Monday, January 15, 2024
In bed around 9 and up at 3:45 to let Lilly out into -6° cold, high of +5°, low of -9°. Wind Chill Advisory with wind W at 14 mph, 9-14/25, wind chills as low as -35°. mostly cloudy day ahead. Sunrise at 7:20, sunset at 4:41, 9+20. The sun is 91,436,,000 miles away and it feels like it. Lilly was out for only about 3 mintues. Solar noon will be at 12:01 p.m. with the sun gaining altitude to 26°.
Treadmill; pain. I woke with the usual: sore left shoulder, right wrist, upper back. 30:42 & 0.75. while watching a 1 hour British debate on YouTube on the proposition: Anit-Zionism is Anti-Semitism. I'm not sure of the setting [Intelligence squared] but with the audience, the proposition failed, 18% to 76%, balance undecided. Mehdi Hasan was one of the debaters, one the negative side.
More thoughts on Israel, Gaza, and the Genocide hearing. I wish my thoughts were clearer about what is happening, and has been happening for a long time, in Israel. We have and have had so many very good Jewish friends in our lives and we know, or have a very good idea, of what Israel means to them. I also know that I will never know what it is to be a Jew (or a Black or Native American or any other historically persecuted minority.) What I don't know is what they think of Netanyahu and his coalition govenment, what they think of how the war in Gaza is being conducted, whether they have friends or even family who were affected by the massacre and kidnappings on October 7th. We have an upcoming dinner with 3 Jewish friends in about 10 days. They are secular Jews, but proudly and intentionally Jewish. All have visited Israel, some more than once. I have to believe that for every Jew, what happened to the Jews during the October 7th massacres and kidnapping happended to him or her, to his parents, her children, their families and neighbors. It was because they were Jews that they were killed and kidnapped. IF our friends had been visiting one of the targeted kibbutzs on October 7th, they would have been killed, raped, or kidnapped because they are Jews. Will Gaza come up, the war, Hamas, the Palestinians, settlers, Netanyahu? Or will these matters be shunned, like views on abortion and other potentially hot topics?
Will Netanyahu, the settler movement, and the destruction of Gaza turn Israel into a pariah state? Or is it, or will it become like Northern Ireland during 'the Troubles,' not a pariah but looked down upon as a dangerous and hopelessly, hate-torn, conflicted society? Or like South Africa during its long history of apartheid? The religious Zionists, the Srugim, seem to me to be Israel's evangelicals, so convinced of thier special relationship with the Almighty and of their divine calling that they are quite willing to trample on the interests of others to fulfill that divine calling, willing to consider all who oppose them as instruments of Beelzebub, Satan, Lucifer. Yet they control Israel's government even more than evangelicals control America's, It was no surprise that South Africa's lawyers quoted Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich in the ICJ as evidence of genocidal intent in Israel's government. Or that they similarly cited secular Netanyahu's biblical reference to Amalek calling to mind to religious Israelites God's own command to "Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’ ” 1 Samuel 15:3. Of all of Israel's enemies in the Hebrew bible, why select Amalek to mention?
To many Americans Israel is Netanyahu and Netanyahu is Israel. The same is true of the settlers in the West Bank, who number now probably many more than half a million. And Netanyahu is Israel's Trump, widely considered to be a corrupt criminal but wielding great political and governmental influence. Netanyahu and the settler movement equal Trump and the evangelicals. Netanyahu has been prime minister since 2009 for every year but one. Before that, he was the head of Likud who succeeded the Labor government of Rabin and Peres after Rabin's assassination by an adherent of the settler movement who believed Rabin was a traitor by agreeing to the Oslo Accords. Will he and Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and their many allies survive the carnage of October 7th and the war in/on Gaza? If they are replaced, it won't be by a government of the Left, for there is no Left remaining in Israel after October 7th. Nor is there any realistic hope for a "two-state solution" for the century-long struggle between the Jews and the Arabs in 'the Holy Land.' Biden and Blinken are whistling past the graveyard talking about it. Nor is there any realistic hope for a 'one-state solution.' What is left?
And what is left for the United States? The U.S. has stood as insurer or guarantor of Israel's existence for many years, Israel's best friend. We borrow money from China and elsewhere to provide $3B a year to Israel, itself a rich country. But what influence does the U.S. government really have on the Israeli government meaning, for much of modern history, on Bibi Netanyahu? Neither the Israeli government nor the U. S. government has been able to stop or even slow the settlements in the West Bank that make a two state solution practically impossible, Biden's hollow rhetoric notwithstanding. And all the hollow rhetoric from American leaders about 'respect for the laws of war' and for international law (i.e., the Geneva Conventions, Genocide Convention, etc.) didn't prevent what has happened in Gaza over the last three months. I have to believe that in the eyes of much, perhaps most of the world, we are culpably complicit in what has happened, is happening, and will happen in Gaza. Even looking at the matter simply transactionally as opposed to politically and morally, what have we gained outside of Israel? What have we lost? When the war is over ('as if'), when millions of Israeli are out for Netanyahu's political scalp, he will try to hold onto power by claiming that only he can stand up to the United States and Biden and the push for the mythical "two-state solution." The U.S. will be a 'frenemy.'
I often think of how similar the U.S. and Israel are and think of Israel as our canary in the coal mine. The rightward slide in each country. Netanyahu = Trump, settlers = evangelicals. Netanyahu claims that only he can protect Israel, Trump says "I alone can fix it. I am the chosen one. I am your voice. I am your retribution." The sense of apochalyptic peril in each country. The big difference is that in Israel, the peril is real. Hamas in the south and elsewhere. Hezbollah in the north. Righteously aggreived Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and in Israel proper. Israelies are rationally afraid of real enemies at all their doors, with thousands of rockets aimed at them and potential suicide bombers everywhere, willing to be 'martyrs.' As I wrote above, I can't know what it is to be a Jew, nor can I know what it is to be an Israeli. Nor can I know what it is to be a Palestinian in Israel, in Gaza, or in the Occupied Territories. It's no wonder my heart and head are so troubled by what occurs in 'the Holy Land' and why I fear the repercussions here and around the world.
P.S. Perhaps it is not surprising that Germany has sought to intervene in the South Africa vs. Israel genocide case in the ICJ considering the post-Holocaust relationship between Germany and Israel. However, it's notable that Namibia, formerly German South West Africa, is outraged. Germany committed the first act of genocide against the indigenous people in what is now Namibia between 1904. and 1908, building real concentration camps and killing tens of thousnds. Not surprisingly, Namibia sides with the Palestinians.
LTMW I see a red-belllied woodpcked vigorously pounding away at the frozen snow covered suet cake. He scores a big chunk and flies away with it. Still no other birds. I suppose the safflower and sunflower seeds are frozen from all the rain we had a few days ago. A solitary chickadee shows up again and again to nab a seed - or are there more than one?
A meditation poem by Emily Dickinson
642
Me from Myself — to banish —
Had I Art —
Impregnable my Fortress
Unto All Heart —
But since Myself — assault Me —
How have I peace
Except by subjugating
Consciousness?
And since We're mutual Monarch
How this be
Except by Abdication —
Me — of Me?
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