The continued occupation in Palestine/Israel is 21st-century slavery and should be abolished immediately. Given the history of Jewish humble beginnings and persecution, there should be no ambiguity as to the ethical, moral, and dehumanizing marginalization and enslavement of other human beings. The United States of America must be a major influencer of calling this injustice both immoral and intolerable.I would also hope that the Jewish community in the United States would influence the call to join the U.S. government in ending the immoral enslavement. Dr. King continuously preached a Gospel of justice, so that all people could live in dignity.
While my reference to these injustices as “slavery” may seem extreme to many and, of course, offensive to most Israelis, no one who is informed regarding the use of military power and racial bias to control the lives of Palestinian citizens can honestly avoid the truth of this situation.
People do not have freedom to be who they are in community with everybody else, they are limited.
That is slavery.
They don't have the opportunity to do and have the opportunity to be able to engage the way others are able to engage in society. They are set aside and they are treated as though they are in no way related to the larger context of what it means to live in community. It is taking the power of government, the power of individuals who have money and abilities, to set others aside and keep them away from the wealth of communities and at the same time marginalize them at every part of their lives.
I know that feeling because I experienced it as a child. I grew up in the south and I know that it is equated, again, to slavery through my experience. I don't need anybody to read a book on that one. It's what I have had to learn to live with most of my life.
Silly me, I thought slavery meant owning human beings and depriving them of all rights. I didn't realize that an expert who somehow attended college in the South was enslaved.
And he is mystified how anyone can be offended by his redefining slavery to mean anything Jews do that he doesn't like:
It's difficult for me to see how my sharing words that would encourage something different, a coming together a community of giving individuals opportunities to see their own self-worth. To build bridges of hope to new community, living, and what that means in integrating people and allowing individuals to have the same opportunities. Why is that such a bad context to address on Martin Luther King's birthday?
He's practically saying, "I'm a Black man, how dare you disagree with me about what slavery means?"
We have a pattern here: terms like "apartheid" and "genocide" and "slavery" and "persecution" are given brand new definitions to apply only to Jews.
The irony is that by doing this, the modern antisemites are cheapening the terms themselves, trivializing real slavery (which still exists today in the Arab world) and real persecution and real genocide and real apartheid.
Which means that to these bigots, inciting hate against Jews is more important than actual genocide and slavery and apartheid.
