James M. Redwine

Hebrews

Get Out Now!

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If one credits the Jewish Torah, the Christian Bible and the Islamic Quran, the Hebrews and Arabs are descended from Abraham who was born in Ur, modern day Iraq. Abraham’s sons, Ishmael and Isaac, were also born in Ur. They are the progenitors of today’s Arabs and Jews, according to the folklore of both groups. Therefore, Arabs and Jews are one people.

 When Abraham led his family and flock out of Ur, they went to Canaan which was already inhabited by several peoples who were probably the ancestors of modern-day Iranians (ancient Babylonians/Persians). If there was an actual Abraham, scholars estimate he arrived in Canaan sometime between 2,000 and 1,700 B.C. And that would have been about the time the internecine bloodbath among numerous peoples of the Middle East had its genesis. Naturally, humans being human, each group has its own version of the truth usually attributed to revelations from their own, self-created, deities.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem that was then and is now Palestine. Jesus’ mother was a Hebrew girl, Mary, and his father was the god of both Hebrews and Arabs (Book of Matthew, Chapter 2). Therefore, Jesus was a Palestinian Jew, although neither Jews nor Islamists consider him to be the son of a god as Christians do. Of course, Jesus is the original Christian according to the New Testament that is revered by modern day Christians.

Regardless of the religious beliefs of Christians, Islamists and Jews, the oral and written traditions of all three groups establish their cultural and historical connections. Assuming there is some factual basis for these indigenous myths, a modern D.N.A. analysis should prove close genetic ties among Hebrews/Jews and Arabs. As an aside, the same could be true to a lesser extent among Arabs, Jews and Iranians.

And to introduce more obfuscation and mendacity into the cauldron, Christians from Europe decided their god had ordained that they should install their faith into what was a family feud. We Americans did not seek salvation in what became called the Holy Land until about the time of the First World War. However, beginning in 1948, we bullied our way into the heart and soul of the “strange mournful mutter” of the dead and dying civilians who are but pawns in the schemes of Middle Eastern and European tyrants.

It is only American might that allows and facilitates the slaughter of innocents and the conquest by those who see themselves as chosen by their gods to impose their evil upon their relatives and neighbors. And it is only American decency, if such there be, that can encourage morality to what started 4,000 years ago and remains today, an immoral war, and help bring about a just and lasting peace.

Merry Christmas to Us

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If the message of Christmas were simply gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, etc., etc., it would have died out about as unceremoniously as the current stock market. Therefore, we should probably consider if there are other possibilities.

When the Jews were conquered by the Romans they reacted as most oppressed people would. Their cultural myths concentrated on deliverance. In general, deliverance from an omnipotent force can take three approaches: armed rebellion; assimilation; and/or peaceful coexistence.

To some of the Hebrews their hoped-for messiah would be a warrior who would throw off the Roman rule. To others the approach was more of total capitulation. But for many the thought was a Prince of Peace would provide the best hope. To fight Rome, as the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 A.D. showed, was to court annihilation. As the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius chronicled, revolt by the Jews brought total devastation to their society.

On the other hand, the Romans and Jews of that time did not appear to be interested in peaceful coexistence except upon terms set by Rome. That left real deliverance from bondage for the Jewish people to be more metaphysical, that is, through philosophy not armed resistance. And it took 2,000 years, the horrors of WWII and the benevolence of the world’s new Rome, the United States of America, before Jewish self-determination could be realized. Still true peace as called for by Jesus is elusive. The Middle East continues to be an area where armed rebellion is both ubiquitous and futile.

Perhaps we should give the true message of Christmas a chance. I know President Trump has his faults and I carry no brief for much of what our government does in our name. However, to withdraw from foreign conflicts that simply kill thousands, destroy cultures and cost trillions appears to me to be the course Jesus would call for. Merry Christmas and welcome home to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else we are engulfed in endless counterproductive conflicts. And if we really are the new Rome maybe we should learn from the military fiascoes of that ancient one.

The debacle on Wall Street might best be addressed not by quarrelling over interest rates but by investing our treasure in ourselves instead of squandering it in the vain pursuit of a Pax Americana.

It Sounds So Simple

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The Babylonians of Mesopotamia formed a written code of laws designed to resolve all human needs and control all human behavior. That was over 3,500 years ago. It did not guarantee Freedom of Speech.

Fear not, after the Babylonians the Hebrews took a shot at it and adopted, after first rejecting, the Ten Commandments that were supplanted by first Greek then Roman laws. None of these directly recognized the essential right to publicly disagree.

Then along came history’s greatest conquerors, the British, who promulgated a system of law that encompassed much of prior legal systems. What each Code contained was a written desire to account for all human behavior. But the right to peaceably assemble and tell the rulers they were either great or full of bug dust was not specifically included.

