11/19/23

 Sunday, November 19, 2023

In bed at 11:30, waited for Geri's return, up at 8.  Let Lilly out.  38°, sunny day, high of 46°, wind N at 7 mph, 4-11/18,  The sun rose at 6:18 and will set at 4:24, 9+35.       

Treadmill; pain.  I woke up with back pain but w/o CPP.🙏  . . .  It didn't take long for the CPP to show up.  I'm wondering if sitting is a trigger.  If so, I'm in trouble. . .  Laid down and fell asleep around noon, CPP gone upon awakening, but returned.  

Edward Said.  I watched the second half of a 2-hour interview of Edward Said in 2002, said to be his last interview as he suffered from a terminal case of leukemia.  He was a renowned literary scholar, musician, and advocate for the cause of the Palestinian people in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, where he was born in 1935.  I was interested primarily in what he had to say about Israel and the Palestinians.  His family moved to Egypt and then the U.S. in his youth.  He went to Princeton for his undergraduate education, and to Harvard for his master's and doctoral education, and he taught at Columbia for many years.  He was close to Yasser Arafat for many years and was on the Palestinian National Council from 1977 to 1991.  He split from them after the Oslo Accords in 1993, which he called a disgraceful sellout.  He was not a fan of the Palestinian leadership.  It was interesting seeing this distinguished Palestinian/American scholar speak on behalf of the suffering and mistreatment of the Palestinian people and calling for a single-state solution with equal citizenship for Israelis and Palestinians.  He considered the U.S. brokered "peace process a charade or a meretricious canard.  As I watched, I thought of how much worse matters became in the 21 years since his interview, years dominated by Israel's governance by Likud Party politicians and Binyamin Netanyahu.   I think of Oriana Fallaci: "No matter what system you live under, there is no escaping the law that it's always the strongest, the cruelest, the least generous who win."

Biden editorial in this morning's WaPo.  There is a long piece by Joe Biden in this morning's paper, repetitively asserting Israel's right to defend itself and calling for "a two-state solution" to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people.  In America's unending virtue-signalling, he calls attention to his advice to Netanyahu to observe international law about protecting innocent civilians and hails the fact that some humanitarian relief is being delivered to Gaza.  He levels no criticism at Israeli policies and practices in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Gaza itself, notably the growth of settlements, displacement of Palestinians, thefts of land, and the multi-year blockade of Gaza and now the relentless bombardment and destruction of Gazan life and infrastructure.  Does anyone other than Joe Biden really believe that a two-state "solution" is realistic anymore, with 600,000 to 800,000 Israeli Jews living throughout "Samaria and Judea"?  With perhaps tens of thousands of Israelis (Srugim) believing in  Eretz Yisrael Hashema including all of the West Bank, Gaza, greater Jerusalem, much of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt?  Or is this just more of the charade or meretricious canard about a so-called 'peace process'?  I suspect that the so-called 'peace process', if it ever had a real chance, met its end with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on 11/4/1995, or perhaps with Yasir Arafat's rejection of the Clinton-brokered deal offered by Barak Ehud's government in 2000.   Give us a break, Joe.  Wake up and smell the coffee.  Stop pissing on our shoes and telling us it's raining.  Other clichés come to mind.  

Santiago, Italia    I also watched this documentary on OVID while Geri was at the symphony.  The first half was about Pinochet's takeover of Chile and his rule from 1973 to 1990.  I think of this as the Nixon-Kissinger-CIA coup that overthrew the democratically-elected socialist government of Chile and installed a fascist, military dictator.  So much for America's belief in democracy and majority rule.  Again we see Fallaci: "No matter what system you live under, there is no escaping the law that it's always the strongest, the cruelest, the least generous who win."  

It was interesting to watch 2 hours of Edward Said stating his views on Israel and the Palestinians, and on colonialism and imperialism, knowing that he was labeled a "terrorist" and a "radical" by many on both sides of the issues and was the subject of a lengthy file maintained on him by the FBI, and then to watch interviews of many Chilians who appeared to be perfectly normal middle-class human beings who also were members of the Communist Party, though certainly not Stalinists.