Runner's Heights: What's in a Word?

Today is Cross-training day so there will be no mileage, only the rapture and rotations of the elliptical machine. For the time in a long time, this is the 28th consecutive day that I have worked out and although I can feel the fatigue, I have no desire to curtail this sequence unless I am forced to skip a day. The trick is in cross-training because tedium can easily set in especially if you are working out alone all the time. In addition to this, this is the week that I parted ways with my coffee habit and the headaches and the dizziness keep coming back like a droning fly that loves the scent of my hair. I am kicking the coffee habit as an experiment to see if it will impact my mileage in any manner. So, I will post the result of my findings as we go along.

I am aware of the public spat going on between the scholar, Norman Finkelstein and the former member of O.J. Simpson's criminal defense "Dream Team" and Harvard University faculty, Alan Dershowitz. What is interesting is that Dershowitz and his fellow thinkers at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) are convinced that every Jewish person should also be the supporter of the Israeli government's policies, no matter how totalitarian and inhumane those policies might be. To hold the values and aspirations of an entire Jewish diaspora hostage to the machinations of an authoritarian regime is perhaps, far-fetched, but Dershowitz and his interest groups see no problem with that. If you criticize the policies and actions of the Israeli regime, you are anti-Semitic, just like opposing George H.W. Bush would be unpatriotic. Comparisons between the Israeli regime's treatment of the Palestinians and South Africa's apartheid are gaining more ground because the world is not blind to the blatant aggression and oppression of innocent peoples. The Jewish diaspora has, thanks to the efforts of lobbies like AIPAC, been pressured into thinking that any criticism of the current Israeli government's action is sacrilegious. Furthermore, what is perhaps a sign of disrespect to Holocaust casualties and survivors worldwide, AIPAC seems to have tied the recognition of Holocaust with the tacit approval of the Israeli government's action to decide whether you are an anti-Semite. Fail either and you are an anti-Semite...no questions asked. And watch out, if you question or critique AIPAC, the anti-Semite label might be yours.

At the rate Noam Chomsky's criticizing Dershowitz, his anti-Semitic label seems only around the corner. Anti-semitism is a grave and serious label and at the rate that Dershowitz and AIPAC are trivializing the label, it might be soon become antiquated, just like "commie" and "beatnik." It will be a great disservice to the millions of people who suffered and who wish to be no part of what is happening there.