H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – Standing for Palestine, standing for patrimony

Oct 24, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – The laptop is activated.  Foreign newspapers browsed.  News, views, interviews blanket.  Israel! Israel! Israel!  Passionate postures for, a million words in support of, and the Colin Powell doctrine of unbeatable force applied.  I absorb the emotions flowing out of America, the volume for Israel.  I see and read a plaintive whimper occasionally about those other people in what is now a boiling cauldron of a conflict; the worst of combustible spillover and overkill yet to come.

In that cathedral of the civil, of fair play, and of justice, the outpourings are more managed, expressed more mutedly.  I speak of Great Britain; save for the rambunctious, wild-eyed Irish.  They should know, having felt the ravages of Cromwell and Ironsides.  And, in greater Europe, it is more of the same: all for Israel.  None for the other people.  That is, if they are still seen as people, count for such.

I exhort, even beg, my fellow Guyanese to note how the fairer of skin, the beneficiaries of other people’s wealth, close ranks and rally around the Semitic tribe, which they have often devastated with their pogroms, when such feed their hates, release their passions.  The USA and the good and cultured people of Europe all hold one head and speak with one voice: Israel has been wronged!  Israel is due its hour of retaliation.  To Israel belongs vengeance.  To fellow citizens, I invite examining the depth of the commitment of Americans and Europeans on the side of the Israelis, and none other.

Palestine.  Palestinians.  The Palestinian cause.  Where is that, who are they, what is that all about?  Who cares?  Who has the gumption to dare say what would be quickly labeled as ‘antisemitism’ at its most barbarous?  American Senators elbow each other out of the way to get to the microphones, and before the cameras: For Israel today.  Israel forever.  From the U.S. House of Representatives (a misnomer and joke, for sure), Congresspeople trip each other up in their haste to record their inseparable bond with Israelis besieged by heinous foes and inhuman fiends.

Whether I agree with them or not (and I certainly don’t), the lesson for all Guyanese is how a foreign cause cements, binds, steels, and encloses the minds of Americans (white and black [at least the political ones]) under the Star of David, Israel’s blue and white national banner.  The identical conclusion can be made about Western Europeans, and the verbal thrusts of their politicians and populations: it is about who they stand for, and the ironclad nature of their stances.

What do Guyanese stand for today?  Outside of the turbulences of national elections, it is safe to say that there is scant else that knits groups and holds them in an irreversible grasp.  Not to any great degree is the harnessing power of the Venezuelan Border controversy.  Where is the pulsing oneness?  Not the assaults on the national patrimony that punish and pierce in the losses inflicted on personal economy.  What about some togetherness, that crescendo of voices unified for a compelling cause, as now beheld in thunderous waves from the Potomac, North Sea, English Channel, and the Black Forests?

Guyanese have a duty to be of unrelenting ferocity over their patrimony.  But, alas, politics stands in first place, with patrimony dumped to the rear of considerations, probably farther behind. In the United States, bitter partisan politics (notwithstanding the Squad) is shunted aside to run forward and cast a vote for Israel.  Why brutish, barbarous, divisive politics are allowed to control our minds, contain our spirits here?  I contend that we have our own Palestinians, and they are Amerindian, African, and Indian, and the product of other fusion.  They may be remote from the bright happenings of the new Guyana day, but they are right in the face, and cannot be minimized or wished away.

Once more, I am impressed by the spirited local identification with the poignancies of the Palestinians.  It is good and it is inspiring.  Guyana breaks off diplomatic relations with Israel, and there would not just be the Congressional Black Caucus to watch.  If Guyanese think that they have seen, or know about, lobbies, then they need to know how much they really don’t know.  Still, that is peripheral to the substance of this offering.

Elections cannot be the only issue that electrify the domestic identity.  There is that vaunted patrimony that is there, but might as well not be, for all the difference it has made in the lives of Guyanese, other than the now fabled one percent in the population.  The unity that has been so long elusive should weld every Guyanese to cluster around their rich patrimony.  Government and Opposition leaders freeing their own, empowering them, to bring down other Guyanese only serves the calculations of dividers and conquerors. There must be no cult leader, no tribe, no clan, no group, no family, that separates Guyanese from their wealth, and their right and part in it.  Now, who are the Guyanese that stand for that, rally, and march for that destiny?  For Palestine is great, Palestinians greater.  For Guyana and Guyanese, the greatest possibly.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, interviews, Palestine, patrimony

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