The primary reasons for Netenyahu pursuing his Gaza war, whatever the actual success of the strategies, are to eliminate Hamas, hide his failure in preventing October 7, stay in power, avoid going to jail, and others.
There is a secondary reason, a bonus. Bibi has made Biden look weak and ineffectual. Biden’s rhetoric has been equivocal, leaning towards Israel. His actions have been less equivocal, since his arming of Israel remains intact, whatever he says.
This is exactly what Bibi and right-wingers in his cabinet want. They want Trump. Bibi, an agile politician if not a world-class statesman, can see that all this is costing Biden support and votes, increasing the chance of a Trump victory in what will be a close election. When Trump is back in office, they believe, whatever they want, whatever they ask for, he will be on their side. Unlike Biden, who seems to be having trouble holding steady in the political winds.
So while there are reasons that Bibi has remained stubborn and needlessly brutal in Gaza, helping elect Trump would be another good outcome for him. A bonus.
After the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered a halt to the Israeli offensive in Rafah, Israeli spokesperson Avi Hyman said, “No power on Earth will stop Israel from protecting its citizens and going after Hamas in Gaza.”
I have no two-way channel with God. Whether or not the age of prophets and prophecy is past or present, whether there are those who had or have revelations, I am not one. This has not stopped me from wondering what God would say or do when faced with the precise way Israel is going about its protection of citizens and its pursuit of Hamas.
It seems that Netenyahu and his war cabinet, and their supporters, believe that everything they are doing is exactly what God wants them to do. Whether that comes from direct communication or is derived from their interpretation of the tradition they haven’t said.
If they asked me how I interpret the tradition, that is, what I think God wants, I don’t think it is this. Again, I’m not a prophet, and they would never ask me anyway.
I imagine God being pretty harsh with these Israeli leaders. I imagine God would tell them that as strategists they are the worst. The word “idiots” might be used, if that is how God talks. I imagine that Israeli lack of mercy and compassion would come up. God might remind them that in biblical times, Israelites who strayed so far from basic moral principles could expect to be smitten.
Maybe this is what the spokesperson is hinting at. Yes, he might be saying, “No power on earth will stop us. But if God intervenes, that’s a whole different story.”
Political power is one of the great temptations. Read ancient or modern history, read the Bible, read today’s news.
That news includes Nikki Haley, who not long ago called Trump dangerous and demented, now says she will vote for him. This is only the latest example of these kinds of turnarounds. A roster of Republicans brutally criticized Trump while they were vying for the 2016 nomination. The moment he won the nomination and looked like a potential president, they changed their tune. None more radically than Lindsey Graham, whose unwavering support of all things Trump has led to speculation that Trump has some secret personal evidence about him. Pure speculation.
Democrats are not strangers to political expediency, equivocation and hypocrisy. Plenty of examples. But Republicans have taken it to a new level. The Trump phenomenon has laid bare that in the Republican domain, with a few exceptions, all elements of integrity are gone. Maybe sleeping, maybe on vacation, maybe wounded, but more than likely dead for now.
For those of us who are not politicians, just citizens and political observers, the question loudly arises: Is political office and power really so important that all vestiges of integrity can be sacrificed? There were moments in the Nikki Haley campaign when she sounded like she actually meant what she said. We now know she didn’t. Or if she did at the time, she has found something more important, like being president someday.
There are so many Christians who support Trump and so many Republican politicians who are faithful Christians. Which means they may have read the Gospel of Mark thousands of times, and quoted it just as often. Whether they understood it is a different question, as is the question of how closely they follow it.
It is worth, for them and anybody, recalling the words from Mark 8:36:
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? (NIV)
There are a lot of souls forfeited along the Republican trail.
“I have had many conversations, as you have had, with a lot of young people over the last many months now. They don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East, or frankly about history, in many areas of the world, including in our own country.” Hillary Clinton, MSNBC, Morning Joe, May 9, 2024
I have not forgiven Hillary, or for that matter Bill, for being such a destructive force on the Democratic Party and America.
Without details about all these issues, let’s just say that Hillary is a terrible national politician and leader, who convinced the Democratic Party, against all observation and evidence, that she would be a certain winner in the 2016 election. She didn’t win, and her foreseeable defeat changed America for the much worse.
