The Passing of a Giant Bent on Keeping Hope Alive Against Overwhelming Odds

In terms of keeping hope alive, I can think of no one who worked harder for longer to accomplish that than veteran Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat, who passed away this week from COVID-19 and other illnesses. Tragically, despite his protean efforts Erekat did not accomplish his dream of creating an independent Palestinian state, living in peace alongside Israel, but on a personal level he role-modeled a standard for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation that will hopefully serve as an inspiration for a future coming together of the two peoples. 

In the short run, I must acknowledge, the loss of Erekat feels like the flickering out of one of the last rays of hope that illuminated the long ago 1990's when in the wake of the Oslo Accords, Israeli-Palestinian peace seemed imminent. I remember on a visit to Jerusalem in the summer of 1999. calling Erekat to see if I could set up an interview with him for an American Jewish newspaper and receiving a gracious invitation from him to come that very day to interview him in his lovely house in in his hometown of Jericho. The interview was upbeat and optimistic--Labor's Ehud Barak had just defeated Netanyahu and hope was again in the air after a three year stretch of Likud rule. Erekat was urbane, charming and totally won me over on a personal level. 

Erekat discussed the political scene on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides in an incisive and, I thought, surprisingly manner, but he told me that he was even more excited about the growth in people-to-people ties between everyday Israelis and Palestinians, introducing me to his then-teenage daughter Dalal, who had taken part in the Seeds of Peace camp in Maine a few years before that and formed close friendships with Israeli teens, which they had maintained after returning to Israel and Palestine. Dalal, who was then about 18 and, if I recall correctly, a university student, invited me to join her and other Palestinian and Israeli Seeds of Peace alums at a meetup the following day at a mall in Mevasseret Tziyon, west of Jerusalem. That proved to be a memorable and inspiring encounter---to see the warm friendship between the young people and to feel that the sense of hope, possibility and warm humanity they evinced was the wave of the future. 

Unfortunately, it was not. The peace process crashed and burned just over a year later after the failure of the Camp David Clinton-Arafat-Barak Summit, Arik Sharon's inflammatory walkabout on the Temple Mount and beginning of the Second Intifada. I won't go into that sad history now, only to mourn the lost opportunity of the late 1990's and to wonder why too few people on both side were ultimately able to live up to the humanism, decency and passionate desire for an end to the conflict evinced that day by Saeb Erekat, Dalal Erekat and her Israelis and Palestinian friends. They had come to know the other side deeply and could not longer hate. They had understood in their bones that the only solution that would work was one that accorded justice, security and peace to both sides. 

I saw Erekat for the last time a year ago at the annual J Street conference in Washington, where he gave a passionate speech denouncing the Trump-Kushner Middle East peace plan (the so-called 'Deal of the Century') as an insult to the Palestinians and utterly unacceptable and still holding out hope that a fair two-state solution could somehow be revived. I'm not sure if he really believed that was possible anymore given the huge number of Israeli settlements that had sliced and diced the West Bank to the point where a contiguous Palestinian state seemed impossible--but he was clear that a one-state solution in the present dynamic was a recipe for apartheid, oppression and escalating violence. I was impressed not only by how affectionately he was received by the J Street crowd, but that he could still come to Jewish audiences in a warm and open-hearted way, even after all of the crushing disappointments he had endured. 

What can I say--it totally sucks the way things have turned out in Israel- Palestine, It’s been a personal tragedy for me--I can only imagine what it felt like to Saeb Erekat. I hope he took consolation in his last months of life that he gave his all to the vision of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel, and helped lay the groundwork for a day when Israelis and Palestinians live side by side in peace, equality and mutual affection--whether in one state or two. We owe it to his memory to keep working to finally bring Erekat’s vision to fruition.

We Have Saved American Democracy--All the Rest Is Commentary

 

At this portentous moment, I recall the gist of a dispatch by the renowned American journalist William L. Shirer, who eye witnessed the ascent of Nazi Germany as a correspondent during the 1930’s, conveying his emotion at hearing the news on April 30, 1945 that Hitler was dead and Germany was on the edge of capitulation. I cannot now locate the exact quote from Shirer I was looking for, but the gist of what he wrote that day was that while evil would certainly go on existing in the world, at least the particular form of evil represented by Hitler and Nazism had been vanquished and would no longer be able to cause massive death, genocide and destruction, At least Hitler was dead and gone from the world, and, with his evil ideology crushed, there was a chance for healing and better days to come.

I feel a similar sense of profound relief and renewed hope at the news that Biden has narrowly vanquished Trump and denied him another term in the White House. I realize the parallels here are far from exact. No, Trump is not Hitler, and has not yet committed genocide; though he is similarly a fascist impelled by a lust for absolute power and contempt for democratic governance. An equally important difference is that Trump and Trumpism have not been destroyed in 2020 as Hitler and Naziism were in 1945. On the contrary, Trump only narrowly lost the election and maintains the fervid loyalty of close to half of the American electorate despite his hateful demeanor and evident bigotry; his tearing immigrant children away from their parents, selling out the country to Putin and readiness to imperil hundreds of thousands of lives by irresponsibly holding unmasked super spreader rallies from the country.

