appears in Saturday's Washington Post. It is titled Why the Iran nuclear deal is not a friendship agreement and is by columnist Colbert King, who has won a Pulitzer for commentary, and who I think it is worth noting is Black.
One of the main arguments against the Iran deal offered by opponents is the opposition of the Israeli government and of some Jewish organizations, in large part because of the stated opposition to Israel of Iran's Supreme Leader, and of the actions of one of its proxies, which King addresses in this paragraph:
Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, which is bankrolled by Iran, said: “If all the Jews were gathered in Israel, it would save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” Despicable.
King writes by providing us the larger context of the increasing anti-Semitism around the world, with example after example, and noting the following:
A June 30 ADL poll , although finding significant drops in Germany, France and Belgium, reported increases in the share of people expressing anti-Semitic views in the past year in Romania (up from 35 percent in 2014 to 47 percent), Italy (up from 20 percent to 29 percent) and the Netherlands (5 percent to 11 percent). Even in countries where decreases were found, the levels of anti-Semitic views were still high: See Poland, 37 percent; Russia, 23 percent; and Ukraine, 32 percent.
Greece’s anti-Semitic attitude score — 67 percent — was the highest in Europe.
What I have just quoted appears before King turns to Iran and Hezbollah.
Immediately after the paragraph about Hezbollah he writes
That said, an international agreement that deters Iran from developing the capacity to produce nuclear weapons in the near future, and comes with rigorous inspections and safeguards against cheating, could be a good deal. But it is no friendship agreement.
But that is not the best part of the column.
King rightly notes that President Obama has made clear that this deal does not mean the US will no longer hold Iran to account for its sponsorship of terrorism, eg., Hezbollah. The goal of the agreement is to prevent Iran from going nuclear, which would inevitably lead to a further spread of nuclear weapons in the immediate region.
All of this is interesting, but by itself would not warrant my writing about the column.
What does is King's final three paragraphs, to which I now turn, one at a time.
Eradicating virulent anti-Semitism, curing the United States of racism or ending homophobia won’t happen with the signing of an international agreement, the removal of the Confederate flag or a Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage.
I found it interesting that King offers the three items together. For most of us here South Carolina taking down the battle flag and the decision in the Obergfell case were important advances, even as we recognize the limitation of each, and the fact that each has generated pushback. I think most here would recognize that these are advances, they are also not magic solutions. They represent steps forward. The pushback we are seeing provides a real opportunity to expose some of the opposition for the hatred it espouses, clearly on the flag, but also in some of the commentary on marriage equality.
The nuclear deal will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, the White House says, and it will keep Iran’s nuclear program exclusively peaceful in the future. Approve that deal.
Some have complained that other issues the United States has with Iran were not part of the bargain. True. But had we included those we would not have made the progress we have made in prevent nuclear proliferation to a regime whose intentions we rightly distrust. We have made progress, which enables us to confront further issues, just as marriage equality allows us to turn to the implications of continued homophobia, and what additional guarantees of equality might be necessary to be consistent; and we are already seeing our first serious national discussion of the implications of the Battle Flag, of the continued distortion of the history of the Civil War and its aftermath, and recognition of the harm symbols can represent, as a descendent of Jefferson Davis made clear in South Carolina.
But there are still hundreds of years of dark and lurid history to overcome, in the Middle East and globally. The world community can’t lose sight of that grave reality.
Grave reality.
Dark history.
My last name is Bernstein.
My mother's mother's family was from Bialystok, and fled to this country in the aftermath of a pogrom. That is, part of the family did. Some were still there, and I grew up hearing of the efforts of my great-grandmother to try to get relatives out of Poland during the rise of Nazism, even before 1939.
I read some of the examples that King cites of continued anti-Semitism and I have memories of things I have heard and seen, not merely in earlier American history (Leo Franks, anyone, or Gen. Grant's General Order 11), but during my own life: the bombing of synagogues in the South, that my senior prom had to be held at a Jewish club because many of the other clubs around Larchmont admitted at most a few token Jews, that there was serious discrimination in the financial services industry (yes, there were Jewish banks and stock brokers, but others seriously limited Jewish employment if they allowed it at all) and there were still neighborhoods in which Jews were not welcome. I have been called a Christ-killer when in my early 20s. And things like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Henry Ford's "The International Jew," people saying "Hitler was right" and the rise of neo-Nazism (including to my shock several people I knew in a high school that was about 1/4-1/3 Jewish), etc.
Hatred of any kind cannot be allowed to dictate policy.
Discrimination and intolerance should always be confronted.
When we can make advances, we should seek to, but that does not mean we ignore the reality of what is left.
There are still racists for whom the Confederate Battle Flag is a symbol.
No doubt there are homophobes.
For Blacks and gays there are those who would use discrimination, intimidation and violence against them
And while I might now religiously be a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers) I have no doubt of the reality of an anti-Semitism that indicates the willingness of some, both in this country and around the world, to use force and violence towards anyone they would identify as Jewish, which would include me.
That we find a way of lessening some of the discrimination, intimidation and the possibility of violence does not mean that we pretend the sources of these have disappeared: the racists, homophobes and anti-Semites continue to represent a threat.
But when we can make advances, we should.
King writes "But there are still hundreds of years of dark and lurid history to overcome, in the Middle East and globally. The world community can’t lose sight of that grave reality."
dark and lurid history - that is true in the United States, with respect to Blacks, gays, and Jews.
grave reality - we can and should celebrate advances, even as we cannot pretend that the threats do not exist.
I found King's column very worthwhile, which is why I have chosen to share and comment upon it here.
Peace.