Made, not begotten: A tribute to Father David Burrell, CSC

 

In July of 2011, I moved back to Notre Dame, to take a job as the rector of Duncan Hall.  As I was settling in, before the students arrived for the new school year, Father David Burrell invited me to Corby Hall for dinner.  I had met and befriended David while living and working in Uganda for a year and a half with Holy Cross's Overseas Lay Mission program.  He took credit for setting up me and fellow volunteer Whitney.

“David, I was expecting to see you on the flotilla,” said the much younger priest at our table, wearing black clerics, glass of wine in hand.  David didn’t make the connection and looked up puzzled, thumbing his impressive eyebrows.

“The flotilla to Gaza,” the young priest clarified. 

It was the summer of the second freedom flotilla, officially named “Freedom Flotilla II: Stay Human.”  It aimed to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza symbolically and, in a small way, materially.  The flotilla ultimately did not sail, but it remained a topic of discussion for a full news cycle.  The previous year, a different flotilla did set sail, but the Israeli military raided it and killed nine activists on board and turned it around before it could reach Gaza.  

“I would have if I could have,” David said sincerely, using the young priest’s name gently in response.  The young priest, it appeared, was trying to get a rise out of David.  It was not hard to get a rise out of David.  

In 2018, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories predicted that Gaza would be “unlivable” by 2020.

On the first of October this past year, 2023, David died.  Six days later, that predicted unlivability in Gaza exploded, as people like David warned us that it would.  "What happens to a dream deferred?"  Israel suffered heavy casualties that day, as the world knows.  Then Israel regrouped, and it has been making Gaza even less livable since, as most of the world knows and as some of the world tries to avoid knowing, fully.  

I wish David were still with us.  He could share his wisdom and his clear analysis.  David would have mourned those Israeli lives lost.  He had sympathy for all human beings.  Yet, David was no both-sideser.  He knew and saw too much.  After I had the privilege myself of moving through the checkpoints of occupied Jericho, easily with my US passport; after I walked down Hebron's al-Shuhada street; I understood David's intense feelings on this topic.      

In our last correspondence, a week or so before he died, we talked of attending the same zoom webinar to learn how, on earth, to build international solidarity, specifically in order to prevent war between the US and China.  David knew that there is nothing inevitable about that war, or any war.  He understood that we make our own history, even if not under circumstances we would choose.    

While I wish we could still correspond, at the same time I'm glad David hasn’t had to witness this latest installment of nakba.  This televised genocide of the Palestinians, bought and paid for in part by our tax dollars.  He probably would have resented his own growing helplessness in the situation, as he aged and neared the end.  He nevertheless might have tried to break out of Holy Cross House by now, to get on the next flotilla, stubbornly ignoring doctors’ and religious superiors’ orders.  

Near Lake Saka, at the Holy Cross novitiate for East Africa, at the top of this beautiful mountain crater lake, we turned around to see David stubbornly climbing up behind us.  With his foot and his back issues, he was supposed to stay in the car.  "My doctor said I sometimes have to act my age," he told us down there. When he reached the top, he cracked himself up, "I decided to act my age!"    

Before David returned to Notre Dame for his jubilee in 2009, he had a colorful Ugandan stole made in Jinja.  He wanted the colors to be loud, to stand out in the basilica.  “I’ve got a reputation to keep,” he told us.

David had many reputations, as we all do.  The one I wish to remember the most is his standing up for the victims of the occupied Jericho road and trying in his own small yet animated way to liberate the occupied Jericho road.  Like a good Samaritan.  

History is made, not begotten.  “Go and do likewise,” Jesus told the young scholar, at the end of the parable.  In other words, "Stay human."  We'll do that, David.

shielded

“It’s a shame,” Julianna thinks.  “Sad.”  She is reading the New York Times on her phone in the car, waiting for Greta’s dance class to end.

Thirty-five years ago, yesterday, she was born in Abington Hospital, north of Philadelphia.  

Julianna habitually reads the news, or at least habitually scrolls.  Some days she isn’t sure she likes reading the news.  Is she doing it out of a sense of obligation?  Because she should?  But often, she does enjoy it, or enjoys scrolling at least.  She manages to catch an episode of The Daily at least once a week, and she is pretty faithful to David Leonhardt’s The Morning.  

She grew up with Peter Jennings on the ABC evening news.  More so, she grew up with Jim Gardiner and the local Philly 6 ABC Action News, which preceded and followed the national broadcast.  The former gave her a sense of the world.  It implicitly warned her: be careful out there. The latter gave her a sense of the more local geography, particularly Philadelphia: be careful down there.  

She refuses to pay extra for the Times cooking section.

