Post No. 998 - Gaza, Again

 “The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu.” Editorial, Haaretz, October 8, 2023

I think it’s fair to say that the world doesn’t care about Gaza or the plight of the Palestinians. Since I began this blog in 2004, Israel has pulverized Gaza with disproportionate military force at least five times (2006, 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021), causing massive destruction of critical infrastructure and thousands of civilian casualties. Israel targeted hospitals and schools, yet I don’t recall a single American official calling Israel’s actions “evil” or “merciless” or, heaven forbid, a “war crime.” What I remember are assertions from the State Department and the White House that Israel’s right to defend itself was sacrosanct.  

To be clear, I’m not defending Hamas for targeting civilians, shooting women and children, and taking more than 100 people hostage. But nor do I accept the idea that the attack by Hamas was unprovoked. The actions of the Netanyahu government in Gaza and the West Bank over the past decade is the provocation. Gaza is one of the most -- if not the most -- densely populated places in the world, often described as an open-air prison due to Israel’s complete control of access points, water, electricity, and the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, and other goods. Israel controls Gaza’s airspace as well as its coastal waters. 

In the West Bank, Israeli settlers with the active collusion of the Netanyahu governing coalition, police, the Israeli military and the courts, have waged a merciless campaign to drive Palestinians from their traditional lands, to appropriate Palestinian olive groves and water sources; entire villages have been reduced to rubble by Israeli army bulldozers, schools destroyed, homes invaded. Writing in the October 19, 2023 edition of the New York Review, David Shulman notes that in the South Hebron Hills, thirteen villages are in imminent danger of expulsion, with the backing of Israel’s High Court of Justice. 

Shulman also writes the following: “The moral foundation of the State of Israel has been severely compromised, perhaps beyond repair, and exchanged for the horrific reality of the occupation, which is further entrenched with each passing hour.”

Once again we see a disparity in the value of human life. The lives of Palestinians are simply not valued as highly as those of Israelis. Palestinians die at the hands of Israeli soldiers or settlers with no outpouring of shock or sympathy or calls for justice, and the United States certainly doesn’t rush aid to the survivors. Moral outrage is reserved for Israeli victims. Palestinians are dehumanized in the same way that Native Americans and African Americans were during America’s first century and a half. Palestinians are deprived of civil rights, legal redress, and can be killed with impunity, driven off their ancestral lands to make way for Jewish settlers. 

Benjamin Netanyahu is a narcissist in the same way that Donald Trump is a narcissist, and like Trump, is under indictment. For fifteen years he has preached division and hatred of Palestinians and surrounded himself with rabid ultra-nationalists. Netanyahu is responsible for the attack by Hamas as surely as Donald Trump is for the January 6 assault on Congress. 

I can’t bear to watch or read mainstream American media coverage of this war; it will be presented as a fair fight between equals, which isn’t even close to the reality. While Hamas is clearly being supported from without, presumably by Iran, the support comes nowhere close to what the US provides Israel on an annual basis. Israel has an overwhelming military advantage, the latest advanced missiles and bombs, fighter jets and ordnance. 

American media will also remind us that Israel is the Middle East’s only democracy, and therefore entitled to our undying support. This assertion is laughable. Netanyahu and his coalition of rabid ultra-nationalists care about democracy about as much as the American Republican Party does, which is to say, very little. 

Israel and the United States share an astonishing hubris. Both countries believe themselves entitled to oppress, invade, attack, disenfranchise and expropriate what belongs to others, and both react with shock and rage when those others rise up and strike back. 

