James M. Redwine

United States

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.

 

Motes and Logs

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The United States has several mottos: E Pluribus Unum [out of many one], Land of the Free, America the Beautiful, In God We Trust, United We Stand, This Land Was Made for You and Me, etc. If a national motto is meant to be a goal, perhaps we should consider adopting golf legend Jack Nicklaus’ motto when the media was urging him to pile on Tiger Woods after Woods’ consenting adult personal behavior came to light. Jack responded, “How is that any of my business?” Now, I shamefully admit to the titillation aroused by indiscretions of public figures such as Tiger, Bill Clinton or The Donald. However, my too normal weakness does nothing to assuage our national political angst nor does it comport with any of our grandiose views of ourselves, you know, our mottos.

As we struggle to mend our shredded national self-image and our decimated international reputation, a movement away from personal attacks among one another and especially by the national media might be a logical starting point. The mote that is so concerning in the eye of those we disapprove might be better left out of our serious considerations of issues such as war, inflation, unemployment and health care.

We sometimes lose sight of how good we have it. When we spend our national energy denigrating the religious views or personal behavior between consenting adults, or the differing political or sociological philosophies of our fellow Americans, or non-Americans, we might lose sight of what truly matters.

Numerous alarms have been sounded by people who may be well intended but not grounded in history. We are not, “On the eve of destruction” as sung by Barry McGuire. I remember this dire warning from 1965 and note that during the sixty years since we have been constantly in or preparing for war, but we have also virtually buried Jim Crow and eliminated polio. We have accomplished much in spite of our frailty of personal attacks. Of course, we have much more to do, but we should build on our successes, not forget why they were necessary.

Well, my recommendation for our national motto falls on the Golden Bear side of the ledger, not shrill voices of those who espouse America’s greatness but call for its pettiness. A removal of the log from our own eye could be a fitting place to start.

20,000 “Accidents”

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Photo by Peg Redwine

Israel’s soldiers killed three former Israeli Jewish hostages December 15, 2023 in the Gaza Strip. According to Israeli Defense Forces accounts the three men were unarmed and shirtless. They carried a white flag with the word “HELP” written in Hebrew. The men cried out to the soldiers for help in Hebrew as they held their arms up while emerging from a building. The Israeli soldiers immediately shot and killed two of the men and wounded the third man who retreated back into a building. The soldiers followed him, and even after their commander ordered the firing to stop, the soldiers killed the third man.

Israel called the incident a “tragic accident”. But the killings were intentional, not accidental. Those three killings of unarmed Israelis were the same as the 20,000 intentional killings of Palestinian civilians by Israel since the October 07, 2023 intentional killings of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas.

Israel is responsible for the destruction of water resources, hospitals, mosques, churches, businesses and homes in Gaza. By preventing humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza, Israel is responsible for the endemic disease, thirst and starvation of up to 2.2 million Palestinians, 70% of whom are women and children. The armaments, money and political cover given to Israel by the United States enable this deliberate genocide.

Israel asserts that by dropping leaflets that order civilians to abandon their homes Israel is absolved from killing them. But the people have nowhere to go as the 2.2 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza have the Mediterranean Sea to their north, Egypt to their west and are otherwise surrounded by Israel. Egypt and Jordan have taken some refugees in but have no obligation to do so. Israel is responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and should be mainly responsible for assuaging it.

Gaza is an area of 360 square kilometers and Israel has 22,143 square kilometers. If, in fact, Israel wishes to avoid civilian casualties, it should allow the Palestinian civilians to shelter inside Israel, especially East Jerusalem, until the war ends and Gaza is re-built for human living. Border crossings from Gaza into Israel could be opened with quick and efficient security checks. Aid from the United States could provide temporary shelters, food, water and medical care. Great Britain, that created Israel out of Palestine starting in 1917 through 1948, also could and should help provide border security and humanitarian aid.

