6/4/24

Tuesday, June 4, 2024

In bed near 10 and awake at 1:07, unable to sleep, up at 1:27 to take a fasting glucose reading after eating nothing after dinner last night: 309, down a tad from yesterday's 317 but worrying.  I moved to the TV room, lit a candle, and finished typing the passage in Leibowitz's 40 Years After, the paragraph describing some of what the Israeli government and IDF had descended to since occupying Arab lands and its effects on the Israeli Jewish people.  . . . At 2:45, Lilly got Geri up to let her outside.  I retrieved the walker from the kitchen where Geri had left it last night & Geri returned to bed while I waited for Lilly to do her business. . . Breakfast #1 at 4 a.m., Raisin Nut Bran with blueberries, raspberries, banana, and prednisone. . . Sun-up at 5:13,  blew out Kitty candle at 5:30, turned off the lamp, and tried to sleep.  Dozed off and back up at 6:35.

Prednisone, day 23.  Sleeplessness?  Perhaps euphoria, or am I simply so happy to be free of crippling pain and disability?  As Shirley Wiegand, our faculty friend and confidante of Anitas Hill used to say when she was very tired, I'm dragging major butt today.  Earrands run to the hardware store for 7.5W light bulbs, Walgreens for Geri's gauze wrap, Wild Birds Unlimited for suet and safflower seeds, and Sendik's for more ice for Geri's knee, and I'm exhausted because of half-night's sleep.  Later I emptied the dishwasher and refilled it with the same result: crippling backache and exhaustion.

I'm grateful to Yeshayahu Leibowitz, for his clear thinking and writing about what happened in and to Israel with the military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem in 1967.  He writes beautifully and indicts Israel's treatment of their Palestinian victims ruthlessly and relentlessly, ever since 1967.  I'm also grateful to Ariah  Neir for the following:

Is Israel Committing Genocide? by Aryeh Neier in the June 6, 2024 edition of the New York Review of Books.  Excerpts follow:

 . . .  Hamas operatives do not wear uniforms, and they have novisible military bases.  Hamas has embedded itself in the civilian population of Gaza, and its extensive  network of tunnels provides its combatants the ability to move around quickly.  Even if Israel's bombers were intent o n minimizing harm to civilians, they would have had difficulty doing so in their effort to destroy Hamas.

And yet, even believing this, I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.  What has changed  my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of hmanitarian assistance into the territory.

As early as October 9 top Israeli officials declared that they intended to block the delivery of food, water, and electricity, wihich is essential for purifying water and cooking.  Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's words have become infamous: "I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip.  There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.  We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly."  The statement conveyed the view that has seemed to guide Israel's approach throughout this conflict: that Gazans are collectively complicit for Hamas' crimes on October 7. . .

The cumulative effect of these measures [obstruction of humanitarian aid] is that many Palestinians - especially young children - are starving . . .  The obstruction of humanitarian assistance is unlikely to effect Hamas combatants directly.  Even in conditions of famine, men with guns find a way to get food.  It is those who bear no responsibility for Hamas's crimes who are suffering  most.

I have been engaged in efforts to protect human rights for more than six decades . . . I cannot recall any dispute over rights that aroused greater passion and more debate than that involving the war in Gaza since October 7. . . Whatever else emerges from this war and whatever judgment comes from the ICJ, it is evident that Israel has done itself as well as its Palestinian victims long-tern harm.

Both Neier and Leibowitz are Jews.  Neier is a Holocaust survivor and former CEO of the ACLU and of Human Rights Watch, of which he is also a co-founder.

Getting angry at God in Spoon River.

Wendell P. Bloyd

They first charged me with disorderly conduct, / There being no statute on blasphemy.

Later they locked me up as insane / Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard.

My offense was this: / I said God lied to Adam, and destined him / To lead the life of a fool, / Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good.

And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple / And saw through the lie, / God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking / The fruit of immortal life.

For Christ’s sake, you sensible people, / Here’s what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis:

“And the Lord God said, behold the man / Is become as one of us” (a little envy, you see), / “To know good and evil” (The all-is-good lie exposed):

“And now lest he put forth his hand and take / Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever:

Therefore the Lord God sent Him forth from the garden of Eden.” (The reason I believe God crucified His Own Son / To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it sounds just like Him. )

I read Wendell Bloyd's epitaph and I think back to a conversation I had at the breakfast table in Tom and Sue Clark's kitchen in which I suggested that nobody really succeeds at the challenge of theodicy,  understanding why a perfectly good, almighty, and all-knowing God permits so much evil and suffering in the world he created. The term literally means “justifying God.”  I suggested that it is a lot easier making the case that God is a mean prick than making the case that He is all-loving Father figure,  etc.  I found and still find relief from the problem only by stepping back from believing in the traditional God of St. Thomas Aquinas, et al.  If a personal, human-like God is not responsible for creating or authorizing all the evil and suffering on Earth, then there is no reason to be always mad at him for putting us into and through what Bloyd calls "the wretched tangle."  I love the simple, colloquial, concluding kvetch: "It sounds just like him."😂