Not Quite Home Sweet Home

 ”At the end of the day, the best measure of the humanity of any society is the life and happiness of its children. We live in a rich society with poor children, and that should be intolerable.” Mike Davis, City of Quartz

We keep asking one another, “does it feel like home?” The answer for me is yes, our new digs strike a homey vibe with me, even though we are not fully situated and have at least a dozen boxes left to empty, artwork to hang, stuff to put away. Our familiarity and comfort level grows, routines develop, but we still carry the muscle memory of the little apartment we lived in for so long.  I set up my gym in the carport, heavy bag, double-end bag, suspension trainer, and can do all the modes of training I did up the block, with the benefit here of being able to leave the heavy bag up all the time. My wife still feels unsettled, in part because she’s been distracted by her mother’s physical condition after hip replacement surgery, and the prospect of rotator cuff surgery in July. Two surgeries in less than a year for an 80-year-old woman who wasn’t in the best of health to begin with. Like millions of Americans, we have elder care responsibilities. My sister-in-law says worry is the weight; she’s right, it’s the worry of what might happen next. 

My son takes after me in several respects (poor boy), and one of those ways is that he hates meetings, corporate-speak, and bullshit. When he worked at the LA Philharmonic there were too many meetings that meandered around and accomplished nothing, and now he’s experiencing similar nonsense at the San Francisco Opera. “This is definitely my last non-profit arts gig,” he tells me, exasperated by all the hours he considers wasted. He complains but on the other hand he’s lucky as hell and knows it, with a tolerable job in the city he wants to be in, health insurance, a measure of predictability, and less than $20K in student loan debt for the year and a half he was in college, first at Southern Oregon University and then Pacific Northwest College of Art. I don’t know if he’ll ever go back to school. But whether he does or not, my son is an artist in his soul, and nothing can change that. The kid is 24 and already has figured out that the world into which he was born is fucked. 

While I was cleaning out a bin I found a publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center titled, The Year in Hate and Extremism. It was from 2019, a year before the January 6 Trump-goaded insurrection. Skimming through the Executive Summary I came across this passage: “It is time to move beyond the illusion that hate violence and extremism is merely a criminal crisis in America. It is also a political crisis.” What most of us saw with our own eyes on January 6 was a manifestation of that political crisis -- the refusal by the loser to accept the results of an election. We watched the storming of the Capitol happen in real time. Then we watched the same scenes replayed over and over. For the first time in American history, the transfer of political power was marred by violence. The folks who breached the Capitol under the Trump flags were not peaceful, law-abiding tourists as some in the GOP would have us believe. They were not victims, they were perpetrators. Five people were killed. The Vice President was a target of the mob. Those are facts. The rewrite of history by the Trump wing of the GOP -- and that’s most of the party -- is well underway. Lie big, lie often, and never let the lie die. Tell me, someone, can a two-party system function when one of the parties is insane? Surely the answer is, not for long. It’s the old notion of a house divided against itself, as true now as it was in 1861. The American experiment in self-government is fraying, and the hard reality is that we might see, four years from now, a GOP-controlled Congress refuse to certify the results of an election if the outcome doesn’t favor its candidate. And then what happens? If you think this is farfetched, you had better think again. The GOP as currently incarnated cares about one thing, and one only: power. Kevin “Tiny Balls” McCarthy and Mitch “Cowardly Lion” McConnell flip-flop like bass in the bottom of a boat. Although it’s critically important for American democracy that the events of January 6 be fully investigated, such an inquiry is the last thing the GOP wants as it’s likely to expose complicit party members. Some sort of watered-down, toothless investigation may still happen, but if it’s not a bipartisan effort, it will have very little legitimacy. Corruption in Washington D.C. is a stubborn thing, like a bloodstain on a white shirt. 

Speaking of...I have to have some blood work done and a colonoscopy. The prep for the colonoscopy is worse than the procedure itself. My personal history of colonic polyps. 

It appears that the legal noose is dangling closer to Trump’s fat neck. The Attorney General of New York is looking at potential criminal liability, not only civil liability. Trump’s long-time money man, Allen Weisselberg, is being squeezed. When it comes down to saving Trump’s bacon or his own, what will Weisselberg do? Stay tuned. Trump trampled just about every norm we’ve come to expect an American president to adhere to, and I won’t be surprised if he’s our first criminally indicted former president. 

Jeffrey St. Clair writes on the Counterpunch website, “The Palestinians are a stubborn impediment to the inexorable growth of the Israeli state. They are an obstacle that must be removed. But removal is not enough. Their cultural identity and history must be erased, all traces of their existence as a people wiped away.” 

