David Kersh on Gaza

My friend David Kersh sent me an email on Gaza. David is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent and cultured (in the absolute best sense of the word) people I know. I was moved by what he wrote and asked if I could post it here.

On Gaza

I am an American Jew. My life began on 6/6/1967 at exactly the same time the six-day war began, which in many ways sparked the present conflict. At one point in my life, I spent six months (lots of 6’s here) in Jerusalem, where I felt utterly homeless, wondering where the Jews like me were. I did find a couple of them- my two Argentine roommates. One of the most awe-inspiring and refreshing memories of an intense 6 months in the holy land was discovering The Marx Brothers' Night at the Opera one late Friday night at the Jerusalem Cinemateque while everything else in sight was closed down for Shabbat.


The situation in the Middle East is not so cut and dry. I am tired of being silent.


I read article after article and get the talking points made by each side, and I can somewhat modify my perspective in the course of a day. And yet I just can’t accept that macho man (and woman) Israeli military force is a solution to the “problem.”


I look at the troubling photographs of dead Palestinian children, I see the poverty-stricken Gaza streets, and I am also troubled that, yes, these same photographs become part of a Hamas PR machine to get the West to side with them.


I am sickened by the one-sided perspective of the American political class who can only sympathize with Israel and only gets their side of the story.


I am sickened by the contextually false and empty comparisons of bombs coming from Canada and Mexico and how we would surely and without a blink respond to this by crushing them with all our might.


I am bothered by Israel the Victim.


I am bothered by progressive Jews who would otherwise deplore violence in all other situations but who can so easily rationalize the Israeli aggression.


I know former Primer Minister Menachem Begin was part of a terrorist organization, but that was okay, of course, because it was a Jewish terrorist organization.


I get it that Palestinians were treated like shit by the Egyptians and the Jordanians before 1967, and that the Arab world treats them like unwanted step children, and that supporting the Palestinian cause serves their purpose of having a common enemy of Israel so they can keep their repressive regimes in tact.


I get the role of Iran in this geopolitical equation, and don’t want Iran to get any stronger.


I get it that the Palestinians would be better off if they had a Gandhi running their show, and that they have been unable to get their act together.


I read somewhere that Hamas was created by the US and Israel to counter Arafat and Fatah, which does not surprise me one bit.


I am sure that Israel was not negotiating in good faith, and that the Palestinians were not negotiating in good faith either.


I get it that Hamas probably wants more Palestinians to die because it benefits their campaign, and that they are all a bunch of no good thugs and killers.


I am bothered that, according to the American political class, Israeli children are “traumatized” by having to endure unexpected home-made rockets from Hamas, but Palestinian children living under occupation, seige or blockade are not traumatized living in such dire circumstances.


I believe each side has a different starting point for the conflict and of who started what and where.


I am bothered by a lack of nuance, of depth in understanding the complexity of the situation by the American political class (except for good ole Kucinich).


I believe the line between defense and offense is fuzzy.


I can find nothing to love or look up to in any of the repressive Arab political systems in the Middle East .


I sometimes comprehend the desire my fellow Jews have for a Jewish homeland, though never at the expense of another group, and never as a place for me to call home.


I know I am probably naïve, and my fellow Jews in Israel will think I don’t know what the hell I am talking about because I am not there, on the ground. And yet, I just can’t accept that macho man (and woman) Israeli military force is a solution to the “problem.”

Jon Stewart on the War in Gaza

Jon Stewart returned last night after a seemingly endless break . . . and he didn't flinch for a moment.

Once more, like some Jubu master, he applies a much-needed sandal slap across the face of the American media.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Strip Maul

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

I think it's so important - and admirable - for Jewish-Americans to speak out like this about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Stewart could take a lot of heat for his comments, but I think he knows that perceptive criticism of American media coverage is crucial if we're going to have a healthier and more open dialog about this ongoing crisis. The endless bloodshed between Israel and Palestine not only destroys too many innocent lives in that region, it has a direct affect on our own economy (billions of dollars a year), foreign policy, and national security.

Bravo, Jon.

When the history of early 21st-century journalism is written, how interesting (and shameful) that it basically took two comedians and a sportscaster to shake the media out of its lethargy and subservience.

Stewart continues to raise the issue of media coverage in his interview with David Gregory, the new host of Meet the Press.

Happy Holy-Days

(AP) A Palestinian boy watches the funeral of three children in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip December 29, 2008. Palestinian medics said five young sisters, died in an Israeli air strike in Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza and three other young children were killed when a bomb struck a house aimed at the nearby abandoned home of a senior Hamas militant in Rafah.

