from the Black Hills to Gaza and back to Canada then off to Israel

I found this video on Jadaliyya, an English language Arab news and culture website. I agree with them that  TED talks have their problems (the few I have seen are overwhelmingly by white professional guys in suits), but this one by Aaron Huey comes from a decolonizing perspective. Yes, he too is a white male but he actually takes a critical look at that. In their introduction to the video, Jaddaliyya links the practices of colonial settler projects, links what's happening to the Palestinians by Israel with what was done to--and continues to be done to-- the Lakota by the US, and to Indigenous peoples everywhere.

While Huey, a photographer, specifically uses contemporary photographs to inform his narration of the resistance of the Lakota to a long history of settler policies and violence, the hard questions that he raises about the role of 'wasi'chu' , Lakota for both 'non-native' and 'those who take the best part of the meat' (which has been white people and continues to include settlers of all skin colours who benefit from the dominant society's policies and methods) can be extended to Canadian setter society and other settler peoples like Israelis. 

Jadaliyya Reports states that:

Today, three days after “Thanksgiving Day,” it is important to remember that in the United States, settler colonialism has been so complete, and so successful, that the world has forgotten that South Africa, Australia, and Israel are all reproductions, all approximations of the ongoing victory in the Americas. We have forgotten that people learn from each other, and that techniques and lessons of genocide have always travelled in well cut suits, paperwork, and handshakes. We have forgotten that those of us who live today in the United States, are continuing to settle native land, and that even the ability to be a politically progressive—or even radical—citizen of the United States is a wage of genocide. A reservation is a bantustan is a refugee camp is Area A is an allotment is native title is Gaza..

shout out in Israel

This protest was held earlier this month in Tel Aviv during the recent Israeli attack on Gaza which killed 162 Palestinians, including 30 children, and wounded 1000, many severely.

This large fired-up group of Israelis chants to another group of Israelis on the other side of the street. Watch the video (3 m); below is the text in English (as translated on the video above) of what the Israeli group is chanting in Hebrew.

The hatred against not only Palestinians but Israelis who are left-leaning is shocking and sickening. What makes things worse is the man that comes before the camera about halfway through, who is welcomed as 'the next Prime Minister' and who leads this shout out on hate and xenophobia is a member of Israeli parliament, an elected member of the Knesset. He is of Iranian and Afghan descent. Indeed, many of his supporters look like they could be Mizrahi Jews like him, Jews who are indigenous to the Middle East. This man is an archeologist, which is so troubling because one has to wonder what role he plays in erasing Palestinian history from the land to justify the state of Israel as inheritor?

Why do I tell you these things about him? Read his words below which I've placed in blue text.These are the beliefs of a member of the Israeli government? I am used to right wing madness but this crosses all lines; it is venom and clearly hate speech.

It's funny that Israel claims that Arabs want to drive them out of the land and kill them all, but it seems some Israelis not only are architects of a language of extermination but also gloatingly and deliriously so:

The nation wants victory
The nation demands war now
Respect to IDF (Israeli Defense Forces)
The nation demands to expel leftists
Leftists are sons of ****
Your mothers lied [slept with] Arabs
Leftists go to hell
and shall you get cancer soon
Welcome our next Prime Minister [Michael Ben-Ari]

Good evening, good Jews

And to you all leftist traitors

we now demand let the army destroy

let the army exterminate

let's not confuse; No innocents in Gaza

No negotiations anymore

No agreements, we force them to kneel

and beat them

Eradicate Gaza, Eradicate Gaza

What, only 15 killed?

We want 15 plus 2000 bodies

We want all Gaza in graves

all Gaza in graves

Security means to annihilate Gaza

Yes, Eradicate Gaza, eradicate Gaza

People of Israel are alive

It would be interesting to hear what the leftist Israelis on the other side of the street were chanting.

snow story

I've lost my camera somewhere, so I wasn't able to take a picture of the snow storm that blew into town the night before last. I've looked high and low for a week but the camera is nowhere to be found. But I do have a story of the snow storm that blew in. 
 
That morning I did my best to make it to the yoga class I teach at 7 AM. After my alarm woke me up, I poked my head from behind the curtain to look out into the jet black morning to see if there was a hint as to what kind of day was coming our way. I was dumbstruck. A snowstorm! Overnight the landscape was completely transformed. Yesterday had been a balmy plus 8 celsius when I pedaled home on my bike; now we were slapped into the middle of winter.

My heart sank as I saw the piles of snow burying the car. Strong wind gusts whipped the world into a white howling storm. Wasting no time, I pulled on my clothes and dashed out into the dark to clean off the car. My dashing changed to trudging when I opened the front door. Snow threatened to fall inside the tops of my knee-high boots as I trudged through high drifts. Using a snowbrush, I cleaned some of the snow off the top of the car, but it was too heavy and slow-going. I started to sweat. This is going to take me forever!

I trudged back into the house to telephone to say I would be late to teach yoga. I dashed back outside, cleaned the rest of the snow from the car, scraped the windows, then looked down the driveway. Our winter shovels are still in the garage! I trudged through the snow to the backyard to get the garden shovel; it was hopeless to try and get into the garage as the snow was too deep.

I was sweating and I hadn't even started shoveling! Maybe if I shovel out two tire paths behind the car I might manage to get out of the driveway and on my way.

