The drama was launched in 1947 Congressional hearings.
Looking back to those days,the extremist side of that conflict became known in 1950 as McCarthyism, after Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, a Republican who served in the US Senate from 1947 until 1957. He became a media star because he was horribly simplistic as he peddled fear. Finally, the Senator overreached and ran afoul of an honest judge named Joseph Welch. After that he spiraled downward.
But for a time it was the McCarthy era, where the sides were clearly defined, no room for ambiguity. The times demanded good versus evil, darkness against light, the powerful against the weak. This four-minute film clip below, from the 1947 hearings, shows both "friendly" and "unfriendly" witnesses. One of the friendly witnesses was an actor named Ronald Reagan, who later became President of the United States.
Those with the power of the Law behind them asked the question: "Are you now or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party"? It was a question which, with the wrong answer, could send a person to jail.
Ten of those who testified as "unfriendly" witnesses, became known as the "Hollywood Ten." Because they originally refused to cooperate with House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) they were cited for contempt of congress.
They were subsequently fired and blacklisted by the Motion Picture Association of America. All 10 served up to a year in prison, were fined $1,000 and faced great difficulty working in Hollywood again.
Some worked under assumed names. The blacklist was finally broken in 1960 when Dalton Trumbo, an unrepentant member of the Hollywood Ten, was publicly acknowledged as the screenwriter of the films Spartacus and Exodus. (Could Trumbo have anticipated that the Israel he celebrated in his script for Exodus, would one day be asking "Are you now, or have you ever been"?)
The oppression of the Hollywood Ten operated on a McCarthyite battle of simplistic good versus evil. The battle is repeated whenever extremists hold absolute power, or think they do. Give the "wrong" answer and you are doomed to an indefinite time of incarceration, or at the very least, a permanent banishment from polite society.
Fast forward to the Palestine of 2011-12, where a dying young Palestinian man lies chained to a hospital bed in Israel's Ofer Prison in Palestine. In an earlier Wall Writings posting, I examined what happened to bring this young man into the Israeli military prison.
After he was seized on December 17, 2011, Kahder Adnan was asked the contemporary variation of the 1940s' Communist question, under torture in an Israeli jail nine weeks ago this weekend.
Adnan was asleep with his family when he taken by the Israeli Occupation Forces from his home near Jenin, in Area A, that part of the Palestinian Occupied Terrorities which the Oslo Accords mandated "the Palestinian Authority has sole civil jurisdiction and security control, while Israel retains authority over movement in and out of the area."
The questions put to the 33-year old baker and Bir Zeit University graduate, are probably not recorded. Israeli officials have made no effort to be specific as to why Adnan had been placed in "administrative detention," the bland terminology used by Israel for "disappearing" a Palestinian into the darkness of the absolute control of its military prison system.
Israeli occupation forces subsequently have let their friends in the media know that the question put to Adnan was a variation of the old 1940s American "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party." I am reasonably certain no one asking that question had ever heard of Joe McCarthy.
For Khader Adnan, the question was more along the lines of, "Are you now, or have you ever been a member of Islamic Jihad"?
From the McCarthy era to the time of Israel's military occupation, the questions resonate through the decades. We, the all powerful, the all good, demand that you confess that you belong to a "party" that is evil. How does the public know that the Islamic Jihad is evil? Because the "only democracy in the Middle East" declares it to be so.
Communism in the 1940s and 1950s did bad things; the 2012 Islamic Jihad is fighting military occupation by the means it has, none of which are attractive. Extremism from the top of the power pyramid, engenders extremism from below.
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