Saturday, September 7, 2024

Flashback 2006: Fighting the Middle East war in a Chicago cab

July 2014 Pro-Palestinian march

     Some extra reaction to my Wednesday column, thanks to Fox News, which did that thing they do where they break my column apart and post it, exaggerating the most controversial bits. I think they do it to sic their readers on me — ring the Pavlovian bell, get the pack salivating. I won't reprint any of it. Let's just say: not the best goodwill ambassadors for the State of Israel. 
     In that column I mention that I've written about the Palestinian-Israel situation occasionally over the years — not much, because it never changes. This column from ... 18 years ago is evidence of that. It's from when the column filled a page, and I've kept in the subheadings. Fox News is free to do with it what they will. 

OPENING SHOT

     "What do you think about the war?"
     The day wasn't going well already. I had an interview in Evanston but absent-mindedly got on the Kimball instead of the Linden train. Now I was in Albany Park. So either catch a train back or grab a cab. I was supposed to be there in five minutes. So a cab, and a cabbie glaring at me in the rearview mirror. I didn't need to read his license to know where he was from.
     "The war . . . in Lebanon?" I said, buying time. "It's a tragedy, of course. The Palestinians, they need a place to live. . ."
     That was enough. "The Palestinians have a place to live,'' he fumed, "it is the Zionists who must find somewhere else. . ."
     I gazed out the window. He went on and on.
     "One soldier!" he spat. "One soldier is killed and for that hundreds of children must die! Children are being blown up."
     ". . .and not by us. . ." I imagined him adding. The hypocrisy moved me to argue.
     "Hezbollah fires missiles from residential neighborhoods," I said. "It's as if you used a baby as a shield to rob a bank, then blamed the police for shooting the child."
     This of course made things worse. The cabbie quickly moved on to Hitler, and he once thought Hitler was wrong but now he sees how right he was. . .
     "Pull over," I said. We were miles from where I was going.
     "Aha!" the cabbie said. "What I'm saying makes you mad."
     "No," I said, wearily. "I've heard it before. I'm just not going to pay to listen to it."
     So I got out, on Broadway, the cabbie lowering his rear window so he could hurl a few parting tidbits.
     My question is this: How long until it breaks out here? The crisis in the Middle East, slugged out by proxy in the U.S. Because you know it will. Somewhere. Some day.

'RACISTS GO HOME!'

     It could have happened Monday; a hot day, 95 in the shade. Several thousand people — not the 5,000 organizers claimed, but a good turnout — filled Federal Plaza, waving blue and white flags around the orange Calder sculpture, supporting Israel.
     Across Dearborn, a counter demonstration alongside the Dirksen Federal Building. Only about three dozen people, but one very loud loudspeaker.
     "Israel is a terrorist state! Stop the killing, stop the hate!" rhymed a young lady wearing jeans and a checkered scarf. "Israel is a racist state! Stop the killing, stop the hate!"
     She led the chant through "Hatikva," the Israeli national anthem and over the "Star Spangled Banner."
     The pro-Israel rally offered up a variety of political leaders — Rep. Mark Kirk, gubernatorial candidate Judy Baar Topinka and Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who spoke forcefully and well.
     "All of us who support democracy and the rule of law must come together and condemn the terrorist acts of Hezbollah and Hamas,'' Madigan said. "We must let Israeli citizens know that people across the world who love democracy support them."
     Meanwhile, across the street, the chant was "Racists go home!"
     The police lined Dearborn to keep the two groups apart. I worked my way across the street and approached the girl leading the chants and stood there, waiting for her to pause. She noticed me and, to my surprise, tried to hand me the microphone, thinking that I wanted to speak next.
     Had I presence of mind, I would have seized my chance to lead an anti-Israel rally, taken the microphone and began shouting, "A secure Israel and a free Palestine, neighbors in peace!" or some such sentiment completely unacceptable to these people. Who knows what might have happened? "HOSTILITIES CEASE IN LEBANON AS WORDS OF SANITY SPREAD AROUND GLOBE. "He touched us," said Fazza al Fazool. "We were so wrong. . ."
     Instead, I raised my notepad and pointed sheepishly at it. She handed off the microphone to somebody else and we stepped aside to talk. She was Lara Elborno, 19, a student at the University of Iowa but from Chicago, a native of Kuwait but an American citizen.
     "Ten times as many Lebanese and Palestinians have been killed than have Israelis," she said. "Israel is aimlessly targeting civilian populations without any accountability, and the U.S. unfailingly supports Israel."
     I went back to the Israeli side, marveling how nimbly Elborno slipped into the language of PC propriety: Israel is a racist state, of course, because of its religious nature, as opposed to say, the whole frickin' Arab world, where Elborno would risk being stoned as a whore for going out in public without her chador, never mind attending college, never mind leading a rally.
     I'm a big believer in words, but sometimes they fall short and lose meaning. Arguments with cabbies, slogans at rallies — Israel exists because its brute force is greater than the brute force of its hostile neighbors, nations that keep their oppressed populations diverted from their own misery by inciting them over a convenient bogeyman.
     The counter demonstration lasted longer than the rally and I stuck around, convinced that if I waited long enough, a candor greater than concern for children would emerge. I wasn't disappointed.
     "From the river to the sea!" Elborno yelled into the microphone. "Palestine will be free!"
     That's more like it. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." The river she is referring to would be the Jordan -- Israel's eastern border. The sea, the Mediterranean, its Western border.
     And the "free" is not religious freedom, nor freedom of speech, nor of the press. Israel has all those.
     She meant "free" in the sense of "gluten-free," as in, devoid of something, and the something she wants the land devoid of is so obvious there is no need to spell it out: "Palestine will be free of Jews."
     That is why you never hear Palestinian activists speaking of two nations living in harmony. Because that is not their goal. The goal is all the Jews gone and Israel back in Muslim hands. That is why we have this bloodletting year in and year out, and until that changes — or Israel is destroyed — the problem will never go away.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 21, 2006


