Yesterday the reading from Jeremiah 14:17, which came up in Morning Prayer in the Christian prayer book, was sadly apropos: "Let my eyes stream with tears day and night, without rest , over the great destruction which overwhelms the virgin daughter of my people, over her incurable wound...We wait for peace, to no avail, for a time of healing, but terror comes instead..."
The Latin Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattisa Pizzaballa, has called for a day of prayer and fasting for peace in the Holy Land on October 17. Catholic patriarch calls day of prayer and fasting for peace in the Holy Land | Catholic News Agency
At Mass this evening our priest urged the congregation to observe prayer and fasting on Tuesday, Oct. 17, in solidarity with all who are suffering from the war, and in intercession for an end to the violence.
It's a terrible thing. And there's no effort to bring peace. A US naval fleet has been moved into position to interdict any interference from other powers. So we're aiding and abetting whatever happens. I hope it's not genocide but IDF generals have already used the term "human beasts" in describing Gaza civilians.
ReplyDeleteI think the interdiction the Americans are there to prevent would be from bad-faith actors, i.e. primarily Iran.
DeleteThe Israelis are treating the atrocities committed by Hamas as a declaration of war. We're told the Israelis are abiding by, or at least trying to abide by, what international law requires from combatants. That doesn't mean that the bombing, and then presumably an invasion, won't happen. (I have been tied up with work all day, so have not been able to keep up with events - not sure whether the invasion has begun.)
I think the possibility for peace will come after Israel either destroys Hamas, or alternatively tries and fails to destroy Hamas.
I have a friend who is an immigrant from Egypt. I asked him whether he thought Egypt should admit Gazans who are seeking to flee the bombing and war. He is against it; he stated there is no good way for Egypt to distinguish the terrorists from those who simply want peace and security.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone knows how to untangle what has been created in former Palestine, I hope they will tell us.
To me the best outcome would be for Hamas to be disabled enough to be out of the picture for governing Gaza. And then for Israel to do something like the Marshall Plan. I know Biden said it would be a bad idea for Israel to occupy Gaza again. But I don't see how that could be avoided in the short term if Hamas is out.
DeleteWith post-war Germany and Japan the US helping to build them up enabled a good outcome in the long run.
So-called smart money says Netanyahu will be out when this is over.
It seems like the best way to have untangled the mess at least somewhat would have been for the Palestinians to have accepted the Oslo Accords or the peace proposal of 2008. But that didn't happen.
DeleteNot sure how Israel "destroys Hamas." It's an extremist ideology that arose from hatred and a taste for violence. It was, to an extent, fed by Israeli policies and repression. Might as well say we're going to stamp out MAGA.
ReplyDeleteIsraelis control power, water, food, and everything else that goes in and out of Gaza via sea and the two pass points in the fence. So the notion that they won't "occupy" Gaza is moot. They don't need to.
The current Israeli scorched earth effort that has displaced a million people in northern Gaza, ostensibly to stamp out Hamas and get back hostages, will inflame feelings among Palestinians, extend to other Arab countries, and make everything worse in the long run.
We need to be more measured in aid and support to Israel.
Katherine, thanks for pointing out the day of fasting and prayer today. I'm not sure that letters to elected reps in support of immediate and ongoing aid to Gaza would go amiss, either.
Hamas is a political and terrorist organization. It is like the PLO, or the IRA. Per Wikipedia, "Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, gaining a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council, and subsequently took control of Gaza Strip from Fatah following a civil war in 2007. Since then, it has ran Gaza as an oppressive one-party state."
DeleteIsrael's objective is to destroy Hamas, which presumably means defeat it on the battlefield, kill as many members and leaders as necessary, remove it from power in Gaza, and then ...well, it's not clear what happens next.
If any of that proposed plot line reminds you of the US post-9/11, you are not alone.
I guess it reminds me more of the Viet Cong. An enemy who doesn't really threaten our existence but against whom we have ideological differences, an enemy who melts in and out of civilian territories making it impossible to tell collaborators from innocent bystanders, an enemy who doesn't fight "fair" because it is up against a well-funded, organized army. And we all know how that deal went down.
DeleteWe're not fighting Hamas (yet). And Hamas really does threaten Israel's existence; they make no bones about it. "From the river to the sea..." If Hamas had more sophisticated and effective weapons, nobody doubts they'd use 'em on Israel. This is why the prospect of Iran with nukes is such a nightmare for Israelis.