For a brief time Israeli bombs and artillery shells will cease raining down on Gaza, but the apartheid regime and the gross imbalance of power between Jews and Palestinians will remain. There’s no victory lap to be taken by anyone. It’s a human tragedy, a miscarriage of justice, and a grotesque, ongoing violation of human rights. 

 

The Cartoon Kingpin

 “The cohort aged between thirty and forty was shocked into a strangely hapless political sentience by the September 11 attacks and the fraudulent war of aggression fought by the Republican administration against Iraq. Even as this cohort recognizes the immense civic and representational value of Barack Obama’s presidency, it has little experience of the Democratic Party implementing a Democratic agenda.” Joseph O’Neill, New York Review of Books

I caught short takes of the Democratic Party’s virtual convention -- clips of Michelle Obama’s speech, Kamala Harris’s acceptance, Barack’s indictment of Trump -- and large parts of Biden’s speech. The bar has fallen so far in the Age of Trump that Biden was given high marks for getting through his speech without committing any major gaffes. When Biden said, at the close of his speech, “May God protect our troops” I was reminded of the role he has played for nearly twenty years at the top echelons of our government, a time when our country has been continuously engaged in armed conflict with someone, somewhere on the planet; a time when our government stalled, deferred and ignored the accelerating climate crisis; a time when our capitalist-centered government legislated massive transfers of wealth from the many to the few.  

Biden closed with that for many reasons -- to reassure people that he won’t become soft on national security or that he has any intention of seriously challenging the military-intelligence-surveillance complex -- but also because ours is a country trapped and stunted by our addiction to war. 

The power brokers in the Democratic Party still refuse to acknowledge that the future lies on the left, not the right. Until Bill and Hillary Clinton are dead and buried, they will be rolled out every four years to dispense wisdom and remind us of the glory years. Barack and Michelle will play similar roles, defending the center-right and assisting in silencing, or dismissing, voices of people who have a different vision for the party, like AOC and Ilhan Omar. The old guard never relinquishes power without a struggle. Not Pelosi. Not McConnell. 

A  few questions rolled around my brain this week, such as, will the GOP go the way of the Whigs? How does the country learn from the colossal failure, ineptitude and corruption of Donald J. Trump and the criminal hordes who surround him? Why did the Democrats feel it necessary to give Michael Bloomberg a place in their virtual convention? 

Will the indictment of Steve Bannon for fraud end with his long overdue comeuppance? Doubtful. But it was somehow reassuring to see Bannon under arrest, and I hope to see similar scenes repeated with William Barr, Jared Kushner, Ivanka, Mike Pompeo, and the cartoon kingpin himself, Donald J. Trump.

Has it ever been more clear that the stock market and the real economy have almost nothing in common? 

Consider this amazing feat: the intellectually and morally bankrupt GOP has succeeded in repudiating both Lincoln and Reagan. 

Last I checked more than 500 wildfires were burning in California, multiple small blazes, and three or four big ones that are burning thousands of acres, destroying homes, and forcing residents to flee. Here in Santa Barbara it has been oppressively hot for the past few days, 90 degrees as I write this, and the sky is hazy from fires burning to the north and southeast. I can’t help but think we’re witnessing a glimpse of our future, an endless series of climate calamities. 

The Champions League final between Bayern Munich and Paris St. Germain should be epic. Bayern is a ruthless and relentless bunch, a steamroller of a side, while PSG relies on the creativity and flamboyance of Mbappe and Neymar. I think PSG can trouble Bayern, but I think the German club will lift the trophy. 

Israel is bombing Gaza again. The world yawns, as usual. How much of the equipment and ordnance landing on Gaza was made in America or funded by American taxpayers in the form of military aid? Israel can only get away with its war against the Palestinians because it enjoys the unequivocal support of the United States. 

