Nearly one week ago, three gunmen wearing suicide vests killed 44 people and wounded at least 239 in an attack on Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul. According to the latest information released by the Turkish Government, the three attackers were Russian, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz nationals, each with ties to ISIS.
I saw him in person once. It was during his exile from the ring, after his championship title had been stripped from him by the white establishment that controlled the sport. But to the African American community, he was still “The Greatest,” and in summer of 1967, Muhammad Ali was the Grand Marshal of the annual parade through the Watts section of Los Angeles. My parents, fervent supporters of the civil rights movement, decided to take my brother and I to the parade as an act of solidarity with the people of Watts – whom only two years before had revolted in a spontaneous rebellion against American apartheid. As we drove through Watts, we could still see dozens of burned-out stores.
This past Tuesday, April 26, Donald Trump won all five Republican primaries held on that day, and emerged as the presumptive candidate of his party for President of the United States.
The following day, basking in his victories, Trump delivered a speech at the Center for the American Interest in Washington DC that was billed as a “major foreign policy address” of the billionaire businessman turned White House candidate. To my ears, the speech seemed more posturing than policy, with few if any specific proposals as to how to approach and solve the myriad of complex and intertwined calamities confronting out country and the people of our planet.
My aunt was blind in one eye. When she was a child in Czarist Russia, anti-Semitic gangs rode through the Jewish village where she lived, burning and shooting. A sliver of glass went into her eye. The reason for this destruction: a local child had gone missing, and the Christian peasants were convinced that the Jews had murdered the child and used his blood in the making of matzot, the ritual bread we Jews eat during the holiday of Passover.
Sixty-two years ago, in the landmark case of Brown vs Board of Education, a unanimous Supreme Court of the United States ruled that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional. Separate educational facilities, the Court said, “were inherently unequal.” The ruling paved the road to integration and was considered a major victory for the civil rights movement.
When I was 12 years old, my parents took me to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speak at an outdoor rally for civil rights in the Watts section of Los Angeles. We were some of the very few white folks in the crowd. I can still remember the eloquent words pouring out of the man on the stage, the triumphant voice thundering for justice. The day after hearing Dr. King speak, I was back in school, and I must have mentioned the event to my social studies teacher, because she asked me to give a report to the class. That afternoon, some boys followed me after school, yelling "n*gg*r lover" at me for a few blocks.
Last Wednesday, September 30, I travelled to Harrisburg with a group organized by the Arab American Institute (AAI) in Washington, DC and Marwan Kreidie, an AAI activist from Philadelphia. During the day, we met with Governor Tom Wolf, who signed “The Pledge to Combat Bigotry,” a public statement against anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred in politics.
Yesterday, at a Donald Trump campaign event in Rochester, New Hampshire, a man wearing a “Trump for President” t-shirt made the following statements when called upon by the billionaire candidate: “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims.” “You know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American.” “Anyway, they have training camps growing where they want to kill us.” “When can we get rid of them?”
I was on vacation last week. My wife, daughter, and I spent the time in a beachfront hotel in Montauk, a lovely little village at the tip of Long Island. Vacations should be a welcome relief from the tensions of the world, but this year, the world found a way to make its pain known through the ubiquitous electronic devices that litter our contemporary environment.
