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ACCORDING TO LIZ - The attitude adopted by the newest resident of the White House has emboldened others to emulate him including such shameful actions such as Republican Representative Brandon Gill sending out a fundraising e-mail soliciting his supporters to sign a petition to deport Ilhan Omar:\
Disgusting.
Threatening to deport legal US citizens because you disagree with them is fascism pure and simple.
And White House minions are clearly eager to not cross the wobbly legal lines of the Big Boss with press secretary Karoline Leavitt declaring that federal courts “have no jurisdiction” over Frump’s conduct of foreign affairs or power to expel foreign agents.
Recently Homeland Security abducted green card holder Mahmoud Khalil in front of his eight-months pregnant American wife without even letting him talk to a lawyer.
For the crime of engaging in free speech as a member of the Apartheid Divest group, urging the university to divest from Israel, a country engaged in systematic genocide and oppression of his people.
A country led by a man that the International Criminal Court has charged with war crimes including mass starvation, of intentionally directing an attack against civilian populations, and crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.
Trump-besotted underlings removed Khalil to a detention center in Louisiana and were about to deport him before a federal judge ordered a hearing to be held in New York City.
Khalil, who was raised in Syria by a family evicted from their home during the Nakba, held multiple posts in international development, including with the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, before enrolling at Columbia University where he completed the work for a Masters degree in Public Administration.
Trump is clearly terrified by knowledgeable people – just look at his cabinet.
The American Führer’s not so rational desire to divide his world between us and them, between those who will grovel at his feet or fund his future ambition, and the rest of the world is an embarrassment for all Americans.
That and his absolute belief that true justice exists only for those with the power to enforce it. And now that he has it, by golly, he’s going to use it. And abuse it.
What about universities failure to protect Palestinians and freedom of speech?
If this is epitome of its free speech, how come Republicans are now forcing D.C. to remove its Black Lives Matter mural from its place of honor near the White House?
Will any vestige of social justice survive the reign of King Self-Important?
The 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court formally defined apartheid as a crime against humanity “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”.
The position taken by the current occupant of the White House to scrub Gaza of the Palestinians that live there is nothing short of ethnic cleansing and, de facto, a war crime.
One that the United States has used repeatedly throughout its history, slaughtering the original Americans, impounding them on reservations and brainwashing their children, corralling West Coast Japanese into concentration camps in interior deserts, dictating where people could live through redlining and other restrictions, demonizing others based on the color of their skin, ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation.
All this in the supposed home of the free.
And as too many Israelis have done to Arab families who had lived and farmed for generations in Mandatory Palestine after the debacle of the British division of the territory once controlled by the Ottoman Empire.
In the same way as in the United States, both of yesteryear and today, spoils are assigned to those who are perceived by the current economic ideology as most productive and “deserving” of handouts by the existing regime with little regard for morality, social obligation, or pre-existing ownership.
The Doctrine of Discovery edict issued by Pope Alexander VI in 1493, granting Spain dominion over the New World, established the concept of colonialism – that lands not inhabited by Christians could be claimed and “barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself”.
This became the foundation for western expansion in the United States, culminating in the unanimous Supreme Court decision that the resident Indians only had right of occupancy. Which could be abolished.
Forty years later, did Lincoln mean government of the people for the people by the people was to be government of white Protestant men for white Protestant men by white Protestant men…? Certainly, certain white Protestant men continue to think so.
And the Israeli elite, originally favored by American Jewry and since prodded by Netanyahu-funded pro-Israel cabals’ infiltration and manipulation of the government of these United States, has taken their cue from the history of the older country.
First, cultivating the ground to make their expansionist dreams seem reasonable, and then seizing any excuse to force Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank from their homes and land, cloaked in the approbation of the exceptionalist Americans.
Now forcing American leadership, both Democrat and Republican, to muzzle dissent.
What is perverse in this purported land of the free is that some members of society are freer than others.
Some Jewish groups pushed the Governor of New York to delete language from a CUNY listing for a Palestinian studies job became the listing included terms such as “settler colonialism,” “apartheid” and “genocide” which were offensive when applied to Israel.
If they can’t stand the truth, shouldn’t they be pushing the Netanyahu government to disengage from policies that promote them instead of muzzling free speech in America?
Should every school now remove “settler colonialism” from African studies? “Apartheid” when talking about South Africa’s history? The word “genocide” when referring to the Nazis, the Turks, the Hutus, Cambodia, Biafra, the Soviet Union and… sadly, the United States?
Racism – against Blacks, against Palestinians – is not something anyone is born with. It is inculcated in homes and schools, in churches and synagogues. It can only be addressed through education.
Evil works in the dark where it is unexamined. People cannot learn from the past and present if every action that anyone could consider offensive is removed from the curriculum.
Fear and greed are underpinnings of pure evil. Profiteers pushing power to promote their own ends.
Unfortunately, one of the privileges of great power is the ease with which one can lack curiosity and not care about other people. Because they exist in a world in which they are unaccountable.
That’s why so many were appalled but not surprised by Trump's executive order targeting campus activism around Palestinian rights, and his attacks on students since then.
Hi order is a hate crime, an act of aggression. And any person or organization that complies is de facto complicit.
Universities should be places where students can engage in open discourse and activism without fear.
Remember the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller, prominently featured in a number of Holocaust museums?
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.
So... who's next?
Universities' leadership?
(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
