8/2/2025

 Saturday, August 2, 2025

D+267/195/1266

1790 1st US census conducted; population is 3,929,214, including 697,624 slaves

1865 Lewis Carroll published "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

1939 Albert Einstein wrote to US President FDR informing him of recent research on fission chain reactions, making possible the construction of "extremely powerful bombs."

1964 North Vietnam fired at the destroyer USS Maddox in what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

1990 Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait,  US President George H. W. Bush ordered troops to Saudi Arabia

2018 Pope Francis declared the death penalty unacceptable in all cases, reversing church teachings..

In bed near 9, up at 4:20.  57°, high of 77°, AQI of 125, Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups. 

Meds, etc.  Morning meds around noon.

Feed Gaza.  I believe the Israeli government is deliberately, intentionally, and cruelly starving the people of Gaza.  I believe that the soldiers of Hamas, which governed Gaza when Gaza was governed, are well-fed, both from stocks of food cached in tunnels and elsewhere before October 7, 2023, and from food stolen from aid convoys and civilians after the war began.  In areas of food scarcity, the well-armed are always the last to go hungry.

The Israeli government, and perhaps most of the Israeli populace, justify the starvation by reference to what Hamas did to Israeli civilians on October 7, and by the fact that Hamas had governed Gaza ever since it was put in power by the vote of the Gazan people after Israel's withdrawal in 2005.  Israel identifies the people of Gaza with the government of Gaza, holding both equally responsible for October 7.  That this has been government policy since October 7 is clear from public statements of its prime minister, its defense minister, its minister of national security, its minister of finance, and other officials.  I am not positioned to argue with the Israeli identification of Hamas with the Gazan people, but it raises the question of how much any populace is accountable for the actions of its government.  Emperor Hirohito and Führer Hitler were supported by most of their country's people, though not all.  Were the Japanese and German people fully accountable for the actions of their leaders in waging World War II?  Donald Trump has run for US president three times.  He received more votes the second time than the first, and even more votes the third time.  To what extent are we Americans accountable for his actions in, for example, supplying arms and financial support for Israel's war on Gaza, recalling that his support simply continued the policy of his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden?  

The question is not simply academic because it relates to the justification of waging Total War against a people, which is what Israel has been doing to the people of Gaza for the last 22 months.  A total war involves the massive mobilization of all of one country's resources to inflict massive destruction of all of the enemy country's resources.  If a 'limited war' is one army against another army, a total war is one populace against another populace.  Civilian resources are fair game because, directly or indirectly, they support the enemy's military efforts.  Our wars against Japan and Germany between 1941 and 1945 were total wars.  The firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden and the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed more civilian resources, human and property, than military ones, but were considered fully justified by the US and the UK.  Israel claims to be waging a fully justified defensive war on Hamas, but is clearly waging a total war on Gaza.  The question is whether its total war is justified.  The Israelis clearly think it is, while most of the rest of the world thinks it isn't.   

The Israeli government, through its prime minister and chief spokesman, Benjamin Netanyahu, claims that there is no famine or starvation in Gaza and that claims to the contrary are Hamas propaganda.  Such news graphics and reports as are available, however, state the opposite, and Israel has made it impossible to obtain more complete information by barring new media from Gaza since the beginning of the war.  No international correspondents or photo journalists have been permitted inside Gaza since October 7th.  Israeli authorities maintain that Gaza is an active war zone, where they cannot guarantee the safety of unaccompanied foreign reporters. They argue that allowing independent journalists in could endanger soldiers, require additional military protection, and risk exposing sensitive troop movements, undermining military operations, and hostage rescue efforts.  When a journalist is permitted to embed with an IDF unit, the military vets all materials, restricts movement, and requires pre-publication review of any reports.  The result is that, in very large measure, the world is prevented from obtaining independent reports from inside Gaza, while Israel dismisses reports from Gazan/Palestinian sources as Hamas propaganda.  Reports from Israel's extremist government, however,  are entitled to as much respect as reports from Donald Trump's American government, which is to say, none.  The world is left with the reports from Gazan health authorities (which most of the world accept as reliable), reports from the UN and the World Health Organization, and reports from all of the world's major international humanitarian organizations which say, with one voice, that the people of Gaza are starving and the cause of the starvation is Israeli government restrictions on humanlitarian aid that is readily available.  The inescapable judgment must be, as I wrote to open this piece, that the Israeli government is deliberately, intentionally, and cruelly starving the people of Gaza.

