In the early morning of November 20, 2023, I found myself up and listening to the BBC news on the radio. I always have the radio on because I always seem to live next to a neighbor who has issues with living in a multicultural building, despite the fact that there might be only one or two black people present!
I decided not to head for the kitchen to refresh my cats' food and water just yet; besides, I had another hour before the two would come to remind me of their existence. It was then that I realized the neighbor below, a Jewish woman, either mentally challenged, as some neighbors have suggested or just someone who feels a black above her is too much, too close, woke me up. It's her campaign to have me packing my household and moving along...
Then I heard a voice describing how Israel was seriously trying hard to end the conflict by ending Hamas. Seeking out their hiding places. Tunnels. Under hospitals...
Has Israel violated international humanitarian law?
Like bombing hospitals where the sick and dying are located, I heard myself say. I could see those premature babies, placed altogether to provide warmth for all since there was no fuel for perfectly working incubators. But Israel won't allow fuel to enter the hospital because Hamas might use the fuel. In the meantime, babies died at Al Shifa hospital.
Hamas is there!
Coons! That's who is speaking. Senator Chris Coons sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and is the national co-chair for Biden's 2004 re-election. He's dodging the question.
Israel is doing the best it can possibly do. It has the right to defend itself.
And Biden? His policy, his refusal to call for a ceasefire, is this decision on his part hurting his chances for a second term?
Dodge the issue!
The country and the world are with Gaza, not because it stands with Hamas, a violence-oriented organization. The country and the world are standing with Gaza because of those 14,000 dead and counting. Because of the 5,000 children dead. And counting. Unfortunately, they are still counting. Some might be in the rumble of collapsed buildings, homes, schools.
These children aren't Hamas!
Biden, too, is doing his best...
She's harassing already. Pounding. Stomping. The woman below. Five something in the morning. She's doing everything he can. Like being on a mission. A campaign. It doesn't matter whether or not she knows I'm up or not. The goal is to keep me up. Drive me out. Someone's assisting her. Taking turns.
I was about to pull myself up when the next segment came on. Another BBC program called CrowdScience. The episode was entitled "Why do we lie?" I was still thinking about Sen. Coons's well-rehearsed answers. Does it come naturally, or did he have to memorize his answers?
The BBC interviewer tried but couldn't resuscitate the heart when it came to Gaza, although I'm not so sure it's a matter of having a heart for even the 3-year-old Israeli child, kidnapped and held hostage. If so, Coons would see in the child those Gaza babies and children dead for no reason other than there are manufacturers of weapons and men who must use them.
The host and her two medical guests discuss the frontal lobe, which is, "bound up with social intelligence". It is also where problem solving takes place. If truth is suppressed and we begin to "invent an entirely new story", then our amygdala fires up. The amygdala is where our emotions are centered, and this area lights up, suggesting we are lying. "Its response to the lie makes us feel bad."
A study found that the more people lied, the less active the amygdala, suggesting that this indicates the less we care. In other words, the more opportunity to lie, the more we lie! We become comfortable with our own lying. The lying, in turn, "escalates", "snowballs".
But we no longer care.
Sen. Coons revealed to the BBC interviewer that he met with Israel's PM Netanyahu, the Crown Prince bin Salman, and President el-Sisi last month. Good. Good. But there's the occupation, the settlers, I think. I'm sure the BBC interviewer is thinking the same. There are those check points. People told to remove themselves from the lands they've known all their lives.
"Has Israel, is Israel violating international humanitarian law?"
Israel, says Coons, "still needs to provide more opportunity for humanitarian relief, to get into Gaza". They have provided notice before carrying out an attack. They have provided pathways for civilians to escape the North of Gaza.
And if you don't want to continue with an invented narrative, you'll see, as I did while listening to this man, dead children in the rumble. Their bodies have yet to be reached. You can see for yourself those "pathways", those roads where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, carrying their babies, children, a few of their possessions. Food and water is scarce.
But, yeah, Coons acknowledges that the Israel campaign has caused too many Palestinian deaths.
Wow!
I expected a yes/no response, says the interviewer. Yes or no!
Coons declares that actually it's a question that is not for him to answer.
American values what are they, again?
A week or so ago, my building manager thought she was silencing me when she offered that the woman below was a Jew. It can't be racism. She's a Jew. I looked at her as she sat back, a white woman, assuming, to use feminist and Jewish thinker Judith Butler's words, that "Jews monopolise the position of victim". They are "always" and "only" "presumptive victims".
I would be thrown under the proverbial bus, as usual. Is she feigning ignorance to silence me, a black woman? Or is she honestly ignorant of how racism and anti-antisemitism work in the US? Does she even get that she has just revealed how white supremacy works, particularly in that room, between a white woman and a black women. I might be older, but she is the one recognized as human and privileged.
At any rate, I'm gagged. Momentarily, at least.
Coons' well-rehearsed responses do much the same by sending the interviewer away empty handed. Sen. Coons thinks.
There's Israel not trying to protect Palestinians. Civilians.
And so, where are those American values these days?
You can tell how much trouble we are in if you can't give and honest answer, and resort to lying with a straight face.
If you can't say democracy will be alright come November, a year from now. If no ceasefire, and soon...
Do we care? Do you?