A reasonable alternative, if Israel does not wish to have the Palestinian civilians sheltered within the borders of Israel, would be to have non-Hamas Palestinians moved to the current illegal Israeli settlements in both Gaza and the West Bank. These areas are already free of Hamas fighters and have shelters, water, medical facilities and security checkpoints in place. The illegal Israeli squatters would have to be ordered to vacate the areas. But that is already called for by international law. If East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank were used to shelter Palestinians, that would be consistent with the pre-1967 borders and consistent with the Oslo Accords for a two-state situation.

Of Gaza’s 2.2 million population, at the most 40,000 are with Hamas. Screening the refugees would not be onerous as anyone who has walked through a magnetometer or who has been scanned with a hand-held unit can attest. Once the conflict ends, that is, once Israel is satisfied Hamas is no longer a threat, the United States, Great Britain, Israel and the United Nations could carry out a Marshall Plan to repatriate the Palestinians or the state of Palestine could finally be established.

 The United States is almost alone in its support of Israel’s genocide of Gaza’s Palestinians. The United Nations has called repeatedly for a humanitarian ceasefire and humanitarian aid to Palestinians, but until December 22, 2023 the U.S. blocked such action by veto. Finally, the U.N. Security Council managed to pass a weakly worded resolution allowing some humanitarian aid; the United States abstained. However, Israel has indicated it will not cooperate with the resolution, so innocent civilians will continue to be killed by Israel and those not directly killed by Israeli military action will die from or be degraded by deprivation of basic humanitarian necessities.

Why is America putting its prestige on the line to support Israel’s position? The answer may lie in history. Israel claims its god gave Palestine to the Hebrew people and helped them escape bondage in Egypt. Most estimates are the Book of Exodus was written during the 13 century B.C. A part of that divine intervention was the killing by Israel’s god of the first-born child of every Egyptian from Pharoah’s, to those of prisoners in dungeons and even the first-born of maidservants. The Israelis still celebrate this genocidal slaughter of innocent humans on Passover. Also, their god caused the Red Sea to part and drown all of Pharoah’s army. Then, according to the Jewish myth, their god gave the Hebrews the land already owned and inhabited by the Canaanites and others. See the Book of Exodus, Chapters 10-13.

Many of our early American ancestors of mainly European descent believed their Christian god gave us mainly white Americans all the land from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, Manifest Destiny, even though it was already inhabited by millions of Native Americans. And just as Israel has demonized Palestinians as terrorists for many years, America’s Declaration of Independence describes Native Americans as:

“He (King George III) … has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

The cultural memories and Volksgeists of America and Israel are strikingly similar and the religions of both assuage any moral dilemmas from eliminating the original inhabitants of coveted land and resources by any means deemed necessary. The German philosopher Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1779-1861) and the Austrian philosopher Hans Kelsen (1881-1973) described these memories as the Volksgeist or spirit of a people. And the German psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) said these subconscious suppressed memories can actuate behaviors. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who posited humans act and react as archetypes based on historical myths that are sometimes misinterpreted or misapplied.

What this may mean for America is we Americans often see ourselves as always doing good. As French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) said, “America is great because she is good”. Many of us tend to believe that whatever we do is divinely inspired and cannot be wrong. Israel may see itself as an historic victim that must always be in a self-defense mode, a Volksgeist of being in constant fear of annihilation. And many of us Americans have often seen ourselves as that miraculous shining city on a hill that gives light to the world and is always on the side of right.

That may be why Israel and America stand virtually by ourselves on the developing genocide in Gaza. We both may need to re-examine the validity of our myths and the morality of our actions.

Scene of Washita Massacre. Photo by Peg Redwine

 

Shanghaied

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On February 04, 2022 Russian President Vladimir Putin, on an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping, attended the China Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. Twenty days later Russia invaded Ukraine. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, in response to an invitation, visited Taiwan over China’s objections on August 2, 2022 and China immediately responded with massive military maneuvers around Taiwan.