DeleteI agree re: "an enemy who melts in and out of civilian territories making it impossible to tell collaborators from innocent bystanders."
I dunno. It seems like we have been actively fighting some anti-Israel or -Western faction since 9/11.
DeleteWe have hosted many opportunities since the Carter admin for Israelis to work out differences with their neighbors.
But we also continue to back Israel in the face of provocative moves such as West Bank settlements and a noose around Gaza. Now we are supporting what looks to me like disproportionate response to Hamas's terrorism. Certainly the Palestinian body count in Gaza is far higher. Even if Israel is blameless in the hospital tragedy, it is killing indiscriminantly by reducing residences to rubble and cutting off power and water.
Don't many of Israel's policies work against our attempts to broker peace?
Is a "Jewish state" even compatible with American notions of equality if it means disenfranchising non-Jewish Israelis to ensure a Jewish majority in the Knesset, creating a ghetto in Gaza, and trying to encroach on Palestinian territory in the West Bank with armed. ultra-Zionist settlers?
To what extent have tips from Israeli intelligence helped thwart attacks like 9/11? And would we need protection from those attacks if we were less insistent on taking Israel's side?
It's all very complicated, and I'm sure there are many more things to think about than the obvious ones I offer here.
But I think we need to think about aligning ourselves less with the state of Israel and more with the cause of peace in the entire region.
Jean, I agree that we need to align ourselves with peace in the entire region. And a notion of a Jewish state is antithetical to American notions of equality. However we have to look at why the Jewish state came about, the history of pogroms, etc., and the big one, the Holocaust. Collectively "everybody else" did not simply let Jews exist, they actively sought their destruction. The Balfour Declaration seems to me to have been a collective expression of very guilty consciences. Even America turned away a shipload of Jews during WWII seeking asylum from the Nazis, and sent them back to their fate.
DeleteHow long should Holocaust guilt drive support for Israel? And where do we draw the line with support when Israeli policy feeds violence? "Never again!" loses some punch when Palestinians are pulling dead kids out of apartment buildings destroyed by Israeli bombs.
DeleteI'm not sure it was a good idea for Biden's trip to the area to be announced ahead of time. Seems like an invitation for something bad to happen. When he went to Ukraine it wasn't publicized until the trip had taken place.
ReplyDeleteHowever, that said, I wish him and Blinken luck in their diplomacy efforts, particularly in getting humanitarian aid into Gaza.
I don't think of this as Palestinians versus Israelis as much as Hamas versus the Netanyahu government. No humanitarian instincts to be found. They're playing The Game and Machiavelli wrote the manual. I wish our country stopped supporting Israel. They do whatever they please. And they're big boys now with nuclear weapons. The support we give them is used to buy arms from American companies. So, it is actually a subsidy to our domestic military suppliers. I am sadly believing that our foreign policies have only resulted in more chaos and confrontation throughout the world and the US really doesn't know what it is doing.
ReplyDeleteHistory has interesting role reassignments. The Sicarii were first century Jewish terrorists. Their tactics wrt the general Jewish population of the time seem to echo in Hamas' relation to the Palestinians.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicarii
The company I worked for was founded by a guy who was a Jewish Holocaust survivor, from Poland (though now it is part of Lithuania). The corporation name is a phonetic version of his ancestral village which no longer exists post WWII. It has dual headquarters, in the US (in Pennsylvania) and also Israel, and has plants in about a dozen countries. The two plants in Israel are in Beersheva (in the south) and Midgal (in the north). So I am wondering how they are affected. There was quite a bit of back and forth travel to the Israel plants by some of our US engineers. I found the company to be a good employer, though I realize that probably has more do do with the people I worked directly with than anything else.
ReplyDeleteBeersheba and Midgal certainly are Old Testament place names. So seems they've been settled for several thousand years.
DeleteI've seen a lot of spellings of Beersheba (Be'ersheva, Beer-Sheva?). Probably the correct one is something in Hebrew characters.
DeleteThe company plant is out in the middle of nowhere about 30 miles from the town. I've seen pictures taken by co-workers who went there. It's like desert without the sand. I think it would be called hardpan here. At least they didn't waste any agricultural land on it.
This hospital explosion in Gaza is a disaster on several levels: 500+ Gazans killed; the Arab and Muslim world, convinced it was an Israeli bomb, now in a frenzy; Biden's peace conference in Jordan canceled; the Abraham Accords and other peace initiatives in the region now back-burnered for some indefinite time.
