Some random cogitations..

On Racism vs Patriotism
My friend made this post on her blog, read it then come back here. She raises some interesting points. I must say that there was a resonation that occurred in me while reading her post. When my children were younger we would go in to the local "foreign" grocery, we'd be looking for something specific, and I'd call it a cultural experience, but it was amazing the things we found in there. The smells also were sometimes very interesting. Now I'm making no judgments here, but I too, sometimes feel like a stranger in a strange land. (By the way the book by Robert Heinlein titled Stranger in a Strange Land is a good one.) The richness that cultural diversity brings, also seems to bring a paucity of understanding. How sad.

Then I started thinking about the recent situation with the Israeli's intercepting the "Flotilla of Hope" or whatever they called it. I don't think most of us will ever really know what actually happened there. Benjamin Netanyahu's quote "This wasn't a love boat, this was a hate boat." There is so much filtering going on that the truth becomes obfuscated. Two entirely different stories when told by opposite sides. Then there is the "today's terrorist is tomorrow's government" idea, look at any of the old colonial countries in Africa where freedom from the colonial power was extracted from the barrel of a gun. Look at Israel itself. Those terrorists, as labeled by the colonial powers at the time, are now the government. Whose to judge? The winners usually write the history books, and after time passes, who is to say who was right who was wrong.

If you and I were faced with some of the things the Jews Israeli's were facing prior to their becoming a state, what would we have done? What about being a black man or an Indian in South Africa during apartheid?

Apartheid truly an evil system of legal racial segregation enforced by the National Party government in South Africa between 1948 and 1994. Apartheid dictated that the rights of the majority non-white inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and minority rule by whites was enforced. As would be expected this "separateness" sparked significant internal resistance and violence as well as an almost universal trade embargo against South Africa. A series of popular uprisings and protests were met with the banning of opposition and imprisoning of anti-apartheid leaders. As unrest spread and became more violent, state organizations responded with increasing repression and state-sponsored violence.

In 1975, Israel had offered to sell South Africa nuclear warheads. In 1976, South Africa's prime minister, John Vorster, not only made a visit to Jerusalem but accompanied Israel's two most important leaders, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, to the city's Holocaust memorial to mourn the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.

FACT: Vorster had been an open supporter of Hitler, a member of South Africa's fascist and violently antisemitic Ossewabrandwag and he was interned during the war as a Nazi sympathiser.

Rabin hailed Vorster as a force for freedom and at a banquet toasted "the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence".

A few months later, the South African government's yearbook described the two countries having one thing in common above all else: "They are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples."

What?? I say WHAT??

So where does that leave me? Well I'm continuing to learn tolerance, I'm continuing to learn to look for those things for which one can have hope. I'm struggling not to think in stereotypes. I'm trying to smell the roses and ignore the manure out of which they grew... I can make a difference. I can be a difference.

Finally, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is fair, whatever is pure, whatever is acceptable, what¬ever is commendable, if there is anything of excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy—keep thinking about these things. Then the God of peace will be with you.

What do you think?