“Stay Focused”
Don’t Stop Talking!
DeSean Jackson is a professional football player. He’s black. Jackson made offensive comments about Jewish people. Julian Edelman, New England Patriot wide receiver, 2019 Super Bowl MVP, and Jewish, posted a response to Jackson. ESPN
Measured. Thoughtful. Honest. Compassionate. And most of all, open ended, meaning open to reconciliation.
Rami and Bassam
Bassam and Rami are brothers in loss. Bassam’s 10-year-old daughter, Abir, was killed by a rubber bullet to the back of her head fired from the gun of an Israeli soldier. Abir was on her way to school after stopping to buy some candy.
Rami’s 14-year-old daughter, Smadar, was killed by two Palestinian suicide bombers. Smadar was downtown Jerusalem looking for school clothes.
Bassam is a devote Muslim, Rami a non-religious Jew. I’ve known Rami for almost 15 years, Bassam for 10. They are dear friends of the Vis family.
Their message to anyone with ears to hear is this: “We are not animals. We do not have to continue killing each other without mercy. We can change. We can talk to each other.” They have declared this thousands of times to “anyone who will listen.” Rami was our first ever speaker for our first ever tour, a group of three couples from NW Iowa in 2007. Since then they have spoken Smadar’s and Abir’s names and stories to over 50 groups who travelled with us.
“Stay Focused”
Malcolm Jenkins is a professional football player as well. Jenkins is black, something I normally would not draw attention to, except in this context, and maybe in every context, color matters. Jenkins has a brief but important message to deliver around the Jackson anti-Semitic controversy. Please listen. ESPN
Jenkins is not downplaying the seriousness and insensitivity of Jackson’s blatant and ignorant comments about Jewish people. But he is reminding his own people, people of color, that they have a mission and that they cannot be distracted from that mission. This moment in time is their moment to make things different for them.
Singular Purpose
Rami and Bassam have a laser focused purpose in their lives – the end of the oppressive Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people, and along with it, the end of the senseless slaughter of little girls shopping for school clothes or simply walking from a store with a piece of candy in hand.
Every moment is for them a moment in time that they will never get back, and they are determined not to waste a second of those minutes. They do it for their daughters, Abir and Smadar, and for all the sons and daughters, brothers and sisters who have been murdered in this conflict.
Jenkins has the same mindset here I think. He speaks into memory the name of Breonna Taylor.
And names matter, especially names of people we’ve lost too soon or too tragically. Breonna Taylor is the image reminder that Jenkins wants in front of our eyes so that we don’t forget all the others who came before, too many to count.
The Black Lives Matter movement matters because it is an opportunity to right a history of wrong done to black people. We will be side tracked from time to time, sometimes with something that needs to be addressed, like with Jackson’s comments. But as Jenkins’ reminds us, it cannot be for too long.
Stay focused.