A Cross-Burning Mentality

Hate’s whisper manifests in shouts. There are ways to achieve any goal. When the goal is to destroy and malign, lies and cross burnings work wonders. Just ask anyone who lived through the pre-civil rights era and they will relate evil’s effective methods.

My first friends were two blacks girls, Doris and Evelyn. I adored them. They were a bit older and would take me with them to the drugstore to buy bubble gum or penny candy. They taught me how to play jump rope and were always patient with this klutzy white girl.

We just did kid stuff and I was so happy to play with the “older” girls. I didn’t know they were black. I knew I envied Evelyn’s long braids and wished my hair were long enough to wear them. Including the pretty ribbons on the ends. They were my friends and I looked forward to having fun every day.

We moved away from my grandparent’s home when I was four years old, and I never saw my first friends again. I still think of Doris and Evelyn from time to time and pray they are well and are having wonderful lives.

Living in Detroit in the fifties I never experienced racism. Never noticed black or white until one day when watching TV, I saw a little girl being escorted into school by the National Guard.

She had braids like Evelyn. I could not even fathom why or what was happening or its implications.

Slowly came the dawn. When we traveled to Florida to visit my grandparents, I noticed drinking fountains marked “colored.” Cabs drove by with signs for “colored” people. My mother explained and I came to realize that simply possessing information and understanding it can be worlds apart.

As years passed, television news aired more riots and crazies in white hoods burning crosses, governors screaming threats and hangings until sadly, the reality of hatred became all too apparent.

Southerners had their unique way of expressing hatred. It was overt, vicious, cross-burning, highly effective intimidation.

Northerners seem to prefer subtly, code words like, restricted and whispers hidden behind open hands. A glance, a wink. As a teenager while in a drug store in my WASPY neighborhood, two kids nearby smiled at me. I smiled back. The boy suddenly faked a sneeze repeating “A Jew, A Jew,” then they laughed. It is odd how hatred aimed at you like an arrow stabs you in the heart.

In college my roommate’s boyfriend told her my Jewishness separated me. “Those Jews even look different. They don’t look like other people,” he opined.

By the end of the term, my roommate’s boyfriend announced to her, as I listened on the extension, “Norma has really changed since she got here. She is cool, not like other Jews.”

Now of course I had not changed and Lord knows, I am exactly like other Jews or anyone else. It was the first time I realized the truth of knowing others as the best defense against hatred. Fear and suspicion are true catalysts for prejudice.

Iran is an excellent student. It learned well the ways of hatred. Spread lies, burn crosses and intimidate. Smear others using fear and suspicion, and the job is easily accomplished. Combine the best of North and South.

Lobbing missiles from Gaza toward schools and hospitals, blowing up busses filled with innocent people, thumbing one’s nose at decency, propaganda. These are the cross-burning tools of today’s haters.

The South used these methods well. It took much longer to achieve racial equality in that area due to their tactics. The sight of police battling freedom fighters still elicits a sense of fearsome foreboding.

Iran knows they can wear Israel down. They have already exhausted the world and the American Jews.

One doctored lying photo of Israelis aiming weapons at civilians is worth a million truths. One burning cross can frighten away the armies of goodness.

The methodology of spreading hate has never changed. If it ain’t broke… Intimidation done well creates a perfect storm of malice. Iran’s Mullah’s have learned the lessons well and rely on the “oldies but goodies” to achieve their goal.

They are not afraid because they believe their malevolent agenda is truth and will succeed. They will persevere and wait the world out.

What tool in good’s arsenal will stop the cross burnings? What direction will lead humanity back to the path of righteousness? What can curb the huge egos - edging God out - of the world leaders who we have entrusted with our collective destinies?

Had we ignored the cross burnings, fake sneezes, ever so polite-sorry-this-club-is-restricted or fire hoses and attack dogs against innocent people marching for their rights, America would not be the even more amazing country it became.

