1/21/24

 Sunday, January 21, 2024

In bed at 9 and up at 6 after a rough night with BPS and chronic pains.  3° and a high of 20°, wind is WSW at 9 mph, gusts to 15 mph, wind chill is -11°, ranging today from -12 to +5°°.  Sunrise at 7:07, sunset at 4:49, 9+31.

Treadmill; pain.  Considerable BPS last night, especially at 3, 4, and 5ish.  Last night's chili???  Plus the now normal sore right wrist and left shoulder.  Yesterday I had very few PF spasms.  This morning I am feeling some warning tightness. . . 11 a.m., 30:16 & 0.70 watching another interview re: Israel & Gaza & Palestinians with a UK professor.

I'm grateful to have come upon a blog called "THE HOMEBOUND SYMPHONY" maintained by Alan Jacobs, a professor at Baylor University and before that at Wheaton College.  He is a very thoughtful writer and he already has me reading and thinking about W. H. Auden's poem Atlantis whence Jacobs gets his blog's subtitle: 'Stagger onward rejoicing,' and listening to Rachmaninoff's Vespers.  I'm a big fan of so-called sacred music, especially mass music and most especially requiem mass music.  Despite my disparaging of the Church as an institution, I feel gratitude for much of the art that has come forth from religions, including the Church's abundant contributions.  

    On 1/15/24, Jacobs posted a typically thoughtful piece called "Silence, Violence, and the Human Condition" including this:

Shall we say, then, that silence is complicit in violence? It’s obvious why that is a more defensible argument [than that silence is violence], but it is not as dispositive as people who use it believe. I recently wrote something about Israel and Gaza, but I didn’t do it because people told me that otherwise I would have been complicit in the violence done there – though indeed people did tell me that. I wrote it for my own reasons, not because I felt that I was complicit in anything.

There are more evil things going on in the world than any one person can respond to. You could spend all day every day on social media just declaring that you denounce X or Y or Z and never get to the end of what deserves to be denounced. If my silence about Gaza is complicit in the violence being done there, what about my silence regarding the Chinese government’s persecution of the Uighurs? Or the government of Myanmar’s persecution of the Rohingya? Or what Boko Haram has done in Nigeria? Or what multinational corporations do to destroy our environment? Or dogfighting rings? Or racism in the workplace? Or sexism in the workplace?

There are two possible responses to this problem. One is to say that I am inevitably complicit in every act of violence I do not denounce, even if it would be impossible for me to denounce all such acts. But that position leads to a despairing quietism: Why should I denounce anything if in so doing I remain guilty for leaving millions of violent acts undenounced?

The second way is better: pick your spots and pick them unapologetically. It’s perfectly fine for people to have their own causes, the causes that for whatever reason touch their hearts. We all have them, we are all moved more by some injustices than by others; not one of us is consistently concerned with all injustices, all acts of violence, nor do we have a clear system of weighting the various sufferings of the world on a scale and portioning out our attention and concern in accordance with a utilitarian calculus.

 

I am grateful for anything that helps relieve my frequent feelings of complicity in all the world's wrongs, from global racism to wasting water while doing dishes.  I do not regret having regret for having lived my life too complacently, for having failed to contest in whatever way might be useful the wrongs of the world, of 'going along to get along.'  But I'm prone to overdoing it and to making myself miserable about all that's wrong with the world and with myself.  Cui bono?

LTMW at a hardy little chickadee in the near zero weather working diligently at getting a seed out of the safflower/sunflower tube.  It is about 2/3rds empty so what remains consists of big clumpy seeds and nuts and an occasional twig, i.e., not the easily nabbed and nutritious white safflower seed or black-oil sunflower seed.  The chickadee's feathers are fluffed out to hold on to some of his or her bodily-generated heat and I marvel at what seems to me to be a miracle, how the tiny birds, or large birds for that matter, are able to survive in weather like ours.  Now a brightly-colored house finch shows up on the tube and a snowbird and a squirrel work the ground under the feeder.  I suffer with my approach-avoidance conflict: to remain on my recliner in my comfortable, warm house or to put some clothes on, walk on the treacherous snow & ice,  and fill the feeder. . . . . The birds win; I fill the feeder. . . . The red-bellied woodpecker shows up to loosen and fly off with a big chunk of suet.  His pecking is so powerful I'm glad he works on the suet cake and not on my head.

