James M. Redwine

Palestine

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.

You Shall Know the Truth & the Truth Will Set You Free (John 8:32)

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Jesus was born in Palestine and did much of his teaching there about 2,000 years ago. The words Jesus spoke were so offensive to the chief Jewish scribes and priests they called upon the Romans to crucify him even though he had committed no crime except, “He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place” (Luke 23:5). Actually he was just calling for peace and justice.

The Chief Pharisee, Joseph Caiaphas, and his ruling Judaic council charged Jesus with heresy and asked the Romans to try him. The Roman rulers, Pontius Pilate and King Herod, could find no fault in his behavior and planned to release him. Pilate then called together the chief priests and the religious rulers and the populace, to tell them Jesus would be released. “But they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified” (Luke 22:6-25). So, Jesus was crucified for expressing views those in power in the Sanhedrin found offensive. Those eye witness accounts as reported in the Bible come from the famous authors of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all of whom were Jewish. Ergo, the knee jerk response of contemporary society and Trump’s White House that they were being anti-semitic would lie fallow.

The Romans, much like those today in American academia who caved to the financial threats from the Trump Administration, just washed their hands of the matter (Matthew 27:11-26). However, the shame of shirking the most sacred duty of a college, that is, preserving the free flow of ideas, cannot be so easily cleansed.

Another Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil, who advocates in America today for peace and justice in Palestine and Israel has not been charged with any crime, but is currently imprisoned in America for exercising his First Amendment right to free speech, principally during his tenure at Columbia University. He was arrested by the power of President Donald Trump’s Executive Branch that disagrees with Khalil’s calls for peace in Gaza and an end to the slaughter by the Zionists of over 50,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians. Khalil’s peaceful support for the resistance of the Palestinian people from 1948 until now to the military actions and occupations by Israel in Palestine, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Yemen is at odds with the positions of the Trump and Zionist Israeli administrations.

The myopic view of Israel’s Zionistic actions over the past seventy-seven years is reminiscent of lessons from Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. Just as a narcissistic ruler is conned into parading naked before an adoring crowd until an innocent child exposes his vanity, Presidents Biden and Trump find no fault with the Zionists in Israel. That is the very purpose of the First Amendment, to expose the truth.

When our government will brook no dissent nor even consider opposing views, great harm and even greater injustice may occur. Protests and free speech in a non-violent academic atmosphere are vital to preserving our democracy. Just as our Founders feared, a silenced majority leads to tyranny from a minority.

Many Jewish people at Columbia University, and in much of the rest of the world, agree with Khalil or, at a minimum, believe he has the right to peaceably, publicly express his views. In America, Free Speech is not anti-semitic or pro-Palestinian; it is an essential element to preserving our democracy. As the Jewish and Roman rulers of 2,000 years ago discovered, power abused can lead to rights denied and even a country being destroyed. 1948 might have been a new beginning for Israel, but it may not survive the Zionist dream of total conquest of its neighbors in the Middle East while being abetted by our government, much of the media and academia.

The First Amendment to our Constitution is first because our Founders knew it is vital to democracy. When our institutions sell their principles for money or succumb to fear of speaking the truth because they may be branded anti-semitic, we may eventually reap the whirlwind, perhaps even a nuclear one.

Predictions

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Happy New Year! Photo by Peg Redwine

It is the new year, a time when we humans have often either savored our accomplishments, reflected on our regrets, dreamed of our hopes or dreaded our fears. The new year has long been a time when people of many cultures have analyzed the past and predicted the future. As Yogi Berra might have said, the future is hard to predict. However, that has never stopped us from trying. As for me, I find regretting the past only makes it more regrettable and dreading the unknown future only leads to self-fulfilling prophecies. On the other hand, attempting to predict the as yet uncontrollable events ahead will probably do little harm as the world will ignore us anyway. Ergo, I will boldly, if ignorantly, publish a few of my predictions as my experience has been hardly anyone will pay attention so no harm will result.

First, I will not lose weight nor exercise more unless an increasing frequency of nighttime bathroom trips qualifies. Nor will I read the many potentially life-altering books I have in my library. Second, I will not help Peg more around the house nor spend less money on chips and dip and less time in front of the telly. Third, none of my complaints about any public officials will result in any constructive impacts as, first of all they will not be read and secondly none of the officials will think they need to make any changes.

When it comes to generic suggestions, such as I and many others have been making for many years, our state and federal governments may take umbrage, if they even take notice, but not one of our calls for peace in the Middle East or anywhere else will be heeded. In fact, I predict our national leaders will swallow the false intelligence once again fed to us by Israel, such as “weapons of mass destruction”, and we will support a war against Iran as we enable Israel’s theft and destruction of Palestine and Syria.

I do predict Ukraine’s invasion by Russia will finally reach a stalemate on the terms I predicted just after it began three years ago; and, after we have expended billions of our treasure. Russia will stop in return for a permanent seizure of Crimea that they have occupied since 2014 and the permanent occupation of a substantial portion of Ukraine east of the Dnipro River with Ukraine to maintain its ownership and control over the port of Odessa on the Black Sea. I further predict Russia will not help rebuild Ukraine, but America will to the tune of many more billions of our dollars.

Well, Gentle Reader, I suppose you can tell why I find predictions of the future as unhelpful as Yogi might have. I do have many more fears and hopes relating to our fragile globe’s future, but I find the concentration upon them debilitating. And, as it is the new year, I will just succumb to muddling on through 2025. “Happy” New Year to you all.

