10/23/23

 Monday, October 23, 2023

In bed by 10, asleep by 12?, bed, lzb, bed, up at 6:15, 44°, high of 58°, cloudy, windy afternoon ahead, AQI=43, wind SSW at 7 mph, 2-18,/27. Sunrise at 7:14, sunset at 5:56, 10+41.

Woke up with bait bucket thoughts: dream of being with a happy Pope Francis, me glugging wine staight from a bottle, earworm drinking song 'glorious, glorious, one keg of beer for the four of us, singing glory be to god that there are no more of us, for the four of us can drink it all alone,' wondering if life is like painting where we need to know when to stop - easier said than done with life.

Hypocrisy  From Ishaan Tharoor's column in this morning's WaPo.

There was universal revulsion and outrage in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 strike on southern Israel, which saw the brutal slaughter of some 1,400 Israelis and marked the bloodiest single day in the Jewish state’s history. But sixteen days of Israel’s campaign of reprisal in Gaza has already killed 4,651 Palestinians, according to local authorities, including close to 2,000 children. Whole neighborhoods in the crowded territory have been flattened, more than a million people are homeless and a humanitarian crisis veers from bad to worse with fuel stores close to running out. Israeli demands for the mass evacuation of parts of Gaza have raised the specter of ethnic cleansing.

Yet on Wednesday, a day before Biden’s speech, the United States deployed its veto at the United Nations Security Council to shoot down a mildly worded draft resolution put forward by Brazil calling for a humanitarian pause. It was the sole “no” vote on the table, with even allies including France voting in favor. The United States has long shielded Israel from censure at the United Nations, but the recent precedent of its scolding of Russia in the same forum makes the current moment more conspicuous.

U.S. and Western officials have decried the Russian invasion as a breach of international law, a shattering 0f the principles of the U.N. charter and a challenge to the global rules-based order writ large. Many governments in the Middle East and elsewhere in the so-called “Global South” have also condemned Russia’s aggression, but been more cautious to see Ukraine’s plight in the same moral frame as their Western counterparts. They point to the legacy of the United States’ 2003 “preemptive” invasion of Iraq, the West’s comparative indifference to hideous conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere and the hypocrisy of abetting the decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories while cheering for the freedom of peoples elsewhere. 

 On Friday, Jordan’s King Abdullah II described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “a war crime.” He said Israel was carrying out “collective punishment of a besieged and helpless people,” which ought to be seen as “a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.”

That may not trouble an Israeli leadership bent on retribution, argued Marc Lynch, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, but it’s a problem for the United States. “It is difficult to reconcile the United States’ promotion of international norms and the laws of war in defense of Ukraine from Russia’s brutal invasion with its cavalier disregard for the same norms in Gaza,” he wrote in Foreign Affairs.  . . . . 

[A]n editorial in French daily Le Monde: “In the current tense climate, their support for Israel — which is perceived as exclusive by the rest of the world — risks jeopardizing their efforts to convince Southern countries that international security is at stake in Ukraine.”

The diplomat speaking to the FT gloomily summed up the latest Gaza war’s impact: “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost … Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.” 

Solomon and David's map of the Promised Land.  A posting on my FB Yiddish Word of the Day group:

1)Before the modern state of Israel there was the British mandate, Not a Palestinian state .

2) Before the British mandate there was the ottoman empire, Not a Palestinian state .

3) Before the ottoman empire there was the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt, Not a Palestinian state .

4)Before the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt there was the ayyubid dynasty, Not a Palestinian state .Godfrey of bouillon conquered it in 1099.

5) Before the ayyubid dynasty there was the christian kingdom of Jerusalem, Not a Palestinian state .

6) Before the christian kingdom of Jerusalem there was the Fatimid caliphate, Not a Palestinian state .

7) Before the Fatimid caliphate there was the byzantine empire, Not a Palestinian state .

😎 Before the byzantine empire there was the Roman empire, Not a Palestinian state .

9) Before the Roman empire there was the hasmonean dynasty, Not a Palestinian state .

10)Before the hasmonean dynasty there was the Seleucid empire,Not a Palestinian state .

11) Before the Seleucid empire there was the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon, Not a Palestinian state .

12) Before the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon there was the Persian empire, Not a Palestinian state .

13) Before the Persian empire there was the Babylonian empire, Not a Palestinian state .

14) Before the Babylonian empire there was the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, Not a Palestinian state.

15) Before the kingdoms of Israel and Judea there was the kingdom of Israel, Not a Palestinian state .

16) Before the kingdom of Israel there was the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel, Not a Palestinian state .

17) Before the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel there was the individual state of Canaan, Not a Palestinian state . 

The posting includes the map of The Empire of David and Solomon, showing Israel to the north and Juday to the south, surrounded by the Philistines and Amelikites in what is now Gaza, the Phoenicians in what is now Lebanon, the Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites in what is now Jordan and Syria.  The West Bank was part of the kingdom of Judah.

The poster's point, I suppose, was not simply that there never was a time when Palestinians ruled, as a natin-state, over the land we know as Palestine/Israel, but also that for a period, Jews did so rule there, back when David and Solomon had an empire, i.e., were imperialists. 3,000 years ago.  I'm not sure what this is intended to prove unless it's perhaps the religious argument for greater Israel, the theme song from Exodus: 'This land is mine.  God gave this land to me.'

LTMW at 2 big Tom turkeys pecking away under our bird feeders when a (red-tailed?) hawk swooped down and scared them away, causing one to fan out his tail feathers.  A little later a group of 8-10 turkey hens spread across the front yard.  

CPP has returned today.  Rats.

Treadmill  Only 10 minutes and 0,23 mile.  Not feeling very well.  Watching more or The Final Days.

The Final Days is a documentary film on Netflix that I watched over the last 2 days, depicting the Nazis continued war on Europes' Jews even even in the final days of WWII.  It is the most disturbing documentary of the Holocaust that I have seen.  Watching this film at the same time that Russians are waging war on Ukrainian civilians and Israel is killing thousands of civilians in Gaza and is prepared to kill many thousands more makes me more persuaded than ever of that "inhumanity" is oxymoronic.  Our species is violent, predatory, capable of vast wickedness, evil.  It makes me more persuaded than ever that the idea of a loving, all powerful, God is a daydream, a fantasy created to ease our pain.  In the Eden myth in Genesis, Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and I'm thinking they came to know of the terrible Evil that inhered in themselves, that  evil that Solzhenitzhen said lies in every human heart.   I'm thinking again of that vision of The Last Judgment not being God sitting on his celestial throne passing judgment on each of us, but rather the all-revealing mirror that lets us see all of our own lives, the good and the bad.  It seems that once Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and knew they had a choice between good and evil, they opted for the evil.  It seems to fit the history of our species.  "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them . . . God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day."  And if Man is made in the image of God, what does that say about God?   He should have stopped on the fifth day.

Emergency pickup of Lizzie.  Andy called at 5:17 and asked me to pick up Lizzie at the Middle School at 5:30.  He was waiting to pick up Peter at Nicolet and Peter was late.  Geri went to get Lizzie.  God bless her.

City of Milwaukee dystopia.   Every day on average there are 2 and 1/2 people shot and injured  by gunfire.  2022 total non-fatal shootings  = 876, 2023 to date: 729  non-fatal shootings.