 

A Synthetic Scandal: Ilhan Omar & AIPAC

“That victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he, or she, has become a threat.” James Baldwin

Maybe AIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby, doesn’t directly buy political favors in the way the NRA does, but that doesn’t mean that politicians from both parties aren’t influenced to  outright support AIPAC’s aims or remain silent about them for fear of landing on the wrong side of the lobby. And you can see by the hysterical reaction to Ilhan Omar’s comments about AIPAC how quickly bipartisan indignation and righteousness gets ginned up. How dare this first year congressperson from Minnesota criticize AIPAC! The temerity. Naturally, anti-semitism must be Omar’s motivation. What else could it be in our black and white world?

Omar apologized but you can bet money that she will be forever fighting the anti-semitic label, which is one way AIPAC wields influence. On their best days, Washington D.C. politicians are a pusillanimous lot, and for the majority of them the idea of crossing AIPAC is about as welcome as a colonoscopy. Get smeared with the anti-semite brush and you can kiss your career goodbye. An AIPAC endorsement can spell the difference between winning or losing an election or reelection bid. And it hardly matters if the charge is baseless. You just can’t criticize Israel, period. You can’t compare AIPAC to the NRA though they both practice and benefit from influence peddling. You can’t bring up the fate of the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank without having anti-semitism thrown in your face. I can think of no other nation in the world that can squelch even the mildest criticism as quickly as Israel can. The Israeli Defense Forces shoot and kill unarmed Palestinian protesters without consequence. This is a fact, not an anti-semitic statement. I don’t contest Israel’s right to exist as a nation and have security for its citizens. I don’t question the reality of anti-semitism in the world; it is real. I do question whether Israel has a right to forcibly expel Palestinians from their land, wall them into pitiful enclaves, restrict their freedom of movement, torch their olive trees and take their water, or strangle the life out of them in Gaza; I also question the Netanyahu government’s support for democratic values.

But just try having this debate in the United States, or Britain, for that matter. You can’t. No critique of the government of Israel is allowed. The subject is off-limits. The second you raise the question of the Palestinians you are deemed to be hostile to Israel, and if you’re hostile to Israel you will be chased from the editorial pages of the New York Times, from CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and all the rest. You will be silenced. Ask Angela Davis or Mark Lamont Hill. Ask Noam Chomsky. Ask Jeremy Corbyn. Ilhan Omar is in good company.

MJ Rosenberg, a contributor to the Huffington Post, wrote the following: “AIPAC uses the same tactics as the NRA to ensure that the United States never deviates from support for whatever policy the Israeli government is pushing at the moment.” It’s assumed that Israel’s foreign policy objectives are indistinguishable from those of the United States, and that the United States will always, and forever, provide diplomatic cover and military aid to Israel.

Donald Trump has called for Omar to resign over this synthetic scandal, a ridiculous thing for him to say but hardly unexpected from the most corrupt person to ever inhabit the White House. Less than two years ago Trump was apologizing for neo-Nazi’s who chanted “Jews will not replace us!” Pelosi and others in the Democratic Party leadership have extracted an apology from Omar, that’s enough. Like the NRA, the fossil fuel lobby and Big Pharma, AIPAC uses all the means at its disposal to influence the United States government on behalf of Israel. This is a fact and nothing to apologize for. If supporters of Israel are so certain of their righteousness and morality, why are they afraid to engage in debate and discussion?

Bill of Goods

“People come, people go

Some grow young, some grow cold

I woke up in between

A memory and a dream

So let's get to the point, let's roll another joint

Let's head on down the road

There's somewhere I gotta go” Tom Petty

The daughter of one of my wife’s oldest friends graduated from a local high school on Thursday, an afternoon full of sunshine and a light breeze. The line of people filing into the stadium was long and moving slowly through the gate; parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, some clutching balloons that were not allowed into the stadium by the hired security guards, who also checked bags for contraband, air horns, signs, and anything else deemed verboten. An instrumental group was on the artificial turf field playing musical numbers from movies. White chairs for the graduates, arrayed like a chevron, and a three person Navy color guard. The mood in the area where we sat was expectant, light, tinged with relief, graduation being an end and a beginning. As we watched people stream in I thought of my son, for whom high school was one long agony of not fitting in or connecting; he stacked his time and couldn’t wait to be free of what he considered a soul-sucking waste of his time.

