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| Hundreds of UT Austin students and faculty gather on campus for pro-Palestine protest, Ren Leija, Senior News Reporter, The Daily Texan, April 24, 2024 |
© April 25, 2024, the Griot Poet
Opinion: A new set of ‘Four Questions’ for
anti-Israel protesters
by Congressman Steve Israel as reported by The Hill: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4619331-a-new-set-of-four-questions-for-anti-israel-protestors/
(Summarized for brevity)
“Question 1: On Oct. 7, the terrorist group Hamas
slaughtered young Israelis at a music festival as well as other civilians in
surrounding communities. They murdered, stabbed, shot, raped, beheaded, burned.
They forced children to watch the butchering of parents. They cut off women’s
breasts, killed the defenseless elderly, abducted, and continued to hold
innocent civilians hostage. Did you protest that massacre in the days, weeks,
months after Oct. 7. At least once? Did you fly flags, wave banners, and demand
justice?
“Question 2: In the ongoing civil war in Sudan, at least 13,000 to 15,000 people have
been killed and 33,000 others injured. Over 6.5 million are internally
displaced and more than 2 million others have fled the country as refugees.
Here too, innocents have been beaten, burned, raped, tortured, murdered.
Meanwhile, according to the human rights group Oxfam, Vladimir
Putin’s war on Ukraine has killed more than 10,500 civilians, including 587
children, “as constant bombardments, mines, and drone attacks have left a
generation traumatized, displaced, and fearful for their lives.” Have you
protested the grotesque and persistent war crimes in Sudan or Ukraine? If not,
why not? Why do civilians in Sudan or Sevastopol seem less important to you
than in Gaza?
“Question 3: In Gaza, Hamas violated international law with a
heinous military doctrine that forced its own innocent civilians to become
Israeli military targets. It embedded weapons systems in hospitals, schools,
and residential apartments. (Many foretold the strategy on day one: Hamas
massacres Israelis, Israel responds by targeting Hamas weapons in civilian
infrastructure, casualties skyrocket, the world turns on Israel, and the
university protests ignite). Have you protested Hamas’s illegal tactics of
deliberately putting innocents in harm’s way? Have you demanded boycotts,
divestment, and sanctions for nations that fund, enable, and empower Hamas’s
crimes against humanity?
“Question 4: You chant: “From the River to the Sea,
Palestine will be free.” In fact, the Hamas charter continues to insist
that the geographic borders of Palestine extend “from the River Jordan in the
east to the Mediterranean in the west and the north to the south,” i.e., the
entirety of Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. And while I’m asking —
why is it that while I support a two-state solution in which Jews and
Palestinians live with full rights, your chant seems to support the purging of
one?
If not, why not? Why do you protest only Israel?
“Two-state solution is the only resolution.” Chant THAT!
My plus one:
Have you read “Perceptions of Palestine” by Kathleen
Christison?
Who asked this insightful question: “If a broader frame of
reference on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had been employed, allowing a
less warped public discourse, might not years of warfare have been avoided and
steps toward peace achieved much earlier?”
Or did you read a post on the Internet and join a “flash mob”
in response?
Or anything else other than your own curated news feeds?
This piece is not for getting me snaps.
It’s about encapsulating for you digestible facts.
Anger is a powerful emotion.
The adrenaline rush can be overwhelming.
Some researchers have suggested that it may [even] be an
addiction.
Source: https://psychcentral.com/lib/is-anger-an-addiction
News outlets no longer have the independence of getting all
the advertising dollars.
Investigative journalists are rare and have given way to
valuing access.
Probing the powerful too much will get them dismissed.
Thus, the genesis of “softball” questioning.
The daily newspapers have been reduced to magazines.
The Yellow Pages can be ripped apart by prepubescent teens.
So, the only card the “fourth estate” must play is from the
prescient movie “Network”:
“I’m mad as HELL, and I won’t take it anymore!”
They do it on your news feeds and your favorite network news
channels,
Bonus Read:
“Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of
Show Business,” by Dr. Neil Postman.
Your anger is managed and part of the programming.
Thus, we have the “warring factions” George Washington warned
us about in his farewell address.
Nuance (noun): a slight difference in sound,
feeling, meaning, or appearance. It's often used to describe the more delicate
aspects of something, especially in language, writing, or interpretation.
I understand your passion.
You’re the generation that has had to endure the sadistic
spectacle of endless school shootings.
You’ve had to endure endless RUN-HIDE-FIGHT drills and ZERO
gun control legislation.
You had to endure “Zoom fatigue,” which wasn’t a THING before
the pandemic.
By design, you’re strapped with debt before you graduate
college, and people wonder why you’re not starting families or buying
houses.
You’re watching a warning Earth, and it’s a coin flip between
political parties on whether we’ll survive it.
But, as someone old enough to remember Kent State and A&T,
Seeing what is happening from Columbia, Emory, and UT,
Like many college campuses in the 1960s,
Protesting the Vietnam War vigorously,
The Civil Rights Movement, Star Trek, a Man on the Moon, and
the “Dawn of the Age of Aquarius” were pregnant with possibilities.
Unfortunately,
It led to the election of Richard Milhous Nixon on a “law and
order” ticket.
He did some GOOD things:
The EPA,
Enforcement of anti-discrimination laws against the father and
son New York real estate developers refusing to rent to black residents (the
son, astonishingly obtuse, would become president),
And he appointed one of the seven republican justices who
voted FOR Roe vs. Wade in 1973.
Then:
He proceeded to break almost every law that then existed.
It led to the deaths of over 50,000 Americans and millions of
Vietnamese citizens.
It led to the prolonged injuries and deaths of troops exposed
to “Agent Orange.”
It led to the Watergate scandal and our current mistrust of
government institutions.
It led to mostly black, white, Jewish, and Hispanic GIs coming
home to be spat upon and called “baby killers.”
Because it’s easy to get behind any Pied Piper with a bullhorn
or a podcast.
“TikTok” was never a part of the First Amendment,
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act needs to be
amended.
So that Mark Zuckerberg and other tech moguls can stop wasting
our time, “apologizing” and doing nothing.
Flash mobs don’t require much attention,
Or thinking about the consequences,
Adrenaline, like any drug, is a hell of a fix.
It’s not easy, I realize, to consider the nuances of a
situation.
Your satisfaction with pimp slapping “the system” might lead
you to the election of a narcissistic psychopath bent on “retribution” who will
have the nuclear codes.
He tried to nuke a hurricane, oblivious to the consequences.
His solution to fires due to climate change was to “rake the
forests.”
He told us to inject bleach,
Shine lights up our rectums,
And ingest the horse dewormers Hydroxychloroquine and
Ivermectin.
He killed over a million citizens during a pandemic.
He’s bent on retribution and imprisoning anyone who goes
against him.
“Are you better off now than you were four years
ago?”
Hell yeah, pilgrim!
“Two-state solution is the only resolution.”
Or the sixth mass extinction WILL be the “final solution!”
This election isn’t about Democrats vs Republicans.
This election is about whether we’ll ever have another one.
This election is about whether women are citizens or state-owned
broodmare cattle.
This election is about if the government goes “1984” and
invades our bedrooms.
This election is about Democracy vs Fascism.
This election is about empathy vs cruelty.
This election is about survival vs extinction.
There is “world peace” on Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (maybe a planet) because there are no HUMANS
on them!
As Earth once was, “peaceful” without us.
And,
After Armageddon, any argument you tried to make about the
“lesser of two evils” will be [horribly] irrelevant.
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