I have said repeatedly that the best thing for the Democratic Party, for America, and selfishly, for me, would be if Hillary would just go away. Partly so she would stop saying stupid and unhelpful stuff like this. Partly because, as noted, she is responsible for where we are now.
If I were Israeli, and my leader and his braintrust were as incompetent, despicable and crazy as Bibi and his, I would be demonstrating too. Demonstrating to find out why they could not work out a way for the terrorists to finally release the remaining hostages, without literally alienating the entire world and killing tens of thousands of people.
The ongoing demonstrations in Israel had me wondering something that is absurd on its face, but maybe enlightening. Why aren’t there any protests in Gaza? Even if you believe the people in Gaza have nothing to legitimately complain about, you might understand the burdens of their situation.
You know the answer. Protesting against existential threats you can’t control is pointless, when all of your time and life force is used to survive, with a little left over for grief. It might actually get you jailed or killed as an enemy. Which is why others around the world are protesting for you. Contrary to the view that American and global protestors are motivated by some hateful, selfish, naïve, uniformed petulance, they are just doing what the people of Gaza can’t: Saying, shouting “no”.
Hind Rajab, age six, senior kindergarten graduation, killed by tank fire in Gaza
The rapper Macklemore just released the new track Hind’s Hall, about the war in Gaza and the protests.
Macklemore is a hugely popular artist. On Spotify, he has 32 million monthly listeners, making him 128th in the world. His tracks have been streamed 13 billion times.
Eleven years ago, his track Same Love celebrated the right of relationships between all people, at a time when same-sex marriage was not yet fully allowed or protected in America. It was a hit and has become an anthem.
His new track about the Gaza war is another powerful statement.
Hamilton Hall/Hind’s Hall, Columbia University
Artists in various media have taken on the war in Gaza. Slowly, tentatively, because many are concerned about being dropped or rejected. Musical artists have been the slowest. Macklemore, who has built a career independent of record labels, laments:
Yet the music industry’s quiet, complicit in their platform of silence What happened to the artist? What do you got to say? If I was on a label, you could drop me today I’d be fine with it ’cause the heart fed my page
Macklemore isn’t a hater, except of thoughtless war and repression. The millions who will stream this track (all streaming proceeds going to UNRWA) are not haters, except of thoughtless war and repression. It is notable that Spotify, in today’s New Music Friday playlist, doesn’t include Hind’s Hall.
Thank you Macklemore. Thank you all artists—writers, filmmakers, musicians—who have stood up and those who haven’t yet but will.
The U.S. and the Holocaust explores America’s response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the 20th century. It dispels competing myths that Americans either were ignorant of the unspeakable persecution that Jews and other targeted minorities faced in Europe or that they looked on with callous indifference. The film tackles a range of questions that remain essential to our society today, including how racism influences policies related to immigration and refugees as well as how governments and people respond to the rise of authoritarian states that manipulate history and facts to consolidate power.
We consider it here and now because this is the week set aside to remember the Holocaust. It is the week that Biden remembers to talk about the Holocaust and about the antisemitism that drove it. He did not talk about Gaza.
What is missing, and what The U.S. and the Holocaust documents, is the inconvenient truth that America was ambivalent and late responding to the horror. Powerful politicians didn’t want to address it, because they didn’t like Jews, blacks, and anyone who wasn’t a white, right-thinking American. Journalists who tried to chronicle Germany’s program of hate were thrown out of that country.
There is a confusing conflation about Gaza. When those who were and are the victims of hate, then and now, respond to yet another massacre of hate on October 7, isn’t that hate—that antisemitism—the central and overriding issue, in Palestine and America? Doesn’t it push any other related horror to the margin and justify it?
That’s why The U.S. and the Holocaust is so important. For various reasons, we didn’t do more sooner, but we could have. For various reasons today in Gaza, we could do more, but we haven’t. Are those failures, then and now, missed opportunities for better and more humane outcomes? Or are those failures complicity?
Mehdi Hasan was the most dynamic journalist on MSNBC. While he never had an everyday slot, his weekend show was always smart, iconoclastic, entertaining and honest. He did not suffer fakers and fools. This January, MSNBC took away the show, essentially demoting him. He resigned.
He is back, as founder of new media platform Zeteo:
How many times have you complained about the ‘mainstream media’? About corporate control or censorship? About softball interview questions or lazy ‘both sides’ coverage?
