Or perhaps “Rarely Sung Heroes” in these modern times of growing (or struggling?) decency in the United States. I say that with caution and some hesitation. Let me explain.
Back on June 6, 2019, the 75th Anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France honoring all the Allied soldiers who participated, fought, died, and survived in that historic amphibious invasion to liberate Nazi Europe, I published my blog-post Five Hundred Yards. It was my attempt for readers to bring an acute perspective and emotion what the landings on Omaha Beach was like that June morning for the thousands of 17-, 18-, 19- and 20-year old boys had gone through as they hit the water or beach. If you have the opportunity to read or reread Five Hundred Yards, please do. It will set the stage and context for this post.
Some/Many caucasian Euro-American descendants born and living in our 50-states today have a generic, basic knowledge of how indigenous North American peoples/Indians were either exterminated, moved from their homelands, or abusively treated and deceived by the U.S. government, military, and new settlers between 1778 and 1911, during the official existence of the United States. Between 1539 and 1774 thousands upon thousands of Indigenous peoples were massacred by European colonists and their armed forces. By far the biggest killer of North American Indians were all the lethal diseases European colonists/invaders brought within them and spread. Ironically, similar to what former President Trump accused the Chinese of doing with COVID-19. Nevertheless, it is estimated that from the Pre-Columbian Era (1325–1492) to the final massacre in 1911 in Washoe County, Nevada, between 95,000,000 to 114,000,000 Native American people, that’s millions not thousands, were wiped out by Europeans.
Despite this horrific background and constant inhumane atrocities committed upon them by Europeans and Euro-American descendants, during our first and second European World Wars more than 12,000 Native American Indians fought in Europe for the U.S. in World War I. More than 44,000 fought for the U.S. in World War II. Keep in mind, this is only one to three generations after the exterminations and removals from their own ancestral homelands over a 600-year timespan. Think about that. The numbers of your own people gradually and drastically dying, massacred, and disappearing all around you. With that in mind, these Native American men who, like their African-American WW1 and WW2 military counterparts, volunteered to go fight and risk their lives on a far away continent for a nation who at the time and well before did not love them or treat them as equals and far from justly. Nor did this nation welcome their survivors home as heroes the same as their own caucasian Euro-Americans and yet still went and did their patriotic (tribal) duty and did it bravely, honorably as the warriors they had always been.
I want to commemorate in a small way those Normandy, D-Day Native American warriors who did not come home, those who were wounded and maimed, and those who survived the entire war who did come back home, but nonetheless were still scarred and mentally wounded by those 2–3 years in Nazi Europe. Scarred perhaps too by six centuries of war upon their people by Europeans and Euro-Americans. Here is one of many partial accounts of that June morning on Omaha Beach, 1944 by Army Medic and 19-year old Private of Fox Company in the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division who were the first frontline units to hit Omaha Beach.
In my June 6, 2019 blog-post Five Hundred Yards, I wrote about how many casualties were sustained by the first wave hitting the beach or head-high water of Omaha in the first 15-minutes and hour of landing. What I didn’t mention in that blog-post was that decades later German Wehrmacht testimonies stated they were firing their MG-42’s, 5cm and 8cm mortars, and rocket-launching Nebelwerfers so much, non-stop that the barrels were all overheating, even when they rotated them with extra barrels they had, 3-4 extras in some units. The German gun-crews were astonished by how many Allied soldiers kept coming and falling, coming and falling, over and over, endlessly as they quickly exhausted their entire stores of ammunition. On the American side with the 1st Division known as “The Big Red One,” they sustained over 2,000 casualties in the first hour of landings.
One particular Army Medic who was one of 14 total Medics in his regiment made it far enough up the 300-400 yards of flat beach and took cover. However, as he looked back from where he had come he realized he was all alone. No one in his company had made it safely as far as he had. He then noticed many of his fellow infantrymen lying on the beach wounded, screaming, and in the rising tide carrying their 60-75 lbs of gear, most were struggling or unable to pull themselves up the sand so as not to drown. Without hesitation he ran back some 300-400 yards again under heavy fire with his two satchels of medical supplies to those wounded and drowning, pulling many of them 10-11 yards up on the beach and began giving first aid. Another Corp man reported to his officers that this one Medic pulled about eighteen wounded out of the water that were twice or three-times his size and their uniforms and gear heavily soaked. Charles Norman Shay is a Penobscot Indian from the state of Maine and was that one remarkable Army Medic. He tells in his own words what happened:
“The seas were red with the blood. At the very beginning, it was difficult for me to witness so much carnage. I had to push what I was experiencing out of my mind, so I could function the way I was trained to function. Then I was able to operate effectively and even saved a few lives. I have always been proud to be a medic. It’s a special privilege.”
Shay remembers cradling those critically wounded to give them some comfort. When he found one he recognized, badly wounded with an open abdomen, he stayed with Private Edward Morozewicz, one of his closest friends, to ease him in his last few breaths. In 2017 Shay visited Morozewicz’s family, making sure they knew of Edward’s courage. Charles participated in a special ceremony honoring his fellow fallen medic. Shay still questions why he lived when Morozewicz and most of his unit were killed. “I knew [Edward] was slowly dying. I bandaged his wounds and gave him morphine. But I knew there was no help for him,” says a somber Shay.
Most of the American 1st and 29th Division’s first waves onto Omaha Beach perished, cut-down and slaughtered by the precise, heavily supplied and experienced 352nd German Infantry Division. The 352nd was assembled with many battle-tested soldiers pulled from worn-out or disbanded Wehrmacht divisions that had served on the Eastern front in Russia. By 12-noon on D-Day over half the men and most of the officers in Shay’s Company were either seriously wounded or dead. Up to 3,000 Allied troops died, and some 9,000 were injured or classified as missing that day, unidentifiable, or lost to the sea. Of Shay’s Regimental Medical Detachment of 42 medics, seven were killed and 24 severely wounded. After so many of his regiment and company fell or were killed, he later struggled many times with Survivors Remorse.
“My heart breaks for those mothers who prayed for their brave sons but never welcomed their sons home again,” says Shay wiping away a tear. “I can never forget the men who never had the chance to experience life as it was meant to be, a wife and a family, but instead were destined to depart this life in some far-off [European] land.”
Shay often says it was random, crazy luck that he survived D-Day, the rest of the war, and later the Korean War that he volunteered for service just five years later. After the war in Europe ended, the U.S. Army awarded Shay a Silver Star for his actions, and the French government appointed him a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur, the highest honor given to non-citizens of France. But despite those medals this humble Penobscot Indian veteran always refers back to fellow warriors who paid the ultimate price and sacrifice for their country, homeland, Native tribes and family. Shay says there were many just like him.
Recently there has been new memorials and ceremonies finally recognizing the heroic contributions and sacrifices of Native American WW2 veteran warriors. Charles Shay makes annual trips back to Normandy to pay his ceremonial respects and honor his fellow Indians lost there with Eagle feathers, sage, and tobacco. He does so to bring heightened awareness to the younger public, particularly back in the United States. He lets his fellow Indian warriors lost, buried there under row after row of white crosses that they are not forgotten.
In the Normandy American Cemetery at least 29 Native American soldiers are buried. In the Brittany American Cemetery at least nine Native American soldiers are buried. And at the Utah Beach American Cemetery 30 Comanche soldiers, Code Talkers, from the Oklahoma Reservation are memorialized there. According to Dr. Harald E. L. Prins, an anthropologist and researcher at Kansas State University, 175 Native American soldiers landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. Over 75-years later only around 55 have been identified.
For an extensive telling of Shay’s gallant service on D-Day go here. Many of the past stories of that day in June, a lot of the later accompanying military field narratives describing the Omaha ordeal are sanitized versions of the original field unit notes. And as S.L.A. Marshall writes for The Atlantic magazine in his provocative, transparently graphic article “First Wave at Omaha Beach,“ he says even “Cornelius Ryan’s epic film The Longest Day misses the essence of the unfiltered Omaha story.” I highly recommend his article.
It is my opinion, reflecting back this June 6th, 2021 anniversary of D-Day, given these Native American warriors pre-war histories they had every justifiable reason not to lift a finger for a white-man’s faraway war. They did not have to do any patriotic service for a 1940’s Euro-American country that treats them and had treated them as second- or third-class people without the same identical privileges and human rights afforded White America. Today, I think these Native American warriors are overdue, deserving the utmost respect, honor, and ceremony up to or beyond any other homage given to any Euro-American veterans of any U.S. wars! May they all receive many sacred Eagle feathers, burnt sage, and tobacco so all of their spirits rest in peace and receive (at minimum) equal remembrance and honor by all Americans; every single one of us without exception. Unmeasurable gratitude for all of you Native American warrior veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces, past and present.
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Excellent post. So much of our history is being lost through simply not teaching it and actually suppressing it. And then also through natural attrition, as people die.
I feel sad because we’ve lost our sense of honor and courage and we have elements now in society that want to turn us into everything these unsung heroes fought against in WWI and WWII.
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We are undergoing a tremendous reframing of everything ‘Western’ to be understood as bad. Everything. This historical reassembly uses linguistic treachery at its finest which is then used to ‘reexamine’ history through an ideological narrative. (One need look no further than the vaunted 1619 Project to see how this method works. Orwell would not be surprised at how effective is the method to undermine what’s true and replace knowledge of history with a Just So storyline that supports and not surprisingly aligns with only a single anti-Western ideological narrative.) And that narrative – now used by the propaganda machinery of authoritarian rulers around the globe – centers around the sin of ‘colonization’ as the fatal character flaw of all things Western. And this narrative finds rich soil in the West because we teach this lie as the only acceptable version of history. The West, we are told by inundated messages daily, is the only responsible agent for all of the world’s problems and any successful improvement for anyone anywhere is at best merely a small and inadequate compensation for committing the Great Sin on the victimized world.
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Tildeb, as always I enjoy your feedback, comments, and exquisite knowledge on so many topics dear to me. Thank you for this comment here, Sir. 🙂
I am a little unsure, though, whether you think this “tremendous reframing” of Western history, and in some cases, correctly reframing past distorted, nationally biased/revised versions of history—and/or omitted portions of history that does take place by the Victors—as right and appropriate… OR… is “to be understood as bad. Everything” about this current “historical reassembly.” For example, commemorating the remarkable, heroic contributions of Native American warriors/veterans like Charles Shay’s unit and others at Omaha Beach and Normandy, or the Code Talkers in the Pacific Theater against the Japanese, or African-American veterans (of TWO World Wars!) such as the Tuskegee Airmen or the Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division. For decades, probably too many, these non-white soldiers and units were ignored, forgotten, or intentionally omitted from popular news, literature, and school text books in white Euro-America.
Did I misread or misunderstand the meaning/gist of your comment? I feel like I did. Feel free to elaborate please and help me with my typical dysfunctional brain. 😄 Thank you Sir.
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All of the contributions made towards the destruction of the the Third Reich and the Japanese Imperial forces and Italian brigades are worthy of my deepest respect and appreciation. The protection of liberal democracy – even with its ongoing struggle extricating its internal institutions from popular shortsightedness, stupidity, brutality, and selfishness predicated on bigotry and discrimination – against these particular overt threats are vital history to why we can swim in the lazy waters of evaporating liberalism today.
But foregoing this history and recasting it as Western Imperialism and colonization is a slap in the face of each and every person – regardless of race, creed, colour, and sex – who put themselves on the line, who stepped up and served regardless of differences, to aid this effort and defeat the existential threat. Respecting the uniform has earned this appreciation because that expectation defending liberal democracy in all its national forms and versions is what is being donned by the wearer.
