5/18/24

 Saturday, May 18, 2024

Prednisone, day 6, and I still have bilateral shoulder pain and hand pain in the morning.  I overcame the temptation to sleep on my bed last night and spent the night on the recliner again.  I was awake in the middle of the night and listened to the first part of the NYTimes Magazine long feature "The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel," the balance of which I listened to when I awoke at 5 a.m.

Major accomplishment: (1) I lay down and napped, under the covers, on my bed and got up on my own.  Getting up from a left-side laydown was not bad, but doing the same from the right side was a problem.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this persistent shoulder (and hand/wrist/fingers) pain will disappear very soon due to the prednisone.  I wish I had paid more attention to Dr. Ryzka when he mentioned something about when I would feel better.  I hope to sleep in bed tonight for the first time in two months.

Two telling tales about Israelis, Israel's government, and the Palestinians.  One is a guest opinion in this morning's NYTimes by Megan K. Stack entitled "The View Within Israel Turns Bleak."  She describes the hard, bitter, venomous attitude of the Israeli public toward Palestinian Arabs, not just in the Occupied Territories, or "districts" as the Israeli government calls them, but in Israel itself, where about 20% of the population is Arab.  She describes the widespread distribution of military rifles and ammunition by the government among Israeli Jews, but not among Israeli Arabs and the widespread fear among Israeli Arabs.  She reminds me of a term I heard for the first time yesterday or the day before watching the Isaiah Berlin Lecture at Oxford University by Professor Margaret MacMillan of the University of Toronto: "Kabinettskriege" or "cabinet wars."  Cabinet wars, unlike "total wars," were limited in scope, goals, and outcomes, and limited to fewer and more professional fighters.  Total wars engage total populations, involve more of the total population through conscription and otherwise, and have massively different impacts on people's thinking.  Total wars lead to widespread hatred and demonization of the enemy, meaning not just the combatants but the peoples from which they come.  "We're gonna have to zap, the dirty little Jap," and all that.  The Tokyo firebombings, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki become acceptable in total war, not in cabinet wars.  From the beginning, the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts have been total war, existential war, giving rise to near-ubiquitous fear and hatred.  I say "near" ubiquitous because there was a "Left" in Israel ab initio, and at least until October 7, 2023, there were many Israeli Jews who worked for and yearned for peace with the Palestinians.  Not so many anymore.

     The other piece is the very long historical article I listened to during the night and early morning from the current NYTimes magazine "The Unpunished: How the Extremists Took Over Israel" by  Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti.  It's the history of the Settler Movement in Israel, of "From the River to the Sea," of Gush Emunim and Greater Israel, of Exodus and "This land is mine, God gave this land to me."  It's the story of racism and apartheid and so much of what is wrong with Israel, has been wrong from the beginning and became worse after the 1967 war.  It's the story of Israel's right-wing terrorist movements, of Rabbi Meir Kahane, of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, of Yigal Amir and Yitzhak Rabin, of Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich.  It's the story of how Israel became like America's Jim Crow South, and has become or is becoming a pariah state.

LTMW I see our good neighbor John MacGregor out for a walk in the 70℉ sunny weather.  He wears a short-sleeved, lilac-colored shirt and coral-colored Bermuda shorts, with his arms crossed behind his hunched back resulting from childhood polio.  He stops to study something on the street or in the grass on our lawn before deciding to proceed up into Mequon rather than down County Line Road.  I wonder whether his choice is affected by the gentle hill on County Line vs. the level road in Mequon.  I doubt it since he appears to be in very good condition from his multiple walks day in and day out.  I almost always feel some shame at my own non-existent exercise habits when I see John out and about.  We're the same age and he has had some daunting health scares since we have been next-door neighbors, but I daresay he will long outlive me, and live better, despite the history of polio, because of his exercise discipline.

    I also see a female goldfinch plucking a big beak full of nesting material from the $8 cotton ball I have hanging on one of our shepherd's crooks.  Her male partner is perched on the tube feeder with several strands of cotton stuck on his beak but blowing horizontally in the steady breeze.  I need to supplement the sunflower and safflower seeds in the feeder this afternoon.

Schroeder the Fisherman

I sat on the bank above Bernadotte/ And dropped crumbs in the water,

Just to see the minnows bump each other, until the strongest got the prize.

Or I went to my little pasture /  Where the peaceful swine were asleep in the wallow,

Or nosing each other lovingly, / And emptied a basket of yellow corn,

And watched them push and squeal and bite, / And trample each other to get the corn.

And I saw how Christian Dalllman's farm, / Of more than three thousand acres,

Swallowed the patch of Felix Schmidt,  / As a bass will swallow a minnow.

And I say if there anything in man - / Spirit, or conscience, or breath of God

That makes him different from fishes or hogs,  /  I'd like to see it work!

Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology (1914)