[Peace-discuss] Supporting racism

[C. G. Estabrook]

David Gehrig, who used to amuse us all as an ‘alderman’ in Urbana (he writes now from where my family used to live, in Bethesda, Maryland - the name means ‘house of mercy’) has a riotous letter (even the headline is funny) in this morning’s N-G, about (among other things) how we in AWARE have failed to police our listserv to suppress uncivil animadversions. This is America - censors better not fall down on the job.

Unfortunately, unadulterated enjoyment of David’s wit isn’t possible, because he’s writing finally in defense of crimes for which 'our' government is responsible, viz. Israeli apartheid - worse, in the territories illegally occupied (with US support) by Israel, than apartheid in South Africa was.  

The issue is alive in C-U because of the propaganda efforts of the Israeli government and its lobby in the US. They have caused the state university to violate academic freedom and the state legislate to vote for apartheid (which of course it would not have done in regard to South Africa).  The US government supports Israel primarily because Israel is a 'stationary aircraft carrier’ for US depredations in the Mideast - i.e., what AWARE was set up almost 14 years ago to protest.    

Israeli propaganda (and David’s special pleading) are designed to mislead, if possible, even the elected. And it proved all too possible in regard to our local members of the legislature Bennett and Ammons, Democrats who refused to vote against using state money to support Israel’s suppression of the Palestinians. In these Orwellian days, slavish subservience is to the News-Gazette “independence of thought.”

—CGE

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Sunday Extra: Ammons demonstrates independence of thought
Sun, 08/30/2015 - 7:00am | The News-Gazette <http://www.news-gazette.com/author/news-gazette>
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By David Gehrig

It's a little amazing to me that anybody would take Illinois' most intractable quandary, the state pension system, and somehow manage to tie it to a problem even more intractable, peace in the Mideast. When peace finally comes between Israel and the Palestinians, you can guarantee that nobody is going to walk up to the podium in Jerusalem (or wherever) and say: "We owe it all to Illinois pension laws. Thank you, Springfield!"

It's worth mentioning that Carol Ammons was one of only two present House members who didn't vote yes (the other being Silvana Tabares). Withholding a no vote offended a few local Green Party litmus testers on the anti-Israel side. But recognize that going with the flow and voting yes would have been cake; instead, Carol demonstrated the independence of thought that I admire her (and supported her) for.

I don't support the BDS movement, which is fundamentally rooted in what I believe is a misplaced but highly emotive historical analogy and which is therefore doomed to perennially bark up the wrong tree — spinning its wheels while strengthening, rather than weakening, Netanyahu's hand in the process.

But there's something else that should be pointed out about Ammons's critics on the vote. One of the complaining letters to the N-G was from local "truther" Steve Francis, an unabashed Holocaust denier and conspiracy crank who twice brought a gang of tinfoil merchants to town for "conferences" on how the Nazi gas chambers were made up by the Zionists, the Mossad killed JFK, and Israel staged 9/11. Another letter was from Carl Estabrook, an otherwise nice and intelligent guy who inexplicably let Francis fill AWARE's "anti-racist" mailing list again and again with Holocaust-denying sludge without making the slightest effort to refute him, a truly ugly sin of omission. The third was from David Green, who is ... well, enough said there.

Can anyone believe Francis is acting in good faith when discussing Israel? Of course not. And every instance of Estabrook and Green ignoring Francis's anti-Jewish ravings — while continuing to distribute them on the AWARE list — is another blot on their less than shining armor, and another ding on the nameplate of AWARE.

If Carol has lost the vote of a Holocaust denier and a couple of his enablers, it's hard for me to feel bad about that, and she shouldn't either.



David Gehrig, a former Urbana alderman, resides in Bethesda, Md.


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