Jared Kushner’s Pocahontas Moment, Part 2
In 1842, fewer than twenty years before the breakout of the Civil War, the U.S. Congress voted overwhelmingly to Stand with Slavery. The U.S. Congress consistently denounced slave revolts even long after the trans-Atlantic African slave trade was abolished. (Slavery and slave trading remained legal within the continental and coastal United States.) Even abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison condemned a slave revolt aboard the slave ship Creole as barbaric because one slave owner was killed.
Even though the majority of Northerners opposed slavery, their representatives in Congress voted to Stand with Slavery and censured the one member Joshua Giddings who spoke in favor of the right of a slave to revolt against his subjugation. And that member was censured by the vast majority of Congress including Northerners even though the majority of their constituents were against slavery.
White Southerners claimed slavery was “existential” to their way of life. And that argument carried in the U.S. Congress, long after other countries had decided slavery was inhuman and intolerable for one people to subjugate another. But slave owners and their representatives in Congress prevailed for many years.
The argument given was biblical. Genesis 9:20–27. Ham sees his drunk father Noah naked. Noah curses Ham’s son Canaan and says he will be a slave. So God cursed his son Canaan and his descendants by destining them to perpetual
servitude. Later in the Book of Joshua this “justifies” Israel’s conquest of Canaan and why the Canaanites had to be subjugated. The Hebrew meaning of Ham is “dark or black” hence the mark on the dark-skinned peoples. They were destined to continual subjugation. The curse served as Biblical proof text for pro-slavery Southern Fundamentalist Evangelicals enabling them to make heavenly-sounding justifications. The New Testament further confirmed their justifications. In Ephesians 6:5 “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear and with a sincere heart just as you would obey Christ.”
Not only did they claim that slavery was “existential” to ‘their way of life,’ and biblically ordained but also even though most of the rest of the world had already abolished slavery, the pro-slavery U.S. Congress was adamant: “Why should the U.S. give it up, no country in the world was strong enough to force us to.” And then 19 years later came the Civil War. They stood with the oppressor and you see how that worked out for them. Every other slave owning nation on the planet abolished slavery peacefully. Only the U.S. had to fight a Civil War to end that inhumane practice.
Human beings are pretty much the same everywhere. Germans of today are not the Germans of the 1930s. And young Jewish Americans are not the Israelis of the 2020s. Circumstances and situations can drive people either way. As long as people can change, the world can change. WWII Germans and Japanese changed. Israelis and Palestinians can change.
There is restitution, reparations and compensation for Jewish-owned art sold under duress. Why not for Palestinian refugees driven out from their homes and farms under duress? He who knows only his side of the case knows little.
“Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your youth and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.”
–Edmund Burke
Sentiments change. The idea of paying restitution, reparations and compensation for land taken, confiscated, stolen from Palestinians who left under the duress of war never entered anyone’s mind in 1948. Just like until recently paying reparations for Jewish-owned art not stolen, but sold under duress before and during WWII didn’t enter anyone’s mind until 2016. “Duress” need not be proven. Only that “it might have” influenced their decision — even if sold at a fair market price — surviving descendants are receiving the proceeds at today’s market prices. Hundreds of billions of dollars of art have been reclaimed from museums and returned to these far-distant heirs. Even art which was sold in Switzerland in 1932 (a year before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany) was reclaimed from a museum because the heirs claimed that since the Jewish art dealer was living in Germany at the time of the sale he had somehow anticipated that a year later Hitler would come to power and he felt enough duress that he sold the art. Even though he received a fair market price at the time, the museum was brow-beaten/pressured to give up the art.
Palestinian farmers were totally unaware of what was happening in European capitals as their homes and farms were being given away without any compensation. When Nazi Germany invaded Ukraine and Poland many Jews living in villages thought the German speaking troops came as their saviors since they both spoke German. Like the Palestinians they had no time to keep up with world events. Theirs was a daily struggle for survival.
“No force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.”
— Victor Hugo
The bar keeps getting higher as we humans evolve. What was considered acceptable less than two hundred years ago in the U.S. — Slavery — is no longer acceptable today. Israeli Palestinian citizens and Palestinians living under occupation are the same people. Their only difference is the Israeli Arab is afforded human rights although there is still discrimination — their situation continues to improve. The other Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank are not afforded basic human rights and their situation continues to worsen.
There is already a one-state solution. It’s call Israel. Israeli Arabs are more benign regarding Israel than U.S. students are. Although they make up 20 percent of Israel’s population there are no bombings, no rebellion. The only model which works is pthe Israeli Arab. They vote in Israel’s elections. The same model as here in the U.S. The same model as in post-Apartheid South Africa. There is no other model.
One state enfranchisement is the only clear policy solution. The same answer the U.S. and South Africa reached is the only answer. Recent polls show overwhelming Arab Israeli condemnations of the Oct.7 Hamas attack vs. Palestinians who live in Gaza or the occupied West Bank who overwhelming support Hamas’ attacks. Gee! I wonder why! They are the same people. They are Palestinians. The only difference is one is treated humanely; the other inhumanely and subhumanely. It is not a normal human condition for one human group to be subjugated by another. The very idea is repugnant to most humans,
Ben-Gurion was well aware that theirs [the Zionists] was a colonial settler project. That is why he had no misgivings about and unflinchingly supported the French colonists and rule in Algeria, the British colonists and rule in East Africa and the Dutch Afrikaans colonists and Apartheid rule in South Africa. The early Zionists settlers in Palestine had no such hesitation in calling themselves and did call themselves “settler colonists”. Settler colonialism as a structure is premised on the elimination rather that the exploitation of the native population, thus distinguishing it from classical colonialism. Settler colonialism is centered on the control of land, that it continues to expand AFTER closing of the frontier/”borders.” Boundaries are never actually settled. They become the starting point for the next round of conquest and land acquisition and that continues to exist and expand today under the mantel of security.
