By coincidence, today, Father’s Day, falls on the 20th anniversary of the death of my father, Henry Blankfort, at the age of 91, from the after effects of a heart attack which occurred when he accidentally slipped and fell at the home he shared with my mother in North Hollywood. A black-listed screenwriter and un-friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951, a civil rights activist years before the movement existed and, in the end, a stalwart critic of Israel and supporter of my activities on behalf of justice for Palestine, he remains an inspiration for my own political work to this day as he does for my sister, Jan. At first, with my mother, a supporter of a bi-national state, he was a lone public critic of Israel’s invasion of Egypt with Britain and France in 1956, which led him and my mother, Sylvia, to sever long-time relations with close Zionist friends who were progressive on every issue but Palestine. He would tell me that he “didn’t keep a double set of books” and my mother, a political activist in her own right, took the same position. By the time Israel invaded Lebanon in June, 1982, he had seen enough. “They are just like Nazis,” he told me over the phone. “Go back and read Deuteronomy!” which I did, and realized that the mindset that has been driving Israel’s ethnic cleansers can be traced back to what the ancient Hebrews did in Canaan following orders, so we are told, from the deity they invented. I can only imagine what he would be thinking and doing today. All I can say, as I have done many times since his death, is, “Thank you, Dad.”
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 16:55:10 +0000
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