I can tell you personal accounts from every corner of my country, every ethnicity, every language, every culture including German, Japanese, and Italian heritage, including many examples for the 3 branches of indigenous people and the 624 recognized tribes who – in spite of institutional prejudices and biases and intolerances and bigotries and even imprisonment – stepped up for the greater good and served. This is remarkable, as you clearly articulate in the OP.
And I know many of these stories because I have a brother-in-law who speaks and writes about them all the time. He has not only researched and written about certain units and the men and women who formed them, deployed, and engaged as members in hostile encounters, but currently heads up a team that provides information about those who served, through documentation – both official and collected (like diaries and correspondence) – to the next generation of relatives who ask about what these contributions were. With permission, this is the source of information when students today are to write about one person from a ‘before’ time to help make the historical connections between today and yesterday. He was on the team that actually discovered the identity and relatives of several unknown soldiers (WWI and WWII) unearthed in both Europe and South Africa (from the Boer War). History is not some narrative told by elders; it is real and immediate and important to better understand today why things are the way they are.
This painstaking detailed work is a dedication earned by the sacrifice of life while serving, which is a deeply felt motive by those who serve today. They are connected to their unit. Unit connection to its actual history is not whitewashed or compiled by distant academics but maintained and passed on generation by generation. It is a brotherhood earned, and one that crosses and evaporates today’s artificial historical bullshit that it’s all about power and race and ethnicity and victimization. A unit’s history is always present and it’s always part of today.
So I make the comment about the tremendous reframing because many people in the military understand that this runner or that sapper, this able seaman or that submariner, this pilot and that navigator did his or her duty to the brotherhood, to the unit, to the company, the platoon, the squad, the crew, the person next in line when it mattered most, and that that relationship defined ‘the quality of character’ each service personnel brought into focus no matter how that character might be packaged – by ethnicity or religion or skin colour or whatever. This is real history and a means to link why things are the way they are today with what happened yesterday and a lesson for future generations to understand why ML King’s words give voice to the slavery of 1619 but to the promises made in 1776.
Our character over the arc of time is what matters and not all the bullshit identities and ridiculous intersectionalities and the idiocy of presuming historical victimization to excuse one’s duty not just to the liberal experiment today earned by the blood of others from yesterday but to each and every citizen to be treated better when inequalities are encountered. And the way forward is not to go backwards and bemoan ancient grievances; it is to use the lessons of history and build one’s character to meet these challenges. And prevail.
And the only way to allow people to be personally responsible for their character means we must support equality in law for the individual to have that opportunity. That is what is under threat by this group-based approach today mistakenly thinking that illiberal equity is preferable to the liberal ideal of legal equality, that illiberal ideology this time and for the first time will not logically end at totalitarian rule that must erase respect and protection for the individual in law.
We are seeing the reframing of history to represent the arc of Western history as all bad, all about power, all about hegemony. Well, step back and compare and contrast with every other human civilization and system of governance and one will realize just how far the liberal experiment has brought us. To cast these unquestionable facts of radical development towards the betterment of humanity aside and begin framing our historical narrative in as negative a light as possible is a tremendous disservice to those of all ‘identities’ we owe a debt of gratitude for their liberal contribution towards fulfilling in part those promises of 1776.
That there’s a way to go is not in question. That everything is not utopian is obvious. That our history includes some terrible injustices is quite true. But to focus only on these as an excuse to dismantle and undermine the principles of liberal democracy is by far a greater injustice than forcing the sons and daughters to take a knee today for some of the unjust actions committed by fathers and mothers once upon a time. The revisionist history we support today presents is no less an existential threat than done covertly school by school by school by ‘social justice warriors’ than the overt threat by armed insurrection. Our individual character is in question, and so we will see if we can measure up to answering the call as did those who have come before us.
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My goodness Tildeb. Your first five paragraphs just OOZE with elegant articulation and profound clarity for me now. Wow. Just WOW. Thank you. 🙂
I need to take some deep breaths for a bit, gather myself, then go back and reread your wonderful elaboration. Mainly too… I need to finish reading all of it! Likely 2-3 times. Hah! 😄
I shall return with more. 😉
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What I’m trying to say using D-Day and the individual stories that center on a few aboriginal ones is that history to be understood is not a single narrative written by victors but a compilation of a thousand different stories that share a central theme. And that theme is what is eventually codified into its simplest version. But appreciation for this version rests in thousands of pieces and so I raised the unit’s history as an example. But it always goes back to the individuals involved, their stories, and how their compiled actions multiplied into shaping what was to follow.
Colonialism, for example, is not a policy. It’s a way of life. To erect boundaries and claim only European whites and their descendants are to blame for it is not historical; it’s an ideological narrative used to fit a selected belief. In Canada, for example, the Iroquois ‘colonized’ the land of the Mohawk, who in turn colonized the land of the Huron, who in turn colonized the land of the Chippewa, who in turn colonized the land of the Oneida, and so on. So claims of historical land ownership as if interrupted only by the French and British is ludicrous. So these tribes get together, claim they are a monolith that never existed in history, in order to create a single ‘colonizer’ that successfully pushed them off the lands they had pushed others off of! A recent genetic study indicating this model (comparing burial grounds to specific families) accurately described this constant ‘colonizing’ by First Nations tribes. Naturally, the studies were called ‘racist’ and stopped. We wouldn’t want to disturb the current narrative (by teaching revisionist ‘history’) of vilifying all things Western in order to create a monolithic Bad Guy we can blame for all the world’s ills.
Anyway, that was my intention. Sorry for the length.
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I haven’t yet read this reply because I only just finished my response I just posted… below. Lol 😉
I will probably have to read and reply to your latest comment-reply tomorrow afternoon or evening. Also, as you might remember, this week I prepare to travel first to Mom’s in central Texas, then flying out of Austin, TX the next morning for Mackinac Island. 😁
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No need to apologize Tildeb for the length. 🙂 Usually with my blog-posts, comments can require more length and detail in order to articulate more precisely the thoughts, concepts, disagreements, etc. Please don’t feel you must always apologize for necessary detail and elaboration to convey exactly what you mean.
Sometimes/Often oversimplification—no matter how concise one feels they’ve been—can still cause misunderstandings, even disasters. The very nature of human communication is not only fluid with unique backgrounds relative to the writer/speaker as well as the reader/listener, and those can all fluctuate. Thus, communication is also geographically cultured/based, so every single person carries to some degree personal biases which can and do influence a listener’s, a reader’s reception. The same applies to the writer/speaker. All of this is to say that I do not mind extensive details and pedantry as others might, especially on subjects of a critical nature. Homeland Security certainly has more than two commands when the nation is under (perceived) threat:
Step A) When a bang/boom is heard, proceed to step B.
Step B) Push and hold down red button that is labelled: “Nuclear Arsenal Launch.”
Right!? Lol 😉 Oversimplification, sometimes disguised as “concise,” is one of my personal pet-peeves. Consider if you will the sheer number of synonyms we have of nearly every single English word. That speaks volumes, if I can employ a pun, of what I’m saying. 😛 Plus, it’s also my personal opinion that many people are just too hectically rushed, or really lazy if disinterested, and therefore hide behind that word/concept of concise. Oversimplification and hyper-convenience pervade our current American society. It’s widespread and its habits of (gross) presumption certainly has its problems in human interaction. But enough about the many flaws of human engagement.
I think when you elaborated that “…appreciation for this version rests in thousands of pieces…” and going back to the individuals that participated is essentially saying what I hope I am implying: that every single human perspective in epic and/or traumatic experiences has a level of significant value, if not just to help stitch together the many parts of a greater whole, a completed tapestry. In art, timeless masterpieces are not composed of one, two or three (ethnic, racial) colors, if I may. As we know well, the color spectrum is a multitude of color shades. The microscopic, atomic, and sub-atomic levels make our existence quite fluid for god’s sake! 😄 And THAT is just what the HUMAN eye can see! There are more subtle colors and shades that we cannot see by the naked eye!
Therefore Tildeb, I think we are on the same page, but as is usually the case you are a much better accomplished writer than I am. I’m pleased to admit that you keep me on my toes almost 24/7. 😄 😉
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Just so. These are the tiny hands that shape and craft the generalized version we call history. Replacing all of this with an ideologically formulated narrative to suit one framing is not history (like the 1619 Project); it’s indoctrination.
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Agreed. 👍🏼
If I can complicate somewhat what I was conveying earlier 😛 , I personally try to live by a motto of being inclusive rather than exclusive. I always prefer a well-oiled TEAM! Hence, aside from the more complex justice system, convictions, and types of incarcerations, outside of that… I have never liked Cancel Culture or unjustified ostracism. And I’ve always loathed elitism. I think you understand what I mean here Tildeb. 🙂
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So many unsung heroes. But sure, always those who aren’t, too. History is always very messy. I wonder how much longer will be the opportunity I had as a teacher to ask a classroom who so and so was and why should any of us know anything about them? This building, that institution, the statue over there, the sign over here, that river, the road name, whatever. Almost every day. I didn’t give answers but left it up to them to answer at some later date. I would usually add a story to the name later – often something local and unusual or noteworthy or funny but something to help explain what THEY encountered today. Thank goodness these didn’t have to pass today’s moral hallway monitors and historical sanitizers and the perpetually offended grievance archeologists; historical effects were what mattered and that could and often did promote discussions about positive and negative. Of course, kids these days cannot possibly cope with the potential ‘harm’ such informed consideration might yield, even though I know more than a generation of students who were a bit more hardy and seemed not just capable but actually interested in learning from the past and discussing it with passion. How shocking. So today we are supposed to protect them from this learning and give trigger warnings and shape only approved and suitable anodyne narratives about Western heritage predigested to remove the impurities for them, to foster unquestioning and/or self-censoring consumption I guess… while claiming concern that no one knows why so many don’t seem able to learn from history. Such a mystery. It must be the white colonizer’s fault. Ooo, let’s find ‘another way of knowing’ instead and write a haiku about it.
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HAH! 😄 That’s a delightful way of describing the NECESSARY negative and pain that like it or not, is indeed a lesson-learning tool, and a very integral process at that!!!
You sounded so much like my Dad there it was weird! You’ve actually put in a superb way my answer/response to my Mom, sister, and daughter—referring back to my blog-post Five Hundred Yards and me and my son watching HBO’s Band of Brothers, despite its graphic scenes; sorry folks, that’s war and it is utterly horrific!—and their concern, question put to me: Are you a lover of war and violence? Tildeb, you’ve essentially stated here what I attempted to explain to them and anyone else about my personal passions (for the sake of education and NOT repeating horrific history!) for military history and those men (and now women) who have sacrificed SO MUCH for the greater good, a much better, peaceful world. And btw Tildeb, my Dad would never dilute or sanitize things for me cuz obviously the USMC doesn’t do it that way, nor did he spare me the painful lessons of life, e.g. this blog-post: To Operate A Mechanical Edger.
Hell, Tildeb… even when I’m drinking, enjoying a cocktail, beer, wine, etc? Rarely, in fact almost always I never want anything diluted or “light”! I want STOUT. I want bold flavors from my beer and my wines. The only spirit I will allowed to be “purified” are my vodkas—at least distilled 7-times, preferably 10 or more. This is how I prefer my libations. This is how I prefer my relationships: boldly raw, brutally honest, and acutely proactive. This is how I want to experience life, NOT just the happy, joyous Silver-linings 24/7, 365 days… but all the despair, pain, and tribulations too that come with life that yes indeed IS MESSY! If you don’t have the hard parts, the painful parts as well, then you will NEVER fully appreciate the joy, euphoria, and tranquility of all the good. Everything enhances the other and the opposite, or should… shouldn’t they? Lol 🙂
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Real life is a hard teacher: it gives one the punishment first and then leaves you to figure out the lesson. I learned that lesson while hugging various toilets and understanding that I had spent hard-earned money for the privilege. It’s a good reminder that none of us are born smart, me most of all. I have always had a long way to go.
