2/25/23

 Saturday, February 25, 2023

In bed around 9, awake at 4:20, and up at 4:49 thinking of Sinatra's September Song, being forced off the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1964 because of snow storm & lack of tire chairs, stuck in Pittsburgh, on way to Brunswick?, back on turnpike & forced to remove chains, volunteering for Vietnam, guilt.  22℉ outside, wind WSW at 5, winds up to 15 today, gusts to 28, wind chill is currently 16℉, ranging from 12 to 25℉ today,   1.4 inches of wintery mix in last 24 hours.  Sunrise at 6.34, sunset at 55:35, 11+1.  Let Lilly out at 6.  Lighted my Kitty candle and Tom candle.

How American Jews’ relationship with Israel went from ‘Exodus’ to anguish: In ‘We Are Not One,’ Eric Alterman explores American Jews’ struggle with their tribal loyalties and Israeli politics.  Perspective by Jane Eisner in this morning's WaPo: "Alterman’s well-researched book is the latest example of a more skeptical reexamination of the complex relationship between Jews in the diaspora and their spiritual homeland. The work punctures the notion that American support of Israel was simply picking the good guys over the bad guys. The rise of a far-right government in Jerusalem has hastened the soul searching, forcing a reckoning with what Zionism looks like in the extreme and renewing concern over whether a Jewish state can ever be a truly democratic one.  Just as many White Americans are finally recognizing how racial inequities were built into the foundation of this nation, we now wonder whether the same is true in Israel and whether a genuinely pluralistic state — among Arab and Jew, secular and religious — is even possible." . . .Now Jews in the United States are becoming increasingly vocal in criticizing the Palestinian occupation, which has reached its 55th year, and the unequal treatment of Arab citizens within Israel. Criticism of the current government is also growing among American-born intellectuals in Israel in the political center and on the right; even writers such as Yossi Klein Halevi and Hillel Halkin are recognizing that their beloved country’s existential challenge is now coming from within, from forces intent on exerting Jewish dominance at the expense of a pluralistic democracy. . .  What these writers express, and what is too often missing from the clinical, critical writing on this subject, is the sheer anguish felt by those who are terrified that this near-miraculous experiment in Jewish sovereignty is beginning to unravel. The “Leon Uris version of Israel’s history,” which elevates the Jewish narrative and denigrates the Palestinian one, and which Alterman references throughout his book, is not so much untrue as incomplete. This work, and the work of others, is helping American Jews gain a fuller and truer understanding of this history, but as they grapple with Israel’s evolution they must contend with their attachment to beliefs that are centuries old and, like all tribal mythologies, still serve a purpose."  We are tattooed in our cradles  . . . 

Jimmy Carter’s warning: Without peace, Israel must face ‘apartheid’  'Unlike all other living former occupants of the White House, Carter explicitly viewed Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank as a violation of international law, an impediment to the creation of a separate, viable Palestinian state, and campaigned against them after he left office. In 2006, Carter published a book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” that warned that “apartheid” conditions prevailed in Israel in a context where millions of Palestinians were deprived of the same rights as their Israeli neighbors and where the expansion of settlements was only furthering Palestinian dispossession. . .  “Apartheid is a word that is an accurate description of what has been going on in the West Bank, and it’s based on the desire or avarice of a minority of Israelis for Palestinian land. It’s not based on racism,” he told NPR’s Steve Inskeep in a January 2007 interview. “This is a word that’s a very accurate description of the forced separation within the West Bank of Israelis from Palestinians and the total domination and oppression of Palestinians by the dominant Israeli military.”

I remember the furor that arose with the publication of Carter's Apartheid book.  The word itself conjured association with South Africa and the segregation and oppression of native Africans by the descendants of Boer and English colonists.  But the truth hurts and I find it harder and harder to believe that Israel has not become a racist, fascist state and that it is destined to stay that way as long as it is propped up as it is by the United States.  The great victory that it won in the 1967 war, gaining control over the West Bank and East Jerusalem has turned out to be pyrrhic.   Like the dog that caught the bus, Israel doesn't know what to do about the land and the people it captured.  55 years of occupation, inherent inability to maintain its status as both Jewish and democratic, ever-growing populations of settlers in the Occupied Territories rendering a Two-State Solution impossible,  birthrates among the Haredim and Religious Zionists compared to secular and moderate Israelis guaranteeing the continuation of right-wing governments - all coalesce in producing the modern Israel.  Quo vadis, Israel?  Quo vadis, America?

From Reckonings by V, formerly Eve Ensler: k I have no interest in countries. They are arbitrary demarcations, divisive slashes made by patriarchs on the basis of theft, greed, colonialism, ownership, and violence.  Most often they are lands stolen from the Indigenous at the high cost of genocide.  I do not have one patriotic bone in my body.  I have a serious aversion to flags.  The make me nauseous.  I blanch at the national anthem or anytime some says something like "we are the greatest country on earth."  I am not a country.  My only loyalty is to kindness, dignity, freedom, equality, and life force."

Doe and 2 fawns trigger some heartache.  They came to our birdfeeders around 5 p.m.  The doe used her tongue to get seeds out of the squirrel proof tube; the fawns ate seeds on the ground.  I recorded it and felt some heartache that I couldn't send the video to Kitty.