Thirty-five years ago, tomorrow, she came home for the first time, with her parents, to the house in Glenside.  There, she lived her first five years, with her parents Tammy and Pete and her older brother, also Pete.  Or Peter.  At five, right before she started kindergarten, they moved out to Doylestown township--a kind of exurb, outside the borough of Doylestown.  She went to Our Lady of Mount Carmel school for nine years, from kindergarten to eighth grade.  In the latter years there, she ran track, did dance, played softball, and after they let girls join, she became an altar server.  She got good grades.  She sang a solo for the May Procession.  She went to Gwynedd Mercy Academy, an all-girls prep school.  She had a not-serious boyfriend in 11th grade, who went to the all-boys prep school.  She ran varsity track and played varsity volleyball.  She studied faithfully, and she passed her AP tests, including calculus.  She volunteered, weekly, in a tutoring program in North Philly.  Her dad was proud of her kindness and service and her AP scores, but he wasn’t keen on her going to North Philly.  

Peter went to Villanova.  When she graduated, she went to Holy Cross, in Worcester.  They offered her some decent money, and Tammy and Pete were able to foot the rest of the bill.  They had a good financial advisor.  At Holy Cross, she majored in accounting and English.  She drank for the first time, but only on the weekends.  She studied in London spring of her junior year and relished traveling around Europe on relatively cheap flights.  After graduation, she joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and taught for two years at a small Catholic grade school in a blighted Chicago neighborhood on the south side.  Her dad was proud of her service, but he was not keen on the location.  

After the JVC, she took a job with Deloitte, in New York, which was always the plan, and she moved to Hoboken.  In Hoboken, she met and made an unserious and then later serious boyfriend: Bobby.  Bobby also worked at Deloitte but in a different department.  He was from Summit, New Jersey and had gone to NYU. Also, he was Catholic too.  They got married several years later, back at Mount Carmel, and they lived the fun young couple life for a few more years in Hoboken, drinking on the weekends.  

Before their first kid’s arrival, they bought a house in Rutherford.  Just last year, before their third kid, they moved to Summit, where they bought a bigger house.  Bobby’s parents were both retired, healthy and active, and available to help with childcare.  They had encouraged them to move out to Summit.  There’s a train from Summit to Manhattan.  

Julianna no longer works at Deloitte, but Bobby does, and he has done pretty well there.  She is a full-time mom, which is indeed a full-time job, even with the nearby grandparent help.  She is active on the elementary school PTA.  Greta is in first grade.  Julianna does some ad hoc editing for a friend, for pay, and accounting for the PTA and the church, as a volunteer.  

  

“If only Hamas wouldn’t use human shields,” she thinks, as she scrolls.  “If only the Palestinians hadn’t voted for Hamas in the first place,” in 2006, she learned a couple months ago.  She returned to that thought, as she did two days ago, while she scrolled in line at Whole Foods.  

“Israel has no other choice.  It’s tragic.”  And like two days ago, her thought process terminates.   

Greta emerges from the studio.  Julianna buckles her in the booster seat, and they drive home.  They listen to the Frozen soundtrack. They beat the rush hour home.

Honesty in education?

 Hi Mike, or Whom It May Concern

My name is Terry Fitzgibbons.  I'm an A/R in EA of Passaic, and I enjoyed your presentation this past week at our rep council.  Thank you for coming out and for all of the information you provided.  I agree with all the points you shared.  My wife is a state employee and in CWA, and we are seeing mailers targeting her to drop her union too. 

If I may, I would like to push further on the Honesty in Education front.  If not the elephant in the room, the elephant in my head the other night was, What about Palestine?  

Many rank and file educators here in Passaic, across the state, and across the nation are concerned that "the union" (however they perceive it: the local or the state/national affiliates) may or may not have our backs when it comes to teaching honestly about Palestine.  In NJ, this perception stems in part from President Sean Spiller's statements, which we view to be very one-sided, ahistorical, and politically convenient.  We are concerned, in part, because NJEA PAC backs candidates who, yes, are decent on public education but who are complicit in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.  This is true of almost the entire NJ congressional delegation, and it is also indirectly true for NJ state leaders.  For instance, NJ state legislators, both Dem and Rep, have criminalized the nonviolent BDS movement.  (See the Ben and Jerry's/New Jersey/Unilever story from a couple years ago as an example.)

Perhaps this is not in your purview.  It may be more of an academic freedom/legal question.  (And forgive my PAC tangent above--I share that as an example of why some teachers do not feel safe and feel that the Honesty in Education is circumscribed.  Perception for many folks is their reality.)  If so, could you please direct us toward NJEA resources and/or personnel on academic freedom?  The Council on American Islamic Relations has excellent resources, but we are looking for resources internal to the union, too.  While we don't expect the NJEA to make better public-facing statements and resolutions anytime soon (like the UAW or the postal workers have done), it would behoove members to have a flow-chart, for instance, for what to do if we're targeted or disciplined.  For in-the-classroom work and also for out-of-the-classroom advocacy.  If this already exists on the local level, I apologize for that lack of knowledge.  Or, if it's as simple as "keep detailed notes and call Frank," that will work too.

