Quite obviously I'm an American;
For I'm writing in English and English is not merely a language but a frame of reference that defines you to others as well as yourself. You find out how deeply this is true when you immigrate from one country to another...how much the old country sticks with you, for better or for worse, and in time you begin to find more objectivity and belong in both places or perhaps some would say, you become independent of every place or no place is your place (certainly as it was) any longer......and with this you have to accept that perhaps now it will be even harder to convince others of your thoughts.
And I'm afraid, that though yesterday I marched with you, words and mystiques bombard us so - they leave none of us peace- that I will not find the perfect message to reconnect and say what you already know.
The Flotilla was a complication involving perhaps a dozen countries in law relations, economic relations, military relations, etc. A nation, any nation has to show that it is stronger than forces around it in the way that if people stop respecting the police, and do successfully challenge the police, there is no longer a police; but to the flotilla people themselves it was the story of David against Goliath that only needed to be revivified to activate the oppressed against their masters. It became, in their words, an issue of good vs.evil in the emotional and poetic and religious sense( which we impart to Protestant Unitarianism, Quakerism, etc.).
And this culture of Americanism, in its best light, to give a damn about the "underdog" is what you and I like best about America. I'm not knocking it, but I want to raise questions that may cause more closeness among lefters themselves; the flotillers want to speak to the world.....they want change that puts those on the bottom on the top ...Yet they keep remembering "civil rights", Vietnam, our Women's Lib demonstrations as though all the miseries and remedies of the world lead to the same mother, and you can carry everything in the same basket. Can you? Even assuming that the ideals are the same, do you use the same operations? The flotilla to Gaza is a reenactment, to those who went, of the "freedom rides", except that they are so only in memory and nostalgia.
So, Is there an "American" perspective? The perspective that you can carry everything in the same basket?Graham Greene's movie, "The Quiet American" explores the theme of an idealistic American who goes to Vietnam with a plan to end the war and instead brings disaster upon everyone. Is there, in other words, a patent for democracy and peace that can be exported and applied by one body upon another. I don't think so but the President, Bush, who went into Iraq did.
And getting back to"civil rights" is this the problem you see in Gaza...effectuating the US Constitution, because with making law work comes a specific constellation of operations, like overcoming two sets of courts, etc. while the war here between the Jews and the Arabs is about land...there are two nations standing in the same place claiming the same territory like the old wars of Europe you always read about.....while racial discrimination in America was not about territory, nor about nationalism, it was about oppression within one country within already fixed and definable borders. It didn't involve foreign nations, or ideologies, it was social, economic There was no question in the minds of the African Americans but that they wanted American rights. Do you settle all things the same way..... by waving flags about oppression and discrimination when the sides are fighting for every olive tree and every building in East Jerusalem in totally different ways? What is it exactly that Fatah-Hamas vs Israel can't even bring themselves to the table to talk about? Civil Rights? Women's Rights? Abortion?
Please note that the Women's Movement had the goal of making the LAW work for women. Remember Bella Abzug..... reality. Seats. Seats in Congress. Votes
War is terrible and it brings the worst of sufferings and inhumanities, but the source of this war isn't "American capitalism" or "power" writ large as the flotillers are using it to upraise the entire world. This is a story within a story...the relations between Jews and Arabs. Oil may rule the overall politics of the Middle East and more, but Israel went into Gaza specifically for Gilad Shalit and katyushas.
Therefore, in my view, there's a loss of reality in the flotilla.... The generosity with which the flotillers stood before the mast involved other lives, lives that they hadn't been chosen through any elective process to represent. As an Israeli I ask the flotillers, " you want Israelis to listen to you, and you haven't the "political correctness" to come waving a flag for Gilad Shalit?" A new messenger of peace in the region?.Yes we have to do something about suffering but this isn't it. And the American Left (and I admit how vague this term now is) will have to rethink it all and find another way, through legal paradigms that form a structure for activism and idealism.