The instrumental group began playing the graduation march and the students filed in, two by two, girls in red robes, boys in blue; as the students passed the stands family members stood up and waved or called out, hoping for a wave in return. Pair after pair until all the students were seated on the white chairs. The school principal asked everyone to stand for the pledge of allegiance -- that strange ritual -- and then a choir sang the national anthem (no one took a knee in protest). The principal, an embattled figure who is currently suing the school district for its decision to return him to a teaching position next year, introduced two of the school board members who voted to oust him, an ironic twist. I wondered what was going through his mind, knowing that this was his final graduation exercise at the school where he had worked for nearly 20 years. He began speaking about what a record-breaking year it had been for the athletic department, with something like eight conference championships and two state titles, an odd place, it seemed to me, to start a graduation speech, given that the majority of students are not involved in athletics, and then he spoke of the award-winning choir and the theater department, using, within the first two minutes, the word “amazing” three times. Most of his speech consisted of platitudes to hard work, learning from adversity and never giving up, stock phrases, many of which were repeated by the white girl who spoke next; she reminded her classmates that they had begun four years before as wide-eyed, weak-kneed freshman, and now here they were, confident and accomplished seniors, ready to step out into the wider world and seize all the opportunities she was positive were waiting. Her pigmentation or surname would never stand between her and her dreams, and the cynic in me suspected she came from a family with dough, maybe even a Hope Ranch clan.

The final student speaker was a special education kid who got a big cheer when he finished. I wondered what his future would be like, if he would find his place in the world, or if this accomplishment would be the highlight of his life. The times are so different now, the American Dream is dead, the American Empire is in decline, and the can-do American spirit that existed in the the quarter century after World War II has been replaced by fear and cruelty and grotesque, brazen corruption that kills hope. As the long roll call of names began I wondered if my generation had sold these kids a bill of goods, a false promise, and a bucket of piss. I hope not. I hope these kids will wrest power from the oligarchs before it’s too late.

Short Takes:

Donald Trump: “All the best Constitutional scholars agree that I am above the law, below the law, immune to the law, better than the law, and beyond the reach of law. I can pardon myself any time I want to.”

Razan Al-Najjar was only 21 when she was murdered by an Israeli army sniper. Razan was a medic, trying to provide care to a wounded Palestinian near the fence that keeps Palestinians trapped in Gaza. The medics wore white vests and held their hands up, not that this universal gesture matters to the Israeli Defense Forces. Israel is now spinning the fairy tale that Razan was no Florence Nightingale, she was providing care to Hamas. Nobody believes this BS except Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the UN, and Bibi, of course.

Anthony Bourdain, RIP. You told the truth about what you saw, as well as what you ate.

According to Seymour Hersh, the award-winning and legendary investigative reporter, the most lethal words to come out of the mouth of a guest on cable news are, “I think.” Hersh could care less about what guests think -- he only wants to know what they know and can prove. Amen.

Trump is possibly the most brazenly corrupt American president in history. The US Constitution has a mechanism for stopping him, but only the corrupt US Congress can make that mechanism work, and the chances of that happening are slim.

Enough Bullets for Everyone

“The victims are themselves the culprits. This is exactly what the Palestinians have had to endure for 70 years.” Robert Fisk

Watching Israel and the United States stand truth on its ear is like riding Space Mountain at Disneyland in pitch blackness for hours on end; climb, descend, twist left, then right. Hearing Donald J. Trump compared to King Cyrus of Persia -- Persia! -- by nutjob pastor Robert Jeffress is nauseating. Too much irony and cognitive dissonance. I’m sure Trump thinks Persia is a theme park or a competing luxury hotel. “Where is this Persia?”

American evangelicals adore Trump, the thrice-married womanizer, pornstar banging, lying adulterer, and unabashed pussy-grabber. So much for Christian principles.

