James M. Redwine

Gaza

A Re-Birth of Independence

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July 04, 1776 was the birth of the United States of America. Our Birth Certificate is the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure those rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Were the men who signed this document naïve? Did they not recognize that these words would ring hollow to slaves, indigenous peoples, women and minorities? Of course not! Our Founders are called founders not because they established the only government in world history that guaranteed these principles, but because they dreamed of building such a nation. And the first giant step was to separate America from the monarchy of Great Britain.

It has taken 250 years of blood, sweat and tears to free many whose rights were only words in 1776. But the Declaration was of an ideal towards which to struggle. Nothing was given; each element of the American Dream has been slowly, and by fits and starts, achieved through reliance on our Founders’ vision and great sacrifice. We have much left to accomplish, but we have steadily progressed toward our ideals of a nation based on true democratic government.

As President Abraham Lincoln declared at Gettysburg in 1863, the United States would have a new birth of freedom and that “…[G]overnment of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. The Civil War was the throes of our second birth of independence. It led our nation to those magnanimous ideals of “malice towards none and charity for all” that laid the foundation in the hearts of Americans that guided us to the Marshall Plan after WWII and leadership in humanitarian beneficence throughout the world from 1946 until we began to retreat from kindness into autocracy.

Immediately after WWII, thanks to trillions of dollars of U.S. aid and peaceful persuasion, America went from an isolationist self-centered nation to a beacon of hope across the earth. Then we began to lose our way so that now most of the planet sees us as simply a sycophant of the new country we helped establish in 1948, one we have supported without questioning its immoral hegemony and Zionism. The United States is now linked with Israel in aggressive wars of conquest and repeated genocides. How did we allow ourselves to go from a beacon of freedom to a symbol of oppression?

It began innocently enough with a desire to help Jewish minorities in Europe after WWI and especially WWII. Then Israel fell under the non-democratic Zionist government that took our foreign military and economic aid and repaid us by attacking our ship The Liberty in 1967 where Israel deliberately killed 34 of our sailors and wounded 171 more to hide their espionage upon America.

Next Israel used its Jewish American spy, Jonathon Pollard, to steal our nuclear secrets while we continued to supply Israel with diplomatic cover and aid. Ironically, Pollard is now a citizen of Israel who is running for a seat in the Knesset on a platform of Palestinian elimination from Gaza.

Just as our Declaration of Independence set forth King George III’s transgressions that justified our Revolution, we should acknowledge that Israel has repeatedly led America to engage in foreign wars in Iraq and elsewhere using false allegations that Saddam Hussein and others had weapons of mass destruction. Currently, Zionist Israel has falsely led us into repeatedly attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities while Israel controls the nuclear weapons that it stole from us.

However, the real damage that Israel has wreaked upon America is not just misapplication of the hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. aid, but the damage to our democratic ideals and our hard-won place among nations as a beacon to equal rights for all. The United States was a light to the world, but now is seen as a threat to attack whatever countries Israel wants to conquer. The world now links us to the actions of Israel, which is seen by most of the United Nations as a pariah country.

It is time to remember our Founder’s guidance and return to that great wisdom of President George Washington who warned us in his Farewell Address not to become passionately attached to any other country for, as President Washington said in 1796:

“…[N]othing is more essential than that permanent inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

It is long past time for the United States to “dissolve the political bands which have connected” America and Israel. We need not treat Israel as an enemy, but we can have a relationship with Israel just as we treat equally all the nations of the world. We need to have a new birth of our ideals and re-take our place as the world’s preeminent democracy. To do so we must cease enabling Zionist Israel to represent to the world we condone or, worse, promote unequal treatment of all humanity.

Should one have questions as to the seriousness of the harm to America from our government’s unqualified loyalty to Israel over loyalty to our ideals, our nation’s top counterterrorism official, Joe Kent, just resigned in protest of the danger posed by Israel’s power over America’s war making policies. The Trump-appointed former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center wrote in his letter of resignation of March 17, 2026:

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Over 60% of Americans oppose President Trump’s policy on Iran. However, according to President Trump, “Right now I’m at 99% in Israel. I could run for prime minister (of Israel)”. In the United States the President’s overall approval rating is 39% according to a new poll from FOX NEWS. And, President Trump publicly stated he might move to Israel and run for prime minister once his current term ends.

Our passionate attachment to Israel has cost us our hard-earned status as that “Shining City on the Hill” in world opinion. We have allowed ourselves to be misled from our ideals; it is past time for us to reclaim our rightful place among the true democracies of the earth and Declare our Independence from Israel. For although we are 250 years old, we are still too young to die, especially because we abdicated our core values.

