{"id":17249,"date":"2026-05-04T10:08:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T15:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=17249"},"modified":"2026-05-04T10:57:54","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T15:57:54","slug":"the-israel-palestine-quagmire-of-tragedy-comes-home-in-essay-by-jodi-melamed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=17249","title":{"rendered":"The Israel\/Palestine quagmire of tragedy comes home in essay by Jodi Melamed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Salah Sarsour.\u00a0 OIP.webp<\/em><\/p>\n

The genocide that resulted from the horrid tragedy of the Israel\/Palestine conflict remains the greatest moral dilemma extant, despite the current madness of King Donald\u2019s war on Iran. And the dilemma came home to Milwaukee when — in an opinion piece by Jodi Melamed in the Sunday May 3rd<\/sup> Journal Sentinel<\/em> Ideas section — she reiterated the situation of Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.<\/p>\n

Sarsour was recently targeted and kidnapped by ICE for his advocacy of the Palestinian people, according to a resolution passed April 21 by the Common Council to demand his immediate release.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Jews who know our history, we have seen the playbook before,\u201d Melamed writes. \u201cDisappearing the most beloved member of our community to terrorize us and fragment us is familiar to us. It was the strategy of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany and by the Russian Tzar in the Eastern European Pale of Settlement. No one should fear the knock on the door, the unconstitutional detention.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jodi<\/p>\n

Marquette Professor Jodi Melamed is a passionate lecturer and social activist. You Tube<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll let Melamed detail Sarsour\u2019s importance to the community in her piece linked below. She co-founded the Milwaukee Chapter of Jewish Voices for Peace in 2014, and remains a member-leader.<\/p>\n

Melamed and Sarsour have worked together on the Palestinian cause, she says. They exemplify the wisdom and courage of our local Jewish leaders in solidarity with Islamic fellows to fight the tragedy of Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s criminally grotesque overkill of 70,000-plus Palestinian people in response to the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, and to counter the sinister misinformation that feeds Trump\u2019s current \u201canti-semitism\u201d campaign. History already casts a shadow of profound shame and criminal accountability on contemporary Israeli leadership. As for the Israeli people, considering the history of The Holocaust\u2026<\/p>\n

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Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee. OIP<\/em><\/p>\n

Her piece initially jumped out at me because I happen to know her personally. I took a 20th<\/sup> Century American Literature course from her at Marquette University while doing work towards a PhD (which I did not complete).<\/p>\n

Melamed was perhaps my favorite of the professors I encountered in a year and a half at MU. I was deeply impressed by her passion for ideas and writing that contribute to social justice and an empowered sense of international pluralism and community.<\/p>\n

I had no idea of her activism and leadership at the time. But it all makes sense now. Dr. Melamed got us students up to speed on the work of important recent writers like Judith Butler and Gloria Anzaldua, and contemporary feminism\u2019s role in today\u2019s society and politics. I always left her class slightly buzzing. She was also a fair and rigorous critic of my own essays for her class, yet always in a supportive spirit.<\/p>\n

Hers is also the kind of quality university education under attack by the Trump administration. Melamed\u2019s essay here also underscores the very real personal fear she feels as a prominent figure in the Palestinian cause with the fate of Sarsour still in limbo.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m proud to report my congressional Rep. Gwen Moore visited Sarsour in the Clay County Detention Center in Indiana on April 24. Melamed urges other leaders supporting him to do the same.<\/p>\n

This is about an important and beloved Milwaukee community leader languishing as a prisoner of unconstitutional state-sponsored terrorism. What has our nation become?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a link to Melamed\u2019s essay:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/story\/opinion\/contributors\/2026\/04\/25\/ice-arrest-milwaukee-muslim-leader-palestine-antisemitism\/89720092007\/<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Salah Sarsour.\u00a0 OIP.webp The genocide that resulted from the horrid tragedy of the Israel\/Palestine conflict remains the greatest moral dilemma extant, despite the current madness of King Donald\u2019s war on Iran. And the dilemma came home to Milwaukee when — … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2811,155,2815,2814,2818,2808,2807,2813,2816,2809,2812,2817,2810],"class_list":["post-17249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-donald-trump","tag-eastern-european-pale-of-settlement","tag-gestapo","tag-gloria-anzaldua","tag-gwen-moore","tag-ice","tag-islamic-society-of-milwaukee","tag-jewish-voices-for-peace","tag-jodi-melamed","tag-journal-sentinel-ideas-section","tag-judith-butler","tag-salah-sarsour"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-4ud","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17249"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17262,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17249\/revisions\/17262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}