8 comments:


  1. Good one, Mr. S. Fazza al Fazool. That cracked me up.
    Smart guy, he was. Nothing got past a Fazool.

    Eighteen years ago? Wow. The 2006 war was barely a blip on the radar screen. Not like this one. Ten times as many Lebanese and Palestinians were being killed than Israelis? ONLY ten? It's a staggering 35 to 1 in this war. Aimlessly targeting civilian populations, she said? So what else is new? It has always been thus. Long before 2006

    And 18 years ago, you were already asking the question that many may have have asked in recent months: "How long until it breaks out here? The crisis in the Middle East, slugged out by proxy in the U.S. Because you know it will. Somewhere. Some day."

    Well, maybe that time has come today. The colleges are gearing up for another academic year. There will surely be pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protests over the next couple of months. October 7 is just a month away. The election campaign will be heating up. And given their juxtaposition, I can't help thinking: "The tragedy at Kent was caused by the war in Southeast Asia. Will the war in the Middle East bring us Kent 2.0? "

    Given all that has already happened in 2024, a historic year like 1968 and 1970 were...who knows? Plausible and entirely possible. Like so much else these days...it's just a shot away.


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No such thing as a Pro-Palestinian protest.
      All of them are Pro-Hamas Jew hating protests!

      Delete
    2. One can be pro-Palestinian...and support Palestinian statehood.
      Without being either being pro-Hamas or "Jew-hating." Works for me.
      Note that I did not say "Israeli-hating."
      Yes, Israel is a Jewish state, but not all Israelis are Jewish.

      Delete
  2. Your first mistake is in your first sentence: "Some extra reaction to my Wednesday column, thanks to Fox News."
    We all know they're not "news."
    In Eric Zorn's newsletter this week, he included a piece by Mark Jacob entitled "What Journalism Isn't." Suffice it to say, Fox isn't.
    https://substack.com/redirect/4f9026e3-0eb3-433c-8bc3-7bf51b50bebe?j=eyJ1IjoiNDlyeTUifQ.IyGtRKF-OY9Nxd7wixXKdNuqLEo7y0Bf2lPvC1Fe8vA

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wish God would step out of the shadows and let us know who He REALLY wants to win the Promised Land.

    john

    ReplyDelete
  4. ...and once God has resolved the Promised Land issue, we could use His tips on the next Super Bowl too.

    I have zero patience for listening to anyone whose disputes are based on religion. Take your nonsense elsewhere, and try to act like adults in a modern era.

    Now, if another country invades yours, then the aggressor and... aggressee?... are clearly defined, in terms of who is the victim and deserves to push back. October 7, for example, is clearly defined. So is Ukraine vs. Russia.

    But trying to isolate the 10/7 attack from the big picture that stretches back hundreds or thousands of years is obviously not doable; the best we can hope for is that our relative geographic isolation keeps us free of rockets being fired at us from, say, Canada, and any localized threats, such as the idiot who was recently arrested for planning an October 7th attack in New York, can be dealt with.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fortunately, we don't need any help from neighbors in wreaking havoc on innocents -- we can take care of that ourselves, thank you.

      john

      Delete

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