I have not heard of incidents yet in Passaic in recent months, fortunately, but we want to be prepared.  A couple years ago, a teacher in our district was smeared by an outside group as being anti-Semitic for her pro-Palestinian advocacy in and out of the classroom.  Thankfully, the union stood by her.  But she was tenured and well-respected in the district and union.  Not everyone has her "social capital."  And that was before the mass hysteria and McCarthyism that has enveloped us since October 7.  I do know of teachers in Montclair and Teaneck, for instance, who have been targeted by outside groups or by less informed colleagues and who have been disciplined by administrators.  I know of professional development workshops focusing on Palestine that have been cancelled by superintendents (e.g. Scotch Plains) and books that have been pulled from school libraries (e.g. Newark (not NJEA)).  

Thank you for listening and your consideration and any help in advance.  Thanks so much for your work and commitment.  

Solidarity!

-Terry Fitzgibbons

Sontag, cancelled.

Susan Sontag, September 16, 2001

The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a “cowardly” attack on “civilization” or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word “cowardly” is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.

Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic President who assures us that America still stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office, who are strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this Administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand united behind President Bush. A lot of thinking needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, about options available to American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense. But the public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.

Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy—which entails disagreement, which promotes candor—has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. “Our country is strong,” we are told again and again. I for one don’t find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that’s not all America has to be.

MCQ

 Multiple choice question from today's AP US History class:

“. . . Because the way of conquering them [Native Americans] is much more easy then of civilizing them by fair means, for they are a rude, barbarous, and naked people, scattered in small companies, which are helps to Victory, but hindrances to Civility. Moreover, victory of them may be gained many ways; by force, by surprise, by famine in burning their Corn, by destroying and burning their Boats, Canoes, and Houses, by breaking their fishing Wares, by assailing them in their huntings, whereby they get the greatest part of their sustenance in Winter, by pursuing them and chasing them with our horses, and blood-Hounds to draw after them and Mastiffs to tear them, which take this naked, tanned, deformed Sausages, for no other than wild beasts, and are so fierce and fell upon them, that they fear them worse than their old Devil which they worship, supposed them to be a new and worse kind of Devils then their own. By these and sundry other ways, as by driving them (when they flee) upon their enemies, who are round about them, and by animating and abetting their enemies against them, may their ruin or subjection be soon effected.”

-- Records of the Virginia Company, 1622

12. What was the immediate effect of the emergence of the tobacco economy in the Chesapeake region on the Native Americans?

a. Depletion of the soil from tobacco cultivation.

b. Loss of land due to encroachments by tobacco farmers.

c. Arrival of more settlers for labor on tobacco farms.

d. Decreased military attacks by the English on Native settlements

On Palestine

(Sun. Oct. 15)

 Dear Friends and Family,

Father Daniel Berrigan, SJ, speaking on the one-year anniversary of 9/11.

An anniversary like this induces—seems to me, induces silence rather than a lot of words, but I’ll try. A few minutes after this horrid event a year ago, the phone rang. I was working at something. And a friend from North Carolina said, “Something terrible is happening in New York City.” And I said, “What?” and so on and so forth. And my first reaction was, I guess, right out of the gut rather than the heart, and I blurted into the phone, “So it’s come home at last.” Sympathy and tears came later, but that was the beginning. And I had a sense that that came from a very deep immersion in what I might call a hyphenated reality of America-in-the-world, hyphen in-the-world.

I was under American bombs in Hanoi in '68. We spent almost every night, Howard Zinn and myself, in bomb shelters. It was quite an educated moment to cower under the bombs of your own country. There was a period of very intense reflection after that—that would be in February. Three months later, with my brother and seven others, I went to Catonsville, Maryland, and burned the draft files. I had seen what napalm did to children and the aged and anybody within the swath of fire in Hanoi. I had seen what happened to Jesuit priests who get in the way of America in Salvador. In ’84, I met with the Jesuits who were later murdered at the university there. I had tasted American courts and American prisons. I'm trying to explain my first reaction: So it’s come home at last.

Within a week or so, I opened the Hebrew Bible to the book called The Lamentations of Jeremiah. And I found there a very powerful antidote to the poison that was running deep in the veins of authority here. Evidently, this bystander of the destruction of the holy city was giving us permission to go through an enormously redemptive and healing labyrinth of emotions, emotions that one would think superficially the Bible would not allow for. But he allows the bystanders and the survivors to speak of enormous hatred of God, a spirit of revenge against the enemy, a guilt in view of one’s own crimes and inhumanity, a hatred of those who have wrought this upon us, etc., etc. These are all the tunnel, the very deep tunnel, of psychology and spirit that the Bible opens before us. I began to understand that unless we went through that, we would never come out to the light again, and that that would be true of myself, as well. I began to understand that the foreshortening of that lonely and difficult emotional trek was a clue to Mr. Bush and the war spirit, and that unless one were allowed the full gamut of human and inhuman emotions, one would come out armed and ready with another tat for tit.

I am no Daniel Berrigan, but last Saturday, like him, I initially thought from the gut and mind.  I should have thought first from the heart and mourned the loss of life.  All life is precious.  (Pause.)  

