The inflammatory language is part of the playbook for those seeking destruction. Many of the pro-Hamas rallies call for the elimination of the only Jewish majority country in the world, while an ocean of Arab states long ago refused to truly aid their Palestinian cousins with anything but decades of war. They will call it ‘hasbara.’ I call it the facts of history they choose to throw into the Orwellian memory tube. None of the actual humans intersecting in times and places should be reduced to ideological binary abstractions. The people who yell loudest that Israel is “settler colonial” haven’t yet given their own homes and plots back to the indigenous peoples in their states. For them land acknowledgment, words without due action, is quite enough. But it is demanded of Israel, with its long regional history (City of David, Solomon, etc) and TINY country, to give back what the ‘virtuous ones’ would never consider returning to the ‘rightful heirs’ in their territory. That was plain as day at UVM’s 2023 graduation. A 30 second land acknowledgment by the university president, dressed in his European medieval robe and floppy scholar’s beret, as all the professors were costumed. No invitation to a local Native American to enact a ritual of life passage. No offer to give the property over to Vermont tribes, who could make good use of housing, pools, gyms, libraries, medical facilities, kitchens, etc etc. It’s what professors and students at UVM insist upon for Israel, but will not act upon the principle themselves. There’s a word for that kind of contradiction. No, not antisemitism (okay, yes it is)…hypocrisy. Yeah, that’s it!
Thank you for the incredible balancing act here. So much of this needs to be said and heard.
The inflammatory language is part of the playbook for those seeking destruction. Many of the pro-Hamas rallies call for the elimination of the only Jewish majority country in the world, while an ocean of Arab states long ago refused to truly aid their Palestinian cousins with anything but decades of war. They will call it ‘hasbara.’ I call it the facts of history they choose to throw into the Orwellian memory tube. None of the actual humans intersecting in times and places should be reduced to ideological binary abstractions. The people who yell loudest that Israel is “settler colonial” haven’t yet given their own homes and plots back to the indigenous peoples in their states. For them land acknowledgment, words without due action, is quite enough. But it is demanded of Israel, with its long regional history (City of David, Solomon, etc) and TINY country, to give back what the ‘virtuous ones’ would never consider returning to the ‘rightful heirs’ in their territory. That was plain as day at UVM’s 2023 graduation. A 30 second land acknowledgment by the university president, dressed in his European medieval robe and floppy scholar’s beret, as all the professors were costumed. No invitation to a local Native American to enact a ritual of life passage. No offer to give the property over to Vermont tribes, who could make good use of housing, pools, gyms, libraries, medical facilities, kitchens, etc etc. It’s what professors and students at UVM insist upon for Israel, but will not act upon the principle themselves. There’s a word for that kind of contradiction. No, not antisemitism (okay, yes it is)…hypocrisy. Yeah, that’s it!