Adagio in G minor - Tomaso Albinoni

(AP) Three Palestinian brothers Sidki, 8, Ahmad, 12, and Mohammed Absi, 14, who were killed in an Israeli missile strike, during their funeral in Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 29, 2008.

More than 360 Palestinians have been killed. U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said 62 civilians were confirmed killed and the number was likely higher. Another 1,450 Palestinians have been wounded.

Two Israelis have been killed by rockets.

Washington Post: Food and Medical Supplies Grow Scarce in the Gaza Strip

Juan Cole: What Is the Israeli End Game?

What I can't understand is the end game here. The Israelis have pledged to continue their siege of the civilians of Gaza, and have threatened to resume assassinating Hamas political leaders, along with the bombardment. The campaign of brutal assassinations launched by Ariel Sharon earlier in this decade were, Sharon, promised us, guaranteed to wipe out Hamas altogether. Do the Israelis expect the population at some point to turn against Hamas, blaming it for the blockade and the bombardment? But by destroying what was left of the Gaza middle class, surely they a throwing people into the arms of Hamas. The US experience of bombing North Vietnam and mining Haiphong Harbor, etc., was that it only stiffened Hanoi's resolve. The massive Israeli bombardment of Lebanon in 2006 did not achieve any significant objectives. In fact, Hezbollah was politically strengthened; it now sits in the Lebanese cabinet and has been recognized as a formal national guard for the south of the country. Its stock of rockets has been replenished. There is a UN buffer now, but in the past such buffers have been removed when hostilities threaten.

If the Gaza population doesn't turn on Hamas, and Israeli measures don't destroy the organization (which they helped create and fund back in the late 1980s when they wanted a foil to the secular PLO), then what? They'll just go on half-starving Gaza's children for decades? Malnourished children have diminished IQ and poor impulse control. That would make them ideal suicide bombers. Plus, sooner or later there will start to be effective boycotts of Israel in Europe and elsewhere over these war crimes. The Israeli economy would be vulnerable to such moves.

Of course, there are only 1.5 million Gazans, and they increasingly are being forced to live in Haiti-like conditions, so in the short term the Israelis can do whatever they want to them. But I can't see this ending well for the Israelis in the long term. Very few insurgencies end because one side achieves a complete military victory (I think it is about 20%). But by refusing to negotiate with Hamas, Israel and the United States leave only a military option on the table. The military option isn't going to resolve the problem by itself. Gaza is a labyrinth. Those Qassam rockets are easy to make. There is so much money sloshing around the Middle East and so many sympathetic Muslims that Gaza will be kept just barely afloat economically, making Hamas hard to dislodge. And the Israeli blockade of Gaza is so distasteful to the world that eventually there is likely to be a painful price to pay for it by the Israelis.

Robert Fisk: Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored

And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise "restraint" – as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course. . . .

We hear the usual Israeli line. General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army's "research and assessment division" announced that "no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them". Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.

Yes, Israel deserves security. But these bloodbaths will not bring it. Not since 1948 have air raids protected Israel. Israel has bombed Lebanon thousands of times since 1975 and not one has eliminated "terrorism". So what was the reaction last night? The Israelis threaten ground attacks. Hamas waits for another battle. Our Western politicians crouch in their funk holes. And somewhere to the east – in a cave? a basement? on a mountainside? – a well-known man in a turban smiles.

And where is Barack Obama?

Blues All 'Round My Head

Blind Willie McTell, bluesman extraordinaire

I've been sick for the last two weeks. The fun included two trips to the doctor and a mind-numbing 6-hour gig at the Emergency Room one beautiful Sunday. (All for very simple issues.)

But that's not why I haven't been blogging.

Basically, I haven't had anything to say. It seems that I've got . . . well . . . the blues.

The War in Iraq reaches another horrific milestone - 4,000 dead American soldiers. (Not to mention hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians.) But nobody really cares or wants to hear about the war:

The War Endures, but Where’s the Media?

Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Meanwhile, the race for the Democratic nomination has devolved into a bitter, ridiculous, and seriously damaging battle. I see no light at the end of the tunnel.

Hello, President "Walnuts" McCain!

Things are so bad, I'm linking to a David Brooks article: "The Long Defeat," from today's New York Behind-the-Times.

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.

Five percent.

Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we’ll have the daily round of résumé padding and sulfurous conference calls. We’ll have campaign aides blurting “blue dress” and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound. . . .

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support? Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance?

The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.

For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.

