Last week, we published a long interview with Raleigh mayoral candidate Mary-Ann Baldwin. Kathleen Lowry writes that she came away “disheartened.”
“It seems she is a shining example of public officials being not just disrespectful but outright contemptuous of her fellow civil servants,” Lowry writes. “No wonder she evokes a visceral response. She seems to believe she can be as disrespectful as she wishes, and then make the claim she is considered polarizing because she is a woman!
“In addition to being outright contemptuous of others, she expresses a complete lack of interest in the concerns of constituents—for example, regarding protecting our neighborhoods. She implies that it has to do with an issue of exclusivity, when I suspect that deep down, she understands how important continuity, identity, and community are for well-being. We need more predictability in our lives, not less, and change doesn’t help.
“We must assume that people we don’t agree with have good reasons for their opinions. At the very least, a mayor should seek first to understand. Our community and politics are not a game. We are hoping someone who knows how to be adult, respectful, and assertive will step up for the mayor’s job.”
We also interviewed local punk band The Muslims. Singer QADR told us that the band wants “a world where … Palestinians can actually be fucking free, and Israel is actually named as a country that upholds white supremacy.”
Kay Alexander took exception to that statement. “According to The Muslims, Israel exemplifies nothing more than a white supremacist, apartheid state,” she writes. “This popular lie feeds on the denial that Israel is the only Middle Eastern country in which the rights of women, as well as religious and cultural minorities, are constitutionally protected, the only one with a free press, and the only one in which LGBTQ people are not tortured and murdered. This lie also conveniently denies the continuous Jewish presence on that land over more than three thousand years, and, most crucially, that Palestinians cannot ‘reclaim’ something that never existed: the only independent sovereign nations in that region, ever, have all been Jewish.
“Worse, this lie morphs into a narrative that deliberately ignores the refusal of Arab Muslim states to assimilate Palestinians. It ignores the corruption and brutality of Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in Judea/Samaria. It ignores the ecocide perpetrated on tens of thousands of acres of farmland and wildlife refuge in southern Israel by incendiary kites. It ignores the rockets aimed from Gaza at Israeli civilians. Most significantly, it ignores the explicit language in the charters of both governing bodies that calls for the destruction of Israel and the deaths of Jews.
“It’s understandable that young, hotheaded musicians would embrace this ignorance and promote these lies. To do so seems cool and revolutionary. But somehow the editorial staff of the INDY, which should know better, has also bought into the fad of Israel-bashing as something hip and progressive. For pity’s sake, wake up and smell the bullshit. Self-proclaimed people of color readily denigrate Jews as ‘white’ perpetrators of white supremacy. Self-proclaimed white supremacists take the opposite approach by denigrating Jews as subhuman. The only constant is that anybody with a racist ax to grind feels entitled to define Jews according to whatever stereotype they wish. That’s the essence of antisemitism.
“All of these lies have been successfully used, and are still being repeated, as justifications for disenfranchising, expelling, and slaughtering Jews. It’s no different when anyone—including a punk band—says that Israel is practicing ‘supremacy’ and then declares that ‘supremacy’ must be ‘thoroughly eradicated and destroyed.’ They’re not being hip or progressive. They’re not being metaphorical. They’re saying that genocide is an end that justifies noble goals. It’s appalling that the INDY perpetrates this rhetoric and the lies on which it’s based.”
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