Stand Up For The Palestinian Middle Class!
“What Palestinian middle class?” you might ask. “Does Palestine even HAVE a middle class?” My point exactly. Sixty years ago, there was a thriving middle class in Palestine, but now almost everyone in Palestine is economic toast. Their homes have been foreclosed on. Their jobs have been eliminated or outsourced. Their schools are all shabby. Their universities are downsized, expensive and hard to get into. Fuel prices there are sky-rocketing. And they are also being told what to say and what to think.
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“What Palestinian middle class?” you might ask. “Does Palestine even HAVE a middle class?” My point exactly.
Sixty years ago, there was a thriving middle class in Palestine, but now almost everyone in Palestine is economic toast. Their homes have been foreclosed on. Their jobs have been eliminated or outsourced. Their schools are all shabby. Their universities are downsized, expensive and hard to get into. Fuel prices there are sky-rocketing. And they are also being told what to say and what to think.
And if Palestinians dare to take up arms in protest or to demonstrate non-violently against this rising tide of oppression, they are accused of “going rogue”.
Palestine no longer has hardly any middle class left at all. And I find this situation to be sad, unjust, unfair and not right. And I object to its disappearance. “But, Jane,” you might ask, “why should you take the risk of standing up for something that doesn’t even barely exist any more?”
Why? Because Palestinians remember the old days — when there WAS a Palestinian middle class. And 60 years from now, after the same U.S. corporatists and weapons manufacturers who have turned Israel into one of the major weapons manufacturing countries in the world and one of the largest military machines on the planet and have finished destroying Palestine’s middle class, they will more than likely have finished destroying America’s middle class too.
“Good grief, Jane,” you might say next, “what in the world has brought on this latest attack of the glooms?” It’s because I recently went to a “Friends of Sabeel” conference.
Sabeel is the name of an organization of Palestinian Christians — but much to my surprise, most of the people at the conference weren’t Palestinians at all. They were mostly middle-class, middle-aged Americans. The conference took place in Marin County for crying out loud. And there wasn’t a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer in the lot.
So. Why are approximately 500 middle-aged, middle-class Americans all so concerned about the plight of poverty-stricken Palestinians that these Americans are willing to give up an entire weekend in order to learn more about the different kinds of shenanigans that U.S. and Israeli corporatists are up to in the Occupied Territories? “See above.”
At the conference, a local college professor gave a slide show presentation regarding the huge cement Wall fencing in Palestinians, and which showed us overlays of how The Wall would look if it were used to fence in elite parts of cities like San Francisco or Washington DC or Dallas — protecting corporatist bullies and creating concentration camps for its victims. (Link: http://thewall.name/)
Jeff Halper, an Israeli university professor, then gave us a talk regarding how we must re-frame the Israel-Palestine debate. “You can’t keep letting Israel frame itself as a victim,” he told us. “It just isn’t.” Not when Israel possesses the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world and has one of the world’s largest armies. “Israel is the second-largest weapons manufacturer in the world as well, even larger than China.” The word “bully” comes to mind here — much more easily than the word “victim”.
And then Norman Solomon spoke and he told us that it was inaccurate when people label Israeli aggressors simply as Jews. “We need to call them by their correct name — Israelis.” But since not all Israelis are aggressors either, I suggested that Solomon might call them “Israeli neo-cons” instead.
“But Bill Clinton wasn’t a neo-con,” Solomon replied. Yeah he was. If you define a “neo-con” as any corporatist who has gotten religion and come to believe that war is the ultimate consumer and therefore “War is a good thing!” then every American president since Truman has been a neo-con by definition — with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter and the definite exception of John Kennedy (not that it did Kennedy any good).
Then Solomon talked about the loss of freedom of speech — but he wasn’t referring to its loss in the Occupied Territories. He was referring to the loss of freedom of speech right here at home.
Stephen Zunes talked next — about how the last 60 years of Israel’s systematic oppression of Palestinians has created a whole bunch of terrorists and extremists that never existed before. “Without the brutal Israeli Occupation, there would have been no suicide bombers, no Al Qaeda and no problems with Iran. Occupation leads to the kind of anger and desperation that creates suicide bombers.”
Then Zunes talked about anti-Semitism. “Historically, rulers got Jews to do their dirty work for them — such as collecting taxes and charging high interest rates. And then if things went wrong, they could point at the Jews and say, ‘It’s their fault’. And that is still going on today.”
According to Zunes, having Israel as DC’s bulldog in the Middle East is the same sort of set-up. “Washington can simply claim that anything going wrong in the Middle East is Israel’s fault. For instance, it was pressure from Washington that started Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, not the two captured Israeli soldiers. So in the long term, the U.S. alliance with Israel is disastrous. Keeping Israel armed and belligerent is more in Washington’s interest than in Israel’s. And it’s working. Even now Arab states are saying, ‘We understand that Israel runs the cabal — it’s not the fault of Western imperialism’.” Yeah right.
Next George Bisharat spoke. “Israel now calls the Occupation an ‘Armed Conflict’ situation. They have switched to the ‘Armed Conflict’ model re-framing in order to justify killings. But ‘Occupation’ is defined by ‘Total Control’ of the country being occupied, and Israel is still in total control of Gaza. However, if you do something long enough, it becomes permitted — and now even the ‘Targeted Assassination’ rule initially invented by the U.S. is being accepted by international law; allowing Israel to state that police cadets, government secretaries, housing authority workers and local court clerks are now valid targets for assassination simply because Hamas was elected.”
To make an analogy between this kind of action in Israel-Palestine and this kind of action in America, it would be as if a group radical Republicans seized and occupied Washington — and then killed off as many people who were working for the elected government as they could. Yuck!
