Thursday, June 27, 2024
1905 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is established at "The "Continental Congress of the Working Class" in Chicago, Illinois;
1950 US sends 35 military advisers to South Vietnam
1977 5-4 Supreme Court decision allows lawyers to advertise
2018 Joseph Crowley is defeated in New York by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
2019 US Supreme Court rules the Constitution doesn't prohibit partisan gerrymandering, allowing a ruling party to redraw electoral boundaries
On the recliner at 10:10 and up at 1:45 to let Lilly out, then I half-slept for about an hour, and back up again. I finished my oatmeal at about 4:20, dozed off, and woke at about 6.
Prednisone, day 46, 15 mg., day 10. I took my pills at 5:30 yesterday morning and at 4 this morning, followed by overnight Irish oatmeal & berries. Morning meds plus 10 mg. of HCT at 6:40; set timer for 1 hour. 123/76. I took a full 10 mg. pill of HCT today. CGM = 297.
According to another story in this morning's WaPo, the Israeli government blames the UN for the food shortages, increasing starvation, approaching famine, and difficulty in distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza.
The worldviews of Israel and strong Israel supporters are radically different from that of the rest of the world. The former accurately see Israel as a small democratic nation surrounded by enemies, the most powerful of which - Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and multiple militias - seek to destroy it as a nation-state entity. The feeling of constant existential vulnerability has predictably grown since October 7th. Much of the rest of the world sees Israel as a strong, thriving, nuclear power, with one of the world's strongest militaries, engaged for decades in military occupation, racist and fascistic oppression, and ethnic cleansing if not apartheid, and now war crimes if not genocide against indigenous Arab Palestinians. Because Israel is a self-created and self-defined Jewish state, populated mostly by Jews, and supported by most diaspora Jews, the relationship between the Jewish state and the Jewish nation, tribe, family, or people, i.e., Jews generally, is a subject always open to debate, often fierce debate. I've been reading two books recently (and currently) about the issue. The first is a collection of essays by Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State (1992). The second is What Shall I Do With This People: Jews and the Fractious Politics of Judaism (2002) by Milton Viorst.
Leibowitz was an Israeli polymath, a deeply observant Jew, and a Zionist who was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1903 and moved to Mandate Israel in 1935 where he lived till his death in 1994. Isaiah Berlin said of him: "It is not so much his intellectual attainments and achievements as a thinker and teacher that have made so profound an impression on me . . . as the unshakeable moral and political stand which he took up for so many years in the face of so much pressure to be sensible, to be realistic, not to let down the side, not to give comfort to the enemy, not to fight against current conventional wisdom . . . Of him I believe it can be said more truly than of anyone else that he was the conscience of Israel . . . " Milton Viorst was a journalist and a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs widely published in national and international journals. Both writers address issues concerning the relationship between Jews and the Jewish state of Israel and, more basically, the issue of who is a Jew. To Leibowitz, a Jew is one who practices halakhah, who observes the commandments found in the Torah and in the Oral Law. "Apart from [the institutions of halakhic practices], Judaism does not exist." He makes the point that other than halakhah, there is nothing, no commonality, that makes worldwide Jewry a definable, unique "nation." Viorst starts his book relating one of my favorite jokes about the inherent fractiousness of religions, about the Jew stranded on an island who builds his own town, but with two synagogues, one to pray in and one "I wouldn't set foot in!" The title of his book comes from Moses's exasperated rhetorical question to God [Exodus 17: 4-6] when the Jews he led over Sinai were ready to stone him because of the hardships they were suffering. Mostly it is a polemic against Jewish religious fundamentalism and religious nationalism and messianism.
It is in large measure this question of Jewish identity and the relationship between Jews, however self-defined and others-defined, and the State of Israel, that makes it difficult to assess the State of Israel, its governments, and its history, especially concerning the treatment of Arab Palestinians. To many in our world, Israel, after 1967 and more especially after October 7th, has become a pariah state, a state like South Africa under apartheid. The response of many Israelis and their supporters is to call their critics antisemitic, biased, or simply bigoted against Jews. Israel = Jews collectively and Jews collectively = Israel and therefore, opposition to Israel's policies and practices = hostility to Jews.