Despite, his threats to overturn the results of the election through the courts, Trump will almost certainly be evicted from the White House on January 20. Nevertheless, he will almost certainly continue to claim he was cheated out of victory and will seek to mount a comeback for 2024. With or without Trump in the White House, Trumpism is unfortunately alive, well and deeply toxic. We have a long road ahead of us in terms of outreach to disaffected Americans who voted Trump and have been deluded by his siren song of white, working class empowerment.

And yet, consider how infinitely worse things would have been if Trump had held the position he had achieved on Election Night, and had prevailed in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona. That would have led in short order to the extinguishing of American democracy. All of Trump’s authoritarian instincts would then have been on steroids and fully enabled and we could have looked forward in short order to his using the full power of the state to punish and arrest his political enemies; to the extinguishing of the power of the legislative branch, the snuffing out of the free press and so much more. In the streets, Trump’s heavily armed Brownshirts, the militias, Proud Boys, QANON, etc. would have been given full reign. Any hope of retarding the rush to incinerate our precious planet would have been lost.

It is indeed a heavy blow not only that Trump almost won the election but that the GOP Senate majority will likely be maintained, making incremental gains for humane, desperately needed reforms. Obamacare stands in dire peril of being overturned by the Trumpian majority on the Supreme Court, with tens of million slated to lose health coverage in a pandemic. Roe v. Wade may now be reversed. And yet, thanks to the hard work and deep commitment of so many progressive and moderate activists; thanks to the courage and moral integrity of the Republican ‘Never Trumpers’; thanks to the fundamental decency of many who voted Trump in 2016, but realized their mistake and switched to Biden in 2020, we no longer have to fear waking up in a totalitarian America in 2021.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris deserve great credit for an intelligent and dignified campaign, embodying empathy and elemental decency, and the coalition that supported them managed in the end to push them through and give our children and grandchildren a fighting chance for a decent future. As my friend Maggie Siddiqui, an American Muslim activist and Director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress. said in a conference call yesterday bringing together progressive interfaith activists of the Prayerful Democracy network; “Working together, we fought voter suppression and empowered each other,…united in our commitment to the premise that every human being has worth. We have a very long way to go, but we remain committed to the dream of building an inclusive democracy.”

What we finally achieved was Keeping Hope Alive. I spent the hours of 11 pm-5 AM on Election Night in a state of existential despair, fearing I was about to witness the snuffing out of human freedom for the remainder of my own lifetime. Despite having a wonderful life partner, a beautiful family and a lovely new home, I wasn’t sure I would find enough of a sense of consolation for the abolition of democracy to sustain my spirit. I felt I couldn’t bear to live in a 21st Century version of Orwell’s 1984; a place where I would have to fear that the consequences of whatever I write on Facebook might be midnight knock on the door from the police. Then I woke up from a fitful sleep around 7;15 AM to find that the vote from my wonderful college town of Madison, had flipped Wisconsin to Biden and there was still hope that we might yet escape Trumpian doom.

72 hours or so later, I can’t say I am feeling elated—I’m too exhausted for that—but simply, infinitely relieved. I now have a future worth living in and so do my loved ones and all our children and grandchildren. America has dodged the totalitarian bullet and we, as a society have saved ourselves for now—by the skin of our teeth. To paraphrase Rabbi Hillel, that is the essence of the matter and, at least for the moment, all the rest is commentary.

A Benediction on Election Day

Sending out deeply felt psychic vibrations—aka prayers—to my beloved country and citizens that we succeed to summon the strength to defeat fascism, save our democracy and begin the process of wound-binding and reconciliation.

So far, we have truly risen to the occasion with 100 million already having voted despite Trump’s sustained effort to demonize early voting, to sabotage the post office, and a million other tactical efforts to steal the election. We as a society have so far responded effectively to those efforts and it has been inspiring to watch. In that context, I was uplifted yesterday by Judge Andrew Hanen of Texas—a George W. Bush appointee who rejected an outrageous GOP appeal to invalidate 127,000 votes in Harris County that had been cast through drive-in voting—making clear that at least some Republican judges will have the courage and integrity to stand in the way of transparent efforts to wrongly strip Americans of their franchise and deep-six democracy.

Obviously, there will be more such efforts in the coming days and we may need to go into the streets in our millions to demand a fair and full counting. Deeply grateful to Joe Biden, who has run a decent and politically adept campaign; standing up to the bully and highlighting effectively what is at stake. Those of us to the left of Biden—including Bernie and AOC—have stayed disciplined and on-message; showing understanding that the imperative of the moment is to vanquish Trump and capture the Senate—internal debates come later.

Whatever happens in next few days we must remain calm and non-violent in our response, remembering that we will need to reconcile with our fellow citizens, many of whom are decent human beings who have been triggered and deluded into supporting Trump. Remember the enemy is Trump and fascism, falsehood, greed and rapacity, not our fellow Americans. Many of them will begin the process of healing once the Trumpian fever is decisively broken.

A tall order indeed, but I am guardedly optimistic this morning, based on the experience of the past few months that we will pass the test—and in the process save our country and help save the planet; giving our children and grandchildren a fighting chance at a decent future. Ain Breira—we have no choice—-but to accomplish all of the above. Let’s do it.