In the wake of 9/11, the war drums beat.  I was an idealist who thought that war was bad but could be part of the answer.  I felt uneasy, but I did not actively stop those drums.  In the navy, I played a small part in that "global war on terror."  22 years later, I see how those wars failed and only brought more war and destruction, more nihilism.  I see the same march toward endless war again and hear the drums beat.  Hence, this email.

To ask how we got here, I believe, is essential.  To ask that is not to justify crimes but to seek future crimes from happening.  Perhaps we don't share the same assumptions on how we got here, and that is fair.  But as Berrigan and Jeremiah warned, "unless one were allowed the full gamut of human and inhuman emotions, one would come out armed and ready with another tat for tit."

With that in mind, in real-time, I believe we are witnessing and acquiescing to punitive genocide.  Our government, our tax dollars.  This scholar of genocide agrees and so does Doctors without Borders, Amnesty International, and Oxfam, to name a few: https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide .  If you feel compelled, follow the Quaker lead and call your decision-makers: Friends Committee on National Legislation | The U.S. Must Act to De-Escalate the Violence in Israel and Palestine (quorum.us)

(I have no personal connections to the land, but it I hope it has been heart--rather than gut and mind--that animates my support for Palestine liberation.  I have copied and pasted my longer thoughts and resources below on that reasoning, if interested.  My response to a friend earlier in the week.  If not, I understand.) 

With deep love for all of you,

Terry

________________________________

Dear ______.  

 Thanks for reaching out.  I've broken this up into 4 sections: 1. semi-concise thoughts on the immediate, 2. resources for regular following-ish, 3. One-off summative pieces, 4.  quick-ish overview of Zionism

Semi-concise thoughts on the immediate

1. There is nothing that justifies the slaughter of innocent people.  Even though the Palestinians are oppressed, and even though they have the right under international law to resist, I can't condone Hamas' targeting of civilians.  That is a war crime  I currently hold two seemingly contradictory positions: a. Palestinians are an oppressed indigenous people that have the right to resist, and b. Killing innocent people is wrong.

a. I view Hamas in the way that I view the IRA, or its earlier precursors in the early 1900s in Ireland.  I don't like what they do.  But, I also understand where they arise from.  (I also note that Israel used to fund/build up Hamas in the 80s because at the time it was thought they would be more apolitical than the more secular and also Marxist groups at the time: Blowback: How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It (theintercept.com).  Not unlike the US funding the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 70s and 80s, some of whom would evolve into the Taliban and al Qaeda).  I agree with the larger cause they're proximate to or that they are a slice of--Palestinian liberation--but not their violent methods.

b. Or a similar historical analogy might be a Lakota raid on a (US/white) settlement village in the 1800s on the prairie.  I don't want babies to die, AND I understand why Lakota resist.  Or when the ANC used violent tactics (alongside nonviolent ones) to push against apartheid South Africa. (Nelson  Mandela was on the US terrorist list until 2008)  Or I just did Powhatan's war in the 1600s in New England.  They raided/killed a village of 400 setllers, in the larger context of being erased.

c.  I should also note that while some Palestinians have taken up violence in their struggle, many Palestinians have practiced nonviolent methods.  

i. One such current method is the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which is modeled on the Boycott South Africa campaign.  BDS has been criminalized in both red and blue states in the US.  

ii. In the first intifada in the 1980s, Palestinians carried out over 100 different methods of nonviolent resistance.  5 Broken Cameras and Naila and the Uprising are two excellent films covering Palestinian nonviolence.  

iii. In the 2010s, activists tried several times nonviolently sailing from Turkey to Gaza to bring attention to the siege (in place since 2006).  Their boats were attacked by Israel.

iv. In 2018, in the "Great March of Return," Palestinians nonviolently marched toward the border to protest the siege, but Israeli soldiers shot and killed 223 Palestinians and injured thousands more.  

v.  I bring these up not to justify last Saturday's violence and civilian hostage-taking but to show that Palestinians have been practicing nonviolent tactics for decades.   

2. Even if you disagree with the analysis thus far, I hope you read on for a pre-last-weekend background.  Many people who are sympathetic with Palestine don't share that analysis of this weekend, and that is fair.   

3. While I had sympathy for Palestinians for a while, I still used to be a both-sideser, "damn both are oppressed peoples, can't we get along type, Michigan-Ohio state old rivalries die hard."  Then I visited the country in 2009, and that changed everything.  There is complete power asymmetry, with Palestinians at the mercy of the all-powerful Israeli state.  I saw settlements, extreme poverty, refugee camps, stood at checkpoints, and walked down streets where Palestinians were harassed by soldiers and settlers.  Now, It's not about me and my tears, as I was able to move through spaces easily as a tourist with my US passport, but that was a formative experience.  (Many people who visit do their tours through Christian pilgrimage companies or Birthright purposefully do not see all this)

Resources: News and groups  (skip over this part for now, if you don't want to get overwhelmed in too many resources)

