I don't know if it counts towards (or subtracts from . . .) my alloted 15 minutes of fame, but I have been personally mischaracterized and insulted on Free Republic and Debbie Schlussel today - and I'm just so proud - it feels like I've finally arrived.
Find out what I did, and why the freepers seem to hate me for it, after the break.
Context:
About a month ago, a progressive newsletter that lists all the going's on in the Bay area mentioned that Ben & Jerry's were running a nationwide search for "Peace Pioneers" in conjunction with rolling out the new flavor "Imagine Whirled Peace"- and so I duly submitted an entry for the non-profit I started more than a year ago that raises money to bring deserving Israeli and Palestinian youth to a traditional summer camp in America, and I went about my day. . .
10 days ago, I found out that I was one of two winners, and I've just now gotten back from the Times Square press conference, where I had to suffer thru meeting Jerry (of Ben & Jerry), being introduced by Maggie Gyllenhaal, and being handed a ginormous cardboard check for $10,000 ;-).
Using the Google, I was checking out what, if any press coverage the event had received, and one of the hits was to a FreeRepublic.com commentary . . . which was as ugly as you might imagine.
Background:
Two years ago, during my 30th summer at Camp Susquehannock, inspired by the thoughtful essays I heard on NPR's "This I Believe" resurrection of the series originally created by Edward R. Murrow, I wrote my own.
What I didn't anticipate was that, 500 words later, I would claim that not only is Summer Camp a great place to grow up, make friends, gain confidence, and learn skills - but that Summer Camp was actually capable of saving the world.
The essay begins:
I believe in Summer Camp. In the simple joys of sunshine and sports and a spring-fed mountain lake. I believe in kids learning to live together, to play together, and to face challenges together.
That opening led me inexorably, a few paragraphs down, to this conclusion:
I believe that the incandescent joy of a happy child transcends every ethnic and economic distinction humankind has invented to keep us apart. I believe that every prejudice, every oppression, every resentment, and every misunderstanding can be cured more quickly by mixing everyone’s children together, making two teams, and letting them play - than by any form of conflict resolution, court intercession, or legislation we’ve come up with so far.
Combine that epiphany with 25 years of training and teaching Aikido, a martial art focused on finding harmony in the midst of chaos and creating partners out of opponents, and The PeaceCamp Initiative was born.
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Freeper Reaction:
So, the Free Republic poster Free ThinkerNY (I won't link to freeperland out of principle) exhibited the independent thinking the site is known for - as his entire post was taken from Debbie Schlussel's thinking-free review of the Ben & Jerry's event. My PeaceCamp Initiative was specifically called out as "Moral Equivalency for Palestinian Terrorism".
Sorry, but can one miss the point more completely?
If she'd bothered to look past her own incoherent assumptions, she'd realize that her statement:
Joining Ms. Gyllenhaal will be photographer Roy Kerwood, who shot the original protest. They will be honoring today's "leaders" of the peace movement, including Robert Kent, who runs a moral equivalency camp for the kids of Israelis and the Palestinian terrorism supporters who would destroy them.
made no sense at all. Ok, she spelled my name correctly, but 1] I don't run the camp, I run the scholarship program (I do work at the camp, and have for a long time, but the camp and the scholarship program are entirely distinct entities), 2] the camp isn't FOR Israeli and Palestinian kids - (its for kids from all over the world - but most of them are American kids from New York City and Philadelphia) - indeed the whole point of the scholarships are to get a few kids each year out of their embattled environments and into this entirely normal, traditional, wonderful, spring-fed lake and sports fields founded 1905 american summer camp - exactly because traditional summer camps teach so many valuable lessons that tomorrow's leaders need to learn if they are ever going to make peace.
More importantly, "Israelis" is the term for people who live in Israel - they can be Jewish or Arab, and the Arabs can be Muslim or Christian (or neither). "Palestinian" is an ethnicity, not a religion or a political stance on terrorism, and insinuating that all Palestinians are, by definition, supporters of terrorism is, besides obviously false (most people in conflict areas simply want their lives back), about the least useful comment I can imagine. If you don't think that at least some Palestinians want peace, who is it that Israel is supposed to negotiate with?
The fundamental truth however, is that if Debbie Schlussel and Free Republic hate me, I must be doing something right . . .
This will be our inaugural summer. With luck, and support like I've been getting (from the people who count), I look forward to seeing how much we can accomplish.