ReplyDeleteAs of earlier this morning, each side was blaming the other for the explosion. The Israeli military claims they had no operations in that area; the nature of the explosion is such that it couldn't be from their ordnance; and to have video evidence indicating it was an errant Hamas missile. Whether they are addressing the possibility that it could have been an errant Israeli bomb or missile, I haven't heard.
Sorry, per the Israelis, it wasn't a Hamas missile, it was an Islamic Jihad rocket.
DeleteIs there a difference?
DeleteThey are two different groups. Not that it makes any difference to the victims :-(
DeleteI have seen a lot of arguing back and forth about a "one state solution" vs a "two state solution". It seems to me that what there has actually been, up to now, is a three-state situation. The West Bank is geographically separated from Gaza. Gaza has been governed by Hamas and the West Bank by the Palestinian Authority, and Israel is in the middle. So there have been effectively three states.
ReplyDeleteYears ago I read Leon Uris' historical novel "Exodus", and James Michener's " The Source". I enjoyed them, I might have to go back and re-read them, and see how well they have time-traveled. I remember that my dad read them too, we would read big novels and talk about them. Nowadays I spend more time doom scrolling on the internet.
ReplyDeleteIt has to be remembered that the Netanyahu government is actually right wing and authoritarian, staffed with bigots and racists. I cannot in any way take on face value anything from the Israeli or United States governments regarding incidents of individual or mass death. First, it was a jihadist missile. They don't have anything that powerful. Then it becomes a jihadist missile igniting explosives stored at the hospital. The lie constantly morphs until international attention fades or is distracted by something else.
ReplyDeleteI expect the totally one-sided support that the US government gives Israel will result in renewed terrorist incidents here. May be hard to notice since we seem to be constantly terrorizing ourselves as of late. People resort to terror when they feel they have nothing left to lose. The uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto did not expect to defeat them or gain concessions from the Nazis. They expected to die or live in misery and only wanted to take as many of their tormenters with them as they could. The Native Americans fought back brutally and their massacres were on the par with modern terrorism. That's to be expected from the brutalized.
You'll get no defense of the Netanyahu government from me. He has only gotten worse the more time has gone by. Hopefully when this is over he'll be out.
DeleteAlthough Israel is currently presenting a united "war cabinet" front, evidently public opinion blames Netanyahu for letting this happen. He and his party will likely suffer once the "war" has passed.
DeleteBiden strategy seems to be to keep as many Americans (himself, Secretaries of State, Defense) on the ground with Netanyahu and the "war cabinet" so they do not go off the deep end. Biden is frankly telling Netanyahu not to make America's mistakes of overreacting with 9/11 and Afghanistan.
This may work out well with Biden; he is certainly giving the impression of being in charge. While he is doing the typically Democratic thing of government spending, he is spending it on defense which is typically a Republican issue. He was very blunt last night in saying that we are really restocking our arsenal with goods made in America as we send existing weapons elsewhere in the world.
Of course, the Republican house has shot itself in the feet multiple times and shows no signs of stopping.
I think the Republican Party as the war hawk party is a vestige of the pre-Trump past. So grateful Trump is not in the White House now. He would botch both Ukraine and Israel.
DeleteI think it's questionable that any Israeli government would react to the Hamas terrorist attacks much differently than the current unity government has so far.
DeleteAs I see it, it's not so much a matter of how Israelis are responding to this specific Hamas attack, but of how Israelis have pursued provocative policies--resuming settlement in the West Bank, favoring Jewish citizens over Israeli Arabs, and doing very little to prevent Gaza from becoming a hellhole of despair.
DeleteSpeaker vote is getting interesting. Each time Jordan has another vote he loses more votes! What happens if this trend continues? When does Jordan give up? How long are the Republicans going to persist in this self-destructive behavior?
ReplyDeleteThis last time the new votes were from districts where Biden won last year. Those reps are taking advantage of the situation to tell their voters they are not part of extreme right.
Unfortunately, those who are voting against Jordan are receiving threats against themselves and their families. Very sad politics!
According to the Washington Post, he is no longer a candidate after a secret ballot straw vote behind closed doors.