News/analysis

A.  Some good anti-Zionist* Jewish perspectives 

1. Jewish Currents

2. Mondoweiss

3. +972 Magazine

B. Groups (Jewish, both non-Israeli and Israeli):

1. Jewish Voice for Peace: Home - JVP (jewishvoiceforpeace.org)

2. If Not Now: IfNotNowMovement

3. Btselem: B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (btselem.org)

4. ICAHD: The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)

5. Breaking the Silence  (This group is really good...former Israeli soldiers speaking out): Breaking the Silence

6. Combatants for Peace.

C. Some good Christian perspectives:

1. FOSNA: A (Palestinian) Christian Voice for Palestine: Friends of Sabeel North America (fosna.org)

2. The Kairos: Kairos Document (kairospalestine.ps)

D. Palestinian sources/groups  (I should probably list more here than I have)

1. Palestine Legal: Palestine Legal

2. USCPR: Home - US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (uscpr.org)

3. Eye on Palestine

4.  Let's talk Palestine

5. IMEU: Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU)

One-off summative recommendations

1.(Short) Palestinians Speak the Language of Violence Israel Taught Them (substack.com) 

2. (Graphics): Mapping Israeli occupation | Infographic News | Al Jazeera

3. (Long: my own thinking) An Elegy for Ted McGrath: "Playin' Sun City?" Palestine, Israel, South Africa, and Historical Memory

4. (Long, interview) Free Palestine with Noura Erakat · The Dig (thedigradio.com)

5. A beautiful novel (of sorts) that encapsulates much of this tragedy is Colum McCann's Apeirogon. I happen to know the brother of the young Israeli girl who was murdered by the suicide bomber.  He and his father are dedicated Palestinian sympathizers, not despite but because of the loss of their beloved.  Because they see the root of the violence.  (He's active on the former IDF vets for peace type stuff)

6.  Film, free docs:

a. Naila and the uprising: wonderful film on the nonviolent resistance in the first intifada.

b.  Peace propaganda, and the promised land: very good analysis on how the conflict is talked about in US media.  Made in 2004 or so, but it explains a lot of how the mainstream narrative (let alone Fox) shapes the discourse.   

7.  Boycott, on how nonviolent boycott tactics are being outlawed in the US.

8.  A bunch of other films, with discussions afterwards: Online Film Salons | Voices from the Holy Land - film series

9. Miko Peled, author of The General's Son: Miko Peled On Israel's GENOCIDAL War On Gaza - YouTube

Parsing out Zionism from Judaism and Anti-Zionism from Anti-semitism

1. Zionism is a nationalist movement started in the late 1800s, which advocated a return of Jewish people back to "Zion"/"Israel" in what was then Ottoman ruled Palestine.  One of its mottos was a "land without a people for a people without a land."  It was in part motivated by anti-Semitism in Europe at the time.  At the same time, if you read Theodor Herzl and the other early ZIonists, including later the first PM of Israel David Ben-Gurion, they speak the language of colonialism. Actually, Herzl was a colonialist – Mondoweiss

a. early Zionists were not religious.  

b. not all Jews are Zionists.  (Some, both on the liberal/secular side and on the orthodox side, argue against Zionism)

c. not all Zionists are Jews  (Some major US protestant evangelical contingent here are "Christian Zionist"...and then some of them are actually anti-Semitic.  That is, They support Israel, but only because they see it as the place of rapture for Christians at the end of time).  

2. There is a vigorous debate within Jewish communities over Zionism.  The Jewish sources I named above are mostly anti-Zionist.  

3. Ironically, to assume that all Jews are Zionist can be a form of anti-Semitism.  There is a long anti-Semitic trope that assumes Jews have "double loyalty."  That is, that they are not loyal to the country they live in.  It's a more subtle form of anti-semitistm, but when Trump for example was speaking to a group of American Jews and assumed they all supported Israel or assumed that they all would move there if they could, that actually was a form of anti-Semitism.  But that might be a tangential distraction here.

4.  The protests of the past year in Israel seemed to be a battle within Zionism.  Liberal Zionists were rightly claiming that Netanyahu is an extremist and that his policies were entrenching extremism.  Bernie Sanders would be a well known example of a liberal Zionist.  Or Barack Obama and most of the Democratic party.  They blamed right wing zionism.  But what a lot of observers were saying was, especially Palestinians, "right wing zionism isn't the problem.  Zionism is."

a. Zionism by definition seeks an ethno-nationalist state which excludes, primarily, the indigenous population.  That is what Palestinians and the 3rd world said when the UN general assembly passed its "Zionism is racism" resolution a couple decades ago.  I would have thought that that view was extreme, still some years ago, but now, I agree with that position.  It is telling that, when you look up which countries recognize Palestine as a state, only the European and US/Australia/etc do not.  (Inside baseball on Zionism, if you wish, pretty good interview, centered on the protests this past year in Israel: The Dig: Zionism’s Civil War w/ Edo Konrad & Joshua Leifer on Apple Podcasts)

i. for what it's worth, I think the answer is a one-state solution, with full equality between all peoples, Palestinian Arab, Jewish, whomever.  One person, one vote.  No favoritism for any ethnicity/religion. The Palestinian refugees would have the right to return (as refugees do, under international law.  Many will choose not to, but they have that right).  The Jewish population would have the right to stay (as we white settlers have stayed here on indigenous land in US, although not equitably).  Many will choose to stay.  Some may choose not to.  But freedom and equality for all peoples.  An imperfect solution.  (Hamas, like the IRA, needs to be brought in politically, which might be difficult, of course).  I do believe Jews have historic, cultural, and religious ties to the land, of course.  