Russia has now been at war with Ukraine for over six months. Ukraine has been supplied with many billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware by America before and during the war. Taiwan has recently received a pledge of over one billion dollars’ worth of military aid from the U.S. The U.S. has long supported Taiwan’s independence from China which claims Taiwan as part of China.

Russia and China share some common borders on the eastern and western edges of both countries and share one main nemesis, America. On September 15 and 16, 2022 Xi and Putin will meet face to face at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in the city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The United States is not invited.

It is possible Russia and China just want to confer on the relative merits of their national ballet companies and the ten billion cubic meters of national gas Putin promised to Xi in their February meeting. Or perhaps Putin and Xi want to compare notes on how each can continue in power beyond the traditional terms of prior Chinese and Russian presidents.

On the other hand, I suggest the two leaders may be getting together to discuss their largest common problem, us. Not much information was released from their conference in Beijing in February and almost no advanced agenda has been published for their Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit. My suspicion is the name “Shanghai” was not chosen idly. It may be that China is reminding the United States of the practice of tricking or forcing sailors to serve on merchant ships sailing to Shanghai in the 1800’s as was often done by American, British and French merchants. Perhaps it is meant as an otherwise inscrutable warning to America to butt out of Ukraine and Taiwan.

As for me, I think Pelosi or anyone else ought to have the right to visit Taiwan and, I think, Ukraine’s territorial integrity should be respected. Of course, I find it difficult to analyze the motivations of China, Russia or even my own country when it comes to engagement in foreign wars unless one is attacked. It seems to me our Constitution’s provision for military defense, not offense, makes sense. But then I am not in charge of our foreign policy. If I had been, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan might have unfolded differently and maybe Ukraine and Taiwan too. Those are matters our elected leaders are much more informed upon, I hope.

D-Day

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“Throughout the 200-year history of the United States the American nation has been at war.” That was how author William Koenig led into his 1980 book, Americans at War. Although ostensibly a study of American warfare from about 1775 at Lexington and Concord to 1975, the end of the Viet Nam War, Koenig actually starts with the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620 and Native Americans meeting the ship. Had he waited until today to publish he could have included another fifty years of Americans at war, right up to Ukraine.

In general, we Americans view our involvement in foreign wars, that is, non-Native American warfare, as justified by the belligerence of others who have forced us reluctantly into “making the world safe for democracy.” The beginning of our provision of armaments, intelligence and training to Ukraine dates back to soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the “breakup” of the Soviet Union. The current U.S. commitment of over 50 billion dollars is only a fraction of our huge military and economic support for Ukraine over many years. Russia has often taken note.

George Soros, the Hungarian born American billionaire, stated on May 24, 2022 that the Russia-Ukraine war may be the start of World War III and result in the end of human civilization. Such doomsday statements are not a new phenomenon. Ever since the days of The Flood people have warned that human behavior, usually by someone other than the Jeremiad of the moment, was going to lead to the end of the world. They mean the end of homo sapiens’ short 200,000-year reign on our 4.5-billion-year-old planet. Earth will survive, but without us.

I have no estimate how many predictions of mankind’s demise have been made from the time of our common really great-grandmother, Lucy, in Africa until 1945. Until America came up with and used the atom bomb, the philosophers who had previously cried wolf were doing just that. However, now with numerous countries possessing nuclear weapons and itching to use them, we may have finally made honest men out of Noah and all the other survivalists. I am not going to address climate change and pollution as doomsday machines as I only have about three pages of print available. I will stick with nuclear war in this column.

With nuclear powers, such as Russia, North Korea, China, America and Israel all claiming they fear for their survival, I am reminded of my onetime acquaintance who told me in 1973 that if Egypt were about to destroy Israel that Israel would be justified in destroying the whole world to avenge itself. Fortunately, he was not an Israeli and Egypt stood down. I do wonder if Putin might feel so threatened he would believe Russia would be justified in starting the nuclear daisy chain.