To hear Bibi Netanyahu and Nikki Haley tell it, Israel is simply protecting itself from hordes of Palestinians who have the temerity to approach the border. It’s all Hamas, Hamas, Hamas. Rinse, repeat. The American corporate media dutifully report the bullshit -- if they bother to report at all. Somewhere in America a cat is stuck in a tree, a community has been ravaged by a tornado, or a passenger airplane was forced to make a dramatic emergency landing. These are “breaking news” stories which must be covered in breathless detail.

The plight of Palestinians in Gaza? Not worth thirty seconds. Too complicated for Americans to understand.

Bibi Netanyahu: “We are besieged by the forces of Hamas. Don’t be fooled by the seemingly non-violent protests, the women and children waving flags -- they are killers, every one of them, trained by Hamas, armed by Hamas, controlled by Hamas. Israel faces a grave threat, an existential threat. Our brave soldiers face bloodthirsty Arabs armed with slingshots and Molotov cocktails and wire cutters. These wicked Arabs set tires on fire which threatens the health of our forces. The smoke gets in their eyes and lungs. One of our soldiers suffered a scratch on the arm that almost bled. Israel will not tolerate this. We have a right to protect our border and we have done so with extreme care, only firing on Hamas when under mortal danger from their advanced weapons. The casualties on the other side are caused by Hamas, not Israel. Hamas shoots its own people and then blames Israel. We have incontrovertible proof of this! Don’t fall for propaganda. Listen to me, I am telling you the truth. Israel is righteous and moral. We do not kill innocent people, only Hamas terrorists whose sole aim is to destroy Israel!”

Nikki Haley: “I have a message to convey to the UN Security Council from the President of the United States, the great and wonderful Donald J. Trump, who knows everything about the Middle East because he is the smartest human being to ever walk the earth: Hamas bad, Israel good.”

The gross injustice heaped on Palestinians for decades by Israel and the US has long troubled me, nagged at me, and infuriated me. The longer I live, the more I read, and the more I understand the difference between American rhetoric and American actions, the angrier I become. Israel could never have occupied Palestinian land for as long as it has without the unqualified support of the United States. As author Rashid Khalidi pointed out in his book, Brokers of Deceit, the US has long been an unreliable intermediary between Israel and the Palestinians; how can the US claim to be neutral and objective when it hands Israel billions of dollars in various types of aid every year? US allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt turn their back on the Palestinians.

In the same way that the American government does not represent the views of the majority of the American people (we are not as immoral, corrupt, greedy, and murderous as the political hacks, CEO’s and bankers who rule us), I want to believe that a majority of Israeli citizens realize that the actions of their government toward the Palestinians are unlawful, immoral, and antithetical to a real, lasting peace.

The American media has an infuriating habit of painting the Israel-Palestine conflict as one waged by equals, which is simply ridiculous. For years now, Israel has changed the reality on the land in the West Bank, displacing Palestinians, building settlements, walls, restricted roads, and making it next to impossible for Palestinians to return, ever.

In the meantime, the Israeli Defense Forces have plenty of bullets and no shortage of unarmed human targets.

Killing with Impunity

“Hate and ignorance have not driven the history of racist ideas in America. Racist policies have driven the history of racist ideas in America.” Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning.

How does an Israeli soldier shoot an unarmed Palestinian, a human being? What does the soldier feel as he or she brings a man or boy into the crosshairs? Is there any remorse after pulling the trigger, any flicker of conscience hours or days later? Dozens of non-violent Palestinian protesters have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in the past few weeks, thousands more wounded or injured. The protesters pose no lethal threat to Israel, they are not surging across the border, crossing from their occupied territory into Israel, and yet Israeli soldiers fire live ammunition into crowds. Think of the military officers who issue these shoot-to-kill orders. Why don’t Palestinian deaths matter? Palestinians are protesting the longest military occupation in modern history, an occupation that couldn’t be sustained without unquestioned backing from the United States. Why does my country support this slow, ongoing genocide?

