GUILFORD-Today, it is Gaza that burns. And tomorrow?
The story of civilization is full of sieges, atrocities, massacres... European colonialism, the African slave trade... the genocide of the original inhabitants of the Americas... the Holocaust... today, the atrocity in Gaza is the face of colonial civilization.
And it is today that a new generation faces the barbarism presenting itself as civilization and shouts, No! Stop! Not in our name!
A new generation of rebels is born.
Yet the war machine marches on, crushing everyone in its path. Can nothing stop it? Can no one stop them? Thus asked Tecumseh; thus asked Crazy Horse.
The Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision in 1857 must have hit the anti-slavery movement like a ton of bricks. Then John Brown's audacious raid was defeated and Brown hanged. Imagine how dark those days must have been, how bleak the future looked at that moment.
But the slaveholders overreached: they declared their right to spread their slavery system everywhere, seceded, and started a war. Who, in the dark days of Dred Scott, could have foretold that this hubris would lead to the end of chattel slavery in the United States a few bloody years later?
Has Israel's overreach planted the seeds for its demise? It is impossible to foretell. But we keep our hand on the plow and hold on.
Solidarity with the Palestinian people is our watchword.
Bert Picard
Guilford
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