Informant38

Both NPR/KQED and the BBC, the only news via radio I get in the mountains besides the NBC/ABC/CBS mainline pap which now that I have FM I don't spend much time with, though sadly unable to access Democracy Now! and other progressive radio on KPFA or KUSP where was I? Ah, both are using the "pro-Palestinian" formula to describe the attacked parties in the latest Israeli debacle/atrocity.
It is an interesting term in this context. Functionally it's the obverse of anti-Semite, not opposite to but the positive to the negative. Against the Jews and for the Palestinians. Therefore invalid, wrong, and immoral.
Add in the very real impression most Americans have of terrorist/Palestinian synonymy, so that the semantic difference between "pro-Palestinian" and "pro-terrorist" is very thin if not non-existent in most minds in their respective audiences, and what this term moves forward is much darker than its superficial content.
Both news agencies were also describing the attacked as primarily Turkish which I don't doubt the possibility of but also without any research I'm confident there were people from many countries on board, at least 50 according to one unconfirmed report.
We're all a little stunned I think, and wondering what next, because clearly the US has nothing to bring but the Israeli dictates of its diplomatic actions and postures, and who else in the world is big enough to push back? China? Russia?
Venezuela?
That I am capable, and by extension many others are capable as well, of fully supporting, or being "pro" both Israelis and Palestinians at the same time, that in fact it is that very support that is so troubling and painful here would seem to have escaped the news editors at NPR and the BBC.
Because I do, of course I do, support, feel concern for and solidarity with, Israelis who have no voice in their own government's hysterical cowardice and panic and its cruel manifest, as well as Palestinians with no food or water and very little tangible prospect.
Pro-them yeah.
Vicious thugs with no moral compass but their own hive-minded survivalist pathologies, nah, pass on that. Survival through dishonor, no.
What's his face said "Give me liberty or give me death" somebody else said "Death before dishonor". It echoes. It's been around for a long time, that attitude.
These are not marginal statements, rare as they come to us. We hear them and thrill, because we recognize what they mean, that we have that, that choice, that spirit, that chance. Now. Here.