To kill with impunity and without remorse requires indoctrination. You must convince your own people that you are killing inferiors or terrorists. Hitler’s regime indoctrinated many Germans to believe that Jews were the source of Germany’s problems, a blight on the purity of the German nation. Jews were systematically dehumanized, their rights abridged, their property stolen; but even this wasn’t enough, the Jews had to be exterminated, wiped out. Hasn’t Israel been doing the very same thing to Palestinians for more than half a century?

Israel has perfected the tactic of deflecting any and all criticism by shouting, screaming, and fulminating that all its critics are anti-Semitic. Israel has a right to exist as a state. It has a right to security. But it doesn’t have a right to murder unarmed people. It doesn’t have the right to bomb Gaza every few years in what is known in Israeli defense circles as “mowing the lawn.” It doesn’t have the right to control who and what enters or exits Gaza, the right to control Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters. Aside from the United States, no nation in the world gets away with murder like Israel does, year after year, decade after decade.

Short Takes:

The Trump kleptocracy is right on track, normalizing corruption, hastening the fall of the American empire. The oligarchs must know, on some level, that the end is near because they’re making a mad grab for as many spoils as they can haul.

Capitalism is killing us, and the planet. Goes to show that any ideology taken to extremes will produce tyranny.

Fukushima is now the worst nuclear disaster in history. Seven years gone and the media has no interest, as if by ignoring the calamity it will vanish. Kind of the same charade Trump and the Republicans play with anthropogenic climate change.

I was fortunate to meet author and activist Tasoula Hadjitofi when she visited Santa Barbara on April 29. I reviewed her book, The Icon Hunter, for the SB Independent. Hadjitofi is a gracious, intelligent and intrepid woman.

Gaza Scorecard

“Editors around the world are requesting their journalists to be ever softer, ever more mealy-mouthed in their reporting of any incident which might upset Israel.” Robert Fisk, The Independent, August 2001

The New York Times keeps a running scorecard of the latest Israeli-Palestinian madness in Gaza. According to the Times, Israel has struck 3,209 targets in Gaza, and Hamas has fired 2,233 rockets into Israel. It’s interesting that these numbers are reported side-by-side, as if to show there is some equality between the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas. But it’s one thing to attack a target in a densely populated territory with sophisticated weaponry, and another to launch a rocket indiscriminately in the hope it will find a target.

The death count is the true indicator of the one-sided nature of this latest round of conflict: 856 Palestinians, many of them children, 40 Israelis, most of them soldiers. It’s also telling that the Times chose not to report the number of wounded on either side, or the number of people displaced from their homes – those numbers fall overwhelmingly, and almost exclusively, in the Palestinian column of a grim ledger.

I look at photographs of destruction on Aljazeera and wonder how the people of Gaza will ever rebuild their homes, businesses, schools, and neighborhoods, not to mention the water and sewage system and electrical grid. For the third time in six years, the infrastructure of Gaza has been smashed. How are Palestinians supposed to rebuild in the face of Israel’s blockade? Where will the enormous quantities of steel, cement and other building materials come from? Not from the sea – the Israeli navy won’t allow it; not from the air -- Israel controls the airspace; not by land from Egypt because the Egyptian dictatorship despises Hamas almost as much as Israel’s political leaders do.

Israel has a right to exist. Israel has a right to defend its territory and population. But Israel doesn’t have the right to occupy land taken from the Palestinians by armed force, or to evict Palestinians so Israel can build more settlements, or to indefinitely imprison Palestinians, and on and on. 

What most irks me about the constant turmoil in the Middle East is the role played by the United States. For decades we’ve blindly backed Israel, allowed Israel to call our diplomatic tune, and provided buckets of military aid and diplomatic support so that Israel can maintain a stranglehold on Gaza and the West Bank. Along with unconditional support of Israel, the US supports the junta in Egypt and the despotic rulers of Saudi Arabia. We sure know how to pick our friends. And lest it be forgotten, we once considered Saddam Hussein a stand-up guy.