The televised scene of young Palestinians publicly celebrating after
the attack on America generated comments from Christians about a culture
lacking values.
Rather than condemning a culture, a more relevant debate might be on
the question of how a teenager anywhere can become so privately angry that
he resorts to public violence.
Recently I was mugged in Ocala, Florida, by a young black man who gave
me a concussion by slamming the side and top of my head repeatedly with
a heavy square object in his palm.
Before the first blow knocked me down I looked into his eyes, surrounded
by a smooth round face and short black hair, and I saw the pain and fear
that feed the cycle of human conflict.
Directly and by implication, after becoming a teenager in 1956, I was
fed tired old lies that something about their culture makes young black
men violent and hateful.
My history teacher made me memorize the Gettysburg Address, but never
said much about "Christian" Americans who let slaves sing gospel
songs but otherwise treated them like animals.
She never mentioned that half a century after Gettysburg many "Christian"
Americans joined the Ku Klux Klan to inhibit the education, voting rights
and Northern migration of free blacks.
She never told us a thriving black community was destroyed and innocent
citizens shoveled into a mass grave after a 1923 unproven allegation of
sexual assault in Rosewood, Florida.
In March I drove 60 miles from Ocala and discovered that all that remains
of Rosewood is a green one-word sign at the side of the state highway.
In Cedar Key the lady at the Chamber of Commerce desk told me there
is not a monument in Rosewood because "some people here are embarrassed."
At the historical museum a clerk retrieved a small notebook of clippings
about Rosewood from a lower shelf, while other Levy County history was
displayed on walls.
I believe the youth who assaulted me still suffers from Rosewood, that
when snowbirds flock to Florida he thinks his ancestors were cheated, and
in my white face he saw vengeance.
To the point regarding Palestine, my high school teachers deferred that
education to "Exodus," the Leon Uris book and Paul Newman film
that was also full of tired old lies.
They didn't tell us Zionist Israel started with colonization before
1900 by Europeans who were intent on completely displacing the Arab population,
and even denied their existence.
They didn't tell us David Ben Gurion said "We must do everything
to insure they never return. The old will die and the young will forget."
They didn't tell us Secretary of State Marshall strongly opposed the
U.N. Partition plan in 1947 but was over-ruled by President Truman, who
said "I have to answer to hundreds of thousands anxious for the success
of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."
"Christian" Americans still don't understand that more than
500 villages were destroyed in 1948, that Israel has persistently ignored
international law, that illegal settlements and by-pass roads have established
apartheid in occupied territories.
Two years ago I visited Ramallah, on the West Bank, a city vibrant with
friendly people, share taxis, street vendors, and children laughing while
walking to school.
While in Palestine I saw children playing soccer, eating ice cream,
scattering flower petals at a wedding, staring at a big shark, climbing
on a motorcycle, riding ponies, feeding goats.
I met Palestinian fathers who dream and pray for simple things like
dignity, self-determination, vineyards and olive trees on land they have
cultivated for centuries.
All they have seen from Israel is double-talk, international deception,
and rockets made in America, fired by American jets, bringing blood, death
and screams to their homes.
If I can forgive a young black man still suffering from Rosewood, why
can I not understand the anger of oppressed children and forgive impulsive
exuberance when they see pain in America?
Apparently the "Christian" thing is to accept the inevitable,
that soon only a one-word sign will remain of Ramallah, and its history
will be relegated to a lower shelf.
Maybe Jerry Falwell will build a church there.
