RUTHFULLY YOURS

Martin Luther King was a noble man whose courage shattered the ceiling of racism in America.  It is disgraceful that too many bigots and charlatans cloak themselves in his legacy to promote hatred.  The latest example is a written tantrum, “Time to Break the Silence on Palestine,” by Michelle Alexander, who became a New York Times columnist in 2018.

Start with rote libel:

Our elected representatives, who operate in a political environment where Israel’s political lobby holds well-documented power, have consistently minimized and deflected criticism of the State of Israel, even as it has grown more emboldened in its occupation of Palestinian territory and adopted some practices reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the United States.

“Well documented power” of the Jewish lobby are well known code words to evoke fantasies about surreptitious Jewish manipulation of politics.

Alexander then brings in brings in Martin Luther King with the following:

Reading King’s speech at Riverside more than 50 years later, I am left with little doubt that his teachings and message require us to speak out passionately against the human rights crisis in Israel-Palestine, despite the risks and despite the complexity of the issues. … And so, if we are to honor King’s message and not merely the man, we must condemn Israel’s actions: unrelenting violations of international law, continued occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, home demolitions and land confiscations.  We must cry out at the treatment of Palestinians at checkpoints, the routine searches of their homes and restrictions on their movements, and the severely limited access to decent housing, schools, food, hospitals and water that many of them face.

Occupation of Gaza?  Huh?  All Jewish residents of the Gaza strip were removed in 2005.  They left behind state-of-the-art, productive farms; agricultural equipment including tractors, greenhouses, fertilizers, and tools; and lovely homes bought for the Arabs by two American Jewish philanthropists.  The local Arabs trashed and destroyed every single remnant of Jewish life.  And they escalated persistent rocket attacks against civilian towns in Israel.

But Alexander does not want to be confused by facts.  She relies on the vituperation and outright lies of anti-Semites, including, alas, Jews (Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now), whose selective outrage is reserved exclusively for Israel while ignoring massacres and terrorism and oppression against civilians throughout the Arab-Muslim world.

She finds solace in Congress, where “[c]hange is on the horizon. For the first time, two sitting members, Representatives Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, and Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, publicly support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.”

And she spanks CNN: “In November, Marc Lamont Hill was fired from CNN for giving a speech in support of Palestinian rights that was grossly misinterpreted as expressing support for violence.”

Misinterpreted?

Lamont Hill was explicit when he said: “We have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grassroots action, local action, and international action that will give us what justice requires and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

Alexander does display her touchy-feely concerns for escalating anti-Semitism by blaming it on the anti-immigrant neo-Nazis in Germany.  In America, she evokes the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre as an example: “We must be mindful in this climate that, while criticism of Israel is not inherently anti-Semitic, it can slide there.”

Her slander is easy to refute, but once again, the New York Times published all the news that’s fit to bash the only democracy in the Middle East where Arabs – men and women – enjoy all freedoms of press, assembly, and access to education and health care and judicial consideration unavailable to them in any Arab-Muslim nations.