ENSLAVEMENT-GENOCIDE-COURAGE

Enslavement - Genocide – Courage?

My partner and millions of others have survived over four hundred years of Enslavement, followed by Legal 2^nd Class Citizenship, and much more that is truly horrific!

There is no need to quote statistics related to: wealth, income, incarceration, life expectancy, housing, education, healthcare, which readily prove – The Facts.

Donald Trump’s words follow:

"Joe Biden became mentally impaired," he said. "Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country."

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-takes-dark-rhetoric-new-level-final-weeks/story?id=114360594

Speaking at the Al Smith charity dinner, Trump quoted the late conservative political commentator Rush Limbaugh III as he spoke about Obama.

"As Rush Limbaugh used to say: 'Barack HUSSEIN Obama'," Trump said, emphasizing the middle name. "He was a piece of work, we miss him," appearing to refer to the conservative commentator.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-obama-middle-name-crticism-al-smith-dinner-1971322

George Floyd’s murder on May 25, 2020 seemingly “awakened” many white people. Finally, they saw Racism loudly and clearly! They could see the deception. There was Zero justification for what had happened in Minneapolis!

White People protested in the streets of most major cities. I began driving from our condo in Chicago to the Southwest Suburbs for Car-avan Protests in the heart of Chicago’s Palestinian Community. Covid kept us in our cars.

Over time things changed. The protests grew smaller and then stopped. The white people were largely moving on. Some moved greatly to the right. Others remained “concerned” through donated money, an occasional signed petition, and similar.

I’m bothered by us white people! Our return to relative silence concerns and scares me. The horrible depths of racism never stopped. The killings and systemic oppression continue.

We seem numbed, tired of the messages arising again and again, or even apathetic Are we or no longer concerned? I’m emboldened to do more! Some other white people are 100% with me! Far too many aren’t!

Rashida Tlaib and Georges - Bisharat and Marx, December 9, 2023 - Piedmont, CA

Since October 7, 2023, I’ve attended over 200 protests, most related to my horror at what has been done in my name by The U.S. Government. Israel’s “retaliation” against The Palestinian People was and far more than extreme.

I was born after the end of World War II. I never saw genocide “live” prior to October 8, 2023. The evidence of Genocide in Gaza is overwhelming!

Many Jews fear another Holocaust! We experienced and experience varying levels of trauma. Anti-Semitism has impacted us. Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. The Nazi’s treatment of Jews, and others they “othered” was unbelievably cruel and scary.

Our trauma as Jews goes far deeper than what we have faced with the Holocaust! Over the past 2000 years, far too frequently we’ve been exterminated and/or exiled solely because we’re Jewish. The pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe traumatized us. Refusing Our to convert to Catholicism brought death and exile in Europe. We were scapegoated by oppressive civil and religious leaders. Jews were labeled “shysters”. We were supposedly the “evil money-lenders”.

When we don’t deeply process our trauma, it makes it difficult, if not impossible, accept, have empathy for, and listen openly to others The Palestinian People are paying a HEAVY price for what should (only) be our own (collective) personal issues.

The Palestinians had nothing to do with the rise of Hitler in Germany! The reparations demanded in Versailles in 1919, began a spiral of division in Germany as its economy collapsed. The monied interests (as always) pushed a Rightward Agenda.

Jews weren’t welcome in The Global North. The United States cut off immigration. The Russian Revolution welcomed initially by many Russian Jews, proved not helpful. The British exported its (potential) problems to Palestine, to the degree that they could.

There was increasing resistance from the Palestinian People. They understandably resented what We Didn’t and Don’t see was done to them.

Money from European Jews bought land from absentee landlords, as poor shepherd, farmers, and village residents lost their livelihoods.

According to the census of June 16, 1933, the Jewish population of Germany, including the Saar region (which at that time was still under the administration of the League of Nations), was approximately 505,000 people out of a total population of 67 million, or somewhat less than 0.75 percent. That number represented a reduction from the estimated 523,000 Jews living in Germany in January 1933; the decrease was due in part to emigration following the Nazi takeover in January. (An estimated 37,000 Jews emigrated from Germany during 1933.)

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/germany-jewish-population-in-1933

In 1933-34, while Jews accounted for 0.8 percent of the German population, fully 16 percent of all German physicians were Jewish, 20 percent of all Jewish specialists were dermatologists, and 25 percent of all German dermatologists were Jews. https://www.jpands.org/hacienda/weyers.html

While the German Jews of 1933 weren’t all well-off, and/or highly educated, relative to their tiny proportion of the population, they were disproportionately so.

The German economic woes of the 1920’s and early 1930’s clearly made scapegoating much more effective than it otherwise might have been. Hitler and The Right made Jews and fellow persecuted peoples like the Roma (Gypsies) into: “others”, targeted for horrific victimization.

After World War II there was empathy for the survivors of The Holocaust. This empathy didn’t translate into Jews being welcomed into the United States, unless they had skills, or relatives who would financially support them.

The British dumped their failing policies upon the newly formed United Nations in 1947. The contrasting interests of a Jewish State vs. the interests of the Palestinians were never resolved. Jewish leadership built up what was to become The Israeli Army starting in the late 1930’s. The British sympathies were much greater for the “Westerners” – i.e. Jews, rather than for the “othered” Palestinians, a Non-White People. The British, despite their favoritism, were strongly Anti-Semitic. They helped bring Anti-Semitism to the Middle East, along with the Nazi troops later on.

