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It’s summer and writing doesn’t
come easy. First there was my trip to
Israel in June, the beach in July, and a cruise on the Danube this month,
visiting Serbia, where one can still see the remnants of NATO’s bombing in the
1999 Kosovo war, Croatia, Hungary and Austria.
From The Austrian Alps I meant
to write about my meeting by chance with Sonja, a lovely teacher who I came
across in the tiny town of Vordernberg, where we ate pizza in a small Turkish
restaurant, and where Sonja talked to me about multi-culturalism in her beloved
country. But I procrastinated, then
turned too busy to write anything as I was completely consumed with reviewing the
Hebrew translation on my memoir, which I hope I can publish in Israel soon
enough.
I
could write about the carnage in Syria and the options the US and its allies
have in punishing President Assad for his systematic murder of men, women and
children, possibly with chemical weapons. But I decided to leave this subject
for my Middle East class, which I will begin teaching this coming Thursday.
Then
I saw the news today about the vigil in Harlem, New York, for Islan Nettles, the
twenty-one year old transgender woman who died Thursday after being removed
from her life support five days after she had been brutally attacked by a man
who got furious after he realized that his female friend was actually born a
male.
The
attack on Islan
was the latest in a series of disturbing hate crimes against members of the
LGBT community in the city, which increased dramatically this year.
It
is perhaps ironic that Islan’s vigil is taking place on the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech on freedom and equality, and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Ironic but
not terribly surprising, given the progress the gay community has made in the
US and in other countries with respect to same sex marriage, progress that must
threaten those reactionaries who irrationally fear homosexuality and same sex
marriage.
Like what I think is a response to
the embracing of same sex marriage, history witnessed the surge of illiberal reactions
to the progress minority groups had made in different parts of the world. It
happened in Europe with the surge of anti Semitism after the emancipation of Jews
in France and Germany in the eighteenth century, and England in the nineteenth
century, when European Christians felt threatened by the granting of equal
rights to Jews, like racists reacted to the emancipation of slaves in nineteenth
century America, and even to the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth
century, culminating in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Let the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement and the senseless death of Islan Nettles be a
reminder of what we as a civilization deserve: freedom to grow in our own skin,
gender, religion, nationality and sexual orientation.
***
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