I’m Ruining My Religion – CounterPunch.org

I grew up in a close-knit Jewish community in a small New England town. The textile factories that employed many people had already left for warmer places and eventually abroad. Business was also in decline, with many Jewish tradesmen running businesses, but as a teenager I didn’t notice this.

Being Jewish brought me a sense of pride. My mother was interested in local and national politics and was the coordinator of both Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign and George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign. Our synagogue, once a thriving center of religious celebrations, was also open to visitors. The post-World War II period saw some leaving for many reasons: some for status, some for work.

When my mother wrote a fictional version of our community, Tales of an American Shtetl (2011) mistakenly depicted the Israeli flag as the Jewish flag in one of their stories about a holiday celebration at our synagogue. From the 1950s to the 1970s, there was virtually no way to learn about the Nakba. It was the peace movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s that introduced me to the Palestinian people and the land issue they live on. At that time, when I was discussing the cause of Palestinian state in the living room of our house, an aunt looked at me as if I had more than two heads.

The current conflagration in the Middle East, where Israel is operating without restraint with the full support of the United States and the support of some US allies, violates rule after rule of the established international laws of war, such as proportionality, mass punishment of civilian populations, mass punishment of civilian populations, etc. killing of civilians and denial of humanitarian aid. The list goes on, and the fact that the United States could end this disaster in an hour fuels the crooks in Netanyahu’s government; War criminal Netanyahu is the worst of these. Weapons manufacturers and the Israeli lobby are in good shape. Second, he impeached two members of Congress.

Besides the two Intifadas, it is now clear that the two-state or one-state solution to the murderous Israeli apartheid regime intends a determined so-called “mowing of the lawn” in both Gaza and the West Bank. It is doubtful that Israel can mow the grass in Southern Lebanon right now, but they can, and they are causing death.

Even in the face of the self-loathing and anti-Semitic propaganda of the warmongers and their fellow travelers, I held the values ​​of repairing the world and not doing evil to others as core beliefs of the secular ideals of my heritage. . Now the relentless attacks of the killers who want to set the entire Middle East on fire seem to be so different from me that we cannot recognize each other. It’s as if Netanyahu and his gang of thugs, like one of the far-right among the Democrats and Republicans, want to establish complete domination over the entire world as if it were their plaything. They destroyed the secular roots of my long-cherished religion!

Protests in the streets of the USA against the genocide in the Gaza Strip are met with militarized police, batons and pepper gas. In this country where campus protests were once considered sacrosanct, colleges and universities are either calling the police or punishing pro-Palestinian protesters with severe academic sanctions. The mass media aids and abets the sickening drumbeat of war. Will the media side with the crazy people in Israel in Israel’s attack on Iran?

A few decades ago, a person who criticized my attitude in an article he wrote on the freedom of the Palestinian people said in a side-by-side column that I was an angry man. This was an accurate assessment!