ii.  I used to be a two-stater, which is the standard US liberal reply.  But the current two-states rhetoric and practice leaves Palestine with nothing (the maps in the al Jazeera link above are useful).  The Oslo process was a sham but standard US telling of them or the 2000 Camp David accords portray the Palestinians as "never accepting"  ( Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land, named above, or Edward Said's 1993 piece predicted this: Edward Said · The Morning After · LRB 21 October 1993)  There currently is a one-state apartheid system right now.  I support one-state for both (all) peoples, in sort of the way that post-apartheid South Africa resolved or Northern Ireland resolved.  Those examples are admittedly tenuous, especially with racialized inequalities generated under capitalism.

iii.  Ultimately, I think Palestine nationalism is incomplete, too, like Black nationalism and all nationalisms, including Zionism.  I understand Palestine nationalism and support it in the larger cause of justice.  But ultimately, what I believe in is worldwide socialism, open borders, multi-national and multi-ethnic states, not nationalism.  (That of course is a long way off, but I also believe that is the only way our species survives impending climate catastrophe).  I tend to support indigenous rights, yes, but that is not my end motivating factor.  Indigenous peoples can, philosophically, be oppressors too.

Ok, why all this parsing out? and what are the lessons of the Holocaust?

1. I stated up top: there is no justification for the targeted killing of innocents.  That is a war crime, yes located within a war of indigenous resistance, but a war crime.  Even the oppressed can (by definition, although not "should") commit atrocities.  The Ukrainians, who are fighting a defensive war against Russian aggression, have committed some war crimes.  

2.  So are/were Jews being killed on/since Saturday and other times in Israel?  Yes, they were.   Last Saturday was horrific.  Were they being killed because they were Jewish?  I think that is only part of the answer.  They were Jewish and living next door to an open air prison.  That does not change the trauma or the mourning, but I think it's important to historicize (not justify it).  Why?

i. Anti-semitism exists and is an evil.  It has existed for 2000 years plus, probably more.  Our beloved Catholic Church is much to blame for this.  Does anti-semitism exist in Muslim corners and in Palestine solidarity corners and in some anti-Zionism corners?  Yes, it does.  That is bad and needs to be stamped out.  But I don't believe anti-Zionism is by definition anti-Semitism.  A great interview (with audio option) on the intentional historical shift--when anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism actually became conflated some decades ago: Israel and Its Supporters Have Redefined Antisemitism to Stifle Solidarity With Palestine (jacobin.com).  There is a difference, in my opinion, between saying "Israel is a racist state.  We need to end this arrangement.  Resist Israel." and "death to the jews."  The latter of course is anti-Semitic.  (For what it's worth, I think it is ultimately more pressing to resist the US, the largest imperial state, than to resist Israel, but that's a longer conversation)  I've been to a number of Palestine solidarity events over the years and I've never heard the latter "death to the Jews," but it is possible that it is uttered in some corners. If so, that is wrong.  I taught a (white Catholic) kid in a college class 10 years ago who was very sympathetic to Palestinians but for absolutely the wrong reasons.  He was a rabid anti-Semite and kept conflating Israel with "the Jews."  (he was influenced by a vile Catholic theologian with vile ideas and bad history/theology, and one time in a paper against abortion wrote "It is well known that abortion comes from the Jews," which was wild)

ii.  So, I believe the attacks on the Pittsburgh synagogue some years ago, for example, and on Israel this past weekend are different.  Both are horrible, but in Pittsburgh, they were targeted because they were Jews.  In Israel, they were targeted for various reasons, one of which was their position as Jewish settlers.  That probably doesn't make a difference to those mourning or those triggered by the violence, but I believe politically, it is different.

iii.  The case of Western Sahara vis a vis Morocco might be helpful (or not).  Morocco is illegally occupying Western Sahara.  The Saharis in the name of resistance have committed some atrocities over the years.  Their victims have been Moroccan, predominantly Muslim.  They weren't killed because they were Muslim (Saharis are also Muslim).  They were killed (wrongly) because of their situation as occupiers.  If ii. and iii. are unhelpful here or sound like justification, then ignore them.

3.  Anti-semitism is on the rise in the US/Europe and the western world..  It is mostly on the rise in right wing circles. 