The situation is complicated by the remembrance of the Holocaust, the Shoah, the attempted annihilation of Europe's Jews not only by the Nazis but also by so many non-German, willing accomplices. To be a Jew in this dangerous world is, I suspect, to be naturally and predictably at least somewhat wary, self-protective, watchful, and on the lookout with a tendency to "circle the wagons" when outside threats appear. How these characteristics must be magnified in the case of Israeli Jews surrounded by enemies with both the will and the means to kill them and their children. I, not a Jew, not an Israeli, can never fully appreciate this. Nonetheless, the tendency to circle the wagons when criticized too often leads to blame-deflecting, blame-shifting, and scapegoating, to a refusal to admit that Israel, like every other country, and Jews, like other people, can be guilty of very bad conduct. How often have I thought, when hearing one excuse or denial or another from the Israeli government or IDF, 'I can't believe my own government, why should I believe Israel's?' If Israeli Jews believe that every criticism of their actions springs only from the bigotry of antisemitism, they are relieved from the challenge of trying to assess the criticism honestly, to examine their consciences. It also fosters a deep "us and them" culture, Jews and Gentiles, friends and foes. Once we are relieved of the burden of self-assessment, of examining our consciences, our behaviors are prone to become only more offensive. I think it was particularly perverse that Israel is blaming the United Nations humanitarian agencies for the inability to get humanitarian aid to the increasingly starving, increasingly diseased people of Gaza when all the evidence from journalistic and human rights agencies attest that the main causes of the problem are Israeli.
Like the Wikipedia editors, I do not believe the ADL is a reliable reporter on Israeli-Palestinian relations. Nor do I believe AIPAC or the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Christians United for Israel, Hadassah, the Jewish Agency, or similar groups deeply devoted to supporting and defending Israel. I do not believe Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing, racist coalition government and I do not believe the IDF. Knowing what I know of my own government's duplicity (Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the Afghan Report, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, spinmeisters, , . . .), how can I believe Israel's?
Furthermore, I can't believe that conflating opposition to Israeli policies and practices concerning Palestinians with antisemitism is: "good for the Jews." How does tarring me and others opposed politically and morally to the oppression of marginal minorities with the slur of 'antisemite' or bigot help Jews generally? How does it help the many Jews, in Israel and in the diaspora, who support the Jewish State's legitimacy and right to exist but are also opposed to major Israeli government policies and practices? Although the numbers are dwindling, there is still a Left and a peace movement in Israel and a larger one in the diaspora, and they, like their opponents in and out of Israel, rely on or at least aspire to the support and goodwill of non-Jews like me.
My thoughts are not very coherent or logical; my thoughts about Israel, at least since its rightward turn with the election Menachem Begin and a Likud government in 1977 often are not. But I hope it helps to try to write them down and see the non sequiturs in black and white so I can be like Flannery O'Connor who wrote to her friend: "I don’t have my novel outlined and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don’t know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again."
Anniversaries. First, ah, the Wobblies. The anniversary takes me back decades to John Dos Passos' wonderful trilogy USA which I enjoyed so much, substantively and stylistically.
Second, egad, we had "advisors" in Vietnam/French Indochina 4 years before Ho Chi Minh defeated and mortified the French in Dien Bien Phu when Harry Truman was president! Then we financed the French desperate attempt to hold on to its Asian empire. Then we invaded.
Third, in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, the Supreme Court held it was unconstitutional to prevent lawyers from advertising their services. The ad that triggered the case mentioned a number of routine legal service - divorce, adoption, bankruptcy, and change of name - and promised "reasonable fees." As it has turned out, the only ads we see and hear are from wealthy personal injury lawyers working on contingent fees: "One call, that's all!" from Gruber Law Offices. "Just dial 7!" form Gendlen, Liverman, and Rhymer. "Let them know you mean business!" from Hupy and Abraham. "It IS about the money!" from Warshafsky Law.
Fourth, AOC defeated the incumbent Democratic representative! I mention it only because I think she's terrific, a great addition to the House, brilliant, dedicated, eloquent, with good basic values.
Lastly, the Supreme washed its hands of the dirty business of redistricting so that elected officials get to pick their favorite voters instead of voters picking their favorite elected officials. Result: minority rule, as we have had in Wisconsin for the last 10 years.
The Biden-Trump debate is on CNN tonight at 8. It is all we have heard about for the last week on both CNN and MSNBC. It appears there have been no newworthy occurrences in the Americas, Europe, mainland Asia and the subcontinent, the Middle East, or anywhere else for the last week, making way for endless discussions by talking heads about the upcoming debate between these two guys.
Watching the first half of the debate: a national embarassment, a disgrace.
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