Despite the constant ramblings by the naysayers who need to believe the U.S. is racist to serve their own selfish agendas, most Americans are kind, generous, hardworking, caring people. We live in integrated neighborhoods, we join PTAs and children of all colors and ethnicities play and learn together. In a crisis no one asks questions when aid money or help is needed. Does anyone believe any American thought for one second before sending millions in relief to Katrina victims whether they were black or white?

We must extinguish the fires of hatred ignited by the cross burners of the present world. We eventually neutralize their evil deeds, but now we cannot afford to wait any longer to stop their march. Too many innocent lives will be lost. The days grow short and we have wasted enough of mankind’s precious time courting madmen with matches.

### In the series “Postcards from Israel,” Ari Bussel and Norma Zager invite readers throughout the world to join them as they present reports from Israel as seen by two sets of eyes: Bussel’s on the ground, Zager’s counter-point from home. Israel and the United States are inter-related - the two countries we hold dearest to our hearts - and so is this “point - counter-point” presentation that has, since 2008, become part of our lives. Feel free to share with others.

Iran is burning crosses? Excuse me, but this reasoning is way off. Iran is a Muslim nation bent on the total destruction of Israel. America is a Christian nation and Israel’s only real ally.

This is the same around the world. Post-cards will not change the world and how people think of each other. Pick a race that doesn’t like another race and you’ll see how the world is made.

Believe me, the writer has very simplistic notions in which political and social issues are all subsumed under the rubic of racism. Fact is that human beings will always find ways to substantiate a claim to enjoy superiority over others. When Virginia was settled, many of the people who came over were those who entered “service” in order to win passage. The history books call them indentured servants” which is an effective disguise of their real status, which was a sentence of hard labor for a fixed term, say seven years. Their state was little better than the black Africans who were brought in to work, better only because English law forbade “Christians” from being enslaved. No such protection applied of course to the heathen blacks.

Their state was little better than the black Africans who were brought in to work, better only because English law forbade “Christians” from being enslaved. No such protection applied of course to the heathen blacks.

Actually, until about 1645, the status of blacks and whites indentured for service was identical. A former indentured servant from Africa who'd served out his indenture, gone free, and started his own plantation went to court to enforce his rights against a pair of runaways who were apprehended in another county years later, after their term of service had expired. Seeking the full measure of service owed him, the planter obtained from a Virginia court a claim on the runaways' services in perpetuity, until he should achieve satisfaction of his rights.

That was the foundation, the institution, of chattel slavery in the American colonies. It was instituted on the claim of a black planter against two black runaways.

As you say, the purpose of the 1661 act founded the institution of slavery of the model of English indentiture And it was not beyond repeal, as it finally was in the United States in the early 1800s, until the huge influx of blacks into the British colonies after 1715. Even the perpetuity of black servitude matters less for many, many years because of the high death rate in the colonies. It was not until the early 18th Century that the population, white and black, acclimated to the conditions of North America. Then there is a terrific population explosion that radically increases the native born members of all races, except for the Indians. People forget, however, that even in America there is a class structure, and that slavery created a bottom layer that kept whites from sinking as low as they did in England. At the same time, it does not absolutely prevent free blacks from living relatively comfortable lives in certain places. Witness Crispus Atticks.

Southerners had their unique way of expressing hatred. It was overt, vicious, cross-burning, highly effective intimidation...Northerners seem to prefer subtly, code words like, restricted and whispers hidden behind open hands

This yenta shows her haute bourgeois ignorance. If she would have spent time in the blue collar neighborhoods but a few miles from where she lived, she would have heard the N-word often. This was as true in Detroit as in Newark, Brooklyn, etc. back in the day. The only difference was the lack of legal apartheid (unless one counts "restrictive covenants" which she does allude to).

Amazing that I didn't think people existed that still claimed that race relations were better "up north." Maybe because the author no longer lives in the United States and has her memory warped by absence. The allusions to Gaza are particularly noxious.

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