You've Got to be Carefully Taught

My title is from a song written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the Broadway show "South Pacific." And when it debuted in 1949, the same year I did, the show was a hit, but this song was amazingly controversial. The premise is that hate and prejudice aren't innate; they are taught. You would think that was a fairly non-controversial sentiment, but as is explained in the Wikipedia entry...

Rodgers and Hammerstein risked the entire South Pacific venture to include the song in the production.  After the show's debut, it faced legislative challenges regarding its decency and supposed Communist agenda. While the show was on a tour of the Southern United States, lawmakers in Georgia introduced a bill outlawing entertainment containing "an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow." One legislator said that "a song justifying interracial marriage was implicitly a threat to the American way of life."

"Communist sentiment?" Just like the current MAGA hissy fit over Christopher Nolan casting a black actress as Helen of Troy in his forthcoming "Odyssey," never underestimate America's capacity for ginned-up outrage. Just so you understand, here is my favorite version by an undisputed national treasure, James Taylor.

And politics is carefully teaching us yet again here in my home state of Texas, and in a country I have visited a few times to report on, and have a great affection for, Israel.

Given the fact that no politician can resist riding a wave of public ignorance, we are seeing the most craven of them promoting laws, acts, and legislation to prevent Sharia Law from "taking hold" in our state.

Sharia Law is, of course, a set of religious guidelines for practicing Muslims. Just as if you are a devoted Catholic, you would have to come to terms with the church's teachings on divorce, abortion, homosexuality, or female clergy. Society at large, except for abortion, doesn't impose those beliefs on anyone else.

If you are Jewish, there are rules, known as mitzvot (commandments), that comprise a framework of 613 laws outlined in the Torah and expanded by rabbinic tradition. They govern daily life, ethical conduct, dietary practices, and ritual obligations, though observance levels vary greatly across Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform branches.

But no one is asking Texans or anyone else to give up bacon. In fact, the ostentatiously MAGA-venerated US Constitution forbids any religious test for public office, and demands freedom of religion, period. In fact, for all those out there with pitchforks about Sharia Law, under the U.S. Constitution, federal and state laws are supreme. You cannot substitute religious law for U.S. civil or criminal law, or anyone's religion. The legal system operates entirely separately from religious codes, though personal religious practices are protected.

So why is Senator John Cornyn, along with his sad Trump veneration in the form of renaming a Texas highway for his lord and master, promoting all these silly proposals to prevent the intrusion of Muslim religious practices? For example...

• Defeat Sharia Law in America Act: Introduced by Cornyn and Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), this bill clarifies that using Sharia law as a basis to discriminate in goods, services, or accommodations is a violation of the Civil Rights Act.
• BOOT Sharia Law Act (Ban Outsiders Openly Touting Sharia Law Act): Targets immigration directly, this bill aims to bar noncitizens who endorse or advocate for Sharia law from entering or remaining in the U.S. and expands the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) authority to deny visas and green cards.

Frankly, any association with Tommy Tuberville should require a comprehensive test of mental fitness for office. And, I still contend his name sounds like he's the host of an afternoon kiddie show.

But to answer my question, he does it because it plays. And it plays by generating fear of "the other," people who speak, look, and worship differently.

Then there is Valentina Gomez, whom Republicans wisely defeated for a congressional seat in the primary. Her main claim to fame? Burning a Quran in a campaign ad and vowing to kick all the "dirty Muslims" out of Texas...

And of course, Governor Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton have fought tooth and nail, and then more nails, the establishment of a community centered around the East Plano Islamic Center, a large mosque in Plano.

Were the proposal to establish a community of faith around a Catholic cathedral or 1st Baptist Church in Dallas, I have to wonder if there would be as much hoopla. Actually, I don't have to wonder very long.

And even today, President Trump said in an interview, "Most Iranians have the same first name...Muhammed, something..."

