Over the years, Israel has made a lot of big mistakes. But they are about to launch upon their biggest blunder of all time. I won’t dwell on the Suez debacle of 1956 or the rank bloodbath in Lebanon in 1982. Over the years, they have violated numerous articles of international law, inflamed their enemies by building settlements on occupied land, and helped scuttle a vital nuclear treaty with Iran.
They have assassinated foreign dignitaries; I am thinking of Iranian scientists and generals. They have elected a Prime Minister who formed an extreme right-wing government consisting of hotheads and religious fanatics. That government in turn, estranged the entire Israeli secular community. And this right-wing government whose signature mission was the security of Israel has now utterly failed on that core mission. The Prime Minister refuses to step down despite calls from every corner. And it no longer matters that this very government has gleefully flouted democracy and diversity.
After decades of bad decisions made by many Israeli governments regarding the indigenous Palestinian population, which started with a mass expulsion in 1948 and has festered like a sore on the body politic, making it even impossible for friends to defend them, the chickens have come home to roost.
As a Muslim scholar recently said on TV, if you treat people like animals, don’t be surprised if they act like animals. And now, Israel, absolutely blind with rage after the atrocities of Hamas on Oct. 7, is embarking on its greatest folly of all, and that is the invasion of Gaza, the displacement and mistreatment of its civilian population and conducting a ground war which is beginning to resemble the Battle of Algiers.
At home in Israel, dissent is stifled and any anti-war sentiment is construed as treason. But Israel wants to remain friends with the United States. So then the question must be, do friends allow friends to commit war crimes? It is quite fair to say that the other “team” has made a lot of mistakes and there have been a lot of missed opportunities to go around.
At this point, it has become controversial to even say something like two wrongs don’t make a right. But killing civilians is wrong no matter who does it. I have been calling for a ceasefire on social media since 10/9, which coincidentally is the birthday of John Lennon. And now this madness is expanding into a wider conflict which even the diplomats seem unable to check. Am I insane to even utter John Lennon’s words ... Give Peace A Chance?
STEVEN ROSENZWEIG, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Some ask: “Can you be sincerely against Israel’s government and some Zionist policies, and yet not at all anti-Jewish?”
The answer is: Absolutely! And here’s proof: Yochanan ben Zakkai (1st Century C.E.), one of the most revered rabbis in Jewish history, would be considered anti-Jewish by today’s Zionists. Why? Because that teacher of unsurpassed wisdom and sound judgment taught his followers shortly after the Romans’ destruction of the Second Temple, and the Jewish Diaspora, that God preferred mercy and kindness instead of a Temple, and that Judaism depended on loyalty to traditions rather than on possession of a certain land.
However, his Judaism didn’t fit with the stern pieties of Orthodoxy or the theories of Zionism that have proven so disastrous.
And how sad to realize that, since 1903, the Jews could have possessed their own country. In that year, Great Britain offered them Uganda – a large, almost uninhabited fertile land where they could thrive and be safe.
But no! The Jewish Congress refused to accept the offer. Those religious zealots insisted that the land “God gave them” was where they had to establish their nation. And the rest is history … a history of anti-Semitism written in blood, which culminated in the Holocaust.
What a tragedy! Uganda could be Israel today, if only they had listened to the wisdom of Rabbi Yochanan instead of the voices of religious extremists.
DAVID QUINTERO, Monrovia, Calif.
Our mainstream state media informed us that Washington has sent “advisers” to Israel. To do what, give advice and share Washington’s expertise on how to “war” against “terrorists”?
Will US officials advise Israel on how to contain a “war” with “terrorists” — after the Afghan “War” spread into Pakistan?
Will US officials advise Israel on how to avoid a neverending “war” with “terrorists” — after the US could not accomplish this in 20 years of being in Afghanistan?
Will US officials advise Israel on how to “win” a “war” with “terrorists” who don’t even have a military — after the US “lost” the Afghan “war”?
Will US officials advise Israel on how to fight a proportional “war” against “terrorists” — after only 2,500 Americans lost their lives in 20 years in Afghanistan, but 150,000 Afghans died?
Just what type of “war” fighting knowledge could the US pass on to Israel? This is like a “war” sitcom. It’s very humorous, like M.A.S.H.
You have big brother advising little brother on how to do “war” but big brother sucks at doing “war.” But little brother has to listen, because big brother writes the checks.
FRANK ERICKSON, Minneapolis, Minn.
Regarding the article by Sonali Kolhatkar in your 10/15/23 edition (“Will Billionaires Build a New Utopian City—to Replace What They Ruined?”), I will have to put the Billionaires Utopia on notice. Think utopian golf courses, sports parks, green lawns, swimming pools and other utopian joys.
Think again about water being California’s “new gold” and the Sustainable Groundwater Act and the Solano Collaborative, which monitors the Solano Subbasin, the Solano Irrigation District, City of Vacaville, Northern Delta and Sacramento County groundwater sustainability. Major purveyors in the basin include six cities and five water districts. The City of Vacaville (population 100,000+) extracts groundwater from the Tehama Sub-Basin with a flow that has created a localized cone of depression due to pumping that occurs in the area. The current groundwater extractions are on average of 120,000 acre feet annually (that’s a pretty big lake)! So Utopians, the land that you have been gobbling up is near the basin that has salt water intrusion. When you present your “sustainable plans” to the Local Agency Formation of Solano County (LAFCO), make sure that your attorneys start with the California Department of Water Resources first. Then consider contingency plans for the next California drought. It has taken my district over two years to annex two parcels with LAFCO approval. So be prepared to pour a lot of money into getting your stooges elected to the LAFCO Board and see just what our citizens think of that!
DALE MOTISKA, Vacaville, Calif. (General manager of the Rural North Vacaville Water District, Solano County)
Webster cites it as the transmission and development or determination of heredity, which they seem to have abandoned in every sense of the word. Our society in today’s world has a growing segment of our males/men’s populations with today’s “stupidifiers” who’ve reverted to our origins beginning of “mammalian beingness,” prior evolutions state of humanity. There are a multitude of areas requiring intellectual abilities whereby females/women have surpassed the male gender and this “stupidified mammalian” state of beingness has now taken a more vengeful state of retaliation via violence against our humanity. When one lacks the knowledge, awareness, intelligence or understanding of issues that bother or confuse them, their anger in many often turns to violent means seeking resolve.
As a nation that has the statistic of now reaching roughly 500 mass killings, domestic violence reaching new heights, the recent post10/7/23 war in Gaza against Hamas, coups of all types taking over more democratic-type nations (ergo Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s book, “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” and a multitude of violent actions primarily and predominantly by males/men; one needs to ask themselves, is it a growing segment of males/men who are not compassionate human beings amongst us to do in the salvation of our humanity, democracy and civilization itself in thwarting this “mammalian reversion” of those lacking the intellectual capacity to resolve issues via collaborative means of negotiations and compromise.
FRANK C. ROHRIG, Milford, Conn.
Thom Hartmann’s articles scare the sh*t out of me. Keep up the good work.
SUSAN ODEGARD, Westminster West, Vt.
From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2023
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