No justification, no justice

So this has been a weekend, good and bad. Maybe not "bad" but very saddening, at least, depressing even. The MAS Day at the Cinema started with the film Occupation 101. You can purchase the documentary here: http://www.occupation101.com/purchase.html. It's heartbreaking, and for me it set the tone for the rest of the day, which I spent crying at seemingly random things that would have otherwise not have phased me in the slightest.

I wanted to get that out there. At the masjid Saturday night though, there was a brother promoting a book he is helping to put out. It's going to be called Palestinians' Holocaust: American Perspectives. Originally the book was going to be titled with "African American" instead of just "American" but they changed it to appeal to a broader audience. I think that was wise, and I was confused at first why they would call it African American perspectives anyway, until I read a "review" of sorts of it, an article mainly written to publicize it. The premise was that African Americans could more closely identify with the Palestinian struggle than white Americans I guess, but the book includes quotes from such notable figures as George Washington, Jimmy Carter, and Alison Wier (ifamericansknew.org). I'm glad that race isn't an issue in it, because in truth any human who has knowledge about what is going on should stand up and shout it... and drown out the lies.

Some quotes that come to my mind now are George Washington's farewell address, when he warned against a passionate attachment to any foreign nation.

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

Malcolm X made a stunning point about racism and quoted Hamlet--is it really better to suffer or to take up arms?

To be, or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.

And others have quotes in the book, some that I haven't read or heard before... I hope someone is listening to the extreme silliness that is blinding this country of all morality and justice and perpetuating lifelong torture of the population of a nation.