The Israeli bombardment of crowded urban areas of the Gaza Strip this past week got me involved in Israel-Palestine issues, a set of problems I've mostly left alone at Progressive Alaska, preferring to concentrate here on issues important to Alaskans.Last Saturday, I posted a diary at DailyKos, called, IDF Gaza Offensive Thoughts - I Was Denounced as an Anti-Semite. My diary began with a quote from a speech Alaska Representative Bob Lynn made before a joint session of the Alaska Legislature, during their 2004 regular session. In his speech, Lynn denounced me for one of my works of art, The Skies are Weeping, about the death of a young American peace activist in the Gaza Strip:
Mr. Speaker:.
There’s “good” music, and there’s “bad” music, and last Thursday at the University of Alaska, I learned about some very “bad” music and a very bad situation, during return to my district during the Holiday.
I was asked by a friend - who is a gifted trumpet player in the Anchorage Community Concert Band in which I play - and who is also a practicing member of the Jewish faith, to a lecture by an adjunct music professor at UAA about a cantata the professor composed entitled “The Skies are Weeping.” The cantata glorifies the death in the Gaza Strip in Israel of an American woman named “Rachel Coorie,” [sic] who spewed anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and burned the American flag as a member a radical Palestinian organization that has condoned homicide bombers. Worse, that adjunct professor attempted to dedicate the cantata to the president of the University!
I must tell you it was an “eye-opener.” I could hardly believe an American professor - an Alaskan professor – at an Alaska campus - could utter such anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism on the campus of one of our universities. So-called academic freedom didn’t apply here, because the professor was lecturing outside his field of expertise in music, in matters of politics involving world affairs
The DailyKos diary elicited a lot of responses, some of them provocative in a positive sense. But like many on-line discussions on I-P issues, the commenting got pretty heavy. Predictably so.
On Tuesday, I posted a diary at firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette, based on some of the things I had learned from the DailyKos diary, and observations about web coverage of the ongoing Israeli offensive. The Oxdown Gazette diary is called The Anti-Semitism Tag Isn’t the Only Weapon Used Against Defenders of Palestinian Rights. This morning the firedoglake folks moved it from the Oxdown Diary niche and onto firedoglake's front page, where, like to DailyKos piece, it got a lot of comments.
I'll be posting a new essay at firedoglake on Saturday morning, in Howie Klein's spot. Howie, who hosted Mark Begich at Blue America twice during the U.S. Senate campaign, is vacationing and doing research in Africa right now, so he's turning the spot over to a series of progressives and liberals, who will describe their political odyssey.
It should be interesting.
image Palestinian kids killed by IDF bombs this morning