I am in Taos for the weekend, for the Fiestas de Taos,
surrounded by histories of peoples going back tens of thousands of years. I'm
eating well, staying in the great Casa Taos facility, anticipating sitting down
with one of America's greatest writers, advocate of Chicanismo--and I should be
primed to do a worthy posting today.
I'm not.
My head buzzes with bits and scenes, descriptions and words
about 50,000 children attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexican border, niños you've
read and heard about for weeks. Children that certain heartless Americans don't
want here, don't want to take in, not considered good enough to be taken care
of, like adults are supposed to treat children. Hatred, racist epithets and the
basest behavior of my species featured on headlines and newscasts, every day.
I could say or write thousands of things about that, but I can only manage a few.
Because, also buzzing in my head is the running casualty
list coming out of Israel. A number that's passing 200. 200, including
children, Palestinians who are being attacked by technologically superior armed
forces led by Israeli generals, directed by the Israeli government and
supported apparently by the majority of Israeli citizens who do have civil
rights. And paid for by my taxes.
My gov't says we support "the right of the Israelis to
defend themselves." [Last I heard, at least one Israeli had been killed
during the time that the 200 Palestinians were slaughtered.]
The Israeli's actions remind me of a conversation I once had
with a Jewish woman. She said she agreed with the Chicanos' Aztlán, the lost
location of the Aztec's original homeland in the U.S. Southwest. That for
Chicanos to gain their civil rights, their rightful place in this country, retaking
Aztlán was an honorable goal. And that that's all the Israeli's were doing in
Palestine.
If the Chicanos were to retake Aztlán like the Israeli's are
disenfranchising Palestinians, like they are dismembering the Palestinian
homelands, like they are dislocating families, like they are strafing kids on
beaches, with missiles, then the Chicanos would be guilty of crimes against
humanity, of genocide, of neo-apartheid. Yet, somehow my President says, the
Israeli's "have a right to defend themselves." I agree with him no
more than I agreed with that blinded Jewish woman.
What the Israelis, particularly the Zionists, have done and continue to do in Palestine is not about being Jewish. The "Jews" are not the problem; the Zionist apartheid is. I've noticed some Chicanos getting sloppy in the heat of their anger and disgust about this crisis. Don't get sloppy. All Anglos do not support the mistreatment of the border mestizos. Nor are all Jews responsible for what goes on within Israel. Many within both countries actively oppose their governments' inhumanitarian actions.
What the Israelis, particularly the Zionists, have done and continue to do in Palestine is not about being Jewish. The "Jews" are not the problem; the Zionist apartheid is. I've noticed some Chicanos getting sloppy in the heat of their anger and disgust about this crisis. Don't get sloppy. All Anglos do not support the mistreatment of the border mestizos. Nor are all Jews responsible for what goes on within Israel. Many within both countries actively oppose their governments' inhumanitarian actions.
There's so much more to say, but my head's too buzzed.
I'm in no mood to review a book, post some of my fiction,
share pics of my trip to Taos. Because there are children on opposite sides of
the world--around the U.S. southern border and behind concrete walls and barbed
wire in Gaza--children who are an embarrassment to my government, forming two
humanitarian crises that the American people, as a whole, are not buzzed about.
Two humanitarian crises that make it difficult for me to
enjoy myself in Taos.
I believe, that's how it should be.
Not just for me.
RudyG
Go to Border Angels if you can aid the Border children. Do what you feel you can about the children in Gaza.
