The latest effort in the Times is an Op-Ed, “Our Fathers Marched With King. Here’s What They Would Say to Activists Today.” Authors Donzaleigh Abernathy and Avi Dresner mourn the “erosion of the Black-Jewish alliance” and urge pro-Palestine activists to find “common ground” with Zionists.
Besides the general lameness that is proclaiming what the dead would think of modern politics, both because it’s not relevant and because it always amazingly aligns with the politics of the person doing the proclaiming, the immensely feeble invocation of “what our fathers did” is pathetic. Yes, your fathers marched, you didn’t. You don’t get some genetic inheritance to that work. You’re a Broadway star and a Zionist writer, respectively, don’t act like you’ve got some authority here. It’s like “Do you know who my father is?” but not even who he was, just who he was around.
Anyway, if we want to talk about what civil rights leaders of old thought of the treatment of Palestinians, let’s see what Malcolm X had to say about it.
the immensely feeble invocation of “what our fathers did” is pathetic
One of the key components of liberalism is reaching some kind of end to struggle and no longer having to try. If that end point was achieved by your predecessors so you don’t have to do anything now? Even better!
