New York Congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Hamas

On October 10, 2023, the New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote about a rally which took place in New York's Times Square on October 8th--one day after Hamas (joined by others, including  members of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad), conducted its massacres and kidnappings in Israel. 

At the time of the rally, it was known that several hundred people in Israel had been murdered. Ultimately it would be learned that 1200 people had been killed in the sadistic rampages--in addition to the 250 people who had been taken to Gaza as hostages.  Those murdered, and those kidnapped, included babies, children, adults, and the elderly.

In his October 10th column, Bret Stephens wrote the following, in part:

On Saturday morning in southern Israel, Hamas murdered hundreds of people at a music festival and kidnapped others at gunpoint to serve as human shields in Gaza. On Sunday afternoon in Midtown Manhattan, a speaker at a rally of pro-Palestinian and left-wing groups celebrated that atrocity...

“As you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters,” a speaker said. “But I’m sure they’re doing very fine despite what The New York Post says.” He was met with cheers.

I went to see the rally for myself: Would there be even perfunctory condemnation of Hamas’s methods? A brief nod of sympathy to Israel’s anguish? Some banal nod to the cause of peace and nonviolence? Not that I heard. What I saw was giddiness and gloating, as if someone’s team had won the World Cup. Hamas had perpetrated the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and the crowd was euphoric.

Similar scenes unfolded across the world. In London, an estimated 5,000 demonstrators gathered near the Israeli embassy and shot off fireworks toward the building. At a rally at the Sydney Opera House in Australia, chants of “Free Palestine” gave way to the underlying emotion: “Fuck the Jews.” At Harvard, almost three dozen campus groups issued a joint statement holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” A statement from Yalies4Palestine insisted that “Breaking out of a prison requires force, not desperate appeals to the colonizer.”

Whatever else might be said about these demonstrations and declarations, give the protesters and manifesto writers points for honesty. “Pro-Palestine,” to many of them, is pro-Hamas. “Anti-occupation” is opposition to Israel’s right to exist in any form. Israelis are guilty by virtue of being Israelis, so their murder and humiliation is something to laugh at. When “Zionism Is Genocide,” as placards at the demonstration put it, then no means are too awful to put a stop to it.

If twice as many Israelis had been murdered on Saturday, would it have chastened the demonstrators or made them doubly glad, by the algorithm in which the terminally self-righteous become cheerleaders for slaughter?

The rally was condemned widely, including by such left-oriented figures as U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  The New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which had posted a tweet about the rally before it occurred, subsequently distanced itself from what took place.

One of those attending the rally was Darializa Avila Chevalier--who is on the ballot tomorrow in New York City's 13th Congressional District primary; the district includes Upper Manhattan and parts of the West Bronx. 

Ms. Avila Chevalier, the daughter of Dominican immigrants, is a community organizer, an educator, and a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the City College of New York.  She is a Democratic Socialist, and has been endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.  

Her opponent is five-term incumbent Congressman Adriano Espaillat. Mr. Espaillat is also Dominican-American, and is the Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He is also a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, but is regarded, particularly in comparison to Ms. Avila Chevalier, as being more moderate, which includes the subject of Israel. The Congressman has been endorsed by such Democrats as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

Ms. Avila Chevalier has had to defend herself concerning old tweets, reposts, and statements. In one tweet, from 2021, she posted: "Fuck Kamala Harris," concerning comments the then-Vice President made about immigration. In 2019, she posted this: "I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me."  The post, one newspaper noted, was accompanied by a smiling-face emoji.  In 2020, she criticized Senator Bernie Sanders's "liberal Zionism."

In a debate with Rep. Espaillat this month on New York public radio station WNYC-FM, she was asked the following, by host Brian Lehrer:

Brian Lehrer: According to CNN, for example, during a three-day period in September 2021, you reposted now-deleted messages, declaring, "Yes, literally abolish the border," and that, "All deportation is wrong." The [tweet a caller to the show] referenced, F--using the full word--Kamala Harris, after she told Guatemalans not to come to the US illegally in 2021. And, on policing in 2020, that abolishing the police, "Means ending the police full stop, period. No more police at all, ever." And, I know you've said you've grown considerably in the years since these tweets....

Darializa Avila Chevalier: So, as you've noted, I've grown considerably since that. And I'm not interested in relitigating the politics of my tweets, which are politics of the past. I'm interested in representing this district on the issues that they face day in and day out, and the fact that we've seen so much, quite frankly, obsession with these tweets, as opposed to the substance of what we're fighting for and the substance of this campaign and what the people, the working people of this district deserve, I think is more of the same type of politics that refuses to actually engage with us, that refuses to actually acknowledge the needs of our communities.

Ms. Avila Chevalier, however, continues to defend her participation in the October 8, 2023 rally in Times Square. 

