FERGUSON AND THE RACIAL DIVIDE

            One of the tragic results of the incidents in Ferguson Missouri is that more of the White People of America have turned against African Americans. I am not speaking only of right-wing people who never liked Blacks.  I’m talking about all whites, including White liberals who always thought of themselves as civil rights advocates.

            Black people might say that white liberals never really supported them, and that they never needed the support of white liberals. But they would be very wrong. In a nation where white people are a majority of the population, and where whites represent an overwhelming majority of the political and business power structure, African Americans simply cannot progress and succeed if the white people are hostile to them.

            White liberals have spent many decades fighting for civil rights. Many white liberals went South during the civil rights struggles where they were freedom riders, and where they conducted voter registration drives and other activities in support of civil rights. Now, after the O.J. Simpson case, the Trayvon Martin case, and the Michael Brown fiasco, a large proportion of the white liberals are alienated and disgusted. I would wager that today Blacks have very few friends left among white liberals. I believe that this is a real tragedy for African Americans.

            It is not the dispute about the circumstances surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown that have alienated the white people. It is the subsequent rioting and looting. White people cannot understand how Blacks can protest the Brown shooting by rioting and looting. It is very upsetting for people who have spent their lives fighting for the rights of Blacks to see them turn this protest into an ugly circus.

            The decline in white liberal support for African American aspirations began with the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1994-1995. Whites had greatly admired Simpson for his heroics on the football field and his humorous movie rolls. Nevertheless, when they heard the evidence for Simpson’s murder of his wife and her lover, they were convinced that he was guilty. Whites were astonished to find that Black people did not share this view. Virtually all African Americans wanted Simpson to be acquitted and, despite all of the evidence, insisted that Simpson was innocent. Moreover, even high level Black commentators joined in the collective Black denial of Simpson’s guilt. When Simpson was acquitted by a largely Black jury, the media showed Blacks at an elite collage cheering. Whites had never realized how different Black attitudes were from those of white people.

            Nevertheless, by 2008 the Simpson case had been virtually forgotten and many whites were able to vote for Barack Obama for president. Then came the Trayvon Martin case. When a community watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, shot Martin, whites saw this as a legitimate use of self-defense against a young man who had attacked the Zimmerman. African Americans had a totally different view. They were incensed that a white man would profile and follow a Black youth walking through a private community. Blacks believed that regardless of whether or not Zimmerman shot Martin in self –defense, he should be convicted of murder on account of his racial profiling. Again, as in the O.J. Simpson case, the Black view was adopted by all of the Black commentators. Whites were very disturbed by the fact that Blacks saw something so differently from them.

            The final straw was the Michael Brown killing in Ferguson Missouri. Whites had no shared opinion about the circumstances of Brown’s death, but were horrified that Black people engaged in rioting and looting of stores. Police put forth an explanation of the shooting which Blacks refused to accept. Some people who claimed to be witnesses said that there was no justification for the killing. Whites were alarmed to see that Black people would loot stores in their own community to express their outrage at the killing. Whites pointed out that they never rioted or looted in any similar circumstances.

            Now, as a result of Whites’ disillusion there is a greater racial divide in America than there has been in a long time. Ultimately, this will hurt the fortunes of African Americans. They will find it harder to get jobs, harder to earn money, harder to get into good collages, and harder to get along with the whites who represent the power structure. The disparities that now place Blacks at the bottom of the social scale will be exacerbated and extended.

ISRAEL AND HAMAS

             It is disheartening to hear of large crowds of people demonstrating in Washington against Israel on account of its incursion into Gaza in search of the rockets and tunnels of the Hamas terrorists. One also hears of much larger and more vociferous mobs demonstrating in European cities against Israel. While such demonstrations may have a humanitarian component—concern for the lost lives of Palestinians, particularly children--there is also a large element of anti-Semitism.  As various American writers have shown, the Israeli invasion was a justified response to multiple rocket attacks by Hamas and the building of tunnels by Hamas under the border between Israel and Gaza.

            Joe Klein, in Time Magazine, put his finger on the problem: “Hamas, which was in an existential jam this spring, needed a new strategy. It had lost its prime ally in the region when the Egyptian army overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood.  (Hamas is the official Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood.) It also alienated another of its supporters, Iran, when it sided with the Brotherhood against Bashar Assad in Syria. Opposition within Gaza to Hamas’ corruption and misrule was also on the rise. What to do? Provoke Israel. It had worked in the past.”

It is useful to understand that the war between Israel and Hamas is not simply a war between two competing religions or political ideologies. It is a war between civilization and darkness. There are many in the world who would paint Hamas as a group of devout Muslims who provide extensive social programs for their people. This portrait ignores the fact that Hamas represents the vanguard of a form of nasty fascism.

The recent hostilities were started by Hamas when it began raining rockets on Israel without provocation. What was Israel supposed to do? Sit by and complain without doing anything? Israel is not that kind of country. They did what the U.S. would do if Mexico started bombarding our cities with explosives. They retaliated.

Hamas is the extreme branch of Fatah. Unlike the Fatah movement on the West Bank, Hamas refuses to negotiate a permanent peace with Israel or to recognize the right of Israel to exist. The United States has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Israel is not just another Middle Eastern country. It is the one true democracy in the Middle East and the one country that reflects the kind of freedom and culture embraced by America. This is why it is hated so much by the most radical and uncivilized Muslim people of the region. Although it is a haven for Jews the world over, Israel is an open society in which more than half of the population is non-religious. There are large numbers of Muslims and Christians living in Israel with complete freedom of religion. Many Americans have gone to live in Israel.

Some people believe that Israel has no right to exist because it has set itself up as a Jewish state and occupied what was formerly a Muslim land under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. I’m sorry, but I think that the case of Israel is special. It is not just that the Jews of Europe needed a place to live after the Holocaust, but that the vast history of pogroms, hatred, and discrimination of Jews left them with no option but to set-up a state where they could live in peace and defend themselves from their enemies. There may be some discrimination against Muslems in Israel, but Israel has created a democracy—yes, a messy and contentious democracy—in the middle of a land ruled by angry and violent people.

The Israelis, many of whom are descended from European, Russian, and Polish Jews who were almost completely exterminated in the Nazi holocaust, have created a powerful military with the vow “Never Again!” They have also created a thriving economy in the midst of the wasteland that Muslim nations have allowed to develop in the deserts of the Middle East despite the existence of oil. They have preserved and expanded the great European culture from which they are descended.

The strong culture of Israel should be contrasted with that of the Islamic world. As George Will once wrote, the Middle East “festers with forces that menace elevated societies everywhere.” I believe that the root cause of radical Muslims’ hatred of Israel is Muslims’ lack of self-confidence. Israel was able to take land in the desert and make it bloom. Many Middle Eastern Muslims see Israel as a Western colony in Arabia and look upon it as a thumb in their eyes.

Some Muslims turned to fanatic religion as an answer to their feelings of inferiority. This is a common historical fact. People of lower economic, social, and intellectual classes envy and resent the more fortunate people of the world. They need to believe that they are among the elect few who practice the correct religion and that however lucky other people may seem, those others are condemned to religious error on earth and to hell upon death. Fanatic forms of Islam, such as Khomeini’s Shi’a revolution, the Salafism of the Moslem Brotherhood, the worldwide jihad of Osama bin Laden, and the fanaticism of the Iraqi ISIS fighters, is the answer for such Muslims.

The U.S. should not presume to dictate to the Israelis what they should do in the face of rockets falling on Israeli cities. It is important that any truce and settlement of the dispute between Israel and Hamas include protection of Israel and restriction of Hamas’ ability to attack Israel.