More Israel stuff.  I watched a couple long lectures by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt on their LRB article and book on the Israel Lobby and its effect on American foreign policy.

Dinner tonight with the Goldbergs and with Micaela.

1/20/24

Saturday, January 20, 2024 

In bed at 9, awake at 4:15, tired but unable to sleep, and up at 4:40, with a badly aching right wrist.  8°, high of 17°, sunny & windy day, wind NW at 15 mph, 8-16/27. wind chill -12 to +3°°.  Sunrise at 7:18, sunset at 4:47, 9+29.   

Treadmill; pain.   The wrist pain has become a troubling problem, extending up into my forearm and a bit into my hand.  It's quite painful, and makes typing on my laptop difficult, anything requiring the use of my right hand difficult, although it aches even doing nothing.  I'm also having some RP, CPP keeping me off the treadmill all morning.  3:15 p.m., 31:19 & 0.70, watching a debate (of sorts) between Noam Chomsky & another about Israel & the Palestinians.

I'm grateful to be alive.  I'm glad that I am breathing and that I don't have to think about it, that my eyelids blink, my heart beats, and my GI system digests and extracts nutrients from the food I eat without my conscious participation.  I'm grateful that I can see and hear and taste and feel not as well as I once did, but well enough to enjoy most of what I see, hear, taste, and feel.  I'm grateful to be sitting on my recliner listening to Geri on her piano, playing softly, beautifully.  It's such a blessing, one song after another from one of her songbooks.  I'm grateful to be able to pet Lilly with both my hands, scratch her behind both ears, rub her back, and massage her shoulders, to feel her with my hands and give her pleasure.  I'm grateful that I can bake a loaf of bread, cook a pot of soup, or fix a couple of "bulls eyes" for breakfast.  

Park Avenue synagogoue, Menachem Rosensaft, ICJ & Gaza.  I watched a one-hour program from the schul featuring Prof. Rosensaft on Shabbat morning, January 13th, speaking on the proceedings initiated by South Africa against Israel for violation of the Genocide Convention.  An honest, fair presentation.  He believes South Africa's case to be bogus in terms of a legal case for genocide because of the absence of the essential element of intent.  He further believes the proceeding was initiated as a means of attacking Israel's treatment of the Palestinians since the 1948-49 Nakba and the 1967 war and subsequent occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.  I suspect he is correct in this judgment.  He offered no opinion on whether the IDF may have a liability for war crimes or a crime against humanity, both of which differ from the crime of genocide.

Trip to Metro Market:  Brrrr!  12°, wind chill 1 below zero.  Worth it to get a loaf of cracked wheat bread, apple fritters, and some muffins for Sunday morning.

1/19/24

 Friday, January 19, 2024

In bed around 10, awake around 3:30, unable to sleep, bait bucket thoughts like last night's, up at 4:30, let Lilly out at 4:45.  1/4 inch of new snow on the ground.  11°, high of 14°, windy day ahead,   The wind is NNW at 18 mph, 10-18./29.  Sunrise at 7:18, sunset at 4:46, 9+27.  We're gaining almost 2 minutes of daylight each day.  Solar noon is 12;02, altitude at 27°

Treadmill; pain.  The usual awakening pains.  I'm wondering whether what has become chronic right wrist pain may be carpal tunnel syndrome.  I'll ask PM&R on the 31st.   30.18 & 0.70 while watching a 1-hour interview of David Levy, former Israeli peace negotiator, on YouTube re: Gaza and Israel.  His view of the future: grim.  Plus 30:07 &  0.68 watching an interview with Gideon Levy, a journalist with Haaretz.  (My TouTube home screen gives me only Israeli 'lefties'; algorithms.)  Daily totals   60:25 & 1.38 miles.