Welcome to Zeteo, where independent and unfiltered journalism is making its comeback. Founded by award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and all-round troublemaker Mehdi Hasan, Zeteo – which comes from the ancient Greek word for ‘seeking out’ and ‘striving’ – is a new media organization that seeks answers for the questions that really matter, while always striving for the truth.
Through hard-hitting interviews, engaging podcasts and newsletters, and compelling op-eds and essays from an array of high-profile contributors – reporters, authors, celebrities, comedians and more – we will speak truth to power… and have some fun along the way. A broad range of voices you may not always agree with, but who bring important viewpoints to the conversation.
Zeteo is not just a media company; it’s a movement for media accountability. So join us as we challenge the powerful, change the narrative, and champion good ol’ fashioned adversarial journalism.
Please check out Zeteo and if you like it, consider subscribing. We need it now more than ever.
On May 4 I published a post about the National Guard shootings at Kent State University on May 4, 1970.
Later that day, on May 4, I was tidying up a large media cabinet, looking for extra space. The cabinet contains CDs, DVDs, books, and an assortment of other items. I found a small pile of stuff taking up space, a pile I hadn’t looked at in years. I pulled out the pile and unstacked it. There between the CDs was a little brochure.
It was a brochure from a long-ago visit to the May 4 Visitors Center at Kent State University (see above).
I can’t explain it. Actually, I can come up with different explanations, none of which I can be certain of. While I haven’t calculated the odds of this happening by chance, they are astronomical. But things happen by chance. On the other hand, forces are at work that we can’t fully know, no matter how smart we claim to be. As Hamlet said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophie [science].”
There is magic in the universe. Believing in it makes us bigger and better.
“You see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are burning up the books, storming around about this issue. You name it. Get rid of the war there will be another one.”
Three days later, on May 4, 1970, the National Guard shot and killed four and wounded nine at Kent State University in Ohio.
Nixon won election in 1968 on a platform of law and order. He had no use for student protests. But even those Americans who still supported the Vietnam War and agreed that student protestors were “bums” were troubled. So Nixon ordered a Commission on Campus Unrest. The Commission, under the leadership of former Pennsylvania governor William Scranton, investigated and issued a 537-page report. It included a special section on Kent State, containing a detailed day-by-day, minute-by-minute description, leading up to this moment:
Major Jones said he first heard an explosion which he thought was a firecracker. As he turned to his left, he heard another explosion which he knew to be an M-1 rifle shot. As he turned to his right, toward Taylor Hall, he said he saw guardsmen kneeling (photographs show some crouching) and bringing their rifles to their shoulders. He heard another M-1 shot, and then a volley of them. He yelled, “Cease fire!” several times, and rushed down the line shoving rifle barrels up and away from the crowd. He hit several guardsmen on their helmets with his swagger stick to stop them from firing.
General Canterbury stated that he first heard a single shot, which he thought was fired from some distance away on his left and which in his opinion did not come from a military weapon. Immediately afterward, he heard a volley of M-1 fire · from his right, the Taylor Hall end of the line. The Guard’s fie was directed away from the direction from which Canterbury thought the initial, nonmilitary shot came. His first reaction, like that of Fassinger and Jones, was to stop the firing.
Canterbury, Fassinger, and Jones–the three ranking officers on the hill–all said no order to fire was given. Twenty-eight guardsmen have acknowledged firing from Blanket Hill. Of these, 25 fired 55 shots from rifles, two fired five shots from .45 caliber pistols, and one fired a single blast from a shotgun. Sound tracks indicate that the firing of these 61 shots lasted approximately 13 seconds. The time of the shooting was approximately 12:25 p.m.
Four persons were killed and nine were wounded.
A map from the report:
Any lessons for today and beyond?
Whenever a university or a government decides to enforce its standard of order against gatherings and protests, that enforcement should be pursued carefully and judiciously, if at all. Things can and will happen when those forces are let loose. The choice of enforcement should be pursued only if there are no other options, which there almost always are. Emotions run high on all sides. Whenever weapons are officially introduced—from batons to rubber bullets to tear gas to guns and rifles—they can easily be used indiscriminately. And fatally.
Few things are more tragically ironic than anti-war protestors being injured or killed. It doesn’t have to be.
Bob Schwartz 