Blatantly Political

In the midst of the celebrations surrounding Obama’s inauguration, amidst the excitement and pride of the American people as they witness a triumph of their political system and yet another fulfillment of their constitution, my heart, while not untouched by the hope expressed on Tuesday last, is full of pain for a people who have not been invited to the banquet.

A people no less deserving of liberty and the right to pursue happiness but presently mired in violence and despair, a despair deepened and made endlessly bitter by the stalwart refusal of every country in the world to treat them like real human beings and take meaningful action to alleviate their plight.

Penned up in the planet’s largest prison, forced to watch – over and over again, year after year – the slaughter of their children, denied even the comfort of an adequate diet, they are blamed for their own misery, told “terrorists” live among them so they must be punished. Bzzzz... sorry...we don’t like the party you voted for in your free, internationally observed, and democratic election so you aren’t real human beings after all and you have no rights whatsoever. Forget the UN; forget the Geneva Convention; forget asking why you might have voted for that so-called “terrorist” party. No rules of common humanity apply to you. It’s the most blatant Blame the Victim scenario imaginable.

Today, their city and their villages – their entire infrastructure – lie in ruins, blasted to bits by one of the world’s most powerful armies and they are denied the simple building materials needed to start rehousing the homeless. Chemical warfare has been waged against their women and children and they are denied proper medical care. Graffiti calling for their extermination has been scrawled on the walls of their ruined homes by the invading soldiers and there’s no condemnation of the racists. No invocation of the Holocaust and why such an atrocity must never happen again.

In a few days, their story will fade from the news and we’ll all carry on pretending they don’t exist. Unless, from the depths of their misery and hopelessness, a few renegades among them do something violent. Then we’ll hear howls of righteous indignation from every quarter. And a few score infants will be killed in retaliation. Wise heads will be shaken at the unfortunate necessity of “collateral damage.” If only they’d learn to act like human beings and give up their weapons, we wouldn’t be forced to drop bombs on their babies.

I’m talking about the Palestinians, of course. Them. When will we remember there’s no such thing as “them”? If nothing else, our deteriorating environment should emphasize that we’re all in this together.

“If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if the promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”

And, oh, how diminished we have become in the last bloody hundred years...

Does Obama’s inaugural rhetoric extend to the Palestinians? Or is it just another glib riff on “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose?”