I'm grateful for snow and ice, at least when they are not damaging people, property, trees, and shrubs.  As far as the eye can see, the earth is covered in a clean, white blanket.  Rooftops are uniformly white.  Early in the morning and late in the afternoon, the sun shines through the ice that coats the branches and twigs on trees and bushes, creating sparkles as I drive past them.  Some animals find shelter from the dangerous winter winds in the snow.  That being said, I will nonetheless be grateful when the beautiful snow and ice are gone, for they create great challenges for old-timers.

"The sights you see will drive you mad."   Deuteronomy 28:34   I read "Two Jewish Writers, a Bottle of Whiskey, and a Post–October 7 Reality" by Gal Beckerman in The Atlantic this morning.  It's an edited interview by Beckerman of Ruby (Reuven) Namdar and Joshua Cohen, two Jewish novelists, the former an Israeli living in NYC and the latter an American.  Namdar mentioned this line from Deuteronomy and it reminded me of contemporary life with the massacres of October 7th and those going on in Gaza afterward, as well as the war in Ukraine, scary news about accelerating global warming, the likelihood of Trump regaining power, etc.  Deuteronomy 26 is an extraordinary read and a reminder of biblical warfare and the transactional nature of God's relationship with Israel.  If you do what I tell you, you'll get these blessings.  If you don't, the Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies, you will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her, and because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during a siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you.  It reminds me of King George's song in Hamilton: 'You'll be back, time will tell.  You'll remember that I served you well. . . Cuz when push comes to shove,  I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love  Da da da dat da dat da da da da ya da.  Or Tevye's chat with God in Fiddler:  " I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can't You choose someone else?"

I was an invader, a colonizer, an occupier.   This thought came to me this morning prompted by I know not what.  During my 234 days as a Marine in Vietnam, was I not, from the point of view of the ordinary rice farmer in the field, an invader, a colonizer (in terms of economics), an occupier?   We were invited into the country by a government we had installed, a government controlled by elite Catholics in a country overwhelmingly Buddhist, a repressive, undemocratic government the opposite of the kind of government we professed to be defending.  We were there to impose our will by force, by bullets and bombs, by napalm and white phosphorous, by Agent Orange and other poisons, by 'strategic hamlets' and 'free-fire zones.  How naïve I was, how ignorant and foolish.

Lilly has been sprightly today,  but she stumbles when turning around.  Proprioception?

Jimmy is in the ER again.  My heart aches for him, my dear friend with whom I share bladder grief.

  

1/18/24

Thursday, January 18, 2024

In bed at 10, awake at 3:15 and up at 3:55, unable to sleep thinking of Lilly.  10°, high of 16°, cloudy, wind WNW at 7 mph, 5-15/24, wind chill is -1°, -5 to +6 today.  Sunrise at 7:19, sunset at 4:45, 9+26.  Another 2 to 3 inches of snow is expected tonight and tomorrow morning.

Treadmill; pain.  Considerable discomfort today kept me off the treadmill this morning.   30:12 & 0.70 watching a long interview of Norman Finkelstein by Chrystal Gale re: Israel & Gaza; harsh criticism of Israel's relations with Palestinians.

I'm grateful for the VA's Whole Health Mindfulness Meditation call-in group on Thursday mornings.  The group consists largely of the same individuals each week, with Lou or Mary leading the conversation joined by Bill, a long-time practitioner, Chris, Mike, a couple others, and me.  I think I may be the only participant from the Milwaukee VA Whole Health program; the others are, I think, from the Green Bay program.  The weekly gathering keeps me 'mindful' of mindfulness and is for that reason among others beneficial since I would like to continue working on mindfulness and MBSR.  But I also enjoy simply the fellowship of the small group of old veterans.  It's a get-together, a socializing, an activity I rarely engage in anymore.   

LTMW otoh my neighborhood birds have returned in numbers to our feeders: chickadees, sparrows, finches, cardinals, nuthatches, even on the long niger feeder stuck in snow on the ground since its support wire snapped during an earlier storm.  

Declining bird populations.  The WaPo this morning reports that in Milwaukee the population of cedar waxwings is down 24%, starlings 19%, goldfinches 17%, robins 15%, and mourning doves 12%.  This is distressing news.  OTOH, populations of house wrens, house finches, and downy woodpeckers are up considerably.

