8/31/2026

 Monday, August 31, 2026

1928 Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weil's "The Threepenny Opera" premiered in Berlin

1941 "Great Gildersleeve," a spin-off of "Fibber McGee & Molly", debuted on radio

1946 Foghorn Leghorn, a Warner Bros. cartoon character, first debuted

1997 Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in a road tunnel in Paris

2023 Two leaders of the Proud Boys were given lengthy sentences for sedition for their assault on the US Capitol - Joseph Biggs 17 years and Zachary Rehl 15 years

2025 U.S. judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the District of Columbia issued an injunction halting the deportation of Guatemalan unaccompanied minors after advocacy groups filed an emergency appeal against the Trump administration's plan to repatriate them

In bed at 9, but still awake after 11 (the sweet tea with dinner?), transferred to LZB around 2, up around 4:30, back to bed, but couldn't sleep, up at 5; 0515 115/69/60 97 204.2;  69/88/68, thunderstorm, mostly cloudy day ahead.

Morning meds at 7:45 a.m. and Eliquis at 6 a.m. and p.m.    

These Generals Fought for Israel. Now They See ‘Jewish Terrorism’ as the Threat. From this morning's NYTimes, by Azam Ahmed, Natan Odenheimer, and Ronen Bergman.

Maj. Gen. Eyal Ben-Reuven spent his life fighting for Israel. He survived the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, when his platoon was nearly wiped out, then went on to command a division in the West Bank and lead Israel’s ground forces in the 2006 war against Hezbollah.

But in recent months, he has returned to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, touring the territory with retired generals and former Israeli officials like himself. He has walked through the remains of a Palestinian school looted by Israeli settlers, and listened to Palestinian shepherds and farmers describe being tortured by settlers who seize their livestock and land.

Now, General Ben-Reuven says he has an entirely different understanding of the risks facing Israel today.  “This, what the settlers are doing here, is the real threat to Israel,” he said, his eyes welling with emotion. “This is more concerning to me than Iran, Gaza or Lebanon.”

Other former high-ranking Israeli officials touring the West Bank with him shared the same indignation.  “This is ethnic cleansing, to put it simply,” Ephraim Sneh, a retired brigadier general and former minister of health, said of Israeli settlers’ attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.

Asaf Agmon, a retired Air Force general, went even further, comparing it to what some Israelis’ forebears endured in the Holocaust — not in the scale of the violence, he explained, but in the effort to erase the Palestinian presence from much of the West Bank.  “Once a society behaves this way,” he said, “that society is doomed.”

I suppose AIPAC, the ADL, and Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir will call these guys "self-hating Jews" and we who agree with them anti-semites.  But this is the threat that Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned against right after the 1967 War, when he pleaded with his countrymen and his government not to occupy the conquered territories.  And let there be no doubt about it, the Israeli government and the IDF and, in large measure, the people are complicit in the atrocities which have been occurring for years.  So are we with our unconditional economic and military support for Israel's fascist government.

More than 200 prominent Israelis signed a letter in June demanding that the government stop the attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. The signatories included two former prime ministers, more than three dozen retired Army and Air Force generals, the former heads of the nation’s foreign and domestic intelligence services, as well as rabbis, a Nobel laureate and one of Israel’s most revered novelists.

The retired officials come from across the political landscape, including from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own party, and many were considered security hawks.

In their letter, they called for an end to “Jewish terrorism” and the “ethnic cleansing” underway in the West Bank. And they accused Mr. Netanyahu’s government not just of being negligent in failing to stop it, but of pursuing “a deliberate government policy in which the entire security establishment — including the military, Shin Bet and the police — is knowingly complicit.”

The signatories cited tens of millions of dollars in government spending on illegal Israeli outposts and farms, and demanded a full accounting of all public money spent on roads, water, electricity, vehicles and weapons to support them.

The retired generals condemning this violence are part of a small but rapidly expanding array of influential Israelis, including many from the upper echelons of the military and intelligence apparatus, who are publicly declaring the lawlessness in the West Bank a threat to Israel’s existence as a democracy.

. . . .

 Moshe Ya’alon, the former army chief of staff who served as defense minister under Mr. Netanyahu until 2016, recently likened the ideology of extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank to that of World War II Germany.

“What is Jewish supremacy?” Mr. Ya’alon, long considered a security hawk, recently said on Ynet, an Israeli news site. “Eighty years after the Holocaust, ‘Mein Kampf’ in reverse. The master race is us.”

 Even if the unthinkable happens as Netanyahu's fascist government shifts into reverse and stops the oppression of the Palestinians in the West Bank, the rest of the world won't simply forgive and forget what has been going on for so long, just as the rest of the world will not forgive and forget what Donald Trump has taught them about America, its government, and its electorate.  People, governments, and history remember.  To paraphrase Maya Angelou, when a person or a country tells you who they are, believe them.  For quite some time now, both Israel and the U.S., whom I often call doppelgängers, have told the world who they are by their actions.  It's way past time for us to believe them.

A little verklempt.  I guess that's a little oxymoronic, but while reading further in Andersen's The Breakup this morning, one of the chapters in which Natalie is the speaker, I saw a reference to a song by Reba McEntire, If I Had Only Known.  I found a video of her singing it on YouTube and teared up a little as I listened.

If I had only known

It was the last walk in the rain

I'd keep you out for hours in the storm

I would hold your hand

Like a life line to my heart

Underneath the thunder we'd be warm

If I had only known

It was our last walk in the rain

If I had only known

I'd never hear your voice again

I'd memorize each thing you ever said

And on those lonely nights

I could think of them once more

Keep your words alive inside my head

If I had only known

I'd never hear your voice again

You were the treasure in my hand

You were the one who always stood beside me

So unaware I foolishly believed

That you would always be there

I thought of course of my mother, father, sister, and of all the friends I've lost, the friends I failed to hold onto, and of the fact that all of our relationships are like this - they will all end at some time. Each encounter may be our last.  The reality is not restricted to our loved ones; it applies to all our experiences, e.g., just the thrill of driving a car, especially on country roads, but also seeing elegant trees, beautiful clouds in the sky, the birds, the wild turkeys, the chipmunks and squirrels, the whitetail deer.   I'm much more aware of this now than when I was younger, but still not aware enough.  Therefore keep watch, for you know not the hour nor the day when the Son of Man comes . . . Mt.25:13, and You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  James 4:14.

Otherwise

Jane Kenyon, 1947 –1995

I got out of bed

on two strong legs.

It might have been

otherwise. I ate

cereal, sweet

milk, ripe, flawless

peach. It might

have been otherwise.

I took the dog uphill

to the birch wood.

All morning I did

the work I love.

At noon I lay down

with my mate. It might

have been otherwise.

We ate dinner together

at a table with silver

candlesticks. It might

have been otherwise.

I slept in a bed

in a room with paintings

on the walls, and

planned another day

just like this day.

But one day, I know,

it will be otherwise.

Jane Kenyon, one of my favorite poets, and one who died young, at age 47, of leukemia. 

 Kitty Brennan.  When I went to retrieve our trash cart this afternoon, I encountered retired Court of Appeals and Circuit Court judge Kitty Brennan, with whom Geri also chatted a few days ago, each time as Kitty was walking her dog.  We had a nice long chat over our trash cart.  I learned that her dad was a WWII vet, an aviator in the Army Air Corps, and that he has gone on an Honor Flight.  Small world.