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Wednesday, November 7, 2018

When Did The Quakers Move So Far Left?

I just got the latest issue of Quaker Action, a publication of the American Friends Service Committee.  I haven't looked at the publication for at least a decade.  It surprised me to see that AFS has moved so far left.  The main article was about the need to abolish ICE.  It was something that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would like.  It spoke of ICE and its enforcement of the immigration law as some sort of horror.  It never mentioned that the people apprehended are law breakers.  It only discussed them as victims.

The next article was about ending the "blockade" of Gaza.  It started out by stating that for the last six months, the Palestinians in Gaza have been carrying out "non-violent protests" and that nearly 200 have been killed.  That's bizarre.  The so called non-violent protests have included about 40 instances of the protesters throwing hand grenades at Israeli troops on the other side of the border, about 100 instances of these same "non-violent" protesters tossing Molotov cocktails, numerous instances of gunfire from the "non violent" demonstrators and the like.  The stated objective of the non-violent demonstrators is to breach the border fence and to attack nearby Israeli towns and villages.  That's hardly non-violent, but the AFS doesn't even bother to mention it.

I was raised just outside of Philadelphia in an area with many Friends' meeting houses.  (After all, Pennsylvania was founded by Quakers.)  The Quakers always advocated non-violence and the worth of each individual.  Still, they weren't far left like this.  I wonder when that change occurred.

1 comment:

Norman Ivins said...

Our hopes of stopping the Pot Market has just gone up in smoke.