My brush with the Milwaukee mafia.  Many years ago, I was kind to a female student of mine (K.B.) who was having some sort of physical or medical problem of some sort during a final exam.  I can't recall now what the problem was or how I accommodated her but it made quite an impression on her because she subsequently propositioned me.  I can't remember clearly the timing and circumstances of the situation except that she invited me to lunch at Snug's Restaurant in the Shorecrest Hotel on Prospect Avenue.  For some reason, which again I cannot recall, I couldn't or didn't simply decline the invitation, but I was uncomfortable about it and her intentions and spoke to Dean Boden about it beforehand, advising him of what I believed her intention to be.  I wish I could remember why I didn't decline, but in any event,, I didn't.  The student was known to the staff at the restaurant.  I think her family were neighbors of the owner, who was Frank Balistrieri, the Mafia boss in Milwaukee with ties to the mob in Chicago and in Las Vegas.  We were seated at what was Balistrieri's table when he was there.  During the lunch, while her intentions were hinted at, I made a point of talking about my wonderful wife and children and making it as clear as I could that I wasn't interested in any liaison and no liaison occurred as I reported back to the dean.  Months later, I received a telephone call from LOA, a classmate from my law school days and a good friend to this day.  He was then an assistant US attorney in Milwaukee and he had some involvement in the prosecution of Frank Balistrieri.  It turned out that Balistrieri's table was bugged by the FBI, my entire lunch conversation with the student had been recorded, and LOA had reviewed it in the course of his involvement with the prosecution.  He laughed about the student's clear if veiled intentions and my clear non-interest.  In yesterday's Journal-Sentinel there was a long story by Mary Spicuzza about the 1977 murder of her cousin, Augie Palmisano, who was murdered by a car bomb in the parking garage of his apartment at the Juneau Village Garden apartments on Van Buren Street.  Frank Balistrieri was widely believed to be the person who ordered the assassination, though he was never charged with it.  The news story described how the FBI had gained access to the Shorecrest Hotel and planted the listening device in the floor under the table where the student and I had lunch.  I wish I could remember today more of the circumstances of his sordid little adventure, and especially why I couldn't simply decline the invitation to lunch, but it all occurred half a century ago,  "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away . . ."

Sweet sour cabbage borscht.  This pot of soup is a real seat-of-the-pants slumgullion.  I threw a can of tomato bisque into it and some ketchup.  A quarter of the broth I cooked last night boiled away because I didn't pay attention to it boiling rather than simmering.  Will it be edible?  any good?  . . . 3 p.m., it's good!😋  An amazingly forgiving soup to concoct.     

Killers of the Flower Moon.  We watched this movie tonight.  Mixed feelings about it.

  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

1/17/24

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

In bed at 8:45, up at 6 after a disjointed, unrestful night's sleep.  0°, high of 13°, Wind Chill Advisory only until 9 a.m.   The wind is WSW at 16 mph, 8-16/30.  Wind chills today -20° to -2°.  Sunrise at 7:19, sunset at 4:44, 9+24. 

Treadmill; pain.  Normal back & right wrist pain; left shoulder, not so much.

I'm grateful that I have all my teeth but one bicuspid.  And I suppose I'm grateful that I still have hair on my old head.  Dad's genes?

Sweet sour cabbage borscht.  Distracted by eating dinner, the broth boiled pretty vigorously for some time.  Hope it doesn't ruin the beef shank meat.  I'll be finding out whether boiling the beef and veggies ruins the broth.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

My brush with the Milwaukee Mafia.  There is a long feature piece in this morning's Journal/Sentinel about the car bombing death of Augie Palmisano on June 30, 1978.  More tomorrow.

