Watching the Republican response to the State of the Union address last night, my immediate thought was: When did Congresspeople start taking acting lessons?
Sunday we skirted the demonstrators and headed to Ann’s Florist and Coffee Bar, where we read the Wall Street Journal. (Our own, bought at Bob’s News earlier, though the café usually has a copy lying around.) On the op-ed page, Peggy Noonan noted the generational divide in this country with regard to the conflict in Gaza, with younger people tending to side with the Palestinians, and older people tending to support the Israelis.
This seemed accurate, and predictable. The young are more radical than the old, siding generally with the oppressed – perhaps because that’s how they see themselves. Though being victims of rape and torture would seem to qualify Israelis for that designation as well. While older people have more experience and, dare I say, wisdom.
Driving down 3rd Ave. yesterday we were stopped by a demonstration. Hundreds of people, many of them carrying Palestinian flags, were leaving the plaza of the federal courthouse and heading east on Broward Boulevard. Policemen blocked traffic and, at Federal Highway, the demonstrators, no doubt fearing they were headed to the Downtown Jewish Center Chabad a couple blocks down on Broward.
It was refreshing to see a political demonstration downtown, in a city that often seems more interested in boats than in world affairs (the boat show was taking place a few miles away) yet it was depressing too: pro-Palestinian demonstrations are often not just pro-Palestinian, they are also anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic. Like much of the world, the demonstrators were concerned about the people of Gaza, but what about the hostages being held by Hamas? Are their lives unimportant because they’re citizens of Israel, the country viewed as the oppressor? Or, more sinisterly, because they’re Jewish? It would be incredibly refreshing if people could look beyond politics and focus on humanity.
I ran into our Turkish neighbor yesterday evening and asked her how she felt about the election in her country. As I expected, she was very depressed about it. Then she gave me the best political analysis I had heard: “We democrats did not multiply,” she said. She noted that she and her three sisters had produced, among them, only two children. While the less educated, more religious segments of the population were procreating at a much higher rate. This struck me as a problem not just for Turkey, and made me wonder about the future viability of democracy.
We’ve all heard about the persecution of gays in Qatar – and the threat by European teams at the World Cup to have their captains wear armbands bringing attention to it. A letter in the Spectator last week noted that another persecuted group in the country is Christians. According to the letter writer, the watch group Open Doors has Qatar at #18 on its list of countries where Christians are persecuted, one notch below China. He then goes on to suggest that, along with rainbow armbands, the players could wear those with crosses.