But despite this current politically driven wave of religious hatred, I look back on my hometown of Houston and a conversation I had in Israel with the Anglican Archbishop of East Jerusalem, the late Samir Kafity, who was a Palestinian Christian, back in 1991.

Houston, like so many particularly southern cities years ago, had neighborhood covenants that banned sales of homes to African Americans or Jews. A successful person in either group couldn't buy a home in the tony neighborhood of River Oaks for years. So, Jews in Houston established their own in places like Riverside Terrace, where I had my first college garage apartment, and later Meyerland.

By the way, 1967, garage apartment, furnished, bills paid, $45/mo. Eat your heart out.

Later, when the anti-Jewish bans were eliminated, they often moved into River Oaks and other chi-chi neighborhoods. And ironically, the lovely homes in Riverside Terrace became the place for successful black professionals.

In fact, thanks to far-sighted people like Rabbi Hyman Schachtel, a true ecumenical spirit grew in the Bayou City, thanks to his activism with clergy of all faiths.

When I was in Israel during the first Gulf War, one of the things I talked about with the Archbishop was the history of the Jewish diaspora and many Muslims as well. I told him that in places like my hometown, these faith communities ultimately learned to coexist. In fact, in Tyler, Texas, the local Jewish and Muslim communities bake food for each other for the fasting holidays of Passover and Ramadan.

I was a bit amazed that wherever these two groups found themselves in the world, they usually found a way to get along, except in the land they both came from, the Holy Land. Though the Bishop did try.

In fact, now the most extreme members of the Netanyahu government, like  National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, seen here waving a flag in front of the Dome of the Rock, the second-holiest site in Islam, are holding sway.

Why is he doing this? The same reason we get tons of stupid AI social media posts from politicians these days. The same reason Cornyn and the others are pandering. Because it infuriates the other guys. How radical is this guy? His proposals include...

• Gaza Resettlement: Ben-Gvir has explicitly called for the Israeli military to conquer and fully control the Gaza Strip, encouraging the departure of its Palestinian residents so Israelis can establish new settlements there.
• The West Bank: He has supported similar plans to expel Palestinians from the West Bank and has previously encouraged right-wing settlers to establish illegal outposts across the territory.
• Palestinian Statehood: He strongly opposes a two-state solution, frequently denying the historical existence of a distinct "Palestinian people".

Settlements are expanding across the West Bank, and Palestinians who have lived there for centuries are being pushed out, often violently. A new law passed in the Knesset calls for the death penalty if a Palestinian kills an Israeli, but if it is the Palestinian who is killed by a settler, it does not apply.

The newspaper Haaretz reported just this week...

Over the weekend, Israeli settlers carried out more than 20 attacks across the West Bank, according to Palestinian reports, wounding several people, including a pregnant woman, while setting homes ablaze, vandalizing property and uprooting olive trees.

On another trip, I visited one of these "settlements" in the West Bank. It is called Efrat, and it's more like a suburb than what we envision when we think of settlers.

There I met a settler, a former Chicago lawyer named Artie Gellman. We met in what is basically a nice, two-story townhouse in Efrat.

His disdain for Palestinians was much on display, and he allowed that he was prepared for a fight. I asked, as his small children slept upstairs, how much barbed wire they could string and how many loaded magazines he could buy for his M-16?

"As many as I need," was the answer.

He also wondered why he and his friends were just considered ex-pats and not modern-day Daniel Boones and Davy Crocketts. A legitimate question, I suppose, when you consider all the two-story townhouses in Boonesboro.

But in all honesty, that is not the Israel I mostly remember from several visits over the years, but like politics everywhere, things are now hardened, more divided, and more hateful. Prime Minister Netanyahu is continuing to violate what is already a pretty shaky ceasefire in this ill-planned Iran conflict, and for good reason. If it ends, his trial for corruption will resume.

The war is saving him from an Israeli version of Jack Smith.

And his buddies like Mr. Ben Gvir and supporters like Artie Gellman are aiming for a Muslim-free Israel.

Artie, have you met Valentina Gomez?