In 1787-89 a small group of white, Anglo-Saxon men made up largely of lawyers put forth the U.S. Constitution that was amended ten times before it was even adopted. The first of these amendments attempted to provide for free speech and assembly, an ideal that has helped preserve our democracy for over 200 years. Perhaps those prior legal systems should have included it.

I was musing about these attempts to avoid conflict by applying written words when I watched and read the accounts of President Trump’s campaign stop in Evansville, Indiana on August 30, 2018. And I was transported back to when I took our son out of school to see President Ford when he led a motorcade down Main Street in Evansville on Friday, April 23, 1976.

Jim and I were crushed by the crowd of about 20,000; however, we managed to not only see President Ford but to even get to shake his hand. I thought such an opportunity was of more educational value than one day of sixth grade class. The school disagreed and still marked his absence “unexcused”.

Regardless, while Peg and I did not take the opportunity to praise or protest President Trump, it was not due to politics or philosophy but simply an inability to be two places at once; we were previously committed and our absence from the conflicting event would most assuredly have been “unexcused”. Had President Clinton, Hillary that is, been the campaigner we would have wanted to see her too. In other words, that First Amendment was and still is quite a good idea.

I am appending my column on President Ford’s visit that was first published the week of January 8, 2007. I hope you find it worthwhile if you are seeing it for the first time and not excessively boring if this is a repeat for you. There were many Americans pro and con then too.

Pardon Me, President Ford

(Originally Published Week of January 8, 2007)

President Gerald Ford died December 26, 2006.  In a life filled with public service, he will always be best known for his pardon of President Nixon in 1974.

President Nixon personally chose Gerald Ford to replace the disgraced Vice-President Spiro Agnew who resigned in 1973 amid disclosures of bribery while Agnew was Governor of Maryland.

Vice-President Ford served under President Nixon until Nixon resigned in August of 1974.  One month after President Nixon resigned, President Ford issued him a full pardon for any crimes he may have committed while president.

At the time, I and most Americans were calling for a complete investigation of the Watergate debacle and especially Nixon’s involvement in it.  It was a time of a media feeding frenzy and blood in the water.

President Ford took the unprecedented step of going personally before Congress and flatly stating that President Nixon and then Vice-President Ford had no deal to pardon Nixon if he would resign.

I recall how dubious I was when President Ford stated that he issued the pardon only to help our country to start healing from the loss of confidence caused by Watergate.

Yet, after a few months I began to have second thoughts about my initial reaction to the pardon.  I began to see how much courage it took for President Ford to go straight into the anti-Nixon firestorm sweeping the United States.

As a country, we were almost paralyzed by the partisan fighting at home and the War in Vietnam.  We needed a new direction and a renewed spirit.

Surely President Ford with his twenty-two (22) years in Congress knew he was committing political suicide by not giving us our pound of flesh.  Still, he put his country first.  Of course, the country rewarded his sacrifice by booting him from office and electing President Jimmy Carter to replace him.

But during the campaign of 1976, when President Ford came to Evansville on April the 23rd, I took my son, Jim, out of school and we went to the Downtown Walkway to cheer the man who put country above self.

For while William Shakespeare may almost always get his character analysis right, when it came to President Ford, “The good he did lived after him.”   Julius Caesar, Act III, sc. ii.

Even President Carter, one of America’s most courageous and best former presidents said of President Ford:

“President Ford was one of the most admirable
public servants I have ever known.”

And when it came to the pardon of President Nixon, Senator Ted Kennedy, while admitting that he had severely criticized the pardon in 1974, said that he had come to realize that:

“The pardon was an extraordinary act of courage
that historians recognize was truly in the national
interest.”

So, President Ford, since even your political opponents came to appreciate your courage and goodness, I am confident that you have long ago “pardoned” all of us who doubted you back when we needed your leadership.

A Capital Idea

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President Trump has decided to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Administration’s two main stated reasons for doing so are: (1) it simply acknowledges the reality, i.e., the Jews of Israel already say it’s their capital; and, (2) America’s decision will promote peace among the Jews, Christians and Muslims who live there. Of course, many of the residents of Jerusalem are sectarian and do not ascribe to any religion. However, none of them can escape their own or their neighbor’s cultural heritage.

According to the Old Testament people were already living in the areas we now call Palestine and Israel when the Hebrews migrated there. And according to the Torah, the Bible and the Quran, Arabs and Jews have the common founder, Abraham. They are genetically half-siblings at their origin.

This makes some sense to me as science has established all humans arose from one source in Africa and the Middle East is geographically connected to that source. We are all connected genetically, although it seems unfair I cannot understand nuclear physics nor run a 4.3 forty.

It is our elected federal government’s function to set and execute our foreign policy. I am good with that. But I would like to respectfully suggest to President Trump that if we want to truly recognize the reality on the ground in Jerusalem and promote peace as an honest broker, we should also recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, just saying.