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You and me both, brotha. 😉
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On a totally different topic Tildeb, my Mom and sister wanted me to give you their personal thanks for your wonderful insight and tips for our trip to Mackinac Island. 🙂 ❤️ And I thank you as well Sir.
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Tildeb,
If I can request a bit more of your excellent knowledge and writing skills please, I wanted to share this PBS Amanpour & Company segment. I usually watch 2-4 times a week Amanpour & Company along with PBS NewsHour and Judy Woodruff. In this 16-min interview May 28, 2021 by Walter Isaacson with Kathleen Kingsbury, the new Opinion Editor of The New York Times, they talk about Cancel Culture, social-media’s influence on the American public, and eventually the 1619 Project you mentioned. When I caught this interview I was very intrigued. And when Kingsbury got to the part about the 1619 Project, I had heard that title once before, but knew nothing about it.
Due to the mass, extensive changes COVID-19 caused for “science & safety” minded intelligent Texans like myself, 😉 my daily/weekly life was turned upside down. As a result of this, my “time” to hear, watch, or read current news was drastically effected! Believe it or not Tildeb, I didn’t know a damn thing about the 1619 Project or this new modern trend of ostracism called Cancel Culture, but after catching this segment, I now know a bit more. I’m not an expert on these subjects, but I’m no longer naïve either. I really liked what Kathleen Kingsbury had to say. That said though, please know as well that I do not always agree with The New York Times, or their Magazine and journalists. There are plenty of other news sources and journalists to consider and read too, THANKFULLY! 🙂 But I did want to get your thoughts on this 16-min interview with her, if of course you have the time Sir. Thank you.
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These are hard questions to answer quickly.
Regarding the new(ish) editor Kathleen’s interview, there’s a reason why it’s now called the New Woke Times and the is an overarching reason why all the best columnists and reporters who have left it over the past couple of years give us a pretty strong clue why. In a nutshell, the rank and file from the various departments of the Times have a strong tendency to follow lockstep with the woke twitter mob and then tell the editors what they may and may not write. If they balk, they get fired or have to write an apology to the staff and the liberals are a dwindling cohort against this onslaught. But Kathleen herself is an expert at using the right language, striking the right tone,. relying on tried and true acceptable words and phrases to make it seem like it’s all good, to make it appear by narrative that the Times is fair and balanced rather than the flagship legacy media it is for the Woke.
So when it comes to the 1619 Project – a project paid for by the Times and then presented to the country as if in answer to the crimes of racism, winning a Pulitzer for the author – one might think the much vaunted ideal of only printing what’s true, presenting facts behind their selection of which columns to publish as Kathleen insists is the reason for people leaving the Times or not being published, one might be surprised to find out that the Times itself and without warning edited its own version of the 1619 Project several times and on different platforms under its banner to pretend it never said what many critics with doctorates in American history had pointed out it had said. No admission of guilt. No editorial explanation for these changes. And when caught red handed (gee, I wonder where THAT term comes from?), the admission was one of editorial confusion between platform editors and never, not once, an admission that its so-called editorial reliance on factual ‘research’ relied entirely on selected ‘lived experiences’ versus much validated contrary facts. (This lovely little insight article is from a fact checker who strenuously disagreed and whose expertise whenever this arose was promptly ignored. Here’s a compilation from historians of why the 1619 Project is cause for great concern by real historians.)
Every single advancement in civil rights in legislation and enacted by legal enforcement since 1619 to address the lack of legal equality for minorities of all kinds are ALL waved away as ‘camouflage’ for embedded racism against only blacks to keep to the 1619 Project’s central tenet unchanged and unbending. In other words, the ‘conclusion’ from all this supposed ‘historical’ research relying on ‘facts’ not surprisingly is the premise used to adjudicate the historical record itself and ‘correct’ it when reality falls short! By fiat.
It’s as much an accurate portrayal of national history as Mein Kamph is for Germany. Sure, there are many facts within each, but both are framed stories, ideological narratives, with a lot of correct facts but organized to look like history when they aren’t. The ‘Project’ uses sifted history to be interpreted with by only a racist framing that, unsurprisingly, finds nothing but racism. Whodathunk? Quick: give that author an award!
That it finds 1776 and all the documents associated with this watershed historical moment to be nothing but additional camouflage for racism demonstrates its skewed ‘research’ and it has nothing whatsoever to do with what’s true.
The 1619 Project is a truly shining example of ‘progressive’ woke confirmation bias hard at work. (Even the term ‘woke’ has been stolen to falsely present vindictive racism as if an extension of civil rights when in fact it’s exactly the opposite.) And it also won a Pulitzer for Hannah-Jones its author, just like Kathleen had won at the Boston Globe for what I am told is really good journalism! Same prize; but two very, very different reasons for them.
And the second reason (not for good journalism but for espousing the ‘correct’ ideology) – a way to address ‘systemic’ racism by following the dictates and teaching of CRT an dimpose it on vulnerable youth by means of public education – is to attach never-ending blame to white people who are the only source of never-ending racism and who can atone only by actively promoting anti-racism for life. Think I’m stretching the truth here? Hardly:
“White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions … Entering the conversation with this understanding is freeing because it allows us to focus on how—rather than if—our racism is manifest.” Robin D’Angelo White Fragility
Yup: if you’re white, we’re racist. Forever. Too bad. So sad.
So how do we overcome manifesting our inherent and institutionalized racism? Gotta love this gem from the High Priest of CRT Himself:
“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Ibram Kendi How to be an Anti-Racist
Biden has granted federal money to education in civics and history that specifically cites Kendi’s works as well as the 1619 Project, both of which are pure Critical Race Theory benchmark works now in action. Both, just like D’Angelo’s works, are diametrically opposed to ending racism. Both want never-ending retribution determined by racial affiliation, by the colour of one’s skin. (Who cares this is diametrically opposed to King’s version that asks for the content of character in its stead? I CAN’T BREATHE is the only proper response to legitimate criticism. Both are deeply anti-liberal and see individual rights and freedoms in law as camouflage for more systemic racism against blacks.
This reformatted version of Marxist ideology, and the mewling appeasement by invertebrate people everywhere like Kathleen Kingsbury and the legions of woke progressive social justice warriors who promote it and think well of themselves doing what they can to protect it from legitimate criticism, is a huge threat to liberal democracy.
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It might be a day or four(?) 😛 Tildeb before I can really digest your reply here and then comment with a hopeful, decent amount of clarity and relevant cognizance. 😄 And you are certainly correct that all these are “hard questions to answer quickly” or as I would put it: oversimplifying it for the sake of speed, or laziness. Thank you Sir for NOT doing that, obviously with your always well thought out responses and high quality checked, edited, rechecked, re-edited details required for such complex topics. What you produce in perhaps 30-mins, JEBUS H. CHRISTMAS, would take me 3-hours to construct and nowhere near as eloquent as you compose. 😆 Bravo to you! 👏
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Have a great trip. Here’s something else to consider over the weekend and into next week. I look forward to you explaining why I’m wrong.
Understanding why CRT is deplorable and understanding the intention to undermine liberal values smeared with lovely and noble sentiments matters greatly I think. This is a legacy issue. Today’s inverted version of what ‘progressive’ means makes it a stealth ideology that is very, very seductive because to champion it makes one FEEL like a selfless and good person standing opposed to those painted as the worst of the worst. And one must be a bigot and a racist to stand against CRT we are told repeatedly by the mob bullies of Twitter and those ethical invertebrates who think this is true, a misogynist and sexist pig to stand against children deciding to undergo surgical transformations of their reproductive organs, a deplorable person to stand against sending fully intact male sexual predators into serving sentences in women’s prisons because they ‘feel’ they should, a Nazi to support Zionism, and so on. The woke ideology will go after liberal values with remarkable intolerance no matter where they are to be found. Why this clue doesn’t hit home to more people on the Left is a great mystery to me. I suspect it’s because too many people swim in the waters of liberalism on a day to day basis but have no clue they do so, that they are privileged to do so, that there’s a debt to be paid for inheriting this prize. This is why comparisons of today’s ‘progressive’ woke folk to the Red Guard are valid, why references to Orwell’s 1984 are appropriate and frighteningly accurate.
More importantly, understanding CRT and how the woke movement generally is an existential threat to the liberal experiment and standing against its incursion wherever it tries to gain headway is essential to defusing the most powerful ammunition the Right can use to gain moderate support for their next populist. I think there’s a strong argument to be made that this is the SAME battle but on a different field that led to the rise of the Third Reich.
(Notice, please, the same rise in acceptable anti-Semitism across the Western landscape… most popularly in the form of those poor Palestinians, donchaknow, the ones who teach the acceptance as fact the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, who are taught both on television and in school at early elementary levels that Jews are monkeys and apes, the same poor Palestinians who pay those and their families who kill Jews with bonus cash and pensions, the poor Palestinians who have been represented at every bargaining table by those who steadfastly reject every potential solution to living peacefully with an Israeli state, who fire rockets indiscriminately into civilian populations (including their own), who demand ‘From river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, and so on, who have outlawed Jewish participation in their governance and social programs, and so on. But the ‘apartheid’ state is Israel, we are told constantly. This anti-Semitism embraced as Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions is part and parcel of the Woke mantra to demonstrate allegiance with poor victims rather than what it is: anti-Semitism cloaked as a virtue of inclusion and diversity by claiming that inequity damns Israelis for not dying in equal numbers every time armed conflict breaks out, and this is evidence of its fascist state.) The Left, by going along with this ideological attack against liberal values in every arena, empowers the Right with those who are politically moderate. Until more of us on the Left figure this out and DO something about it, the more danger we are facing in the coming years to any peaceful legal recourse to protect our equal individual rights and freedoms from the perniciousness of imposing equity on all. The woke Left are attacking the liberalism while the Right responds by attacking democracy. Liberal democracy is at risk from both.
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Hmmmm. 🤔 Quite interesting.
I haven’t yet read entirely your latest comment-reply Tildeb, but because I usually do not demarcate race, gender, and ethnicity—two human conditions NO ONE on Earth can ever pre-select before or at birth, right?—for anyone’s given parental rearing, however, these conditions/traits DO come into play by the age of say one’s twenties and beyond when personal/individual (learned) intelligence and critical-thinking have been well (or not?) developed. In other words, most all humans become 100% responsible and accountable for their words and behavior… AS WELL AS their silence and inaction. The exception to this would of course be mental and/or physical-biological disabilities… also born with and not “pre-selected.” BUT… it must be kept in mind that a person’s race, gender, and ethnicity can never be totally ignored and not factored into human events, personal experience, and history. Yes, after their 20’s they do become a lesser factor, but never ever reduced to zero. Does that make sense? Am I conveying this personal thinking preference clearly regarding other people’s differences to me?
Assuming I have conveyed (up above) my personal thinking preference (template) clearly, I DO NOT utilize this cognitive template when it comes to a person’s or group’s creed, ideologies, or political, social, and economic persuasions and/or tendencies. These are all paradigms, habits, conditioning, formulated when a person has become mature, educated (learned?), and fully accountable for their words and behavior AND their silence and/or inaction. I personally believe this is especially true in regard to religious faiths/beliefs. I do not hold vague, unverifiable lifestyles or life-choices like mythical religions as ANY VALID defense to commit human rights violations, genocide, wars, and massacres. Period!
