HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING GOOD FROM 1942?

 

    On May 27, 1942 Czech and Slovak partisans assassinated one of the vilest of the Nazis, Reinhard Heydrich, the chairman of the Wannsee Conference that systematized the extermination of Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and all other conquered or peoples otherwise considered "inferior" by Hitler's Third Reich. When Heydrich ultimately died of his wounds on June 4, 1942 Hitler ordered revenge for the assassination by razing to the ground the villages of Lidice and Ležáky whence the partisans may have come. In the attack on those villages, every male 14 years-old and older was taken to a field and shot. The women and younger children were sent to the extermination camps and "disposed of" there. In all, 572 men, women and children were murdered in the 2 towns while 7 children were given to SS Officers' families to raise as Nazis.

    On October 7, 2023 Hamas Terrorists from the Gaza Strip attacked Southern Israel killing about 1,300 Israeli citizens and taking over 200 hostages. Embarrassed by the failure of his anti-democratic and ultra-right wing government to detect this attack before it happened, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the razing to the ground of the Gaza Strip. First, by indiscriminate bombing of the area under the excuse that Hamas fighters hide amongst the general population. Second, to complete his revenge on the Palestinian population of over 2,000,000 persons and with little or no regard for those 200+ hostages, Netanyahu ordered a ground invasion of Gaza to complete the razing of the Palestinian enclave. At the time of this writing somewhere over 31,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces largely through aerial bombing. Israel excuses this horror by claiming that Hamas "terrorists" live amongst the general population. Prime Minister Netanyahu, in a paroxysm of Orwellian rhetoric, has claimed that not "eliminating Hamas" means that Israel is weak and open to further attack. That is no more nor less than his excuse for a blatant genocidal attack on civilian targets.

    I support the existence of a safe and secure Jewish Homeland in the Middle East. I also support a contiguous and free Palestinian Homeland in the ancient land of Palestine. It is possible to have both if the murders on both sides stop for the most part, the parties respect one another's rights and allow the fury that reciprocal murders generate to die down without excesses on either side over the coming 75 years.

    What I do not and cannot support is the Netanyahu government of Israel inspired by its fanatical approach to land rights based on a book of mythology mixed with history. Though the Jewish peoples held much of what we call Palestine in the ancient past, that hegemony was broken after the Roman Armies won the Jewish War in 70 CE. Until the 1880s when Zionism began its defense of persecuted Jews by suggesting a home in Palestine, Arab and Bedouin peoples lived in and ruled over Palestine. Despite their ancient claims and mythology, modern Jews were and are interlopers in Palestine. Those Jews have established a homeland that they definitely need and should have but only as good neighbors to their fellow Semitic brothers and sisters.

    The none-too-soon death of Reinhard Heydrich brought about retribution 579% greater than the loss of that one vile Nazi.

    A death toll 579% greater than the 1,200 Israelis murdered on October 7th would yield a Palestinian death toll of 694,800. Thankfully, Israel's genocidal attacks since October 7th have not reached that horrific toll yet the attacks on Gaza stink of Hitler's response to Heydrich's assassination. Before we get anywhere nearer the 35,000 mark of Palestinian deaths, the bombing, the invasion, the blockade and dehumanization of Palestinians must stop.

    Unlike Netanyahu's Orwellian attempt to distract from his government's failings, further attacks are not a demonstration of Israeli strength. This frenzy of genocide is an admission of weakness. What would show strength by Israel is a ceasefire, withdrawal of invaders and a demand that Gazans, the majority of Gazans who are not Hamas, surrender all hostages and also surrenders the leaders and planners of the October 7th attacks. A truly strong leader of Israel could demand that the Gazan people surrender weapons, including rockets, in exchange for opening of border crossings and importation of materials for rebuilding homes, medical supplies and food aid as soon as the surrenders began.

    And my President could be the godfather to an incipient peace by demanding this much of his friend and client, Netanyahu. 

    I must at this point look at the use of the term "genocide". Israelis broadly and even the wider Jewish community have a special connection to that term. The Shoah perpetrated by the Nazis culminating the centuries of discrimination, pogroms and individual murders is most certainly the attempted genocide of the Jewish people. However, that does not make "genocide" a term uniquely applicable to Jews. The Bible tells us that the Abrahamic Tribes committed genocide against the Midianites. Crusaders of the Middle Ages carried out genocides of anyone who held beliefs at odds with their own regardless whether those they murdered followed Islam or a different Christian sect. The Ottoman Turks carried out a genocide on the Armenian people. The Nazi's genocidal machine devoured 6,000,000 Jews and additionally included gays, communists, socialists, and the Roma condemned to the ovens or mass graves. The Rwandan majority Hutus carried out a genocide of the minority Tutsis in 1994. Genocide as a term and a fact is not the sole property of any one people or group. Genocide continues today against the Rohingya in Myanmar (Burma) and the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. The Netanyahu Government's indignation at being called out for genocide in Gaza is only slightly less indecent than the genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza that it is currently carrying out.

