DISOBEDIENCE: "Getting Clear and Courageous Now"

Saturday Night / As Trump Decides

If you're my age, you probably remember 2002 and 2003, the fog of 9/11, the maddening lies out of the Bush Administration, the rush to conquest in Iraq.  Like me, you were probably out in the streets, saying "No War in Iraq!"  

We knew, back then, that "shock and awe" was dumb and dumber...and yet violence has a way of bringing us together, uniting a frazzled and frenzied public, and improving the political fortunes of its masters.  Sad and deadly, but true.

In a sense, Benjamin Netanyahu takes pages out of that same playbook now--pulverizing Gaza and slaughtering tens of thousands there and, when that well runs dry, when Israeli society tires of his carnage, turning toward Iran again.  As Yoav Haifawi says in Haaretz this weekend:

But suddenly, when Israel initiated the expansion of the war into an all-out attack on Iran, which will inevitably bring further death and destruction in both Iran and Israel, we began to see again the power of violence to take over the human psyche and paralyze thought. Suddenly, the automatic Israeli consensus stiffened again, with the media and the public celebrating the spilled Iranian blood. Even a sinking Europe, which had begun to show remorse in its support of the genocide in Gaza, became enthusiastic again, with Germany, France, and Britain literally begging for their share of the pound of flesh and blood.

And here we are, twenty three years later, and we're making the very same bloody mistake.  And don't be fooled; we're already complicit.  Whether or not Trump sends those B-2s to do Bibi's dirty work in the darkness.  American Presidents--including Democrats like Biden and Republicans like Trump--have refused to confront, deter, call out or de-fund the Israeli war machine.  American Presidents have refused to hold Israel (and our own government!) accountable to international law and human rights conventions.  And for this cowardice, bombs are flying over Haifa tonight, and landing in Tel Aviv, and hitting hospitals in the South; and many more are hitting neighborhoods in Iran, and traumatizing new generations of Middle Easterners--who will not soon forget.  And hungry children are being shot in food lines in Gaza.

Protests are fine.  Our voices should be loud.  But that didn't work in 2003.  And we will have to do more, to be bolder, to be smarter, this time.  

Candidates that take money from big money lobbies like AIPAC or the weapons industry should be voted down and voted out--Democrats and Republicans.  Companies still profitting in any way from Israel's apartheid system of racist control and illegal settlements in the West Bank should be boycotted.  That means you, Chevron.  

Investment accounts at universities, churches, synagogues and the rest should be purged of any holdings in companies that champion the architecture of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.  We should show up and support college students doing the hard work in their campuses.  Divestment is not as hard as it seems.  See the American Friends Service Committee, for help!  And every church, synagogue and mosque in the country should join the Apartheid-Free Movement within the next two months.  Move the needle.  Show resolve.  Stand up and be counted.

Again, it's not terribly complicated.  But it does take courage and purpose.  In 1922, a century ago, Gandhi said: "Disobedience without civility, discipline, discrimination, non-violence, is certain destruction. Disobedience combined with love is the living water of life.”  

It is time, my friends, for disobedience.  Not tomorrow.  Not next fall.  It is time for disobedience.  See the links if you need them.  And BE THE LIVING WATER OF LIFE.