“Cruelty has become unremarkable.”
Next former CIA operative Bill Christison spoke. “What happens next in Iran, in the next three months, is most important. An invasion of Iran would create a massive distraction from what is going on in Palestine. And Israel’s right-wing government will be allowed and encouraged to do whatever it wants in Palestine. There WILL be another Gaza. We MUST prevent any widening of hostilities in Iran.”
Hmmm. That would be like how the 9-11 tragedy and the fake war on Iraq “justified” the shut-down of all too many American civil rights. I can identify with that. And so could all the middle-class, middle-aged Americans here at the conference as well. And so should you.
And while the conference was going on, I also manned a table, sold beautiful hand-crafted jewelry for my friend Katie Miranda (http://www.etsy.com/shop/bazaarkhalil) and flogged my two books, “Mecca & the Hajj: Lessons From the Islamic School of Hard Knocks” and “Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today’s Middle East”. Hey, I sold three copies! Plus during the down time I re-read parts of both books. Totally funny! I guess I must have written them back when I still had a sense of humor.
Wigfall Raises As Much Hell In Richmond As Washington
Upon hearing of Texas’ official secession, Louis T. Wigfall roared from the floor of the United States Senate on Mar. 7, 1861, “We have dissolved the Union! Mend it if you can! Cement it with blood!”
Upon hearing of Texas’ official secession, Louis T. Wigfall roared from the floor of the United States Senate on Mar. 7, 1861, “We have dissolved the Union! Mend it if you can! Cement it with blood!”
Three days after John Brown was hanged for treason in December 1859, Lone Star lawmakers picked a new senator. In the angry aftermath of the Harper’s Ferry Raid, the nearly unanimous choice was an arch-secessionist from South Carolina.
Convinced northern rabble-rousers were bent on inciting a slave revolt, Texans wanted someone who would talk turkey not compromise. Their choice certainly filled the bill, rattling the roof of the august chamber with his thunderous defense of the southern cause.
Wigfall’s college days in his native South Carolina spawned a fanatical belief in state supremacy. His alma mater was a hotbed of secessionist sentiment, where as early as 1827 the university president called for the Palmetto State to sever all ties with the United States.
Even though several friends and his own brother perished in the popular pastime of dueling, Wigfall could not wait to take his turn as a gentleman gladiator. When the chance finally came, he went on a bloody rampage.
During five violent months, he engaged in a fistfight, three near-duels, two real things and a gunbattle on the steps of the local courthouse. One youth was killed in the wild spree and two more were seriously wounded, including Wigfall.
Besides ruining his reputation and law practice, the mayhem also burdened his conscience, which tormented him for years with eerie visions of the man he had slain. Snubbed by polite society, hounded by creditors and overcome with guilt, he migrated to Texas in 1846.
Getting in on the ground floor of the recently formed Democratic Party, Wigfall rocked the 1848 state convention with an inflammatory appeal to southern patriotism. When the meeting adjourned, the 32 year old demagogue was firmly entrenched as the most rabid states’ rights advocate in Texas.
Wigfall’s ball really began rolling the next year with an appointment to a vacancy in the Austin assembly. Sensing a favorable shift in the political wind, he exploited the unpopularity of Sen. Sam Houston’s pro-Union pronouncements by attacking his “laxity in defending Texas’ interests.” From that day forward, the two were mortal enemies.
Slaveholders applauded the Dred Scott decision, which upheld their right to do as they pleased with their human property, but not the dogmatic Texan. To accept the Supreme Court decree, Wigfall lectured, was to acknowledge the power of the national judiciary over state sovereignty, a concession he was not about to make.
As U.S. Senator, Wigfall delighted in taunting his Yankee peers and tongue-lashed them black and blue. Session was a simple matter, he reasoned. “If this government does not suit us, we will leave it.” The South would not be cowed by northern threats. “If we do not get into Boston before you get into Texas,” he boasted, “you may shoot me.”
The November 1860 election of a minority president, the choice of only two out of every five voters, started a southern stampede. Meanwhile, Wigfall’s name cropped up in rumors of a bizarre plot to kidnap the lame duck in the White House.
With James Buchanan out of the way, Kentuckian John Breckenridge would advance to the presidency which he then would refuse to relinquish to Abraham Lincoln. But Breckenridge lost his nerve, and the conspiracy fizzled.
Wigfall hung around the enemy capital for weeks gathering intelligence for the Rebs. He was on hand in April 1861 for the bombardment of Fort Sumter, where he personally recommended surrender to the outgunned federal commander.
Later in the year, Texas legislators elected Wigfall to the Confederate senate. No one dreamed the fire-eater would raise as much hell in Richmond as he had in Washington.
Wigfall was at first a staunch supporter of President Jefferson Davis. But his wife hated Mrs. Davis, and her spiteful subversion on the home front poisoned the important relationship.
The bad situation took a turn for the worse, when Wigfall gave his convincing imitation of Yankee general Ulysses S. Grant. Wartime alcoholism impaired his judgment and ignited explosive rages. He blamed every southern setback on Davis and expressed a twisted desire to see him hang.
After the final curtain came down at Appomattox, Wigfall hid for months in the backstreets of Galveston before slipping aboard a British ship and sailing into sanctuary. The exile returned eight years later but was so sick from years of chronic drinking that he had to be carried to a boardinghouse.
Louis T. Wigfall never got out of bed alive. The climax came not in heroic combat but in a lonely rented room. Even death was a disappointment for the red-hot Reb.
“Secession & Civil War” – latest “Best of This Week in Texas History” collection available for $10.95 plus $3.25 postage and handling from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549 or order on-line at twith.com.