So as one case and point of my personal thinking template about another person’s or group’s words/actions, and this is indeed a very controversial position I have on the matter, is this…
In 1947-48 the victorious (primary) Allied nations (including the U.S.) wrongly and immorally allowed and assisted Israel—as a Criminal Accessory—to invade, occupy, and kill Palestinians and Arabs with levels of immoral impunity to the present day. According to verifiable history, Israel absolutely has no legal or historical justification whatsoever for being in the eastern Levant on/in Palestine’s ancestral homelands. But due to exactly what you’ve mentioned Tildeb about CRT:
That is exactly what Zionist Jews seductively played or utilized—sympathetically and empathetically—upon the international community and the U.N., primarily the United States government, in 1946-1948 after the unspeakable atrocities of WW2’s Holocaust. And now because of this horrible blunder that really began with Theodor Herzl, then the post-WW1 Balfour Declaration, and culminated with the WORST judgement/decision in 1947-48 by the U.S., France, and Great Britain to force through the U.N. the creation of Israel in the worst location possible on Earth: around Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. What an utterly ASININE thing to do for all the wrong reasons!!! Now the West, and particularly the United States, are paying for this horrible blunder for the last near 75-years. 🤦♂️
If you are interested Tildeb and have the time—while I’m in Mackinac Island and then reading/reviewing THIS latest comment-reply, to return to later—I have a 3-part series about this idiotic debacle by the U.S. in 1947-48 called: The Circus of Recycling. Three extensive Parts detailing why I and thousands of other Americans believe we need to break such intimate (religious) ties with Israel. The sooner the better. Israel should be completely dissolved, for many profound reasons, the least of which is what 75-yrs of history has clearly shown us. The Palestinians and Arabs have every right to DEFEND their ancestral homelands!
Okay Tildeb, now I must truly prepare for our trip. I won’t be able to return until I’m back. I hope that’s fine with you Sir. 🙂
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So who were all those people around Jesus’ time?
Jews long predate Arabs in the levant. So there most certainly is a historical context for creating Israel out of Transjordan where Jews had always lived. Notice that ONLY Jews, however, accepted partition and only Jews imposed forced migration on other Jews from what the UN determined should be Palestinian lands at the time? Look what happened: immediate war with countries insisting Israel had no right to exist and would impose a military solution instead. Four times this has happened. What hasn’t happened (until very recently) is wider recognition that Israel should have the right to exist at all. This is the camp you fall into and the inevitable result of that kind of position means more war, not less, more terrorism, not less, more Iranian influence, not less, more instability in the region, not less. I don’t see any of this a good thing.
This ongoing deeply biased vilification of all things Israeli fuels anti-Semitism and not Israel’s actions. If the actions were the concern, then far worse action from Palestinian official policies of state sanction murdering of Jews to China’s treatment of the Uyghurs would be condemned equivalently and would supposedly cause equivalent anti-Palestinian and Chinese intolerance and calls for divestment, boycotts, and sanctions. Obviously they don’t. Only Israel. And this is true across the board in all issues, constant vilification of Israel and complete silence otherwise.
You’re being played.
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I encourage you to read my 3-part series about this, if you can. 🙂 Meanwhile, I must put all of this on hold till my return the week of June 21st. Take care Tildeb. ❤️
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I envy your ability to travel! And to a fabulous location, too. Enjoy.
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I responded but have included a couple of links that I suspect WordPress has automatically taken it into moderation.
Also, I think you’ve chosen a fabulous weekend of moderate temperatures with no major weather systems on their way to screw up your trip. The very hot period ending just prior to your arrival should warm the waters and make it much more pleasant on the island afterwards (the system that changes the air looks like Thursday morning. At least, that’s how it’s looking this Tuesday evening. But then, you knew all this when you selected the date!
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Yeah, I had to “Approve” it out of Moderation—damn automated Spamming machines! ✊👎 —they are the reason for this level of filtering and protection on the world-wide-web. Internet protection, safety, etc, has its pros and cons, but usually I am okay with it. To me the www/internet, especially social-media, is just like a world-wide free-for-all 24/7 orgy! Smart people who are not reckless at least wear condoms, and practice other common sense behaviors, right!? 😁
We think we have chosen a wonderful time, yes. We were all just checking the forecast there and it looks (for now) like an average of low-70’s during the day, mid- to upper 50’s at night, sunny or partly cloudy the entire stay on Mackinac Island. We are very excited! 🙂
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According to verifiable history, Israel absolutely has no legal or historical justification whatsoever for being in the eastern Levant on/in Palestine’s ancestral homelands.
The verifiable history shows a Jewish/Judean presence in the region. Most serious scholars/archaeologists accept that the Israelites and Judeans arose from the native Canaanite population. That seems to be reasonable historic justification.
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CR, 👍🏼
I’m replying to this comment last after your comment later below, if you don’t mind. My apologies if my replies are a bit too short—my family and I are currently on vacation—but I have a few moments to quickly respond while some of them rest/nap. 🙂
As I mentioned to Tildeb above, I wrote a much more extensive, expanded background of reasoning and research behind my personal position about the modern state of Israel’s creation and geographical location in my 3-part blog-series The Circus of Recycling. This might give you a much more thorough understanding of why I (personally) think Israel has no legitimate 1947-48 grounds to claim, invade, and now occupy Palestine, the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, etc, as a bordered, self-governing State/Nation inside of Palestine. Nor do they possess these grounds today or the last 74+ years… anymore than we Euro-American descendants have the right to claim the modern USofA as our God-given right to take Native American Indians 800-1000 year ancestral lands. 😉
Anyway, catch my drift CR? Reversing so much ancient and/or mid- to modern history according to whomever’s “god” is a messy nasty business in my academic professional opinion. However, it doesn’t mean ignore it all and continue to commit Violations Against Humanity, these last 75 to 150 years, does it?
As a bit of light-hearted humor CR, with my own family heritage and ancestry I would not mind one bit returning to my own ancestral lands in either Chambons-Mentoulles of Cluson Valley, between Turin, Italy and Lyon, France, or the Alsace-Lorraine region of eastern France near the Swiss border between the towns of Vauthiermont and Baillou, France… rather than staying in Texas. One big reason my ancestors fled Southern Europe was 1) the intolerant violent Catholic Church, 2) constant wars, battles, fighting between ruling royal Lords/Nobility, and 3) because of #2 poor unstable work and economies/jobs for no land ownership. 😄 Isn’t it funny how much of history repeats? Those 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th-century conditions in Southern Europe are now (and have been) materializing inside Texas, or rather the modern ultra-Red, Conservative/Religious and Evangelical-Fundamental sociopolitical movements, for at least the last 6-10 decades. Ugh! Yuk! 🤢
CR, I’d LOVE to be back in eastern, southeastern France on/in my “ancestral lands” right now! 😉
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Don’t let it go to your head Tildeb, 😉 (hehehe)… but THAT elaboration was pleasantly beyond what I expected. Thank you. Furthermore, I see now and understand better what exactly you are stating, promoting, and defending.
I would never wish to speak a disservice to ANY individual veteran or unit or branch of service, past or present, if they’ve honorably upheld (or beyond) the core values and served well (or better) the exact ideals, ethos, and highest standards and principles of the Unit & Branch. My own father, as a USMC Marine, instilled in me, as best he could without me ever enlisting in the Corp, was deadly serious about these characteristics: Honor, Courage and Commitment both in combat, serving the Corp, and in public while not deployed or serving. Most all of the men and several women in my Father’s immediate and extended family all served in one of the major Branches of our military. Myself, if I had not pursued collegiate then professional soccer after graduating H.S., definitely would have enlisted in the USMC or Army. But my career in semi-pro and pro soccer, then post-grad into Psych/A&D rehab and therapy, took me down a different career/life path. But most all of what I grew up with and around our military servicemen and women has always stuck with me. I absolutely have the HIGHEST regard, respect, and gratitude to our veterans, alive or deceased, who served well and perfectly those values, standards I mentioned above.
That said, unfortunately there are always “bad apples in the bunch” that dishonor and betray those highest standards and principles, and abuse their positions of advantage and weapons experience. Of course those bad apples, evil men can be found in any military units/branches in the U.S. and the world’s other nations. I know you know this too Tildeb. 😉
Nevertheless, I do want you to know that it will NEVER be my intention to be a disservice to the personal stories, sacrifice, and highest service standards that SO MANY soldiers, veterans, etc, willingly give for people like me: a 58-yr old American man that has never had to serve or volunteered to serve in peace-time for the precise reason those men and women who have… have afforded me “other” career-life choices! I have and always WILL hold our military servicemen and women in the highest regard!*
Again Tildeb, thank you so much for your excellent, exquisite elaboration.
——————
* — That have served honorably (or above) their military branch’s/unit’s core and sub-core values, and “honorably discharged” or paid the ultimate sacrifice. 🙏
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Sometimes the problem isn’t purposely not teaching something or suppressing it, although that also can be an issue too, but rather a breadth versus depth issue.
Breadth—think a textbook trying to cover as much of the most important information as possible—can’t go into as much depth on narrow topics. Going from largest topic: World War II.
Then narrowing it down: Battles – D-day – Native American soldiers on D-Day
However, as one narrows down a broad topic and starts to gain depth, inevitably it’s difficult to develop depth on all narrow topics because for any Broad topic there are thousands of different ways you can narrow it down. This is part of the reason that most PhDs have to specialize. You can’t be an expert in everything. So it also unfortunately comes down to limits of time and interests.
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CR,
It is very good to see you again Sir. It has been a long time; welcome back! 🙂
I quickly read through your comments; enjoyed this one especially.
I find that very much true. In fact, I wrote a lengthy 4-part blog-series about that one tricky process of condensing historical breath down to narrow, specific depths entitled Games of Unknowledging that perhaps you’d find interesting, time permitting, as much as I enjoyed researching and learning all the various complex components of Knowledge vs. Ignorance. I mean, there are a minimum of four (4) classifications of ignorance and likely more:
• A Native or Innocent State
• Time and Mental Constraints – as you mentioned CR
• Moral-Exemplary Caution
• Strategic Subterfuge
And furthermore, the task of digging up all the specific depths/details to forensically piece together is not a 1-2 week project by any stretch of the imagination I should think! The required (minimum) time is no less than months, perhaps 1-3 years and more if one is a stickler for accurate details and context, right? 😉
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Just to be clear at the start: do you think Israel has the right to exist? If your answer is yes, then we have common ground.
If your answer is no (and it sure seems you are dedicated to this proposition just by the use of your selected descriptive terms for Israel), then you’ve not yet realized your conspiratorial justification for anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism…. because it casts all Jews of all countries to be both imposters in whatever country they may be including the United States and/or swindlers taking away whatever wealth is accumulated from the nation’s citizens.
I know you can’t see your position this way but it logically follows the anti-Zionist position. That’s a red flag. You have managed to frame history in such a way as to justify anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism! As a teacher, you may want to first steel-case the Zionist position and see how this exercise strips the framed version down to be equivalent in all ways to anti-Semitism.