In the world's eyes, has Israel become Netanyahu and the settlers?  If so, is this good for the Jews or bad for the Jews?   If I asked the average American, who Ehud Barak or Elud Olmert or Naftali Bennett or Yesh Atid, or Yair Lapid is, I would get in response a blank stare.  If I asked who Benjamin Netanyahu is, I would be told he is the prime minister of Israel.  Netanyahu was the prime minister from 1996 to 1999, from 2009 to 2021, and from December 2022 until the present.  I daresay that for most Americans Netanyahu is Israel and Israel is Netanyahu.  I also daresay that if the average American were asked to name any other prime minister of Israel, s/he wouldn't be able to name one.  I suspect also that many, perhaps most, Americans identify Israel with the settlers in the West Bank, or in Samaria and Judea as they call it.  According to Israel's official census agency, about 6.8 million Jews are living in Israel proper, and another 503,000 living in the West Bank.  There are also 2.08 million Arabs who are Israeli citizens, and a bit more than half a million 'others.'  The Palestinian population in Israel and the occupied territories is: East Jerusalem, 351,570; West Bank area C, 300,00; West Bank areas A & B, 2,464, 566.  (Another 2.2 million Palestinians live in Gaza, at least before the current war.)  The Jews who control Israel's domestic and foreign policies and Israel's image in the world (at least before October 7th) are half-million settlers in the West Bank.  It is they who have made the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine impossible.  It is they who, more than any other Jews, symbolize oppression, degradation,  segregation/apartheid, and aggression against the Palestinians, at least until the current war in Gaza.  They are Israel's MAGA cult.  Likud is Israel's Republican Party and Netanyahu is Israel's Trump.  I suspect that the settlers in alliance with Likud and Netanyahu are turning Israel into a pariah state and that the war in and on Gaza will accelerate the process.

Visit with Dr. Neery for x-rays and cleaning.  AOK.  Expected worse.

LTMW and seeing birds again, mainly chickadees but also white-bellied nuthatches, male and female cardinals, a mourning dove, and the red-bellied woodpecker.  I whacked the safflower/sunflower tube with my walking stick to break up the frozen seeds and it worked.

Lilly, after a scary day at the vet's

Took Lilly to the vet.  Slow proprioception, degenerative something or other, age-related.  Callous on her right elbow, needs lanolin to protect it from infection.

All Creatures Great and Small.  We watched two episodes of this terrific series tonight.

1/16/24

 Tuesday, January 16, 2024

In bed at 9 but still awake at 10, up at 6. -6°, high of +5°, wind W at 14 mph, 10-18/gusts to 31 mph, feels like -27°, WIND CHILL ADVISORY.  Sunrise at 7:20, sunset at 4:42, 9+22.   

Treadmill; pain.  My right wrist and left shoulder are still sore.  32:14 & 0.75 at 1:30 while watching a long interview of Ian Bremmer on Israel-Gaza.  Later I watched another Intelligence Squared debate on the proposition "Israel is destroying itself by its settlement policy."  The proponents won the debate (audience votes) by about 5 to 1.  The Q & A segment of the program after the formal presentations was very heated not from the audience but from the debaters.

I'm grateful for my warm bed, sheets, blankets, and pillows.  I recall spending a night in a foxhole I had dug in the hills of Quantico and coming down with a high fever and a nasty case of bronchitis by the next morning, forcing me to stay 'confined to quarters' for the weekend and missing liberty in Washington, D.C.  I was the only one in the barracks from Friday night to Sunday evening.  I recall months sleeping on a cot under mosquito netting in Vietnam, 6 months in a tent, 2 months in a corrugated tin hut.  I recall the bunk bed at 7303 S. Emerald and my parents sleeping on the sleeper sofa in the living room.  These memories remind me how fortunate I am with my Stearns and Foster mattress and its accouterments and I am grateful, though fighting off some sadness about my parents' years on that sleeper sofa and its undoubtedly uncomfortable mattress.  The photo is of me relaxing on the sandbag bunker outside the tent I lived in for 6 months in Vietnam.

No surprises in Iowa.  Trump got 51% of the caucus votes and won most handily in evangelical areas and areas with lower income and less education.  In my 'home county' (Webster), Trump picked up 67% of the vote whereas in Polk county (DesMoines), he got only 38%, with DeSantis and Haley virtually tied at 27%.

LTMW at 7 a.m., with the temperature still at 6 below zero, I see no birds at my feeders but a neighbor out jogging on County Line Road.  I can't believe this is a healthy activity.  OCD?  A little later there is an elegant mourning dove perched atop the nearer shepherd's crook and one or more chickadees come to the safflower/sunflower feeder but I can't tell whether they are able to nab a seed.

