We don't care
Recently, 10 Palestinians were slaughtered by an Israeli tank that fired into a crowd of civilians, most of them children, during a non-violent protest against the Israeli Army. Um Tarik asked her son to translate the word "troubling" into Arabic. She heard George Bush's statement that the murder of those Palestinian children was "troubling" to him.
Palestine is a killing field for the Israelis. Close to 600 children have been killed by the Israelis since September 2000. During the month of May in Rafah, more than 43 Palestinians were murdered or assassinated by the "only democracy in the Middle East," and 1,500 more Palestinians have been made homeless yet again. It does not matter to Palestinians that Amnesty International has condemned the Israeli actions in Rafah as "war crimes," or that the United Nations has characterized them as "crimes against humanity." These are empty words and offer little comfort. The Rafah crimes are nothing new for Palestinians.
Jess Ghannam/Pacific News Service May.15.04
The immediate and vicious retaliation of very loud and very powerful people, that any condemnation of the actions of the Israeli government is "anti-Semitic" or "Jew-hating" needs to be repudiated, forcefully and repeatedly, until it's very clear.
It's the same as "American" and "anti-American" - the "Americans" are killing innocent people in Iraq, and the "Americans" are being killed in Iraq.
I'm an American, I'm neither killing nor being killed in Iraq. I'm against the "American" presence there, and I'm against the "Americans" who support that presence. But I am an American.
There are Jews and citizens of Israel who neither support nor excuse the bestial madness of the Israeli government and its covert supporters in the rest of the world. They are being attacked from behind by irrational blanket condemnations of "Jews" and "Israelis", just like we here in the US are being denied our right to be Americans, though we're protected from the hatred many of the voiceless in the world today have for America.
That's what's being taken away from us, our being, our identity, our American-ness.
The language is being manipulated, and as always it benefits the unnamed. Jews who oppose the butchery and cunning of Sharon and his dog-pack are crippled by the imprecision of the language.