These thoughts of World War III came scrambling into my brain when I thought about June 06, 1944 and D-Day. Americans and many others thought the World War of 1914-1918 with its inane carnage, over no one knew what, was going to end world-wide war. Then the courage and sacrifice of 150,000 American soldiers on D-Day was touted as the beginning of the end of totalitarian regimes. Later we thought we had learned something from Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, George Soros, hardly a war monger, fears we may be at the beginning of WWIII raging in Ukraine.

As for me, I will place my confidence in that part of human nature that has pulled us back from self-immolation many times. History leads me to have faith we will not self-fulfill such a dire prophecy. Of course, if I am right everyone will be around to say so, and if I am wrong, what difference will it make?

A Legal Revolution

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Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was a Frenchman who studied American society during a nine-month tour in 1831 when the United States were still simmering with vitriolic political animus from the 1824 and 1828 elections between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Adams was elected by the House of Representatives in 1824 and Jackson won via the Electoral College in 1828. After neither election did the United States fall into chaos, even though Jackson won both the popular vote and a plurality, but not a majority, of the Electoral College vote yet Adams grabbed the presidency in 1824.

Four men ran for president in 1824, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and William Crawford. Because the Electoral College vote was split in such a way that none of the four received a majority, as required to be elected President, under the Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution a “contingent” election was held in the House of Representatives. Each state’s delegation was given one vote and Adams was elected. Jackson and his supporters alleged that Adams and Clay had entered into a “Corrupt Bargain” to shift Clay’s votes to Adams. Regardless, Adams was elected by the House and the country moved on until 1828 when Jackson ran against Adams again.

In his treatise on American democracy de Tocqueville defined America’s presidential election as “a revolution at law” and described it as follows:

“Every four years, long before the appointed (presidential election) day arrives, the election becomes the greatest, and one might say the only, affair occupying men’s minds…. As the election draws near intrigues grow more active and agitation is more lively and widespread. The citizens divide up into several camps.… The whole nation gets into a feverish state.”

De Tocqueville’s ultimate verdict on America’s democracy was encapsulated in his general verdict on how political controversies were ultimately resolved. His observation was that:

“In America there is hardly a political question which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.”

De Tocqueville’s opinion was that the American manner of resolving political issues without bloodshed worked because, unlike European monarchies, the United States citizens respected the law and they did so because they had the right to both create it and change it. Since we get to choose our legislators who write our election laws and because we can change the laws by changing whom we elect if we are unhappy, we accept the laws as written including who is ultimately declared the winner of a current election.

The laws we have the right to create and the right to change include filing for an elected office, running for that office, who counts the votes, how they are counted, as well as how and when someone can legally contest an election. That legal procedure applies to all facets of an election cycle. Each state’s legislature has the authority to establish its own procedures in this regard as long as they do not violate federal law.

As an Indiana Circuit Court Judge I was involved in a recount of a congressional race, a county clerk general election, a county council general election, a town council election and a county council primary election. The Indiana legislature had enacted and published a clear statutory procedure for each type of election contest, including what role each public official should play in any recount. The statutes demanded total openness and media access to ensure the public could have confidence that if all involved followed the law a clear winner would be fairly determined. There were time limits, controls and transparency. After a recount result was certified in each contest life moved on and the eventual losers and their supporters accepted the results because they had had their “day in court”; that is, democratically enacted law was followed not the arbitrary or partisan activity of individuals.

De Tocqueville compared America’s hotly contested democratic elections to a surging river that strains at its banks with raging waters then calms down and carries on peacefully once the results have been properly certified. From my own experience with several elections and after the recounts of some of them, I agree with de Tocqueville’s analogy.

That is not to say I am for or against any type of recount for any office. I absolutely have no position on whether any candidate for any office should concede or contest anything. My position is simply that as long as the law is properly followed our democracy can handle either circumstance.