My trusty Volvo started right away when I took it out for a drive today for the first time in several days.  I drove through River Hills which is a 'winter wonderland' with all the trees and shrubs still covered in snow and ice.

1/15/24

 Monday, January 15, 2024

In bed around 9 and up at 3:45 to let Lilly out into -6° cold, high of +5°, low of -9°.  Wind Chill Advisory with wind W at 14 mph, 9-14/25, wind chills as low as -35°. mostly cloudy day ahead.  Sunrise at 7:20, sunset at 4:41, 9+20.  The sun is 91,436,,000 miles away and it feels like it.  Lilly was out for only about 3 mintues.  Solar noon will be at 12:01 p.m. with the sun gaining altitude to 26°.

Treadmill; pain.  I woke with the usual: sore left shoulder, right wrist, upper back.  30:42 & 0.75. while watching a 1 hour British debate on YouTube on the proposition: Anit-Zionism is Anti-Semitism.  I'm not sure of the setting [Intelligence squared] but with the audience, the proposition failed, 18% to 76%, balance undecided.  Mehdi Hasan was one of the debaters, one the negative side.

I'm grateful for all those men and women who work outside in this weather to perform important functions, first responders including police, fire fighters, and EMTS, and those who repair and restore damage to electric power and internet equipment..  I think back to the winter of 1962-1963, my senior year in college, when I worked outdoors emptying and refilling Milwaukee Sentinel boxes at bus stops in weather so cold my fingers would freeze to the Master Locks on coin boxes, when I walked to and from work between 25th & Vine and 7th and Galena.  Brr. . .

More thoughts on Israel, Gaza, and the Genocide hearing.  I wish my thoughts were clearer about what is happening, and has been happening for a long time, in Israel.  We have and have had so many very good Jewish friends in our lives and we know, or have a very good idea, of what Israel means to them.  I also know that I will never know what it is to be a Jew (or a Black or Native American or any other historically persecuted minority.)  What I don't know is what they think of Netanyahu and his coalition govenment, what they think of how the war in Gaza is being conducted, whether they have friends or even family who were affected by the massacre and kidnappings on October 7th.  We have an upcoming dinner with 3 Jewish friends in about 10 days.  They are secular Jews, but proudly and intentionally Jewish.  All have visited Israel, some more than once.  I have to believe that for every Jew, what happened to the Jews during the October 7th massacres and kidnapping happended to him or her, to his parents, her children, their families and neighbors.  It was because they were Jews that they were killed and kidnapped.  IF our friends had been visiting one of the targeted kibbutzs on October 7th, they would have been killed, raped, or kidnapped because they are Jews.  Will Gaza come up, the war, Hamas, the Palestinians, settlers, Netanyahu?  Or will these matters be shunned, like views on abortion and other potentially hot topics?  

Will Netanyahu, the settler movement, and the destruction of Gaza turn Israel into a pariah state?  Or is it, or will it become like Northern Ireland during 'the Troubles,' not a pariah but looked down upon as a dangerous and hopelessly, hate-torn,  conflicted society?  Or like South Africa during its long history of apartheid?  The religious Zionists, the Srugim, seem to me to be Israel's evangelicals, so convinced of thier special relationship with the Almighty and of their divine calling that they are quite willing to trample on the interests of others to fulfill that divine calling, willing to consider all who oppose them as instruments of Beelzebub, Satan, Lucifer.  Yet they control Israel's government even more than evangelicals control America's,   It was no surprise that South Africa's lawyers quoted Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich in the ICJ as evidence of genocidal intent in Israel's government.  Or that they similarly cited secular Netanyahu's biblical reference to Amalek calling to mind to religious Israelites God's own command to "Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’ ” 1 Samuel 15:3. Of all of Israel's enemies in the Hebrew bible, why select Amalek to mention?

