| I am as patriotic as the next person. Perhaps
a tad more because I chose to come to this
country. I was not born here, and I have been
profoundly proud of my American citizenship
ever since it was granted in 1976. In 1964
when I arrived in New York as a 23 year-old
French Sephardic Jew, Morocco-born, raised
and educated in Paris, America stood for me
as a beacon of opportunity, liberty and justice.
It was a country where all were equal under
the law; a country where silence was not the
general response to prejudice, hatred and
bigotry; a country where civil liberties,
free expression and the right to dissent were
part of the cultural fabric; a country where
democratic values were meant to actually affect
the way we all live: free from the fear of
a knock on the door in the middle of the night,
of being detained and incarcerated on arbitrary
grounds, of being snatched away from one's
children and perhaps never seeing them again,
of being the victim of institutionally-sanctioned
physical violence.
That was what the American flag meant to
me, and still means to me. When "The
Star-Spangled Banner" plays, I get
goose bumps, tears in my eyes. I think of
those eighteen and nineteen year-old soldiers,
children still, cold and terrified in the
landing crafts that took them to their deaths
on the beaches of Normandy so my country
could be free and so that this Jew could
live. I have seen the cemeteries there,
simple graves with white crosses and small
flags. Heroes to be honored, a flag to fly
proudly.
But I won't feel the same way about the
flag if it comes to mean something else.
If under the guise of unity, patriotism
and national security we begin to profile
those whose skin color or physical features
identify them as Arabs, or Muslims, or Middle
Easterners, so that anyone from these groups
can be detained, even incarcerated, solely
on the grounds of physical appearance. Three
men who appeared to be Arab-Americans were
recently denied access to a plane because
they made their fellow travelers uncomfortable.
It is the fellow travelers' reaction that
makes me not just uncomfortable, but downright
scared. And in fact, the official policies
of our government condoned such reactions
and such scapegoating. We remember the tragic
example of Japanese internment camps.
If, in the name of national security, we
allow our enforcement agencies to take liberties
with our civil rights, if we play on our
fears to unite us - rather than on our compassion
for those much worse off than we are - then
I fear the flag will stand for something
I do not like. It is in crises like the
one we are living through that we test our
mettle, our values, ourselves. My hope is
that we will work together to rebuild an
even better America where we will not take
for granted our liberties and privileges,
where we will learn more about the rest
of the world and the plight of those who
have so little that extremism flourishes
and ensnares those who feel they have nothing
to lose, and that we will work with the
rest of the international community to create
more justice in the world, not more war,
and thus give peace a chance.
Unity under the flag, yes. Not out of fear,
but out of faith in a system that promises
justice for all.
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