Hello, friends. This is Against Everyone with Connor Habib. Before I start this episode with

Sarah Schulman, the novelist, essayist, playwright, advisory board member of Jewish Voice for Peace,

and really, actually, the list goes on. I want to go back to a quote that I brought to the show

way back years ago on the very first episode.

It's still important today, and it's from the Christian writer and philosopher G. K. Chesterton.

Here it is. When the businessman rebukes the idealism of his office boy, it is commonly in some

such speech as this. Ah yes, when one is young,

one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air, but in middle age they all

break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the

machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.

But since then, I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling

lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen.

They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to

believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least. My faith

in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as

much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon, but I am not so much concerned about

the general election. The vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact.

It is the reality that is often a fraud.

Friends, right now, the state's refusal, and that is many states, to mediate in terms of

Palestinian liberation in the face of a crisis of violence against Palestinians, especially

in Gaza, has amplified both the need for the vision and practical action and has amplified

our visions and practical actions around the crisis.

...