The Jews brought “progress” to Palestine. This disrupted the lives of the non-wealthy Palestinians as they were pushed off their lands, exploited economically and in general treated poorly.

An analogous situation in the United States is when meatpackers bringing jobs to a local community. The Latino/a workers, with the dangerous jobs, do make money from their employers. They resent the pollution in their communities, the exploitation they face from the management, and similar.

So, why did The Arabs (Palestinians) reject the U.N.’s proposals? In 1947, Jews, made up one third of the population. They then owned under 7% of the land. The U.N. designed 56% of Palestine of the land to the Jews, 2% - Jerusalem/Bethlehem to be shared-neutral territory, and 42% to go the Native Palestine. One third of the people being deemed entitled to 56+% of the land wasn’t “fair”.

The major resistance – driving Palestinians out of Palestine began as the U.N. took over responsibility from Great Britain. Benny Morris, an Israeli historian noted in his book: 1948 and After…, published in 1990 noted that prior to the 1947-1948 War, Haifa’s 140,000 people were roughly half Palestinian/half Jewish. Initially the wealthy and middle-class Palestinians fled. Later the poorer people left. The Haganah took over the Palestinian neighborhoods in April, 1948 , and by July, 1948, only 3,500 Palestinians were left in Haifa.

I grew up, as many Jews of the 1950’s and 1960’s did, learning of the heroic Jews, and the horrific Arabs. Unjustifiably, Fedayeen terrorists were attacking innocent Israelis.

We weren’t told that many Palestinians were seeking to return to their pre-1947-1948 homes, having been driven out by Jewish forces. Leon Uris’s novels such as Exodus simplistically blamed the Palestinians and made heroes out of Israeli Jews.

Later on I learned a lot from various Jewish intellectuals, most notably Noam Chomsky. Prominent Palestinian American scholars such as Edward Said and later on Rashid Khalidi spoke truths, that I learned only much later.

The perception of a new historiographical current emerged with the publications of four scholars in the 1980s: Benny Morris, Ilan Pappé, Avi Shlaim, and Simha Flapan. Subsequently, many other historians and historical sociologists including Tom Segev, Hillel Cohen, Baruch Kimmerling, Joel Migdal, Idith Zertal, and Shlomo Sand have been identified with the movement.^[4]^[5]

Initially dismissed by the public, the New Historians gained legitimacy in Israel in the 1990s.^[2] Some of their conclusions have been incorporated into the political ideology of post-Zionists. Although influential in Western academia, the 'new history' narrative and post-Zionism have remained marginalized in Israel.^[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Historians#Bibliography

Avi Shlaim movingly describes how the Jews of the Middle East were exploited by the newly formed Israeli State. See: https://www.georgemarx.org/2024/10/three-worlds-avi-shlaim.html . His words tear into multiple myths.

Arab Jews – such as his own family, were treated much, much more poorly than the migrants from Europe and Russia. He makes serious charges. His family’s friends and neighbors in Baghdad were often non-Jewish Iraqis. The emerging Mossad pushed the Jews out! The anger of the neighbors of the Middle East towards Israel was Not Anti-Semitism. Today Anti-Semitism continues to be weaponized.

Judaism is a religion. Israel is a nation where prejudice against Non-Jews is increasing, just as Christian Nationalism is rising here. We Jews in the U.S. aren’t being killed in great numbers, though!

My biased perspective is strongly rejected by many, many Jews and the Jewish Establishment. Christian Zionist power, combined with the propaganda of the Israeli Government, together with American political leaders all persist in viewing Israel in a condescending and admiring, mythical way.

They believe that Israel acts independently.

Israel’s politics are intertwined with dominant interests in the United States. Boeing – and Microsoft – and Google – and many, many more’s stockholders profit from weaponry and more that are bought “for Israel”.

It is 100% criminal – war crimes – complicity that we support as U.S. bombs and more are tested and evaluated through their use against the Palestinian People of Gaza!

I have two American relatives, one in retirement, and the other recently passed away, who both embody mainstream Judaism in the U.S. Both, highly intelligent, neither focused beyond the “Anti-Semitism” tropes that persist strongly.

Donald Trump’s recent extremism possibly may help split some who are similar to my relatives from their myths. My relatives are not supporters of Donald Trump and/or The Republican Party. Their visions rest upon perceptions of EXTREME danger in any potential peace agreement with the Palestinian People in any way, yet alone with Hamas.

The murders, persecution, and oppression is building day-by-day in the U.S. against Black and Brown People! We, white people, aren’t followed in stores by security staff. We aren’t stopped for failing to signal a turn, or a light being out on our cars.

We hear, but don’t really deeply hear, of the Deep Racism of our own country!

Similarly – I hear no outrage related to the Genocide in Palestine!

Rather than speaking of “facts”, I’ll suggest resources:

RACISM

· Richard Rothstein – (and his daughter Leah – latter noted book) –

The Color of Law… -

https://www.workingtowardsendingracism.org/2020/12/the-color-of-law-richard-rothstein.html +

Just Action… or

· Esther Armah’s Emotional Justice… - https://www.georgemarx.org/2024/06/emotional-justice-esther-armah-amazing.html

PALESTINE

· Tareq Baconi’s Hamas Contained …

https://www.georgemarx.org/2024/02/hamas-contained-tareq-baconis-excellent.html or