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Hi Tildeb. 🙂
Not yet home to Dallas, but will be either late this afternoon or evening, so my time for this good discussion is still limited. However, I did want to preface my upcoming replies with this note:
Above you laid out only two possible answers for me to select to your question. But 1) I would prefer a more precise and mutual definition of what exactly is “Israel,” i.e. the State or the pseudo-Theocracy, or some other conglomerate description? And 2) a presupposed “Anti-Zionist” to “Anti-Semitic” label upon me before I have had a chance to clarify your reading of my series “Circus of Recycling,“ has prematurely tangled up my ACTUAL posture & position on modern Judaism, the Abrahamic religions, and their significant influences upon modern governing and international politics. Furthermore, modern militaries are overly used today, i.e. last 150 so years, to execute and dictate “religious” mythologies claiming “Divine Rights” to specific geographical regions loosely interpreted basics, primarily upon Abrahamic canonical Scriptures and hard (to impossible) religious “traditions” to verify/confirm incontrovertibly. That is ALWAYS their critical, inexplicably devastating problem for all three Abrahamic religions. Period!
Anyway, the ultimate end to this HUMAN conundrum is that we are all simply Earthlings. Always were, always now, and always will be until our deaths. I think it is that simple. That is the ultimate common denominator on the Universal-Cosmic level. All this silly ridiculous fuss & mass killing/genocide over what a Divine (mythical) deity says during human states of hallucinations or very real psychiatric disorders or psychosis, passed on as divine inspiration or revelation has cost humanity UNTOLD, unnecessary premature deaths and torment for far too long. 😒
Is that above, how you’ve guessed my current posture as you’ve set it up here, a “religiously-based” political state, why borders exist and come and go, on horrible human discrimination, racism, etc, et al, justified as “Divine Right”… precipitating all the worst vices of human nature… to be my “anti-Semitism”? Not in my mind it isn’t. So I felt the need to preface with this.
But I will have more time in the coming days/weeks to discuss this religiosity cluster-fuck mankind has cursed itself with past and present, should you so desire. 😉
Meanwhile, continued respect and well-wishes for you my Friend. ♥️
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Had a brief moment to further ponder our discussion, my replies to you (and CR above), while I am organizing all our photos, videos, gifts, information, etc, of our Mackinac Island trip for two final productions for Mom and sister. You asked earlier:
My previous quick reply I still present, but if I may Tildeb answer your question with a question:
Do you think Indigenous people today like the Terena, Mura, Apurinã, Kayapo, and Yanomamo (to name only five) have the right to exist, live, and protect/defend their ancestral lands in the Amazon Rainforest? If no or yes, then why? As a footnote, many of these indigenous people (like those in the Levant well before Hebrew Scriptures were written) have been living there for at least the last 30,000+ years.
Indigenous peoples in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela, as well as tiny land portions of Ecuador and three other small nations, all have ancestral lands they are fighting for, protecting, and being killed at the hands of currently unstoppable mercenaries covertly hired and paid by corporations, industries, retailers, and market traders such as:
• JP Morgan Chase (USA)
• BNP (France)
• HSBC (UK)
• BlackRock (USA)
• Santander (Spain)
• JBS-Beef (USA)
• Cargill-Soy (USA)
• Marfrig-Beef (Brazil)
• Costco (USA)
• Leclerc Foods Group (Canada)
• Stop & Shop (USA)
• Walmart (USA)
In the Amazon Rainforest should I, as a comparison of intent and actions, include for our discussion on the modern State of Israel the 1881 to present-day Zionist Jews in that bulleted list above? What are the similarities or differences today between Amazonian Indigenous peoples and Arab-Palestinian peoples, BOTH having been on their ancient ancestral lands stretching back to the Neolithic Age (8000–3000 BCE) and earliest Bronze Age (c. 3000–2000 BCE). 😉
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If you wish to discuss whether or not ‘indigenous’ people have a right to a homeland, then that’s one thing. But not answering the Israel question is a dodge. The fundamental question regarding the Palestine and Israel hinges on this question: Do you think Israel has the right to exist? This is the necessary answer – yes or no – that determines everything else that follows because it establishes whether or not there is any common ground.
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I have no issue or “dodges” in answering that question so here is my complete answer:
Just as all Earthlings have the right to exist… and live peacefully with all other Homo sapiens on Earth. Period.
Now, with that they must do it without violating other’s basic human rights, PRIMARILY and MOST IMPORTANTLY to not murder or be murdered or forcefully be removed (or remove others) from your/their legal, provable, verifiable right to live on and own the land on which you/they stand. So… YES, of course Earthlings (who call themselves Israelis, or Terena/Kayapo, or Arabs, or Palestinians, or Chippewa/Ottawa, or Muslims, or Christians, or Atheists and Humanists) all have the right to equally exist on this planet until a NATURAL death. 🙂
Now, why is such a very simple Universal, peaceful, collaborative concept like that so seemingly impossible for most all of human history? 😄 I have a plethora of reasons and long-standing ancient traditions/mythologies which still haunt the human race today! 😁
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Maybe you don’t realize what you’re doing but I’m not talking about people; I’m asking the fundamental and necessary question: do you think Israel has the right to exist? Again, it’s pretty straightforward: yes or no?
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I guess I’m not Tildeb. Sorry. Don’t PEOPLE makeup States or nations? Can you perhaps explain what I’m missing? Thank you. 🙂
P.S. I will be out of pocket for a few hours this afternoon/evening. Fyi, sir.
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Sure.
I’m looking for an answer to a fundamental question that is necessary to answer first before there is any common ground for building real solutions to real problems in the real world. For example, does France have the right to exist? Mexico? China? If the answer is No regarding any of them, then there is no common solutions to be had for issues within or between these states on a national level. So it’s a pretty straightforward question and a pretty important answer.
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Hmmm, perhaps you might be missing the point of my confusion? Is that possible? And I ask that in sincere genuine curiosity to progress in this discussion for “better clarity and understanding.” 🙂
Yes, I do understand the distinction of “people” versus the concept and manifestation of a people to a larger State/nation. But to me you can never separate the two as independent. They are always codependent. Yes, the individual French people have the right to exist. Individual Mexicans do too as well as individual Chinese people… because ALL Earthlings have inherent value and contributions for a greater good and better world. This in my mind includes Palestinians, Arabs, Persians, Syrians (not sympathetic to Bashar al-Assad and his regime), Jordanians, Lebanese, etc, etc.
Your question will always have from me a YES regarding Earthlings happy to tolerate, coexist, and collaborate while simultaneously NOT murdering, torturing, or displacing another peoples (different than yourself) from their long, LONG established ancestral lands. And as I’ve made perfectly clear, “Israel” (the Zionist State) historically or Scripturally does NOT have a #1 legitimacy to the eastern Levant. They are 8th inline to that inheritance—and to claim they have the right given to them from a strictly Hebrew divine entity is no more legitimate than my claim to Sasquatch that I have the right to dispossess the Wichita, Comanche, or Karankawa Indian tribes of Texas where my European ancestors immigrated when previous Southeastern colonies/states of America forcefully pushed west, removing and massacring their children, women, and men… breaking promises to them by our “White Chiefs” in Washington D.C.
Does this perhaps better clarify my position and confusion to your overly generalized question? I hope so Sir. 🙂
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I’ve read the series. Because you refuse to answer the fundamental question knowing perfectly well the hornet’s nest you will be opening, let’s get clear: do you think any nation state have the right to exist? Again, it’s a straightforward yes or no answer.
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Thank you for your patience with me Tildeb. I’m sincerely trying to understand how you think I’m avoiding your question when I think I haven’t. But in the spirit of constructive, diplomatic, patient, respectful discourse you’ve always shown me, I will answer your question the way you want me to. 🙂
“…do you think any nation state have the right to exist?”
My straightest, most forward answer? Yes.
But my answer my Friend obviously has cautions and conditions that I will not repeat. I have always known here that you and I have common ground in this discussion. And again, thank you kindly for your patience with me. ❤️
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When the term ‘anti-Semite’ gets raised, there’s the danger of insulting someone who does think there is cause. That’s the case here; I don’t mean to insult you or make false allegations and I know perfectly well your heart is in the right place. I do not mean to attack your character in any way. What I hope to be able to accomplish is to show that by denying Israel the right to exist, one is actually supporting the killing of Jews because they are Jews. To me, this is unquestionably anti-Semitic even if the rationale is strongly believed to ‘help’ bring about a ‘lasting peace.’ There is historical precedence of what working towards a lasting peace looks like in action when the demand is to stand aside and stop supporting the rights of people who happen to be Jewish… or Gypsy… or Roma… or….
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I would never ever do or support such action as killing other Earthlings, no matter what their individual perceptions of unverifiable “divine-rights to exist” may be. In my mind, one’s faith or one’s religion does not establish via empirical proofs that cannot gift us humans the right to exist. Another way of putting this point is I’ve witnessed and learned from history that way too much exclusion, self-righteousness, elitism, and discrimination by faiths/religion has gone on for far too long now. I don’t think us three need to argue that point; it’s a given, yes?
If Zionist Jews kept their private, UN-universal religion/faith to themselves publicly, out of ALL government and international affairs, then like us Euro-American descendants in the U.S., we’d all have much higher odds of inclusion, equality, and a lot more virtues as a whole. Call it secular or neutral in the public squares, but history has proven numerous times ad infinitum: religions/faiths are toxic. Period!
P.S. And kind thanks Tildeb for detailing your UN-offensive (and non-existent) personal attack (rebuttal?) on me. I’ve not felt that at all. I too know you and where your heart lies Sir. We’re all good. Nevertheless, thank you for politely mentioning all that. 🙂
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So… which country has the right to exist?
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HAH! 😄 Will you promise not to box me up if I answer simply or lavishly? 😉
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Let’s see where your thinking leads us.
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1) In sufficient or extensive detail, please define what “country” means? And 2) Does that definition include or is it intimately linked to, made-up of PEOPLE? 🙂
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Up to you.
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Then I will go with my own definition of country — a large number of people united by either their willing/consensual, coerced, or by association (accessory)—whether silent, passive, or overtly—to be obedient to authority, law, or some unanimous concept of order and expectations, or a combination of those behaviors, while also agreeing to the consequences of NOT being any of the aforementioned components of “their country.”
As I’ve alluded to before, it is impossible to ever remove adult Earthlings, humans, or citizens from a concept, theory/theories which construct or were constructed in the past prior to their birth, of THEIR ascribed group identity either they’ve participated in and contributed to creating or they’ve inherited. Those citizens are indeed accountable for their group’s actions to some exact degree, for better or worse.
That said, if that “group identity’s” actions or inactions are obstructing, promoting, or violating the human rights of other Earthlings/citizens, that citizen and all citizens ascribing to that “group identity,” must all be held accountable. Otherwise, if a citizen/citizens cannot condone the behaviors of the group/country, publicly and privately disavow your identity, association with, support, and promotion of that group/country WITHOUT violating other’s human rights in the process. What are these human rights? What are they globally? An introduction to them if I may:
Exact details of all these human rights provided and protected for every single human being on Earth have been spelled out here, if interested:
[not sure why the PDF file/link is/was not working here] Grrrrr! But go here to follow/find it: https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/human-rights
Has the United States of America, since its official founding almost 246-years ago, led the way as the pinnacle model nation to abide by, promote, and protect the above International Human Rights that in December 1948 they/we vowed to do? Shamefully, not even close! Other big-bullying nations and some smaller nations that signed on to the Bill haven’t either. In fact, since this International Bill of Human Rights was signed by the USA, we’ve progressively and covertly, privately, or blatantly violated, or dishonored this historic International Bill. I am utterly ashamed to be an American citizen as long as this wrong behavior continues. And Tildeb, it has become obvious the U.S., as a whole, will NOT change this behavior anytime soon. Why? Because we’ve gotten to god damn arrogant with our best, most advanced military (offensively and defensively) on the planet and there is only two, maybe three, four other nations that could hit us hard, seriously injure us, but not put us out permanently. As a “country” we know this. So do those other big-bad ass militarized countries. I want no part of that hypocrisy, so I do not identify right now as an American citizen—based on our flawed group behavior in my lifetime. I identify now only as human, an Earthling with the rights afforded to me by the U.N.’s International Bill of Human Rights.