DeleteAt the risk of sounding like a media pundit, unless the GOP comes up with someone who can garner a few Democrat votes to offset the Freedom Caucus members in league with Matt Goetz and the Prince of Lies About Stolen Elections--or a few moderate Repubs decide to vote for Hakim Jeffries (hardeeharhar)--there will be no speaker.
Joe Biden should be giving Dems a secret list of moderate Repubs they could vote for and trying to signal that to moderate GOP members in order to break the stalemate.
However, neither party is willing to give the other a "victory," so the only solution that looks like it has a chance is to grant acting Speaker McHenry enough power to bring actions to the floor while Repubs try to stuff their brains back in their heads the right way.
I would suggest to them a representative from my state, Don Bacon. He has been pretty critical of the dysfunction, but his conservative creds are intact. And he wasn't an election denier. He isn't from my district, so I didn't vote for him. He runs a bit farther to the right than I do anyway. But he comes across as a reasonable person, and has worked across the aisle on occasion.
DeletePost reports abt Bacon: "It’s true that more than 20 lawmakers have stood up to the alleged intimidation [by Jordan supporters] by continuing to vote against Jordan. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) remained dug in despite revealing that his wife felt compelled to sleep with a loaded gun."
DeleteThe battle for speakership has really brought the ferals out of the woodwork, but hard to understand why, since it may be the least secure and most stressful job in America right now. (Well probably not as stressful as the presidency).
DeleteAs restlessly as I sleep, a loaded gun in bed would not be a good idea.
The GOP Speaker meltdown illustrates that, in many meaningful ways, the GOP isn't really a single political party. It's two parties that, for the last 6-7 years, managed to make alliances - more often than not.
DeleteI'm proud of the moderate GOP members who are standing up to the Trumpist thugs who are harassing and making death threats. Wish that backbone was more evident in 2016-22.
Mitt seems to be organizing an effort to push an alternative to Trump. If I live long enough to vote again, I'm not sure I wouldn't vote for Nikki Hayley if the GOP has sense enough to nominate her. I disagree with her about most things, and yet a sane, competent, and serious person looks very appealing next to what else is on offer.
DeleteRaber was reading a history book a few months ago that put some of the current idiocy into perspective. He came away with two conclusions: Americans are, for good or ill, wedded to the two party tradition, and ugly, public infighting is part of that; and we all need to see that what we learned in K-12 about our political history has been highly sanitized and expurgated for the consumption of children to prop up a myth of American exceptionalism.
Some years ago there was a book, "Everything I really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum. Some of the lessons were about playing well with others and not running with scissors. Seems like some members of Congress need to read that.
DeleteI hope this Jordan affair is a turning point for the Republican party. The moderates have shown that they can stand up to the extremists and Trump who backed Jordan.
DeleteIt is too bad the House election is not this November. I think there would be some consequences for the Republican extremists if it were.
Anne, if you're out there, how are things going?
ReplyDeleteHi, Katherine . After a very exhausting trip west, my husband is now a resident patient at the California Rehabilitation Institute. It’s his - our - best chance for a somewhat normal life in a wheelchair . It’s truly an amazing place and we are so grateful that they accepted him in spite of his age-he will be 83 in a month- he was turned down by others. He gets discouraged but I know he can do it if he overcomes his fear. Please pray that he can do so.
DeleteAnne, thanks for the update, I'm glad you reached CA safely and that your husband was accepted to the Institute. We will pray that he will make progress to a more normal life there.
DeleteAnne, glad that things are continuing to work out for your husband. Try to get some rest.
DeleteA prayer from Shalem
ReplyDeletehttps://shalem.org/
Prayer- Two peoples, one land, Three faiths, one root, One earth, one mother, One sky, one beginning, one future, one destiny, One broken heart, One God. We pray to You: Grant us a vision of unity. May we see the many in the one and the one in the many. May you, Life of All the Worlds, Source of All Amazing Differences help us to see clearly. Guide us gently and firmly toward each other, toward peace. ~ Rabbi Sheila Weinberg
Thanks Anne.
DeleteI see that Biden and Pope Francis had a twenty minute phone conversation yesterday about the Israel Gaza situation.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2023/10/23/biden-pope-francis-israel-hamas-246353?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2928&pnespid=u6U8VDQbZLJFg6XQqj6sQ4qXpA63WZpmMrG32O0yqA9mMd8uhWsnSJlomumL9EKtR2rqmkrj
The article doesn't say who initiated the call, but if I had to guess I would probably say it was Pope Francis.