For Reference Please See:

            The Passionate Attachment, America’s Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present (1992) by George Ball, former Under Secretary of State and formally America’s Ambassador to the United Nations; and,

            Assault on the Liberty (1979) by James M. Ennes, Jr.

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavel gamut”

All In The Family

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The Book of Ruth has four pages. One paragraph of one page is perhaps the Bible’s most often recited passage by brides and grooms: 

“Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you;
For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people, and your God my God;
Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried.”

Ruth 1:16-17

These beautiful promises were made by Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi. The family and cultural inter-connections are closely intertwined. Ironically, Naomi, her husband, Elimelech, and their two sons, Mahlou and Chilion, were originally Ephrathites who lived in Bethlehem in Judah, what is now not only the birthplace of Jesus but also Palestine. A further historical irony is that just as today there is famine in Gaza, part of Palestine, in Naomi family’s time “the judges” (the government?) “ruled there was a famine in the land”. So, Naomi and her family left Bethlehem and “sojourned” to the country of Moab that was in what is now the country of Jordan.

Naomi’s sons both married Moabite women but then both sons and Elimelech died. Thereafter, times were hard for Naomi and her daughters-in-law when Naomi heard that, “the Lord had visited his people (in Bethlehem) and given them food”. So, Naomi, Ruth and Orpah decided to seek new lives in Bethlehem. While Orpah turned back to Moab, Naomi and Ruth ventured on to Bethlehem where Naomi’s husband still had a wealthy Israeli kinsman named Boaz. Ruth and Boaz eventually married and had a son named Obed. Obed fathered Jesse who fathered Israel’s most famous king, David. The genetics of the Israeli-Palestinian Naomi, the Moabite (Jordanian) Ruth, the Israeli-Palestinian Boaz and the Israeli King David are closely related. They are all of Semitic culture and history and are all deeply embedded in the general genealogy and geography of the area. In essence, they are all related, leading to possible fratricide or genocide if indiscriminate slaughter should occur.

Yet, according to many authorities that is exactly what the Zionists of Israel are doing today as a matter of government policy. As former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, recently stated in an interview on BBC, what Israel is doing in Gaza is, “very close to a war crime”. And more evidence of Israel’s intent comes from Israeli Cabinet Members, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who have publicly called for the “conquest and depopulation of Gaza”.

More graphically, as recently reported in The Washington Post’s World View Newsletter by reporter Ishaan Tharoor, former Israeli Defense Force general and current head of the Democrats Party in Israel, Yair Golan, stated:

“Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state among nations if it doesn’t return to behaving like a sane country. A sane country doesn’t engage in fighting against civilians, doesn’t kill babies as a hobby and doesn’t set the expulsion of a population as a goal.” 

As for America, with the cooperation of Egypt and other allies, we should immediately force massive amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza through Egypt. America should also guarantee the accessibility and safety of impartial international journalists into Gaza so the world can witness the facts on the ground. And, the immediate cessation of America’s enablement of the killing and destruction by Israel in Gaza should be a priority.

Not only are the descendants of Ruth and Naomi responsible for and entitled to humane treatment, the United States, as part of the human family, must help assure such outcomes.

Life From Above

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Israel has imposed a total blockade of humanitarian aid to the citizens of Gaza. No food, no water systems and no medical supplies are allowed to the more than 2 million people who live there. Israel enforces its prohibition militarily. Israel also bombs hospitals, schools, places of worship and residences. Since October 07, 2023 over 52,000 Gazans, including thousands of children, have been directly killed by Israel and many more are dying each day due to lack of food, water and medical care. The Zionist led government of Israel in March 2025 publicly announced these actions to be its official policy. Israel has received massive amounts of United States military aid to help enable it to implement these actions. The United States has the moral and legal responsibility to cease aiding this humanitarian catastrophe.

The moral issues are subject to debate, but the legal prohibition of United States military and civilian aid to Israel is specifically required by Section 6201 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. Six United States Senators have just signed a letter addressed to the Comptroller General, Gene Dodaro, citing the Foreign Assistance Act, asking for an investigation of Israel’s, and other countries’, denial of human rights to others while receiving U.S. aid. The Act provides no presidential waiver for such actions. Aid to Gaza’s residents should be both massive and immediate. And history provides a guide. From 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949, the United States and Great Britain operated the Berlin Air Lift that flew over 250,000 humanitarian flights over Stalin’s blockade of aid to Germany’s war-ravaged populace. Food, fuel, medical supplies and other non-military aid helped save countless lives. It would also be apropos for the West to help Palestine because there would have been no state of Israel in 1948 without America and England.