With the wind howling in my ears, I set about digging in the dark, wishing it wasn't so early in the morning as otherwise I could get my husband up and get him to help me. Satisfied that I'd shoveled some of the snow out of the way, I jumped in the car and carefully backed out of the driveway onto the street, but as I live on a hilly street, and the snowplow had not yet come by, I could not get my car up the hill. I tried again and again, but my tires just spun in the snow. We had had rain yesterday, which obviously had frozen into ice, and the snow was layered on that. Before too long it was clear that I was going nowhere.

After my numerous failed attempts, I reversed the car, driving backwards down the hill. I couldn't see out the window or my rearview mirrors because of the darkness and blowing snow, so I had to open the window and stick my head out to see where I was going. When I got close to my house, I parked, then dashed into the house and called the gal at the front desk to tell her that I was hopelessly mired in the snow on my street, and to give my apologies to the participants as I cannot get off my street. No yoga this morning.

I ended up leaving the car in the boulevard by my driveway as I couldn't get it back into the driveway, which is on a slope, too. I worried how I was going to get to the university for my writing class, so I decided to walk to the bus stop right away and take the bus.

 I had to walk in the middle of the road as there was simply no place else to walk. At the end of the street, after slipping and sliding through the snow, I saw two men standing in a snowbank.

"Is this the bus stop?" I yelled against the wind. "Are you both waiting for the bus?"

Einstein's ghost

Walking by a bulletin board, I saw that a local writing group has an open mike next week; the topic is "Mystery." Somehow, the first two lines of a poem immediately entered my mind. I was too busy at school  to scribble down my thoughts, but before I left my office, I tucked "a woman's notebook," an old empty journal Margaret from the Northern Women's Bookstore had once given me, into my packsack (backpack), pedaled home in the dusk, then wrote these lines. 

image source

Einstein’s Fears

The mystery is how did Albert Einstein’s

ghost appear before my eyes this morning?

He’s a genius, I know, but I wasn’t expecting

his time-traveling shape-shifting presence

on my screen. He wasn’t a hologram

His message from the other side was clear:

A warning to the American people. Materializing

from “the existence of another kind of matter, the ether”¹

he warned of the rise of a new political party,

the Freedom Party, whose name belied its “gangster methods”

“the terrorists,” he said, “have preached an admixture

of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority."²

Before he went back through the pixel portal

of his Letter to the Editor, NYT 1948

He warned of a violent future for Israel

if Menachem Begin’s party gains power on a platform of

Jewish ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority.

“Albert,” I called before he disappeared into the

“ether of the general theory of relativity,”³

“Your worst fears have come true.”

Albert Einstein’s words from

²  Letterto the Editor, New York Times, Dec. 4, 1948

¹ and ³ “Ether and the Theory of Relativity,” address delivered May 5, 1920, University of Leyden.

Einstein's fears

Einstein's wisdom (above) reminds  me of the teachings of Grandma Dorothy in the short story "The Education of a Storyteller" by Toni Cade Bambara, from her book Deep Sightings & Rescue Missions. Coincidentally, Einstein's phrase is repeated by Grandma Dorothy but in her own way. In the story Grandma Dorothy teaches her granddaughter the importance of sharing knowledge in an accessible way.

In the story, Miz Girl (Grandma's granddaughter who goes by many other pet names) comes home from grade school one day, excited about everything she is learning. Feeling herself to be somewhat more educated than her old grandmother, Miz Girl decides to educate Grandma on Einstein's theory of relativity, which she is learning through books at school. Because Miz Girl is unable to express what it actually means in everyday terms, Grandma Dorothy challenges her on what she actually knows--or thinks she knows. Grandma Dorothy tells Miz Girl to speak plain:

"Well, let me hush, Precious, and you just go on and tell it however Cynthia would tell it or one of your other scatter-tooth girlfriends."...

"Well, my girlfriends don't know it. Cynthia don't know it and Rosie don't know it and Carmen don't know it--just I know it."

And she say, "Madame, if your friends don't know it, then you don't know it, and if you don't know that, then you don't know nothing."

Grandma and Einstein are both geniuses with many teachings for all of us.

Einstein continues to astound us with the presience of his words and thoughts.

Today, I was reading the blog of Yasmeen from Gaza, and in her past posts I found one she wrote about Einstein. Reading a passage from Albert Einstein's 1948 letter to the editor of the New York Times I was dumbstruck; it was like time standing still. The passage so tellingly --and chillingly -- is representative of what is happening today in Israel: the hardening of the Israeli state into one that promotes ultra-right conservatism, apartheid, and racism. In his letter, Einstein warns of the rise of a political party in the just created state of Israel: the "Freedom Party" led by Menachem Begin [who eventually became the 6th prime minister of Israel], providing numerous examples to show that their beliefs and actions are terrorist and fascist. Einstein exhorts people to stand against the violent vision of these purveyors of violence. He explains that 

Within the Jewish community they [Menachem Begin, party members, and militants] have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority.

Einstein also relates that this group terrorized not only Arabs, but Jews living in Palestine prior to its usurption by the Zionist forces:

During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.

Unfortunately, Einstein's warning to the American public not to support "ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority" as the dominant ideology of Israel, fell on deaf ears. Today, we bear witness that indeed Einstein's fears have come to haunt us; his fears are manifested tellingly true. .