My memoir “The Unlikely Social Justice Warrior” is finally out and available for purchase and in it, I thread together stories from my careers in the music industry, religious communities, and human rights spaces. I’d like to share a paragraph from a chapter of my book titled “The liars and the truthtellers" (page 137). I write: “Western democracies that have championed international human rights laws, and numerous international conventions have shown their hypocritical human rights standards. It simply doesn’t apply to Palestinians. The general public, especially young Jews who have woken up to the ethnic cleansing process in the creation of Israel, are angry. I completely understand that anger. It is anger at the betrayal of our human values and rage by “how dare you do these atrocities in my name.” I felt the same rage at the perpetrators of 9/ 11 and ISIS. The difference is, these are terrorist entities and not democratically voted in by me or any Muslim, while the Israeli government is.” I, therefore, have tremendous respect for anyone who calls out their own tribe’s human rights violations. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, is in a class of their own having recently published their report “Our Genocide”, declaring that Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people. This declaration comes nearly 2 years after the start of the genocide, but it sets the stage for what we all know in our hearts to be right and just, challenging those who are denying or supporting of Israel’s genocide. I encourage everyone, especially those who care about Israel’s policies, to study the contents of their website. That includes my own representatives in Congress, California’s Congressman Brad Sherman and Senator Adam Schiff, who must be schooled about what it means to be complicit in supporting a genocide. The latter especially, having recently stood proudly beside the war criminal, Netanyahu, in a photo op that will one day be shown in the history books depicting those who made the murder of 60,000+ Palestinians possible. These are our supposedly “liberal” lawmakers. |