The United States has far greater capability in 2025 than it did in 1948. We can and should alleviate the suffering we helped create. It is both our moral responsibility and our legal duty under our own laws. Also, the only truly permanent road to peace and prosperity involving Israel and its neighbors must come from a Marshall Plan type of solution. America knows both the Berlin Air Lift and the Marshall Plan were humanitarian actions that helped bring much of the world peace, stability and prosperity since WWII.

Since history has proven how greatly we ourselves can profit by simply doing the harder right things, let’s do them. After all, our own laws require them, even if we do not do so because it is right and just.

 

Broad Strokes

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When I was two years old, my Uncle Bud was in the Philippines training to be part of our invasion force into Japan when President Truman made the final decision to use our atomic bombs. My family never doubted the morality of the decision. Based on Japan’s military tradition of bushido and the fact they would be defending their homeland, it was estimated that America would lose a minimum of 250,000 and possibly up to 4,000,000 soldiers in “Operation Downfall”. From my family’s viewpoint, the loss of 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was justified by Japan’s “pre-emptive” attack on our naval fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 07, 1941. Of course, the average Japanese citizen played no part in and had no control over the Emperor’s and his government’s military strategy. In general, today’s nuclear weapons are estimated to be more than 3,000 times as powerful as either Hiroshima’s “Little Boy” or Nagasaki’s “Fat Man”, with concomitant increases in fallout.

According to a May 13, 2013 article posted on the Internet as authored by Nick Turse from Mother Jones, Politics, if Israel used a nuclear weapon against Tehran, Iran, an estimated 5.6 million people would be killed and another 1.6 million injured. That would be about the same total as the number of Jews the Nazis slaughtered in the Holocaust. Hitler justified the Holocaust by blaming Germany’s Jewish population for Germany’s economic woes after WWI. However, it was not the Jewish citizens but the draconian conditions foisted upon all Germans by the June 28, 1919 Treaty of Versailles that prevented Germany’s recovery. Hitler just used the minority Jewish population as a scapegoat to help the Nazis take power, much as the Zionists in Israel, as aided and abetted by President Trump, are using the Iranians as an excuse to invade Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. It is always helpful to have a group to blame and hate, especially if one can use differing religions to stir the witch’s brew.

President Trump has publicly threatened to bomb Iran and has just dispatched approximately one-third of America’s bombers to be positioned to protect Israel from a counter attack or to prepare for a bombing or land incursion of Iran by our own forces. Just as the United States chose to use its atomic bombs so that my uncle and our other military personnel could avoid the almost certain bloodbath of a Japan landing, Israel, or even the U.S.A., might seek to avoid losses by using nuclear weapons. If so, there are other countries with nuclear weapons who might see “pre-emptive” strikes as the most rational self-defense; China, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan and India are nuclear capable. So are France and the United Kingdom. But even though we have fought two wars against England and a couple of war-lite fights with France, American war with either is currently unlikely.

And it is not just nuclear powers the United States might need to be cautious about. After all, President Trump has challenged Mexico, Canada, Greenland, Denmark and several South American countries, not to mention Turkey which has never been averse to a fight. America need not look hard if we want to turn words, or tariffs, into bombs.

Perhaps we should not assume we and/or Israel can just impose our desires on other countries with impunity. As has been proved for thousands of years, the “Glory of Rome” almost always ends up falling on its own sword or is hoisted on its own petard. Two hundred and fifty years is but a moment of hubris in the panoply of history’s irony.

The Crusade Charade

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The Crusades were the outgrowth of many factors but they are generally categorized as a series of wars between European Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims occurring from 1096 to 1291 AD involving competing claims over the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem. The catalyst for the first Crusade was a call to Christians made by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in France in November 1095. Urban declared that God had willed Christians to oust Muslims from the sacred sites. Urban promised remission of sins for any Christian who died in this vital service of Christ. Thousands of English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and others “took up the cross.”

Later in the New World, priests, clerics and politicians and plain Americans have spent from the 15th century to 2024 spreading the gospel at home and continuing to attempt to control the beliefs and behaviors of Middle Easterners. Manifest Destiny was based on the premise that the god of Christians had ordained that America must eliminate paganism and not commit the sin of omitting to develop the land. Such “crusades” as the Trail of Tears were the outgrowth of European immigrants and their descendants’ beliefs that their god had ordained that America was the Promised Land for Caucasian Christians and that Native Americans had to be evicted, killed or converted to Christianity. This ingrained racial memory from 1492 until today may influence the justification for our invasions into the Muslim Middle East. Just as Native Americans had to be destroyed to save them, Muslims are still the enemies of Christ who must be saved from their misguided faith.

