The new - old McCarthyism

Querido Jota:

how are you? Recently an old feeling from my adolescence back in the distant dark days of Latin America prowl these parts. For a while I feel that any kind of criticism against the government, institutions or the army is delegitimized, in a worrying way, as before over there.

Those who dare to express or demonstrate are labelled  traitors.

The intellectuals who have the courage to speak in their classes, public events or different gatherings are persecuted and then  delegitimized. Organizations for peace, human rights or those who are not willing to see the Arabs as their enemies are classified openly as disloyal to the state.

The new - old McCarthyism with which I grew up  shows its teeth ... 30 years later, in another place, another reality, but it is  the same feeling.
Yesterday while I was covering a demonstration in protest at  Israeli army actions against a Turkish Flotilla trying to break the siege of Gaza and also the commemoration of  the 43 years of the Israeli occupation, a smoke grenade was thrown to the middle of the crowd ...... yes  I know, the marks of the past make me fearful, but who can avoid feeling  that way in the face  of so much anger and the experiences of the past. 

From my work "Postcards from the Holy Land"

(C)Quique Kierszenbaum