Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.
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Hempstead, December 26 - A local small-business proprietor who devotes his time and resources to nurturing his children, enriching his marriage, caring for his aging parents, volunteering at a nearby soup kitchen, running fundraisers for area schools, and participating in initiatives to keep the streets of his hometown clean and safe, instead of following the exhortations of prominent activists and putting the plight of Arabs living under Israeli governance six thousand miles away, must perforce disdain those Arabs as inferior to other humans, activists report.
According to those activists, Terrence Howell, 50, who runs Front Street Hardware - a franchise in the True Value chain - spends his non-work hours on family and community endeavors, and donates supplies from his business to local projects, such as last year when a neighborhood elementary school needed to perform emergency repairs to its student bathrooms, and Front Street Hardware provided various fixtures gratis. Moves of that nature, the activists conclude, in the presence of known pro-Palestine alternatives such as harassing Jews or donating to known terrorist groups, demonstrate Mr. Howell's racist sensibilities.
"It's not like Palestine is an obscure issue," explained Hofstra University Students for Justice in Palestine chapter head Latisha Holmes. "It's in the news practically every day. No one can claim not to know how urgent it is, or how important it is to make every issue about Palestine. The only reasonable conclusion one can draw from this man's pattern of behavior is that he regards Palestinians as racially inferior."
"It's internalized white supremacy," agreed Palestine Solidarity Campaign volunteer Holden Lamaar. "You'd think as a person of color himself, Howell would be sensitive to the racist implications of supporting anything that isn't Palestine. Everyone who knows anything knows that there can be no justice for anyone until there's justice for Palestinians, and it's we apologists for antisemitic terrorism who get to define 'justice.' That Howell disregards this axiom is damning enough. What is a pothole on his street compared to the suffering of Palestinian children at the hands of imperialist white supremacist Zionists?"
Holmes added that at a meeting of the local parent-teacher association, Howell voted in favor of allocating certain funds to extracurricular enrichment of children's science education, and not, as Holmes and a group of activists had lobbied, to have her lecture the children on the crucial topics of blaming Israel and Zionists for everything that's wrong with the world, and making the undoing of Jewish security the centerpiece of a fulfilling existence.