To many Americans Israel is Netanyahu and Netanyahu is Israel.  The same is true of the settlers in the West Bank, who number now probably many more than half a million.  And Netanyahu is Israel's Trump, widely considered to be a corrupt criminal but wielding great political and governmental influence.   Netanyahu and the settler movement  equal Trump and the evangelicals.  Netanyahu has been prime minister since 2009 for every year but one.  Before that, he was the head of Likud who succeeded the Labor government of Rabin and Peres after Rabin's assassination by an adherent of the settler movement who believed Rabin was a traitor by agreeing to the Oslo Accords.  Will he and Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and their many allies survive the carnage of October 7th and the war in/on Gaza?    If they are replaced, it won't be by a government of the Left, for there is no Left remaining in Israel after October 7th.  Nor is there any realistic hope for a "two-state solution" for the century-long struggle between the Jews and the Arabs in 'the Holy Land.'  Biden and Blinken are whistling past the graveyard talking about it.  Nor is there any realistic hope for a 'one-state solution.'  What is left?

And what is left for the United States?  The U.S. has stood as insurer or guarantor of Israel's existence for many years, Israel's best friend.  We borrow money from China and elsewhere to provide $3B a year to Israel, itself a rich country.  But what influence does the U.S. government really have on the Israeli government meaning, for much of modern history, on Bibi Netanyahu?  Neither the Israeli government nor the U. S. government has been able to stop or even slow the settlements in the West Bank that make a two state solution practically impossible, Biden's hollow rhetoric notwithstanding.  And all the hollow rhetoric from American leaders about 'respect for the laws of war' and for international law (i.e., the Geneva Conventions, Genocide Convention, etc.) didn't prevent what has happened in Gaza over the last three months.  I have to believe that in the eyes of much, perhaps most of the world, we are culpably complicit in what has happened, is happening, and will happen in Gaza.  Even looking at the matter simply transactionally as opposed to politically and morally, what have we gained outside of Israel?  What have we lost?  When the war is over ('as if'), when millions of Israeli are out for Netanyahu's political scalp, he will try to hold onto power by claiming that only he can stand  up to the United States and Biden and the push for the mythical "two-state solution."  The U.S. will be a 'frenemy.'

I often think of how similar the U.S. and Israel are and think of Israel as our canary in the coal mine.  The rightward slide in each country.  Netanyahu = Trump, settlers = evangelicals.  Netanyahu claims that only he can protect Israel, Trump says "I alone can fix it.  I am the chosen one.  I am your voice.  I am your retribution."  The sense of apochalyptic peril in each country.  The big difference is that in Israel, the peril is real.  Hamas in the south and elsewhere.  Hezbollah in the north.  Righteously aggreived Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and in Israel proper.  Israelies are rationally afraid of real enemies at all their doors, with thousands of rockets aimed at them and potential suicide bombers everywhere, willing to be 'martyrs.'  As I wrote above, I can't know what it is to be a Jew, nor can I know what it is to be an Israeli.  Nor can I know what it is to be a Palestinian in Israel, in Gaza, or in the Occupied Territories.  It's no wonder my heart and head are so troubled by what occurs in 'the Holy Land' and why I fear the repercussions here and around the world.

P.S.  Perhaps it is not surprising that Germany has sought to intervene in the South Africa vs. Israel genocide case in the ICJ considering the post-Holocaust relationship between Germany and Israel.  However, it's notable that Namibia, formerly German South West Africa, is outraged.  Germany committed the first act of genocide against the indigenous people in what is now Namibia between 1904. and 1908, building real concentration camps and killing tens of thousnds.  Not surprisingly, Namibia sides with the Palestinians.

LTMW I see a red-belllied woodpcked vigorously pounding away at the frozen snow covered suet cake.  He scores a big chunk and flies away with it.  Still no other birds.  I suppose the safflower and sunflower seeds are frozen from all the rain we had a few days ago.   A solitary chickadee shows up again and again to nab a seed - or are there more than one?

A meditation poem by Emily Dickinson

642

Me from Myself — to banish —

Had I Art —

Impregnable my Fortress

Unto All Heart —

But since Myself — assault Me —

How have I peace

Except by subjugating

Consciousness?

And since We're mutual Monarch

How this be

Except by Abdication —

Me — of Me?