Most recently the United States has continued the tradition of the Crusades by invading Iraq twice and belligerently engaging Iran and such groups as ISIS, Hamas, Taliban, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and others. America designates these groups as terrorists but they claim to be part of a resistance movement. These organizations are generally Islamic in their religion as were the native Arabs and Persians during the original Crusades. There were Jewish populations in the Holy Land during the time Christian Europeans were seeking to take over the Middle East, but they were a small minority and could not mount an effective resistance to the Crusades.

Today, due to the world’s post-holocaust revulsion of the Nazi atrocities and the beliefs of many American fundamentalist Christians, such as dreamers in the Rapture, the United States is defending Israel’s aggression and is allied with the Zionists against Muslims, especially Iranians. Many of our politicians and much of the national media are on a crusade to support the hegemony of Israel under the guise of its self-defense. Israel has nuclear weapons it developed by spying on the United States and has an extremely modern and powerful military. It has nothing to fear from the rag-tag Muslim militias even if they are backed by countries such as Iran, China and Russia. Israel does not need our military support. And its current aggression in Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere, to say nothing, as most media does, about Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, clearly proves Israel does not deserve our support.

Israel is conducting its own crusade against Muslim countries in the Holy Land. If the United States cannot find the moral courage to confront this decades long injustice, we should, at least, not supply it with weapons and diplomatic immunity. It is long past the time America atoned for its own sins against our native population and that we not repeat those sins in the Middle East. To do so, all we need is to be guided by those principles of our Constitution and the philosophy of that Christian faith many Americans profess. Perhaps, if we make a good faith effort to act in the Middle East as the country we claim to be, we will not be misled by the Zionists among the Israelis into the same type of disaster those holier than thou European Crusaders had to endure a thousand years ago.

 

Speak Up!

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I am pretty sure no one in my high school had ever heard of Viet Nam when our country decided to get involved there. It was interesting how the war of our generation worked its way into our psyches as our government stumbled its way from 600 “advisors” in the 1950’s to 58,000 dead young American soldiers by 1975.

My post-Korean War generation generally started its ignorance of Southeast Asia believing our government’s policies were rooted in American values of support for democracy, humanitarian aid and the principle of “Let’s fight them over there so we won’t have to fight them over here.” Or, from a geo-political concern, after the Bay of Pig’s debacle, our crushing of Communists in Viet Nam might restore our nation’s unbeatable image.

Most college students, including me, either were unaware or unconcerned about a “Police Action” with little risk. In fact, many college students, including me, were rather excited by the possibility of adventures in a foreign land. What few debates that occurred on college campuses were more about which folk songs to champion. Students, including me, flocked to recruiters’ offices and had few worries about dodging the draft.

But by the time I had received my honorable discharge and returned to campus, young people had experienced an awakening due to such events as the Tet Offensive, B-52 carpet bombing of primitive villages and coffins being returned draped with American flags. As for me, the most significant event was the combat death of my childhood friend, Gary Malone, in 1966.

College campuses had metamorphosized from the indifference of the unaffected to protests against government censorship and misinformation. Such student-led political successes as President Johnson publicly declaring on television, he, “Would not seek and would not accept his party’s nomination to run for another term”, energized young people on campuses throughout America. Students were no longer going to accept the government’s Party Line.

I now see a similar fire smoldering and sometimes blazing among many students who object to their country involving itself in killing innocent civilians and borrowing billions of dollars of future tax revenues. Their grandchildren will not be able to afford infrastructure because our country chooses to give away billions of dollars’ worth of munitions.

Another similarity I remember from the Viet Nam campus environment was the stifling of free expression from students whose political and moral views differed from the government’s and the college administrations. College administrations from Harvard, M.I.T., Pennsylvania, Columbia and so many others have allowed contributors to silence pro-peace and pro-Palestinian views or criticism of the Israeli government’s military suppression and oppression in Gaza and the West Bank. Money has trumped the raison d’être for the existence of colleges, the free interchange of ideas.

Under the disingenuous charge of antisemitism, the actions of Israel have become immune from campus debate. However, what is really occurring is the blanket expulsion of free expression in return for contributions and political acceptance. The Viet Nam era is being revisited.

A recent shocking and cowardly action by a university’s administration occurred this week at the University of Southern California. The chosen 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum who is a Muslim, was banned from giving her valedictory because of her pro-Palestinian views. One need not guess what the administration would have done had she supported the military actions of Israel.

There is an encouraging similarity between my generation’s awakening and activism that finally brought an end to our war in Viet Nam and today’s campus climate. It is reminiscent of the 1960’s folk singer Phil Ochs’ song about student free speech:

♫         We’ve even helped to overthrow the leaders of the land.
I wouldn’t go so far to say we’re also learning how,
But when I’ve got something to say, sir,
I’m going to say it now.        ♫

If colleges are that afraid of student free expression, we should remember, the first casualty of war is truth.