Reflections on the Mark Ruffalo Tweeted Apology to Israel (@MarkRuffalo)

For me, as I composed this essay, this music played in the background:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=jKVK8XH1ulY&feature=share
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=7zeJGMUm_O8&feature=share
The musical framework served to remind me about three values that are core to the world I want that works for 100% of its inhabitants:
Unconditional Love
Unconditional Positive Regard
The Golden Rule
I need all three in any life I have had, any life I am currently having, and the life I will have at every future point.
I have no urge to convince anyone of the rightness, righteousness, or goodness of these three values. I do not associate them with capitalism, command or control. They keep humans from harming each other. That’s been my experience. They also allow me common cause with their counterparts in any other spiritual practice and or belief system.

Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) Tweeted:
I have reflected & wanted to apologize for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing “genocide”. It’s not accurate; it’s inflammatory, disrespectful & is being used to justify antisemitism here & abroad. Now is the time to avoid hyperbole." 
( Source:
https://twitter.com/MarkRuffalo/status/1397023731722113032?s=20)

( SOURCE: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Genocide_Convention)
"On 11 December 1948, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was opened for signature. Ethiopia became the first state to deposit the treaty on 1 July 1949. The treaty came into force and closed for signature on 12 January 1951. Since then, states that did not sign the treaty can now only accede to it. The instrument of ratification, accession, or succession is deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations

As of December 2019, 152 states have ratified or acceded to the treaty, most recently Mauritius on 8 July 2019. One state, the Dominican Republic, has signed but not ratified the treaty."

Israel signed the UN Convention on August 17, 1949. Israel ratified the Convention on March 9, 1950. The USA signed December 11, 1948. The USA ratified the Convention on November 25, 1988.

Now let's consider a detailed exposition and brief history of the contents of the UN Convention on Genocide.

"The term "genocide" was coined during the Shoah, or Holocaust, and its prohibition was enshrined in the United Nations convention adopted in 1948; the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention is not retroactive but is applicable to United States - indigenous relations since 1988 when the United States Senate ratified it. The terms of the genocide convention are also useful tools for historical analysis of the effects of colonialism in any era. In the convention, any one of five acts is considered genocide if "committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group":
- killing members of the group;
-causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- forcibly transferring Children of the group to another group; in the 1990,s the term "ethnic cleansing" became a useful descriptive term for genocide."
(This last passage was from an indigenous people's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Page 8 - 9 paragraph 3.)

Other helpful resources are Exterminate All the Brutes, a book by Sven Lindqvist ( entire book) and
The Nature of Prejudice 25th-anniversary edition)* by Gordon Allport; specifically, Pages 14 through 15 of chapter 1.

Allport gives a 5-point scale for Acting out Prejudice: antilocution, avoidance, discrimination, physical attack, and extermination are the five points in his scale.

* - "This five-point scale is not mathematically constructed, but it serves to call attention to the enormous range of activities that may issue from prejudiced attitudes and beliefs. While many people would never move from antilocution to avoidance, or from avoidance to active discrimination or higher on the scale, still it is true that the activity on one level makes transition to a more intense level easier. It was Hitler's antilocution that led Germans to avoid their Jewish neighbors and erstwhile friends. This preparation made it easier to enact the Nuremberg Laws of discrimination which in turn made the subsequent burning of synagogues and street attacks upon Jews seem natural. The final step in the macabre progression was the ovens at Auschwitz."
"From the point of view of social consequences, much "polite prejudice" is harmless enough -being confined to idle chatter. But unfortunately, the fateful progression is, in this century, growing in frequency. The resulting disruption in the human family is menacing. And as the peoples of the earth grow ever more interdependent, they can tolerate less well the mounting friction."

This exposition brings us to Mark Ruffalo's apology. If Israel or the United States were evaluated based on the UN Convention they signed, they would have earned a failing grade. My teaching experience has taught me that there is always a story/ multiple reasons students choose to spend time and energy to fail a course of instruction. Someone makes money when either nation and Hamas violates the UN CPAP COC is likely one reason both Nations are involved in genocide per the UN CPAP COC. Consequently, no apology needs to be made, and they were not hyperbole!

This story is why I do not like Twitter. It truncates the write- proofread- edit/ revise- proofread-as-needed process. It demands a bird-brained incomplete and distracted thought process (the total character limit for messages) that just has never helped me get my voice out there for consideration and potential understanding by a broad audience.
And Twitters' biggest fan was and is POTUS45. Trump and his minions are, as I write this piece, aggressively attempting to ban the teaching of history related to slavery and prejudice (racism).

So we may also now appreciate 1.6.2021 in a broader context as the first major 2021 event down the slippery slope to losing the Democratic Republic altogether. Wage stagnation since the 1970s is another antecedent for our slippery slope milestone list, by the way. Meanwhile, in July 2021, the Jim Crow 2.0 legislative agenda with matching rulings from SCOTUS is happening daily. This is also not hyperbole or a false narrative.
And so, I would encourage @MarkRuffalo to dig deeper and re-consider and or augment his response to the Israel-Hamas deadly conflict.
(C) VernonNickersonSchoolcoach 2021. All Rights Reserved.