Towards a global perspective . . .

This afternoon, I attended a presentation by Combatants for Peace.   The presentation was made by a Palestinian and an Israeli who had both been part of the conflict between Israel and the people of the Occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza.   The two speakers sat to the side of the podium on a couch, still wearing their coats, while they were introduced.   They have been traveling around the country by car, and they look tired.  First to speak is Yaniv Reshef, a soft spoken Israeli in his middle 30s, who has served with the IDF in Lebanon, and who eventually left the military because he came to see that their violence was targeting innocent people, and that it did not serve the cause of peace and security.

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The presentation took place in a luxuriously beautiful room in the University of Rochester library building, with glowing hardwood details and large stained glass windows, a few rows of hardwood chairs lined up in front of a podium and backed by oak tables and comfortable overstuffed chairs under a high ceiling.  The speakers sit, still wearing their coats, on a plush couch to the right of the podium.  Yaniv Reshef pauses as he comes to the podium, to observe the opulence of the venue, and to point out that it is the kind of space he is not accustomed to inhabiting.  At one point, Bassam Aramin says that, obviously, there is no way to win by use of force.  The Palestinians, he says, are fighting a great power

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This post is a response to Katha Pollitt’s most recent column in The Nation, Freedom of Speech, Round 5,425.   Mara Ahmed, a friend of mine, posted a response titled “Katha Pollitt’s Misguided Take on Freedom of Speech” on her Facebook Page.    You can read the following and it will make sense on it’s own, but this is my response to the discussion.  I deeply respect Ms.  Pollitt, and agree with much of her writing.  However, in this case, I think her opinion is clouded by typical American  ignorance of of what we are really doing in the Middle East and South West Asia, and a certain righteousness characteristic of Lefty thinking in the US.  I am also responding to an earlier comment that “Free Speech” is a hassle in relation to one’s small children, but keeping an open discourse is worth the price.

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Free speech is a “hassle” with regard to your teenage daughters because it is unevenly distributed. To be honest, looking at our society, I have to think that free speech was written into the constitution to protect the right to talk about all sides of political issues, not so that any level of pornography and vulgarity can be displayed in any context the speaker chooses. However, the way the law is enforced in this country, political free speech is the kind of free speech that is, in numerous cases, actually suppressed. Whistle blowers are often punished. Chief Justice Alito, in his former career, specifically supported the rights of corporations to advertise any way they want, no matter how damaging, but he actually ruled against workers who were fired for talking about their company in a way that was deemed by the management to be negative. Moreover, government whistle blowers are routinely silenced, one way or another.

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Currently most of the cases that go through criminal court in this country are plead out rather than going to trial.   Most of us have gone to court for a traffic ticket and had an automatic option presented to plead to a lesser charge.   Some years ago, my son got into some adolescent trouble, and the huge pile of tickets he insisted on accumulating were all submerged into the primary charge, which was then reduced so that he could satisfy the system by going to a rehab program and staying out of trouble for a while.   In those contexts it seems like a pretty decent deal.

Until today, I had never really thought about what it would mean to someone who is innocent of the charges, but in some way compromised by the court.   But today I saw the system for the cynical and hypocritical tool that it is.   Where to begin?   Perhaps I’ll come back to the long story.  For today, let me just say that my nephew Chris, an autistic teenager, was charged with a very serious crime that he did not commit.   He was abducted from a respite where he was staying by the police, not given access to a lawyer, and deliberately separated from the counsel of his parents.   After Chrs was taken into custody, a police officer, a man he knew from school, the man with the gun, told him that if he did not agree to the charges and sign off on them, he would never be let out of jail.  He then handed him over to an interrogator with a pre-written list of culpable actions.   Before the day was out, Chris had signed off on all charges.

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