The arc of the moral universe. Which way is it bending?
Remaining awake through a great revolution
The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.”
Dr. King was right. That arc sure is long and sure does bend slowly. That’s okay. We’re in it for the long haul. But I can’t blame some people for wondering if the arc is even bending in the right direction these days.
Case in point…
On this day, February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela, leader of the movement to end South African apartheid, was released from prison after 27 years on Robben Island. Remember, Mandela remained on the U.S. terrorist watch lists until 2008 and the US and Israel were among the regime’s biggest supporters. Israel even played a key role in giving the apartheid regime a nuclear weapon.
But to the rest of the world, Mandela was revered for his courage and leadership in the fight against apartheid. It’s obviously a fight we are still engaged in today with Israel remaining apartheid’s main stronghold. But today, the US government once again, finds itself on the wrong side of the struggle.
Yesterday, in the US Congress, a bill was submitted calling for a full review of the country’s bilateral relationship with South Africa following the International Court of Justice ruling that found it plausible that Israel has committed acts of genocide against Gaza.
The bipartisan bill which was introduced by US Republican congressman John James and Democratic Party congressman Jared Moskowitz attacks South Africa for taking Israel to the Hague and threatens that country’s prospects of benefiting from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
There shouldn’t have been much controversy over the ICJ’s ruling, with the international panel of judges report only intimating what the rest of the world already knows — that Israel’s apartheid regime is guilty of engaging in genocide, including unspeakable war crimes, and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Even the US judge and panel President Joan Donoghue supported the ruling.
It could be that the arc is bending the right way but that Israel and its US patrons are on the back end of it.
It doesn’t bend unless you push it.
one two punch....