This month, as reported by the New York-oriented website "City & State," she said, in part, of the rally:

“At the core of it all for me is human dignity. And I think so often we get lost in the ‘well on this date, and on that date’ when it's all cyclical, if we don't get to the core of how we disregard the human rights and dignity of some people over others,” she said.

Yeah--this date, and on that date.  Actually, the date is germane.  Just a thought: maybe participating in an anti-Israel rally, one day after the large-scale massacres and kidnappings in Israel took place, wasn't such a good idea. 

As recently as this March, one notes, she would not condemn Hamas and its 2023 attacks.

As reported by the "City & State" article:

At a March forum with the Broadway Democrats political club, she declined to condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, when asked directly.

“The premise of that question, to me, ignores the 75 years of occupation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to and the conditions that folks were were living under before this genocide began,” she responded in part. “Palestinians have been living under a state of dispossession, of exile, of apartheid for 75 years.”

The article also noted this:

But Avila Chevalier may be changing her rhetoric as she gets closer to election day. Asked on WNYC [on June 4th] she said “yes, I do condemn Hamas,” but noted that “As far as I know, the U.S. does not send a single dime to Hamas. What we fund is the Israeli military.”

Pardon my skepticism about the sincerity of her Hamas-related condemnation.

(Please note: a detail, above, about New York Congressman Adriano Espaillat, was edited on June 28.)

The holiday

Happy Juneteenth...

I have previously, in this space, mentioned On Juneteenth, an outstanding book of essays from 2021, by the distinguished historian, and Harvard professor, Annette Gordon-Reed. 

Here is the book's amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/Juneteenth-Annette-Gordon-Reed/dp/1631498835/ref

Professor Gordon-Reed's 2008 work, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History, and the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

A Children's Dictionary

The book, below--The Picture Dictionary for Children--was a favorite of mine, during early childhood.

I have several books from childhood, and when I happen to look at them (or even, simply, see their spines on one of the bookshelves in the apartment), I'll often get a sense (usually a somewhat vague sense, to be sure, but a sense nonetheless) of that which I felt looking at them when I was very young. 

The dictionary was originally published in 1939 by Grosset & Dunlap; subsequent editions were brought out in 1945, 1948, and 1958 (the latter, two years after I was born).  The book's title page indicates that the 1958 edition was "Completely Revised," including new pictures. All of the pictures in the book are drawings, as opposed to photographs.

I was looking through the book recently, and noticed something which I found amusing.  

The book includes an entry for "radio" (see image below), which features a drawing of a large, old-fashioned radio (the kind which was a piece of furniture, and which had a place of prominence in many homes, during radio's most popular years as a medium). 

The book also includes a definition of the word "broadcast" (see below), which includes, likewise, a reference to radio.

Yet the 1958 edition, interestingly, does not have an entry for "television," despite television's ubiquity at the time (and whose rise, as a cultural force, had been accompanied by a significant decline in radio's popularity). There are, in the book, definitions of telegram, and telephone (see image)--but not television.  I also looked up abbreviations for television, on the off-chance they might have been included--such as "TV," and "Tee-Vee." "Tee-Vee" had been employed as a written abbreviation during the medium's early years--in some newspapers and magazines, for example. But neither abbreviation--as with the word television itself--appears in the dictionary I very much enjoyed as a child.

Television Influence, 1955

Influence--influences of many sorts (literary, popular culture, art, sports, science, etc.)--can be found in unexpected places.

Below is an image from the book The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book, by Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris. The book was published in hardcover by Little, Brown in 1973. A paperback edition was released by Ticknor & Fields in 1991.

There are many images of baseball cards in the book, including one from 1955, for the player Wilmer "Billy" Shantz.  In 1954, he was a catcher with the Athletics, during their final season in Philadelphia; he stayed with the team in 1955, for its first season in Kansas City.  

His baseball career began in 1948.  In addition to his time with the Athletics, he played for various Minor League teams; a good deal of his career was spent with Triple A teams. In 1959 and 1960 he played for the New York Yankees' Triple A club in Richmond, and in 1960 was brought back to the Majors and played in one Yankees game. It was his last Major League appearance.

He returned to the Richmond team for two seasons.  He then stayed in the Yankees' Minor League system for the remainder of his career--which ended in 1969--as a player/coach, and as a manager. 

His brother was pitcher Bobby Shantz, who had a lengthy Major League career, and was the American League's Most Valuable Player in 1952.

The card below, from the Bowman company, is made to look like a television set; the picture of Mr. Shantz serves, ostensibly, as the television image.  (The bottom of the card, at its center, says, for emphasis, "Color TV.") 

The authors wrote: "Around 1955, the creative people in the bubble gum game, starved as they were for new marketing and promotional techniques, decided that perhaps it was time to take advantage of the latest national craze--television."