A Turn From The Right To The Right

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According to CNN this morning, 13 November 2024, President-Elect Trump will nominate former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister, Mike Huckabee, to be United States Ambassador to Israel. Mr. Huckabee was quoted this morning as denying the existence of a Palestinian people, referring to Palestine as Canaan and Palestinians as Canaanites. As the Republican Party will almost certainly have the majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives in 2025, Mr. Huckabee will likely be confirmed.

United States foreign policy in the Middle East will likely continue to be one of aggressive support for Israel, as it has been since Israel was created out of Palestine in 1948. But, it may turn from a philosophical position to a dynamic one. From a war more of words and increasing military materiel backing to one that shifts from old people making threats and spending our national treasure to our young people bleeding and dying. We have recently traveled this one-way road in Viet Nam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan and the Iraq War. Now is the time to change both our direction and our moral position.

Cultural Myopia

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It is no one’s fault. It is a universal curse. We often can recognize virtues in our friends, but may misinterpret the motives of strangers. What someone from another culture means to be irony, sarcasm, humor, even friendly banter or simply an off-the-cuff comment we may take with umbrage.

If a university student calls out “From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”, that student may mean two countries that include Palestine and Israel. Whereas, another student may conclude it is a call to eliminate either Palestine or Israel. The cultural history of both students can lead to ascribing ill will when none is intended. The odds of misinterpretation are greatly increased when people from neither student’s culture see fit to project their ignorance of both students’ backgrounds upon the controversy.

Another near-sighted source of misunderstanding is the overlaying of at least three religious traditions upon all involved. Fundamentalist Christians may conflate their interpretation of the Old Testament’s Book of Isaiah with the New Testament’s Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John when the topic of a Messiah arises. Confusing matters further is the Quran’s teaching in Surah 3; Jesus is revered by Muslims, but as God’s messenger, not His biological child.

The most puzzling aspect of all the armed and unarmed conflicts among the three Abrahamic religions is each emphasizes making peace and performing good works such as healing the sick, giving charity and forgiving others. Yet, for at least fifteen hundred years each faith has often been used as a sword against those of differing religious and other cultural practices. One wonders if those who profess to venerate their Torah, Bible or Quran have truly studied them or are simply regurgitating coffeeshop/barstool catchphrases.

We currently appear to be carrying on our ancient traditions of denigrating those whom we see as apostates. In the past this may have been simply illogical, immoral and ignorant but of only transitory and limited concern. However, today we may not have progressed in our mutual understanding but we certainly have matriculated from slingshots and lances to weapons that truly are god-like or, perhaps, Satanic. Unfortunately, unlike the gods, we cannot reverse the effects. Perhaps we should actually implement the sage actions each religion’s sacred tome champions and beat our swords into ploughshares before we have no arable lands left to plow or peoples to plow them.

A Dead Reckoning

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When my sister and brothers and I have gathered in our hometown for reunions we and our extended families are often drawn to the cemetery where our parents have reposed for several years. Although none of us still lives where our lives were formed, we know it will always be our hometown because Mom and Dad are there.

Invaders who wish to extinguish an original culture’s claim to their homeland know that as long as the graves of the conquered remain, there will always be a visceral connection to the land. Conquest of a people can never be absolute if evidence of the past remains buried in the land. That is why General Patton in the 1970 movie ordered guards to keep American soldiers’ graves from being robbed. As Patton said, “Our graves are not going to disappear as those of the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians who earlier conquered North Africa”.

In America we have always known that one of the best ways to defeat the claims of Blacks and Native Americans to land we want to occupy is to plow over burial sites, such as was done after the Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre of 1921. As Nora Krikler wrote in her 2023 article, Killing the Dead – the Logic of Cemetery Destruction During Genocidal Campaigns:

“Cultural violence is not a side effect of genocidal campaigns; rather, it is fundamental to the logic and process of genocide itself.”

 According to a CNN report published January 20, 2024, “The Israeli military in Gaza has desecrated at least 16 Palestinian cemeteries during its ground offensive in Gaza …”. Video showed Israeli bulldozers leveling large swaths of burial grounds. Bodies were dug up and scattered by earthmoving equipment and tombstones were destroyed.

Plato may have declared, “That only the dead have seen the end of war”, but even being killed could not save the Palestinians from Israel’s relentless program to obliterate many years of Palestinian culture from Palestine. Israel’s war on two million Palestinians in Gaza is reminiscent of Hitler Germany’s 1940 occupation of Poland where over 400,000 Jews were forcefully detained and subjected to executions, starvation and resettlement.

It is reliably reported that Israel’s military had for a year possessed Hamas’ supposed secret plans of exactly how Hamas would attack after years of Israeli occupation and repression. Also, for eight months before October 07, 2023 Israel had been working with the east Indian government to take in Indian temporary workers to replace the thousands of Palestinian guest laborers Israel is now denying entrance to Israel. It appears the government of Israel had been planning a possible Gaza operation for at least eight months prior to October 07, 2023.

Since October 07, 2023 Israel has systematically destroyed hospitals, schools, universities, historical monuments, churches, mosques and 25,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children. Now Israel is even digging up the Palestinian dead to further eliminate them from their homeland. With Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to expand the state of Israel, “from the river (the Jordan) to the sea (the Mediterranean)”, elimination of all evidence of Palestinian culture, including graveyards, is simply part of the total pogrom.

However, Israel might be wise to take an historical perspective on how Nazi Germany treated Jews. As Napoleon Bonaparte warned, “You must not fight too often with one enemy or you will teach them all your art of war”. In other words, as Hitler found to his chagrin, ultimate power has always been a myth. Someday your slave may become your master.