Reply #2: Hear! Hear! Alan Gross ought to be ashamed of himself!

[Peace Patriot]

I find it especially offensive when rightwingers and fascists try to use Jewish groups in this way, to slander or sabotage leftist governments, and to try to stir up the lowest of human behaviors: religious or racial bigotry. We saw a similar thing in Venezuela, when the Simon Wiesenthal Center alleged that Hugo Chavez had made some anti-semitic remark, and the Jewish groups in Venezuela sent them a stinging letter, telling them to knock it off, it was untrue and slanderous. I don't know who's running the SW Center, but somebody with an anti-Chavez agenda got to them, or was working from within, to give the corpo-fascist press one more of a thousand anti-Chavez headlines, and probably to set the progressive Jewish community in the U.S. against leftist democracy in Latin America, and the Chavez government in particular.

I find this just despicable! I don't know for sure why it nettles me so much, in a world of injuries and horrors. But I got the same feeling back when Daddy Bush let his campaign utilize overt racism against Dukakis with the Willy Horton ads. There is something so low-minded, and so destructive, about particular uses of race or religion with long histories of unconscionable, brutal suppression, that makes using those sufferings for crass political purposes especially horrible and utterly irresponsible, in my book. Sociopathic, is the word I'm looking for. Complete obliviousness to the health of a society and welfare of others.

This is worse than shitty behavior--Gross lying about working with Jewish groups, or Bush I stirring up racist hatred in a country stained with black slavery. It is cynical in the extreme and it is dangerous. You are tearing at the very fabric of society--on race relations here, in the one case, and at the peaceful accommodation between Jewish groups and the Cuban revolution, in the other. It appalls me that anyone in our government would do this, even though I know that they have done far worse.

I think also that I am very, very proud of our country, as the most interesting and successful "melting pot" in the world, and in history--at least as to what we, as a people, aspire to. The civil rights movement formed my psyche as a young person. I even traveled to Georgia and Alabama to be part of Martin Luther King's movement, with nothing in my background that explains, or could have predicted, such a journey. It MOVED me, to think that I belonged to a country where ancient wrongs could be righted, and where people of vastly different backgrounds could love and appreciate each other, and be equals. That is so precious to me. It may be my highest value. To have someone stomp on that value, for bad, cynical purposes, ignites my most passionate animosity.

The civil rights movement in the South was also the place where I first got to know progressive Jews on intimate terms. It impressed me so much that they were fighting side by side with another, very different oppressed group, in common cause. Their magnanimous outlook inspired me; opened a whole new world to me. So it especially disturbs me when Jews, or Israel, are used to front an anti-progressive cause--as with the "Neo-cons" and the Iraq War or oppression of the Palestinians, or in these two nasty cases, in Venezuela and Cuba. It seems so wrong to me--a violation of something sacred. We need to hold on to those sacred and inspiring things, our youthful ideals, even as we learn awful truths about our government. They are our bulwark for helping to create a better world. They keep us on the right path even when we fail and see failure all around us.