No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic. The only question is whether Clinton herself can step outside the apparatus long enough to turn it off and withdraw voluntarily or whether she will force the rest of her party to intervene and jam the gears.

So, Bill Richardson endorsed Obama. A few weeks too late.

And James Carville called Richardson "Judas" for betraying the Clintons. Then he refused to apologize.

Thank God! I'm so sick of all these surrogates calling each other names and then having to quit or say they're sorry. If you're going to resort to schoolyard taunting, then buck up and stick by your nasty names for God's sake!

“I was quoted accurately and in context, and I was glad to give the quote and I was glad I gave it,” Mr. Carville said. “I’m not apologizing, I’m not resigning, I’m not doing anything.”

For the record, I think Hillary Clinton is a "monster." And I'm not resigning either. Deal with it.

(Well, at least she and Bill together are some form of monster species.)

Don't even know where to begin with the Jeremiah Wright stuff and Obama. Liam had a good post on it. If everyone in the U.S. was as intelligent and thoughtful as Liam, there wouldn't be a problem for Obama. (Though if everyone were like Liam, we'd have a lot of other problems! We'd all have to root for the Utah Jazz, for one thing. On the other hand, we could finally appoint Nick Cave as Ambassador to Groove-istan.)

But this is the country that re-elected George W. Bush. The country where half the Democrats don't think what Geraldine Ferraro said might be considered racist and insulting. Personally, I think the Wright stuff has probably done in Obama's candidacy. And I don't know why he didn't deal with all of this way ahead of last week. It was a major shit storm waiting to go Level 5 at any moment, yet they seemed surprised. Whatever. I'm a lousy prognosticator, so I hope I'm wrong.

Did I mention that the economy's in the toilet?

Ah . . . But at least I have the Blues. Since I didn't feel like blabbing away on my blog, I spent time creating a new playlist at Finetune: Blues All 'Round My Head.

It's still in progress, but check it out anyway.

And though I've got the blues, my face did brighten when I saw this wonderful poster today and read about the DVD release of The Phantom Empire:

For indigenous American surrealism, it’s hard to beat the Saturday matinee serials of the 1930s, and I’m not sure that “The Phantom Empire,” a 1935 release from the Poverty Row studio Mascot, can be beat at all. Very likely the world’s first singing-cowboy science-fiction adventure, this 12-episode chapterplay, directed by Otto Brower and Breezy Easton, features Gene Autry in his first starring role — as “Gene Autry,” the proprietor of Radio Ranch. This curious institution seems to be at once a working cattle concern and a full-scale broadcasting business from which Gene and his pals (including his longtime sidekick Smiley Burnett) send out a daily program of country-western songs.

Life is sweet at Radio Ranch until a band of “renegade scientists” arrives, looking for the massive radium deposits of the secret underground nation Murania, the gateway to which happens to be located in a canyon behind Gene’s ranch. Before too long, Gene and his two l’il pardners (the child actors Frankie Darro and Betsy King Ross) find themselves caught between the rampaging savants and the legions of Wagnerian Thunder Riders (accompanied by appropriate sound effects) and lumbering mechanical men (whimsical robots built for a production number in MGM’s “Dancing Lady” but cut from the final film) sent forth by Murania’s “She”-like Queen Tika (Dorothy Christy) to prevent her land of peace and plenty from being invaded by rapacious “surface men.” It’s a lot for Gene to handle, particularly since he has to get back to Radio Ranch by 2 p.m. every day for his broadcast, which he carries on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

It is said that Wallace MacDonald, one of the serial’s five credited writers, came up with the concept while under the influence of nitrous oxide at his dentist’s office. That seems quite possible, given the screenplay’s furious imaginings, which include an interesting kind of television that requires no cameras (but has an inconvenient, floor-level circular screen) and “radium bombs” posed to destroy the entire planet.

Absurdity saves the day!

And now, back to Blind Willie McTell and Lonnie Johnson. . . .

Like Hope, But Different

Oh man, I do love the internet. There are so many creative people out there.

If you haven't seen this yet, you really should.

If you haven't seen the original "Yes, We Can" video this is riffing on, journey here.

Sit for 10 to End the War - International Day of Prayer

Please join us on November 1, 2007 at 12:00 pm (noon) for an International Day of Prayer and Fasting.

Sit for 10 minutes WHEREVER YOU ARE and pray for an end to the war(s) in Iraq.

A day (or half day) of fasting is suggested, and gathering together in groups of at least 2 or 3.

Do not ask permission.

In Love & Power


PLEASE FORWARD (and translate)