How am I trying to change this country I had no choice of being born into? As many ways as I know how without violating those human rights of others. Is it hard? Is it frustrating and exhausting and seemingly hopeless? It damn sure is. But at least I can sleep at night with a very clean conscience and keep doing what I can, despite I am only ONE person in a machine way, WAY too big for its britches.
Does the USofA have the right to exist? Yes at one time we did, and now? No, we don’t. Not as it exists right now? Hell no. But no other country is willing to put us right if we as a whole/group won’t do it ourselves. That’s pretty shitty/sad too. We have way too much blood on our past and present hands… and yet Tildeb, here’s the real absurd, shameful critical rub on this: we KEEP thirsting for more blood, whether directly, indirectly or by Accessory/Association!
Are there other countries doing what the USofA has been doing with impunity? Absolutely! We’ve been talking about them as well in this discussion. Alas, as CR stated in his last comment:
Other than what I’m already doing—and perhaps what I haven’t yet thought of doing better?—I don’t either. But I certainly won’t violate other’s human rights to change it. “Two wrongs don’t make a right” as the cliché goes. Nor does perpetually two wrongs done with international impunity make it all right either. So… I am simply a human from planet Earth; I have no country and I am VERY fine with that. Am I always happy here? No. But I do recognize the fact that I am able to live here—granted with increased intolerance, discrimination, insults, etc, by many patriots, particularly the zealous patriots, but my conscience is very clear, very tranquil, and I will not sacrifice that just to “follow the crowd.” 🙂
Oh! Plus, I can’t leave this country like I want to because I can never abandoned my 81-yr old elderly Mom, who is now in declining health, and leave her behind here. I am essentially all that my Mom has today who is alive and trustworthy to assist her until her death. My 57-yr old sister—who has been a drug addict/alcoholic for over 43-yrs, in and out of countless inpatient outpatient A&D/Psych rehab programs because of her countless relapses, in and out of jail/prison—for the last 10-14 months has FINALLY been clean & sober with rare psych episodes (with illegal implications) and looking delightfully capable of helping me with Mom as well as helping Mom too. Let me tell you, THAT is a massive relief for my own health!!! 😁
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I was hoping for a named country.
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Nepal, Greenland, and Iceland are three countries that first come to mind. 🙂
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Okay, good. By what criteria are you selecting these?
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Btw, apologies Tildeb. It wasn’t Nepal I was hastily (recklessly?) trying to remember earlier in Asia. It was Tibet I was thinking of and its Buddhist legacy and Dalai Lamas before Communist China annexed(?) or rather seized all of Tibet and forced the 14th Dalai Lama into exile. My apologies there for my error and bad memory. 🙂
What criteria? In great part by the criteria I laid out above and in previous comments-replies, the U.N.’s International/Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these nation’s track records since 1946 applying the IDHR/UDHR standard as well as verifiable, equitable, and reliable data/sources throughout comprehensive recorded history. According to OurWorldinData.org who tracks nation’s Human Rights Scores (as best they can) going back to 1946 up to 2017* (and beyond?), Iceland ranks extremely high in the index and has steadily improved its score over those 71+ years.
Greenland is in many ways similar to Denmark’s government and society, as far as its Nordic heritage in the south. Its Thule (Inuits) population also lives there and both heritages have enjoyed a very peaceful existence through all its modern political changes. Even though OurWorldinData.org does not have data from an independent sovereign Greenland, both nations have very high, improving Human Rights Scores over the last 71+ years.
All three of my nations here with very high scores also implies their “violations” over this time-period have been very low or almost non-existent. For me personally, THIS standard, or high scores on the protection of and promotion of a high quality of life for its citizens and the methods they’ve used to create it is the bar to aim for by other nations. Yes, absolutely including the falling United States and its mediocre score.
Its interesting to note here two things. 1) Israel ranks quite poorly on the Human Rights Score in these 71+ years. Their track record certainly deserves no accolades. And 2) It was concerning, to say the least, that Israel did not sign/join the UDHR until 1991 I believe?—over four decades later! A Palestinian point of view about this, worth a read: 🙂
https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/6124.html
* – Source: https://ourworldindata.org/human-rights
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I’m surprised using this criteria you didn’t choose New Zealand. I know little about Tibet. But I do know that both Iceland and Greenland were ‘invaded’ by Denmark yet have achieved negotiated independence only recently so there’s not a lot of history to ‘validate’ their legitimacy based on a human rights record. Iceland has a smaller population than my single voting district on what amounts to mostly a barren island so I’m not sure how a human rights record could be anything but high with a homogenous and tiny population. I suspect bopping a neighbour’s husband over the head to get rid of sexual competition probably doesn’t rank very high or of much interest in the eyes of statisticians of the United Nations. Just spitballing here.
Still, I know enough about Greenland to know the Inuit invaded it as they spread their ‘colonizing’ empire across the northern continent and then south along the Atlantic, killing and driving out all who were already there. Standard operating procedure when resources are scarce. There is good evidence it was the Inuit who repeatedly attacked and eventually destroyed the few Norse settlements in Labrador and Newfoundland, as well as drive the previous tenets away from the coast and deep into inhospitable terrain where their populations naturally dwindled. So the remaining ‘native’ population is entirely made up of invaders, while the other major populations of Greenland are European and American. But again, extremely low numbers where human rights concerns have no environment to be of any real concern.
So nowhere in any of this am I detecting some kind of reasonable measure I can apply across the globe that isn’t based on invasion and settlement that I can use to decide which countries are and which are not legitimate, meaning the criteria you are using is not helpful but cherry picked for a very specific reason.
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Tildeb,
My Friend, not to put this good discussion off, but maybe to temporarily suspend it, because my time at the moment, for the last 16-17 months has been greatly impacted, lessened for personal/private free-time for several reasons. It’s why I have not been able to blog, writing creatively, greatly improving my average writing-skills, or commenting as much on blogs I follow anywhere near as much as I once enjoyed. The two MAJOR reasons are:
• Planning our family getaway-vacation to Mackinac Island for two months, then being gone this month for 13-14 days… and…
• THEN being tasked by my family to create a scrapbook of our incredible trip in both electronic video-form and in material-form that Mom can actually hold in her hands, turning pages, etc, rather than viewing it only on a TV/computer-screen—she has become seriously challenged now with super hyper-tech phone/computer apps and its highly annoying, frustrating complexity giving Users little flexibility, privacy, or enjoyment as electronic devices, its software, and User-friendliness did 10-15 years ago.
That said, I am not at all wanting to duck-out of this provoking, enlightening discussion about “What determines my criteria for the existence of a country.” and our original hot-button: modern Israel’s and the U.N.’s justification in 1948 permitting foreign Jews a “modern Israel” to exist in a pre-existing Palestine/southern Syria that already possessed the Old Yishuv.* It’s just that life, my family obligations, COVID-19, two jobs, and shifting priorities causing my personal time available for something I’ve always had passion for: history of the Abrahamic religions… less and less luxury to do so. Years ago it was one reason why I entered seminary for 3-yrs and over the last 32-odd yrs have thoroughly enjoyed researching and learning a lot more of the Late Second Temple Period of Judaism within the Roman Empire then beyond. Naturally, that has to include the origins of the modern State of Israel to the present.
Excuse the length of this and my explanation of my very limited personal time to this topic and discussion, but I felt I needed to do it. I hope you understand. 🙂
Now with all of that said up to this point, as I alluded to earlier, those three nations I mentioned were in haste. But I framed them inside that 71+ year timeframe for a reason I hoped was implicit. Nonetheless, how far back does 21st-century humanity go to right its wrongs on the international stage? The further back we go the more daunting the “clean-up” becomes. On the other hand, that is not an excuse to turn away, ignore, and do nothing with indifference. It’s why the world HAD TO HAVE the Nuremburg Trials. Humanity MUST stop repeating atrocious history!
In your first paragraph you were stepping out of my 71+ year window; which of course you have the liberty of doing. But it completely reframed my fast answer to you followed by my quick second answer to you. I’ve been happily following YOUR format of inquiry, rather patiently I think. 😉 Your response brings us back to PEOPLES identifying as a theoretical group or nation of governing on a global stage that are either held accountable for that “identity” as one people, or not. In the context of criminal human rights violations, first-hand or by Accessory/Association to an identity/country, does it excuse all accountability? Does it excuse most, but not a few while ALL of the PEOPLE admit willingly (on some degree) ascribing (theoretically?) to that group/country? Where are the clear lines of demarcation? If we, humanity, countries, do not improve clarifying these demarcations then enforcing them, well… we three all know perfectly well what history has shown us (screamed at us) for how long now?
Regarding your second paragraph, and jumping outside of my 71+ year timeframe, then it’s completely understandable to hold the descendants of the Inuit accountable somehow. How many ancestral generations is that? What is their appropriate punishments and/or reparations? I’m sorry my Friend, but I just don’t have the luxury of personal time right now to do the necessary research as an international legal team would have to do. I DO KNOW we must stop repeating violent, lethally revengeful histories!
I disagree, and in my opinion I have provided sufficient introductions—such as my links to the U.N.’s UDHR and the OurWorldinData.org websites—to show that “reasonable measures” already exist despite needing further refinement and consistent enforcement by the majority or all of the high-scoring nations of the international community, if not good-scoring nations… yes, as daunting as that appears.
But I do not wish to blow this topic/discussion off. I’m happy to continue it despite my very limited personal time. I’m thinking maybe I should at some point in the future start a dedicated blog-post to our discussion? Yes? Perhaps? Given my time limitations to do this subject fair justice, would you be interested in starting that post and blog discussion?
With gratitude & respect
——————
* – Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Jews and…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Yishuv
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Thanks for that explanation, Prof., and not to worry; I never want a discussion to derail or take away from living real life first! So I doubt the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is going anywhere during our life time! So there will be time when and if it becomes mutually available AND you desperately want to know why you’re wrong. Until then, you’ll just have to live with the suspense.
I remain your dedicated reader and sincerely look forward to your pics and stories of your family’s expedition to and from the Great White North (almost).
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😄 HAH! I do enjoy your dry, clever sense of humor Tildeb. 😛 Not even partially wrong or a little bit wrong, but flat-out comprehensively WRONG!!! 🤭 Well, at the rate I am going with these piles of photos and videos of our trip, all the many knickknacks we collected, souvenirs, and individual as well as group memories and talks amongst ourselves and the wonderful Mackinac Islanders… it could be as long as 2-months or more. I hope that isn’t an intolerable wait for you—and CR if he remains interested? Just a heads up on my “Time” which seems to increasingly slip into the past faster and faster, ironically after returning from a gorgeous island where Time has stood still. 😉
Very kind thanks Sir for your understanding in this matter. And more thanks for your dedication to reading and engaging me and other readers/followers here! I really do appreciate it. I always welcome your outstanding feedback!
You are welcome to begin a blog-post on this discussion to aid me and others too, should you wish. Otherwise, let’s pick this back up sooner than later, shall we?