4.  I think you could argue that the Holocaust was the single greatest crime in history, in its intensity and direct intentionality.  Jews, obviously, were its primary victims.  The world (including the US government) did too little too late (and after WW2, we secretly put Nazis to work in the CIA in Operation Paperclip, but that's for another day).  The Nazis picked up on a latent thousands-years old anti-Semitism.  The Dreyfuss affair is a well known saga in the late 1800s/early 1900s France which sadly illustrates this anti-semitism and where it might have been headed.

a.  What is the lesson of the Holocaust?  "Never again"?  Or "Never again for the Jews"?  

b.  I obviously was not in any way affected by it, but as a dispassionate observer, I think it should be the former: "never again."  In the short piece from Chris Hedges above, he highlights a Warsaw Ghetto and Holocaust survivor who models that.  For some animated discussion on this, check out Norman Finkelstein's writing/speaking.  Finkelstein is a crank.  

c.  Generational trauma is real, and I don't want to deny that this event is triggering for many Jews.

d. Jews, like any group, are a historicized, constructed group.  That is not to say that they are unreal.  But, that is to say they exist within history, not outside of it.  The same goes for African Americans or the Irish or Tibetan Buddhists or the Philadelphia Phillies.  For all of those groups, history could have turned out differently, if different decisions and actions occurred at different conjunctures.  History and the future is all contingent.  So, the Jews are unique in their history, yes, but they do not exist as eternal victims outside of history.  (I think part of that latter vantage point comes from a particular reading of the Bible/Exodus we Christians get, which gets lumped together with the Holocaust and then Israel's portrayal in the US media.  I know that was the hegemonic view I grew up with and carried.)  Now, that is not to deny their unique historical victimhood.  But, Jews, like any groups (such as African Americans) are philosophically capable of committing atrocities themselves. (If the power and capabilities and capacities were aligned in a particular way.  It's very hard to imagine right now African Americans oppressing white Americans, but it is philosophically possible.).

e.  What is happening to Palestinians is genocidal in my opinion, if you follow the numbers.  That is not to say it's the same as the Holocaust.  And that is not to say it's committed solely by Zionists.  The UK and US government, for two, have been major abetters.  But genocide, like apartheid, are definitions, not analogies.  

f.  And so, that is why I speak up for Palestinians.

5.  There was much mass Jewish migration to Palestine during/after the Holocaust.  That is not to be denied.  Refugees should be given asylum.  The US and European and Australians' records on this front prior to and during WW2 is shameful.  But once landed, what will the power sharing system be?  Will the indigenous people be replaced?  That is why I believe in the above-stated one-state solution, equality and liberation for all peoples.  

Ok, I hope that was somewhat helpful in explaining and not just my blabbering.  I think it important to recognize anti-Semitism and acknowledge the unique crime of the Holocaust, but I also think it important to parse out "Israeli nation state" from "the Jews."  Even if you don't agree with my earlier analysis of the immediate at the beginning OR the historical analysis of Zionism at the end and even if you/one remains a liberal Zionist (which is what I was for a long time), I hope the Palestinian perspectives shared above are helpful.

Cornel West, November 2024, Vote Blue Who?, and Political Praxis

 No one asked for my take on Cornel West running for president, so here we go:

1. It’s only June 2023.  The election is 16 months away.  We have been trained to see “politics” as (presidential) elections (only).  This tendency--including this unsolicited post--comes at the expense of actual material fights and political opportunities right in front of us, now.  This tendency makes some media people/companies/advertisers a lot of money.

2. To be clear, Democrats don’t actually mean “vote blue no matter who.”  The case of India Walton in Buffalo is the clearest proof of that.  She won the Democratic primary election for mayor, upsetting the incumbent.  Instead of “vote blue no matter who” though, the incumbent ran a successful write-in campaign with the backing of NY state and national Democratic party leaders.  Walton lost.  Thus, we should at least be honest: the bad faith admonition to “vote blue no matter who” is only meant for the party’s left flank.  Another Buffalo Is Possible | The New Yorker.

3. Cornel West, in his own words, on why he is running: Cornel West on Running for President, Ending Ukraine War & Taking on “Corporate Duopoly” of Dems & GOP | Democracy Now!.  I can’t disagree at all with his analysis of our rotten system.

1. Thanks to a beloved history teacher, I have been reading and listening to West for several decades.

2. West has his idiosyncrasies, as we all do, but he first fell out of favor with liberals when he, rightly, kept up his "Socratic" critique of US empire under Obama, whom liberals had already canonized and whom they continue to worship.     

4. That being said, I don’t know whether West running for president in a third party is the best strategic move, and I don’t know yet whether I will vote for him.  Here’s an alternative but of course not new perspective, encouraging him to run inside the Democratic party: Cornel West Should Challenge Biden in the Democratic Primaries (jacobin.com)

1. I voted for Joe Biden in 2020 despite his long imperial, extractive, and deregulatory senate/VP career: An Elegy for Ted McGrath: "Yes, but...but yes, at the same time": Why I will vote for Joe Biden and think you should too

2. I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 despite her long imperial, extractive, and deregulatory first lady/senate/SecState career. 

