EXCELLENT — Debbie Blane: We Are Militarized

Deep bow of gratitude to Rabbi Cat Zavis for sharing this with me, which I am now deeply moved to also pass on. So powerful, heart wrenching, and true. Understanding, absorbing, and acting upon this larger picture is, to me, an imperative. We must, indeed, take it all apart. Bless us all, no exceptions. 🙏 Molly

General view of buildings which were destroyed during Israeli air raids in the southern Gaza Strip on October 23, 2023, in Khan Yunis, Gaza.

 

Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

 We Are Militarized

By Debbie Blane

5/3/2024

I am beginning to comprehend

How things have come to be

How they are.

 

Christian Doctrine of Discovery….June 18th, 1452

A Pope, a Catholic Pope,

Gave permission to all explorers going out upon the unknown seas

Looking for unknown lands…

To take the land, any land, to kill the people if they weren’t Christians

(how would they be, they had not yet been evangelized)…

 

The Pope said that the explorers had the rights to the lands,

            The natives did not matter…..

 

From that brutal beginning 

The militarization of the seas

To the days that we live in now

                                    The indigenous people do not matter 

To the empire

No matter where they are.

Alaska, Hawaii, North America (Canada and the USA)

The USA ate up huge chunks

Of Mexico. This confused the people

                                  Because the borders crossed them

They did not cross the border.

The place that was home for them became someone else’s home

Now they are prosecuted for “going home”.

 

Sound familiar?

Israel takes Palestine, the borders cross the Palestinians, 

                                    They did not cross the borders.

The place that was home for them became someone else’s home

Now they are murdered for trying to stay home.

 

The colonizing, the theft of indigenous land – all over the world

Weaponization is built into the very fabric of our

                                    breath.

 

Just as the ill fate of African Americans went from

Slavery to Jim Crow to Incarceration

So too has the ill fate of this country gone from

Doctrine of Discovery to colonization to weaponization

Now our economy is based in having weapons-manufacturing

We must have a war, or many wars, going on around the globe

In order to feed the only way that our country knows how to live

                                                Anymore,

Or maybe it is from ever.

Do you see?

This is why the defense budget grows and grows

We must maintain the global status quo

The manufacturers have contracts that feed off of the fat of the land

Without that they would suffocate

And our economy would die.

The Rifle Association knows no other way to 

See the world, to see the country, 

To see

                                    Life

                                    Even though it is

                                    Death.

 

The very fabric of American life

The food we eat

The education we consume

The clothes we wear

The books we buy

The air we breathe.

 

Everything is infiltrated by the

 fingers of the gun.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg used to be 

One of my sheroes….

And then I learned that in a case before the corrupt court

That concerned Native Americans

She made a ruling based on a law,  a document,

That had broken a treaty.

 

Do you see?

Even our laws are militarized

It means nothing to the ones who are the inheritors of the Doctrine of Discovery

To break a treaty with the Native Americans.

 

There are people in this land

Who look at the indigenous, to whom this land really belongs,

And think of them the same way that the 

Israelis look at the Palestinians.

O(Zero) sum.  Nada.  Dead on arrival.

Just as Israelis today are killing pregnant Palestinian mothers

So did the settlers of this land as well,

Butcher,

Slaughter

Give smallpox infested blankets to

Diminish the population so they could be herded onto reservations.

 

Canada,

The USA,

Australia,

And others….the ones who rose to sanctify Israel as she sought revenge.  

Colonists in this country were also killed by indigenous people,

They had stolen their land

They did not see that native ways were not the same as

                                    European ways.

So the colonizers stuck by the side of Israel

When the revenge began

And continued.

South Africa had also been colonized, and the people who were the indigenous

Filed the lawsuit against the genocide in Gaza with the 

International Court of Justice

Which so ironically, Israel and the United States are not signatories thereof.

 

I remember long ago walking in the West Bank

With a man from Northern Ireland.

Palestinians would call out to him “Hi there Northern Ireland!”

When I looked puzzled he told me

Northern Ireland was colonized too..

Palestine knew how it felt.

 

We must take it all apart.