Later addition — Apologies. Forgot to also mention here that a very dear, close cousin of mine just lost his wife—of 3-4 decades of marriage—to some sudden shocking event none of the family was aware about. So now I’ll be attending a hard, sad funeral very soon down in southeast Texas or the Houston area, maybe his wife’s hometown. We’re unsure because we just received this devastating news this morning. 😔
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Added a general thought below as a new comment-thread. Fyi. No need to respond if you don’t want to Sir. 🙂
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“The exploitation of children in war propaganda that accompanies Arab-Jewish wars is extremely interesting. In Arab anti-Israeli propaganda material we can find literally hundreds of pictures of children killed in Syria and other places in the world with captions stating that these children were killed by Israeli soldiers. In our time, when thanks to modern technology it’s relatively easy to find the original picture and to debunk the fraud, you might think that such actions would be counterproductive. Nothing could be more wrong. The effectiveness of such actions is perfectly illustrated by Mark Twain’s remark: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”. (Earlier Francis Bacon put it a bit differently: “Audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret” – Slander boldly, something always sticks.)”
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Are you saying that no innocent child bystanders have been needlessly killed by military operations from 1947 to the present in the areas of the Levant—where the Old Yishuv, Arabs, and Palestinians have lived for many centuries?
I hope you are not labelling or accusing me of using Arab-Palestinian or Islamic extremist propaganda tactics, tactics that ALL warring nations, groups, factions, etc, have used since “civilized” humans began killing around the entire globe? That’s simply untrue and NEVER would’ve been my motivation for simply stating/reporting, in essence, that innocent, unarmed people and children are killed, slaughtered, or whatever term one chooses inside war-zones/combat-zones… no matter what type of religious or secular families they belong to.
I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here Tildeb, since you stated earlier you know where my heart lies. My actual intent was to put a precious value on ALL OF LIFE, less so plants because we need them to help sustain human life. 🙂
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Of course children have been killed by the IDF. There have been two Intifadas, for crying out loud. Those are children used by Palestinian authorities to fight the IDF – a UN war crime for any other setting but – apparently – perfectly reasonable if carried out by Palestinian authorities against Israel, of course.
Seriously! Where’s the outcry against the Palestinian authorities for doing this not once but twice?
*crickets….
I’m saying that when we are inundated with ‘news’ stories about Israel that consistently cast one-sided criticisms vilifying Israel when the state faces perpetual war with every Palestinian authority by manifesto commitment within every Palestinian organization when not a single ‘news’ story surfaces about the humanitarian Israel carries out for the sole benefit of those who declare themselves eternal enemies, carried out on behalf of those who have a 80 year dedicated history of murdering Israelis under the umbrella term ‘jihad’, when no one in media seems to care to tell the truth about who and what is representing Palestine in this endless conflict and their moral compass including the intentional sacrifice of children to make Israel appear as brutal as they themselves are in fact, it’s understandable that those who assume Israel is the neighbourhood bully is the Bad Guy. And when this is put forward for over half a century, the average citizen in the West goes along with it and accepts it as if true because it’s so familiar. That is anti-Semitism in action because it assumes Israeli guilt that cannot be mitigated by what’s true.
If, for example, you could act on your vilification of Israel – for what you think are good reasons even if completely and utterly one-sided using different standards for all other groups and a special one for only Israel – you would cause a genocide. The people of Israel (over 50% are not religious but still Jewish) would be eradicated by joyous Muslims who would think well of themselves for doing so. And they would think well of themselves because they have the ongoing support TODAY from most people in the West sympathetic to their plight – a plight set out by manifesto by other Palestinians in positions of authority – because we’re surrounded by people – like you – who think well of themselves for standing by your one-sided vilification as if justified, as if Israel has earned this vilification due in large measure to the discriminatory media reports that always vilifies Israel as being the neighbourhood bully who has manipulated the Great Powers using their nefarious Jewish tricks and traits into supporting it that causes maximal harm to those who lay claims of ownership to their ‘stolen’ land.
I suspect you have no care whatsoever how many Jews from their multigenerational land were forcefully relocated by Israel when the state was voted into existence by the UN. I also suspect you don’t know because the issue in your mind has never been raised. I suspect you just presume the creation of the state of Israel only relocated Palestinians because you don’t realize that you are selectively choosing to believe only the predigested Palestinian version of history that purposefully vilifies all things Israeli. Again, the root cause I suspect is anti-Semitism because I don’t think I have witnessed the same absolute one-sidedness from you and your writings about anything else. You have pursued only the vilification of Israel as illegal, as immoral, as the bully, as the ongoing ‘problem’ in this area of the world. This is unique to me coming from you and so it raises the suspicion in my mind that you don’t even know you’re doing it. You have no reason to know you are being fed Palestinian pabulum when stating anti-Israeli sentiment (in spite of glaring facts to the contrary like Pride parades, world renowned hospitals serving THOUSANDS of Palestinians every year, the ONE democratic country in the Middle East, one that has Arabs sitting in the ‘apartheid’ Knesset TODAY holding very real political power, and the list goes on and on and on). Yes, there are lots of works to back this vilification up if you want to frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as being caused by Zionists (their goal WAS to create a Jewish homeland, after all, and for cause especially after the genocide carried out against this identity in WWII) so it’s not even surprising that your efforts are met only by accolade… until now.
So let’s put this charge I make to the test: is there anything Israel could do to change this vilified framing in your mind, considering that any suggestion you make must allow Israel to defend itself and its citizens from the stated and demonstrated intentions by various authorities in Palestine and beyond to accept nothing less than the eradication of Israel and the ‘;cleansing’ of Jewishness from the Muslim realm?
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The previous and this part I’ve quoted are from here and I think worth reading in its entirety because it addresses your last comment perfectly: the use of children in propaganda, especially how it helps paint the Palestinian attempt to eradicate Israel and maintain constant war (and why).
“Surprise has often been expressed at the ease with which Westerners embrace and repeat every lie about Palestinian children killed or otherwise hurt by all-powerful Jews. Recently (though mainly on Israeli or pro-Israeli websites) many return to the New York Times issue with pictures of 67 children who lost their lives during the eleven days when Israel defended itself from another terrorist aggression from the Gaza Strip.
This newspaper earlier published a photo of an Israeli policeman standing over a bloodied man, and the journalist who sent this photo must have known that the policeman was defending the life of an American-Jewish tourist who was beaten by an Arab mob, but labeled it as a picture of a Jewish policeman harassing a peacefully demonstrating Palestinian. This same newspaper published a picture of a grieving father holding his dead baby, suggesting that Israel was the culprit, though the paper knew that the child was killed by an “errant” Hamas rocket. This same newspaper, which never missed an opportunity to suggest Jewish cruelty against Palestinian children, this time went a step further by presenting its readers with pictures of 67 children who “wanted to be doctors, writers, engineers” and whose life was tragically stopped.
The American newspaper didn’t write that the blame for the deaths of these children rests firmly and exclusively on terrorists from Gaza armed and financed by Iran. It skipped the information about the attack on Israel with thousands of rockets, it skipped the earlier history of murderous rocket attacks, terrorists attacks, and arson. Most of all, it skipped the ideology of these terrorists – to fight Jews to the end of the world, to glorify “martyrs”, to raise children to be murderers from their most tender years – and the constant endangering of the lives of their own civilians.
No, according to this newspaper, evil, devious Jews just decided one day to kill scores of Palestinian children.”
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Perhaps if I asked you a simple straightforward question it might help in these matters, yes? 🙂
To be more forthcoming Tildeb, did Herzl, Weizermann, and the World Zionist Organization between 1881 and 1948 ever seriously, equitably assess their shaky religious foundations to claim ANY specific lands on Earth as their exclusive divine right to possess, AND in order to possess said lands, massacre hundreds/thousands of women, children, and men/families of the rightful residents of those lands?
And btw, if you read closely my entire series “Circus of Recycling,” the method that the WZO, Britain, and with the significant help of the U.S. to SWAY member nation representatives in 1946-47 at the United Nations vote regarding the State of Israel, there was NOT unanimous support for an Israeli state in several parts of the world, much less Palestine.
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Professor,
I think your reasoning on some of these points is seriously flawed, playing extremely lose with details and framing.
For example, in your justification of why you think Palestinians have a better right than Jews to control the region you argue that Muslims controlled the territory for significantly more years, while ignoring that said Muslims came as INVADERS, controlled the region from Iraq, and also consisted of at least two DIFFERENT empires controlled by two different ETHNIC groups (Arabs, and then Ottaman Turks).
You then stated in a comment above: “Arab-Palestinian peoples . . . have been on their ancient ancestral lands stretching back to the Neolithic Age (8000–3000 BCE) and earliest Bronze Age (c. 3000–2000 BCE). 😉”
Well, clearly they weren’t Muslim back in the Neolithic Age. So now the justification is that they are indigenous people dating all the way back to 8000 BCE and not how long their religion controlled the area.
The problem is your being sophistical with your framing. You’re choosing when you want certain criteria to apply and when you don’t. The archaeological evidence shows that the later Jews that developed in captivity in Mesopotamia descended from the non-Monotheistic kingdoms of Israel and Judah (even if their strength was exaggerated in the Bible), which themselves descended from the Canaanites. It doesn’t matter if they hadn’t developed full monotheism yet. In other words, the evidence as supported by history, linguistics, and genetics suggests that the Jewish people and their ancestors “have been on their ancient ancestral lands stretching back to the Neolithic Age (8000 – 3000 BCE), until they were forcefully removed by the Romans. Period!
The problem is that there are now two populations that can legitimately claim they are indigenous to the area that have since separated into two different peoples with different national aspirations and religious affiliations.
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Hi CR. 🙂
Like with Tildeb above, thank you Sir for your patience here with me and showing me respect while being constructive, diplomatic, and informative. I do appreciate it. 🙂
After my first and second reading of your response, I’ve realized now from our discussions that Tildeb and yourself put a culture’s or people’s majority, ancient “religious beliefs” (FAITH) at wholly equal terms with what defines a nation-state according to modern terms, perhaps by how the League of Nations (1918) or today’s United Nations would define a nation-state.
It is my firm belief based upon all that I’ve stated here—probably not so clearly due to my inadequacies as an average at-best writer—and stated in my series the “Circus of Recycling” that mixing in WAY TOO MUCH religion into government and nation-state affairs is to me GLARINGLY playing with matches while surrounded by Chlorine Trifluoride! However, if the citizens of a MODERN nation-state completely keep separate their own individual religion/FAITH at home, within the family and their PRIVATE community/group, and out of the affairs of government, nation-state proceedings, then there would be a much higher chance of greater peace among nation-states, or PEOPLES of so much diversity.
Therefore, IMO… without the volatile, highly problematic, “religion-based” nation-states presence in international and national affairs, humanity would be (most likely or assured) a more peaceful planet. Period. We would stop repeating history in such ugly, atrocious, bloody ways that have plagued our species for how long now?
I hope this elaboration helps CR…and Tildeb. 🙂
With gratitude,
Professor/Dwain
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I also don’t mean to attack you. My major concern is I don’t want to see my history erased or ignored for the sake of validating someone else’s history. I do think the Palestinians have been mistreated and I understand why they would be upset.
I normally try to avoid conversations on this topic because I don’t see any good solution for anybody.