Is the United States complicit in Gaza's starvation?  I believe the answer is 'yes,' not in a direct way, but indirectly by totally supporting Israel's total war against the Gazans from the very beginning.  It was true of the Biden administration, and it is true of the Trump administration.  Israel could not have inflicted the massive damage on Gaza, its people, and its infrastructure (including food and clean water infrastructure) without massive American assistance.  Most of the U.S. aid to Israel —approximately $3.3 billion a year—is provided as grants under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, funds that Israel must use to purchase U.S. military equipment and services.  The War on Gaza, like the war in Ukraine, has been a boon to America's military-industrial complex, which so lavishly supports American political campaigns.  While it is true that President Trump has recently authorized more food aid to the Gazans and has called out Israeli responsibility for Gaza's widespread hunger, he also deflects attention by joining Israel in blaming Hamas for the hunger, accusing it of stealing humanitarian aid.  Even if this is true (which seems likely), it is a very minor cause compared to Israel's restrictions on access.  America's evangelical preacher ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is Israel's lickspittle.  He sees Israel as the land God promised to the Jews and their possession of the land as a prelude to the Second Coming.  He believes that it was God Himself who spared Trump in the assassination attempt in Butler, PA, last year.  He is, not surprisingly, in Netanyahu's pocket.

All of the above brings me back to the question I started out with: to what extent should a nation's people be identified with and held accountable for the acts of its government?  I can't begin to know the answer to that question. Are all the Gazans responsible for the acts of Hamas?  Are all the Israelis responsible for the acts of Netanyahu's coalition government?  Were the Japanese in Nagasaki's large Catholic community responsible for the acts of Hirohito and Tojo?  Were the Germans in Dresden, Berlin, and Hamburg responsible for the acts of Hitler?  Am I responsible for what we did to Nagasaki and to Vietnam?  

 These aren't just academic or ruminating questions.  I thought this morning that I could make up a largish sign on a piece of cardboard saying "Feed Gaza," "Stop the Starving," "Feed the Children," or even "Matthew 25: 31-46," sit for perhaps 30 minutes a day in front of our federal courthouse on my rollator, holding that sign.  I would almost surely end up on television where I could voice opposition to the starvation of the Gazans.  It would be a contribution, ineffective perhaps, but a contribution, an act of autonomy, and a taking of responsibility to speak.  Reasons not to do it: (1) I would be far from a bathroom, a real concern for a guy in his mid 80s, (2) I would probably be harassed by MAGA folks or kooks and perhaps ADL and/or other Israel Lobby supporters, (3) I might compromise friendships with Jewish friends, though hopefully not, and (4) I would probably, temporarily at least, make myself a center of attention and controversy at time of life when what I usually most desire is to take a nap or go to the bathroom.  Reasons to do it: (1) It seems like a right thing to do, and (2) it would ease my conscience.

My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky.  So wrote William Wordsworth in his famous 'The Child is Father to the Man' poem.  I thought of his words this morning while looking out my window at two wild turkey hens with their dozen or so chicks feeding on the seeds on the ground under our feeders.  I've been watching whitetail deer and wild turkeys walk about our lawns for almost 14 years now, and I still get a thrill watching them.  My heart leaps up . . . .

Some anniversary thoughts: (1)  Isn't it rather astounding that, even in our nation's first census in 1790, almost one out of every five of those counted were enslaved?    This was 14 years after the most powerful men in the nation declared to the world that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness.”  Think of the astounding hypocrisy of our primary founding document and of its draftsman, T. Jefferson.

(2) Two of my favorite books: Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

(3) The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 10th, and the game was on.  Eleven months later, I was landing on the SATS strip at Chu Lai on my way to Danang.  58,000 dead Americans and millions of dead Vietnamese later,  our ass was grass and Ho Chi Minh was the lawnmower.

(4)  After driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait, George H. W. Bush famously boasted, “It’s a proud day for America. And, by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all."  What a fool.  Some time later, I painted a painting of him and Margaret Thatcher (who claimed to have given him a spine transplant), with him exulting and the ghosts of dead victims of the war in the background.