This report is not about Palestine.
It's about a critical reaction I received to a commentary I sent out a few days ago. I share it as an example of how one can carelessly miss the forest because of the trees and thus convey an unintended insensitivity.
Now, I don't mean my critic missed the forest.
I mean, me!
First of all, in truncated form, what motivated his reaction was an analogy I used to illustrate my argument that Arafat had no choice but to walk away from Camp David II:
"Imagine what would have happened to George Washington, if after the battle of Yorktown, he had accepted from King George the kind of "generous" offer [Israeli Prime Minister] Barak pushed on Arafat. Imagine a royal proposal…showing 1) the New England states "separated" from the Middle Atlantic States by a…"security" corridor to be controlled indefinitely by the Red Coats, and 2) the Middle Atlantic States "separated" from the Southern States by a similar England controlled corridor. Can you imagine what would have happened to Washington, if he had taken such an offer… to the Continental Congress? Probably the same thing that would have happened to Arafat if he had taken the so-called Barak generous offer to the Palestinian National Authority."
Now here's what my perceptive critic, who lives in Tennessee, had to say. "I would suggest that your analogies need to be reexamined. To compare the Palestinians to the American colonialists is non- symmetry… The American colonialists, just like the Zionist movement, came to a land of native population. The Palestinians, therefore, are not analogous to the colonists, but rather to the Native American population that continues to be subjugated and oppressed in their own homeland."
Well, my first reaction (not conveyed to the writer, I'm relieved to report) was, sad to say, knee jerk defensive. With respect to his barb concerning "non-symmetry," my initial thought was to plead asymmetry (as I have done on other occasions). But then I decided that, even if his assault on my analogy had spilled considerable wind from its sails, to debate his point on those grounds would have been an unproductive hair splitting exercise in pedantry. It also might have initiated an even more serious diversion from the intentional consideration of a consequential variety of truths that are stranger than facts.
For, after all, he was making a compelling point that I often have echoed when speaking to audiences back home in the States. It goes something like this:
"More than one Palestinian and Israeli human rights activist has asked my wife, Sis, and me plaintively, `Why does American treat Palestinians like its Native Americans?' Of course, that treatment does not compute for us either, although as Americans, Sis and I do think we comprehend the malign motivations, which are ascendant here at home, in a way that some Palestinians and their Israeli supporters find it hard to grasp. And the answer is mind-boggling."
"Why does America treat Palestinians like its Native Americans? Our answer, sadly, is this…always this: `Because that's what America does! Get it?! That's what America does!'"
In light of that conclusion, my critic's point is vital. The Revolutionary War, important as it was for the colonists was a shot across British bows that was more analogous (and a prediction of things to come) to the Boer War, than it was to Palestine's struggle with Zionism or the Gandhian struggle against British colonialism.
But despite my `that's what America does,' truth, what continues to amaze me is how incredibly indulgent non-Americans are even in the face of that agonizing historic and contemporary contradiction in the American character. Our overseas friends, continuing to make a distinction between our government and the rest of us, more often than not will say to us, "We don't hate Americans, we love America. We just don't like what your government is doing."
Which is far more credit than many Americans will give to non- Americans. Thus the attractiveness amongst too many Americans of the pernicious notion that all Arabs are terrorist.
Pondering the awfulness of that truth suddenly reminded me of the following anecdote from our travels about the States, which I should have remembered when I was comparing a fanciful Yorktown aftermath to Camp David II.
Sis and I left our hometown, Birmingham, Alabama, and headed east on a speaking tour the day after the September 11, 2001 attack that destroyed the World Trade Center. At the end of that week we were in New York where we shared our experiences with an intercultural group, the Westchester County Peace Action Committee, a venerable organization dedicated to nonviolence with a membership consisting of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Native Americans and others. The main topic of worried discussion that night was the post destruction backlash already afflicting Muslims and Christian Arabs across the country, and what to do about it.
There came an existential moment, when a tall powerful man with long jet-black hair, unmistakably a Native American, shared his ironically cogent thoughts. To begin with, he said he is a direct descendent of a Lakota Sioux leader at the battle of Little Big Horn, also known as the site of Custer's last stand. "After that," he said, "my family renounced violence."
These days, he told us, he is a repairman for a big east coast utility. The morning after the attack, he was sent to an upscale home to make repairs. "When the owner took a look at me, he insisted on examining my tool box. `Never can be too careful, these days,'" our new friend said the owner said to him "nervously"--not apologetically.
Later another homeowner--again unapologetically--insisted on scrutinizing, through a locked screen door, the picture on our new friend's company ID.
After that he took a coffee break at a local truck stop popular with other "hard hats," where he hoped to recover from those unsettling encounters in peace.
"But it was just my luck to sit near two men who were talking very loudly and very angrily. They were doing it in a way that indicated clearly that they wanted their thoughts about what ought to be done about the attack to be heard by everyone in the restaurant. One said loudly—also pointedly and very angrily--`We ought to extradite all of them!!!' (Even though it was clear he didn't know what extradite meant, there was no doubt in my mind about who we and them were.)"
Our repairman friend went on to say, "The other hard hat in an equally loud voice agreed saying, `Yeah, we ought to send them all back to where they came from.'"
"After that, I knew I had to do something. But I also knew it had to be in keeping with my nonviolent convictions."
"Now, I could see that I was much bigger than them, so--to try to get their attention--I slowly stood up and kind of sauntered over to where they were sitting."
"I got it. They stopped talking and kind of waited to see what was going to happen next. I stepped up real close so that they could not mistake who and what I was."
"Then looming over them--not quite in their faces--I said very quietly but quite emphatically, `You know, that's a damn good idea.'"