everything Trump Touches Dies” (ETTD).
Fascism has always been a highly infectious disease that some of us, fortunately, are immune to. Just not enough of us it seems.
And the blob continues to engulf more and more of our world.
So the Milgram experiment was right after all!
This is outrageous. I don't recognize America.