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CR,
First of all, thank you kindly too for clearly explaining your intent to not personally attack me—of which I’ve never really felt from you since we first began our cyber-correspondence on WordPress. You too have always been very kind, professional, thoughtful & thought-provoking with me, even disagreeing with me with respect and wonderful tact. I thank you immensely for your natural gift in that with your words/writing—of which I sometimes lack. 🙂
Second, I could not agree more with you on:
You are bang-on there CR. The modern subject and the ancestral histories involved, added with the centuries/millenia of repeated poor decisions by the powers that be (since… what, pick your century) and so many based upon one’s own religious-faith, have cluster-f*cked previous cluster-f*cks. But I think you and Tildeb will agree with me on this: continuing to murder humans, Earthlings who are different than you in cognition—not empirical truths—is truly ignorance and/or revolting arrogance, as the bloody, horrific history keeps showing… and showing… and showing… ad infinitum. 🤦♂️ Violence and killing, by military or no not, is never and never will be the answer. Period.
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Oh! Wanted to also say… with the above stated, I personally feel humans/Earthlings MUST remove religion/faith from the public spectrum. History has screamed repeatedly to us just how toxic public (forced?) religious practice has been, or I’d say… personal individual human perceptions of the World and our existence, which obviously will never be universally unanimous. Does that make sense? 🙂
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So by your further elaboration there, the Arabs and Palestinians have more rights to exist there. I feel with my series The Circus of Recycling and what I’ve added here should be adequate defense of my position on the MODERN State of Israel invading and occupying Palestine. It’s more so supported when you consider all the other locations the Zionist Israelis considered moving to/invading in the late 1800’s. 🙂
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Tildeb,
Had a few thoughts yesterday and today I wanted to share about our discussion here. However, I apologize that I cannot spend any time getting into lengthy, deep, heated(?) debate about this until some time in the future. Apologies.
Anyway, here goes…
How many innocent, unarmed human lives murdered are acceptable to ignore in your mind? How many unarmed children murdered under the age of 13 are acceptable to turn away from indifferently and forget about? One? Two? One-hundred or one-thousand? What if one or two of those unarmed corpses was your own child(ren), or your elderly mother or grandmother? Are they expendable? Will you simply respond with:
“Oh well, that’s just the cost of unarmed innocent lives to appease a very zealous minority religious group not representing all of modern Judaism who once had approx 11-million of their own exterminated by Nazis—they deserved/deserve retribution upon another people not involved with the Nazis, but for their own peace of mind and satisfaction—and to avoid another POSSIBLE global, “holy” conflict in the region.”
That’s an extremely repulsive justification for either removing or exterminating a native population! But aside from the convoluted cluster-fuck of the warring Abrahamic religions for multiple centuries… for the sake of decency and humanity, when does it STOP!? Over 80-years later? A century later in 2052 and way over 750,000+ Palestinians are rotting corpses? Or never? Just let it go on and on and on, ad infinitum?
More horrifying is this question: how many slaughtered innocent men, women, and children are worth ignoring just so that a RELIGIOUS FAITH can become a modern theocracy, pseudo-theocracy, and nation/country deserving respect and fear from all other humane nations on Earth in the U.N.?
Here’s the fact of the matter Tildeb. The modern State of Israel got their sovereign nation in 1948. Why are Palestinians, Arabs, and Homeland/Zionist Jews, and others there, STILL BEING KILLED TODAY!!!!!!!!???? Like the U.S. did under Manifest Destiny, does everyone else in the 18th- thru 20th-century world watching or reading about what’s happening in the Wild Wild West frontier… just wait doing nothing until the U.S. Euro-American Armies and armed settlers wipe out every single Native American Indian tribe until there are no more Indians to slaughter? Because THEN it all just goes away, disappears into white-man history?
I see little differences in that American narrative and the 1881–1952 and beyond State of Israel narrative. If nations/countries are not held accountable for these atrocities and human rights violations—whether one child or 750,000 unarmed people—then WHEN is enough is enough? What’s to stop them and their madmen from doing it again, over and over and over?
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Guibernau (1996, p. 47) has defined the nation as: ‘a human group conscious of forming a community, sharing a common culture, attached to a clearly demarcated territory, having a common past and a common project for the future and claiming the right to rule itself’. So awareness, territory, history and culture, language and religion all matter.
You have focused very much on one aspect and one aspect only regarding Israel: religion. And it is important but hardly the entire story here.
As you are aware, there is historical context why this one religion was seen by the international community following WWII as requiring the protection of its own statehood backed by the UN. By vote, the UN agreed as did every major power after WWII and carved out a part of Transjordan to recognize the international legal claim to this partitioned land knowing full well that many others lived there, too. But there were supposed to be TWO states thus formed: Israel and Palestine. People forget many people in Palestine had been working just as hard and just as long for independence from Transjordan. So the recommendation to the UN was supposed to create a “two State solution.” These two states were intended to share certain aspects of nationhood and become partners in economy. The UN Palestinian delegation worked with this group.
Partition of geography into nation states and human resettlement go hand in hand. Always. You may not be aware that over 600,000 people left the States and migrated to British North America when independence from the Crown was declared. Just like the native tribes had already done as first French and then British trade and settlements came into North America, massive migrations tend to push previous tenants out of their land and who, in turn, push the next tribe out of theirs. This si exactly what happened in Lower Canada so that the Iroquois pushed out the Mohawks who fought a war for domination to trade with the French. Many other tribes became involved especially when the British pushed into Upper Canada and started winning battle with the French. Resettlement causes a domino shift in local (or ‘native’) populations just like the same occurred throughout and forever in the Middle East as certain tribes dominated others. In other words, the establishment of any country involves the migration of people. Israel is no different in this regard. But you vilify Israel in particular while basically ignoring all other massive migrations in history not because of some scale you use to identify human suffering but based on what you consider the most and only factor that matters: Judaism. You care not one whit how many Jews were displaced by Muslims elsewhere. And I suspect the reason is because you presume Islam deserves a kind of special exemption if it involves human suffering of Jews because Islam has also been subject to being pushed out of their ‘native’ lands (I’m thinking specifically of Rohingya and Uyghurs these days). But note you do not identify ‘religion’ as the same kind of root problem elsewhere that you use specifically for the Jews. The Jews you hold in a special category and so I suspect that why you hold the state of Israel in its own special category.
Here’s something for your consideration: if Israel had the military power to destroy every home in the Gaza strip, what would this look like? The answer is: exactly what we saw yesterday and see today. If the Palestinian Authority had the military power to destroy every home in Israel, what would this look like? I think it would be a pile of rubble today. Right there is the fundamental difference between a legitimate state – Israel – and an illegitimate and utterly unwilling partner – Palestine.
Does Israel have the right to exist? I think so and I think has demonstrated that it belongs with the league of nations. Palestine also has the right to exist but has absolutely refused as long as Israel exists and will do everything in its power to wage constant war on Israel. It in the Palestinian Authorities platform as it is in the platform of Hamas – an Iranian backed fundamentalist Islamic State branch dedicated to killing Jews. I also notice you take no issue whatsoever with the Palestinian Authority using money donated by Western nations to pay real people in real life to kill Jews, to fund pensions for Palestinian families who have people serving jail time in Israel, pensions for Palestinians families killed while killing Jews. In Israel, this is called the pay-to-slay program no Western government has officially condemned. You certainly don’t. You present Jews defending Israel from attacks aimed at killing civilians in Israel as waging a terrible religious war to kill Palestinian children. Funny how that happens when the IDF is well known to calls the places they have targeted to get out to avoid if possible or but minimize at the least civilian targets near a military target. As far as I know, this is not done anywhere else in the world between parties in open conflict. There is even a recording from a few months back where the Palestinian tells the IDF they have children on site and refuse to evacuate knowing full well that that means kids are going to die. The Palestinian tells the shocked caller that this is how Hamas produces news coverage to cast them as the victims and even helps raise foreign funding for their rocket program. The higher the Palestinian death toll, the more vilification Israel will earn. Even over 4500 rockets sent to kill civilians indiscriminately into Israel – rockets that killed literally hundreds of Palestinians – doesn’t raise so much as a peep out of people ready, willing, and able to criticize absolutely everything Israel does… because it’s presumed to be illegitimate but the Palestinians sent from their homes by governments in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt don’t even register on the radar. In other words there is a very clear double standard going on by those who presume Israel has no right to exist, that Jews have no right to a homeland, and that any defense put up by Jews is intolerance against those who try to kill them. That’s why I think those who vilify Israel and think well of themselves for doing so are practicing anti-Semites if they do not compare and contrast fairly. I have not seen any fair comparing and contrasting done by you at all. Your position is clearly anti-Zionist and shows no understanding of why Zionism arose or became legitimate.
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This story might be of some interest to anyone who thinks intentionally targeting children and murdering them for nothing more than being Israeli is somehow okay, or that such action might be condemned outside of Israel by its more ‘civilized’ Muslim neighbours rather than celebrated, are in for a Very. Rude. Awakening.
Did you know your government is okay with this?
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Exactly when did this conflict and killing in the southwestern Levant begin, and by whom? No need to go back in time further than 140-years. In fact, just going back to 1946-47 is sufficient. 🙂
Yes, it is a rhetorical question.
P.S. To be continued my good Friend. ❤️
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Just thought you’d like to see what a summer camp program in Gaza looks like. And the testimony of kids, no less. Notice please, they’re not being trained to kill Israelis: they are being groomed to kill Jews.
Now, imagine if such a summer camp were held in Israel with the overt intention to kill Muslims. That would be equivalent and equivalently deserving of condemnation. Please notice that there is no condemnation coming from those who support boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. Why might that be?
Well, because it’s blatant anti-Semitism hard at work but widely supported throughout the West. I think that’s bad. I think that’s a pretty clear indication that we’re not doing our part, our sovereign duty, to those we say we honor, to ensure on our watch ‘Never Again’. I think we have utterly failed as a community of liberal democracies in our duty to those veterans, to those who have come before and paid their last full measure, who instruct, “To you, from failing hands, we throw the torch: be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flander’s Fields.”
Yet it is ALWAYS Israel held in contempt inside a double standard like you’ve done in thread; you mention Judaism, of course, as if supporting Israel was a religious question (in part…) but fail to recognize exactly the same religious motivation used this very day by ISIS that is unequivocally being used on Palestinians through childhood indoctrination to kill Jews.
What I’m saying is that by holding Israel alone to a special category of criticism that you do not hold for Palestinians, you are exercising anti-Semitism. The right of return policy by all Palestinian authorities is synonymous in all ways with ‘Kill All The Jews’ because there is no room for them in this ideology. Period. End of story. And we KNOW how that turns out.
And so ANY military defense used by Israel is ALWAYS portrayed as far, far too much. That’s a clue. In other words, only by succumbing to being killed at the pleasure of Muslims at whatever rate and in whatever way they deem appropriate can those who may or may not realize their ant-Semitism with blanket support of Palestine Israel find Israeli policy acceptable. And I doubt even then! If six million ain’t enough for you…
You have created and maintained what appears at first blush to be a well-reasoned opinion in your previous series about Israel and carried forth here that is, in fact, deeply anti-Semitic. As the musical South Pacific so simply explained, one has to be carefully taught to justify in one’s own mind how to be so discriminatory in regards to the Jewish state of Israel. You have convinced yourself the ISIS element that is Hamas, that is the Palestinian Authority (both of which express this in their manifestos) was, is, and always shall be regardless of any action undertaken, the poor little victim here to the big bully that is the state of Israel. You make zero mention of the intolerance and brutality shown to Palestinians by every Muslim neighbour in which Palestinians (except by force of arms) have been removed. And that’s a rather remarkable one-sided job of what I think is best described as self deluding and virtue signaling.
How does a holocaust happen? When good people believe they are doing the Right Thing by doing the wrong thing. Anti-Semitism is wrong.
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