5. That being said, flippantly dismissing Cornel West’s run illustrates that Democrats have learned little in the past 8 or 25 years.  Instead of trashing him, maybe they should reflect on the party’s rightward shift in the past 45 years: Instead of Trashing Cornel West, Here's what Democrats Could Do if they Actually Cared about Social and Economic Justice - CounterPunch.org

1. After Ralph Nader in 2000, Democrats scolded the left flank, “You should have run within the party” (with no serious reflection on the weakness of Gore or on his own imperial, extractive, and deregulatory senate career).  Fine then: Bernie challenges in 2016 and 2020.  But when those were effectively crushed, what I heard was, “Well, we didn’t really mean that.  We didn't want a serious challenger in the primary. He's not even a Democrat.”

1. Tangent: recently I heard someone remark, “If Nader hadn’t spoiled and if Gore had won, we would have tackled climate change by now,” which is just laughable.  An Inconvenient Truth: great film.  Doesn’t mean Gore did take on or would have taken on the fossil fuel companies.

6. I wish Democrats would fight their right flank with as much ruthlessness as they do their left.  The recent debt ceiling negotiations (an almost repeat from 2012) are telling of their priorities: That Time Biden Was Banned From Negotiating With Republicans (theintercept.com)

7. (To be clear, the Republican party has become an unhinged fascist party.  To argue that both parties are bad is not to argue that they’re equally bad.) 

8. A reminder on India Walton/Buffalo again.  They don’t actually mean “Vote blue no matter who”: Another Buffalo Is Possible | The New Yorker

1. Walton was defeated in the general election.  It’s also similarly frustrating to watch the Dem PACs and money swoop in to oppose progressives (including incumbents) in the primaries: It’s Nina Turner Against the Democratic Establishment in Ohio 11 | The Nation 

9. Voting is just one part of doing politics.  The election is still 16 months away.  Meanwhile, here are some missed opportunities:

1. The End of the Warrior Met Strike and the Utter Failure of the Democratic Imagination - In These Times

2. Betrayal of Railway Workers Ignites Working-Class Fury Toward Biden and Democrats (commondreams.org)

10. Voting is just one part of doing politics.  The election is still 16 months away.  Here are some present opportunities, not to be missed:

1. Wabtec: Wabtec Workers Walk Out for Grievance Strikes and Green Locomotives | Labor Notes

1. The Filthy Emissions of Railroad Locomotives—and the Rail Unions Sounding the Alarm - The American Prospect

2. UPS/Teamsters: Getting the Members into Motion at UPS | Labor Notes

11. Voting is just one part of doing politics, but the constant election cycle, especially with the Trump circus, does make media companies rich.  “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” former CEO Les Moonves admitted in 2016.  They’re doing it again, and we’re feeding the circus.

1. Mainstream outlets, for the most part, have not accepted responsibility for their part in playing up of Trump.

2. Many mainstream media outlets/liberals/Democrats still blame Russian bots, Bernie Bros, Julian Assange, or Jill Stein for Trump’s election. (They also rightly blame the bullshit electoral college).

1. Russia 2016 election interference: What’s real, what’s overhyped? - Vox

2. Exposure to Russian Twitter Campaigns in 2016 Presidential Race Highly Concentrated, Largely Limited to Strongly Partisan Republicans (nyu.edu)

3. The media then lost its mind with Trump-Russia: The press versus the president, part one - Columbia Journalism Review (cjr.org)

3. Liberals/Democrats also have a convenient amnesia when it comes to their role in the 2008 crash and in the catastrophic “global war on terror,” which I argue are root causes of the nihilism that Trump feeds on: An Elegy for Ted McGrath: Lexus trumps olive tree: The limitations of a "good liberal" (Part 1: "Golden Arches")

12. The left flank is derided for being too ideological, as if the center doesn’t hold its own ideology: An Elegy for Ted McGrath: Lexus trumps olive tree: The limitations of a "good liberal" (Part 4: "Web People").  The left flank will be derided for “purity politics,” even when many of us nevertheless turn out to vote for Clinton, Biden, or candidates we're not enthused by.

1. Check out UNITE HERE’s work in Philly in 2020: UNITE HERE, union that knocked on doors of 3 million voters—including 575,000 in Philadelphia—celebrates victory for Biden/Harris : UNITE HERE!

13. But, let’s give Cornel West and November 2024 a rest.  The election is 16 months away.  Check out these not “pure” but on-the-ground, material (and often partial) victories!

1. Chipping away at the real estate state in Jersey City and elsewhere: Socialists Are Winning Right-to-Counsel Tenant Protections Across the US (jacobin.com)

2. Building publicly owned renewables in New York: How to Win a Green New Deal in Your State | The Nation

14. The election is 16 months away.  Check out these massive campaigns we’re trying to win now.  Get involved:

1. Uninsured and underinsured people are dying now, as we speak:

1. Cap prescription drugs in NJ now: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/pass-prescription-drug-price-caps-in-new-jersey/

2. Medicare for All: Tell Congress: Pass Medicare for All! (actionnetwork.org)

15. US aid and diplomatic cover are enabling the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in real-time.  Organize to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel: Get Involved | BDS Movement
16. "There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat.  There is just the same battle.  To be fought over and over again.  So toughen up, bloody toughen up." -Tony Benn