On the Sons of Isaac

They are today’s version of the Jews of the nineteen forties.

I was born too late to help anyone during that terrible half decade but I’m of age now, and I take the values honored then, if only superficially, seriously. That the victims then are the victimizers now is very much worse than mere irony; hypocrisy, as it always has, reigns, together with its court, impunity, inequity and injustice, the real names of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

They are today’s version of the Jews of the nineteen forties.

Hated, slandered, vilified, unfit for human association, they are crowded into ghettos were they can be more easily and more efficiently controlled, and when the mood strikes, disposed of. And should they resist, should they dare to retaliate, then of course, that proves the case against them, justifies final solutions, makes all the wrongs right.

They are today’s version of the Jews of the nineteen forties.

Ismael, first born son of Abraham, cast out, rejected and vilified for daring to be born. It was only supposed to be the slackening of lust, regardless of the supposed justification. And that unfortunate consequence must be undone, regardless of the cost. The writer gets to write the ending, to decide what is just, what is fair, what is beautiful, and Isaac, not Ismael was meant to rule.

They are today’s version of the Jews of the nineteen forties.

But life and fiction don’t always coincide. To some, all life is sacred, to others, all human life is sacred, to still others, only the lives of their own are sacred. It’s always been like that. Today, notwithstanding the rhetoric to the contrary, the sacred status accorded to nonexistent human rights, it’s the latter perspective that reigns but it’s the initial one I hold dear, aspirational though it may be.

They are today’s version of the Jews of the nineteen forties.

So, I defend the underdog, the downtrodden, those whose champions seem destined to futility and calumny and vilification.

Hope is a strange phenomenon, bittersweet, with the bitter part predominating until the very end, but, they are today’s version of the Jews of the nineteen forties, and so, although it’s too little and too ineffective, I stand with the sons of Isaac, while it may still not be too late.
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