The Witness Chronicles, April 25, 2024
Palestine protests in historical context
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Contemplating the Pro Palestine Protests
This generation’s anti-war voices and problems
In 1968, when I was thirteen years old, I was tear gassed. I’d skipped school and taken a bus downtown to go to an anti-war protest against our involvement in the war in Vietnam. There were perhaps a thousand protesters, mostly college students, and we sat in the middle of our busy Main Street and blocked traffic, peacefully.
But in the windows of surrounding buildings were men with cameras with long lenses photographing individuals in the crowd and police were massing down the street. Without action by us, suddenly there was the popping of tear gas launchers and canisters landing among us. I ducked into the doorway of a department store, but not before getting a nose full of the intensely irritating gas.
Other things happened that afternoon, including an officer with a custom made white Billy club four feet long, beating the hell out of a kid and sending him to the hospital. That kid turned out to be the son of a prominent local judge and in a miracle of justice for that time, the rogue cop was fired.
It turned out he had a long internal record of violence that had been covered up for years. Some things never change.
Fast forward to now, 2024, like 1968 a charged political year, but so far no assassinations of leaders like RFK Sr and Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Today we see echoes of those past times with students in the streets and on campuses protesting the brutal war in Gaza, and now the West Bank, against Palestinians and the Hamas terrorists among them. An estimated 30,000 are dead, a majority women and children.
Some of the parallels are striking. Both years are contentious presidential election years in the US. Israel has a warmonger, possibly corrupt political leader in Netanyahu, who has escalated the war in Gaza far beyond any necessary or humane level, starving its citizens, and destroying the entire fabric of Palestinian society.
In 1968 we were to see Richard Nixon elected, a warmonger and corrupt politician. His unnecessary carpet bombing of the Vietnamese helped him get elected, and then eventually turned against him along with his own corruption scandal.
The war started in response to a vicious day of terror by Hamas against Israeli citizens, characterized by slaughter, rape, and kidnapping of hostages. The day ended with 1200 Israeli citizens dead and over 200 hostages taken. Retaliation was fast, indiscriminate, and brutal. And it has remained that way for over six months.
The historical roots behind this run very deep, going back at least a hundred years in modern times and thousands in the history of the region. But things are different this time. Netanyahu’s motivations are extremely suspect. He is very unpopular among his own people and stands to face corruption charges if forced to resign.
He is also a right wing extremist who refuses to acknowledge the Palestinian’s right to a sovereign state of their own, on land they have lived on and worked for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The result of this is the constant existence of vengeful groups that use terror and hate to protest their people’s plight. Or so they claim, though it appears they really just hate Jews and want to exterminate all of them.
Netanyahu has exploited that after Hamas gave him an opening with their October 7 slaughter of innocents. It looks like he and his lieutenants saw a way to hold onto to power in the face of almost certain removal from the protections it affords them. The result was crimes against humanity and today’s protests here in the US, despite Israel being a staunch ally since its inception after WWII.
It took years for the events of 1968 to change things and many thousands of American and Vietnamese deaths. In the end that war was lost by the US, a fact that many on the right have a hard time admitting, in part because it would mean admitting it was all for nothing.
Most wars, seen in the light of history, are for nothing in the end. The Israeli Palestinian war will only have meaning if there is the creation of Palestinian state, a difficult if not impossible goal, especially when the Israeli leader rules it out.
You might ask, what is the point of writing this? I’m doing it in part because it helps me to sort out the why of these things, but the why ultimately eludes me. The sad thing is the realization that politicians on both sides use war as a tool to remain in power and to increase that power. There are men and women, mostly men, who are willing to make that trade off of innocent lives for personal greed and power.
It has always been so. The only possible route to change may lie in those protests by idealistic youth who see the world in black and white terms of good and evil. Naive maybe, but their actions may create change on some level, though it may take years to come to fruition.
Do I agree with them? Some and some not, because there is nothing black and white about it. Ask President Biden, as he tries to navigate between our historical support for the state of Israel and his outrage at the actions of its military under a desperate and unpopular leader.
So, for me personally, I remember the convictions I had as a young man, convictions that are now tempered by what I know of history and human nature. But I can’t fault the convictions of young protestors who will live with the reality of now for years to come.
They have the right to protest, something I would still fight for, but not the right to hate. You cannot beat hate with hate, a lesson we never seem to learn.
~ I write The Grasshopper, a letter for creatives, The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate, and The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. All are weekly and free, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your upgrade to a paid subscription helps make that happen.
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Martin, you are way off in your support of the violent Hamas defenders. The atrocities of Oct 7 were beyond any seen in this century. In some ways exceeded the crimes of the Nazis. The acts committed by Hamas made my blood boil and I was ready to kill in response. Put yourself in the place of a mother or father of an infant behead, of a daughter raped again and again, a son burned alive. Then tell me that you would not want the leaders of Hamas tracked down and dealt with. NEVER AGAIN.
Martin Edic....I am done with you. As far as you are concerned, if Jews do it, it's bad. Well, nuts to you.