    Amidst the genocide disguised as counter-terrorism we have organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and The American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) egregiously conflating criticism of the Netanyahu Government with the broader evil of antisemitism. Those are somewhat different issues though they do have some overlap. The important fact to recall is that they are not entirely the same. Being an antisemite and opposing the Netanyahu Government is almost a given while opposing the policies of the Netanyahu Government does not make one, ipso facto, an antisemite. Just ask the thousands of Israeli citizens who spent months demonstrating against Netanyahu's attempts to co-opt the Israeli judiciary in his attempt to evade conviction for massive corruption how antisemitic they are.

    Further, opposing the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza to further an unjustifiable land grab does not make one a supporter of Hamas. It does make one an humanitarian who opposes genocide. Amongst those who oppose the genocide of Palestinians there are, undoubtedly, members of and sympathizers with Hamas militants but just as the larger Venn Diagram of those opposed to Natanyahu's Government includes some antisemites, so the Hamas faction is a smaller subset within the larger throng of humanity appalled by the Gazan genocide. In fact, one can justifiably argue that the Israeli Defense Force under Netanyahu is the most effective recruitment arm of Hamas that has ever existed. The senseless murders of Palestinian civilians since October 7th has unquestionably brought many survivors of this horror perpetrated by Israel into the Hamas militant fold. 

    We here in the United States have listened eagerly to interviews with Palestinian survivors of incomprehensibly great losses who see that only forgiveness and reconciliation can stop the continuing killing on both sides. The forbearance and decency of those rare souls shames all of us lesser mortals even as we praise their nobility. Yet I cannot help but believe that each of those few great souls has more less forgiving and justifiably angrier counterparts who, even now, plot revenge against the state and people who have murdered their loved ones.

    I would suggest to the right wing Israelis eagerly cozying up to the Christian Evangelical neo-fascists of the United States that they question that support more closely. A significant majority of the Christian Evangelical Movement sees Israel as a major step toward the Armageddon, the return of Christ in glory and the genocide of all who refuse to accept their perverse version of Christianity. These Christian Evangelicals need Israel to exist as one step in their bizarre train of prophecies, a red calf without blemish to resanctify the Temple, Armageddon and the subsequent mass execution of Jews, Islamists and other "unbelievers" in the ashes of the destroyed world. Perhaps allying with those who look forward to your people's ultimate genocide is not the wisest alliance one might make. But that would require some thought to the future rather than for just immediate gain, commitment to intelligence rather than willful ignorance and forgiveness rather than revenge. In short, being humane rather than minimally human.

     Unfortunately, because of those who cannot understand that peace and security do not follow from anger and revenge, I write of a world that could but stubbornly refuses to exist in which weak, authoritarian leaders refuse to see anything beyond their own advantage, people dehumanized by a majority of others turnabout and dehumanize those that are a minority in their sphere and revenge for real and imagined wrongs incite more revenge from the revenged upon. It is a cycle of vengeance, a perfect circle that grows ever smaller as neighbors devour one another leaving nothing but horror, resentment and ashes generation after generation.

    I see little or no hope, little or no sanity and unsurpassed amounts of weeping. Still, the weeping can stop if the first step is a ceasefire.

 

RETHINKING WHAT IT IS TO BE AN AMERICAN

 

I was born in Connecticut almost 72 years ago. My mother was a direct descendant of immigrants William and Suzanna White through their son, Peregrine, who was born on November 20, 1620 on board the good ship Mayflower as it rode at anchor off the tip of what we now call Cape Cod. 

My father was born in Pennsylvania. His father came to the United States from Poland in 1913 and was immediately shipped off to Pittsburgh to work in the coal mines that fed the steel industry there. Because my grandfather could speak many languages he was recruited by the mine workers' union and became an organizer for them who was blacklisted and shot at by thugs in the employ of the mine owners.

My grandmother, from Eastern Poland, left there as the war clouds of World War I were lowering. She and her brother, Vincent, snuck across the border of Poland into East Prussia where they caught a Baltic steamer to Amsterdam from which port they sailed for the United States where they had a brother who had already immigrated and landed in Pittsburgh. Vincent was just another strong back to be sent to the mines in and around Pittsburgh but my grandmother was seen as a potential public burden. She was confined to Ellis Island for a month while pleading with her brothers to send her $10 that would allow her to be released into America. She and my grandfather met when she was called in to translate for my grandfather. He was in the Allegheny County Hospital having contracted Black Lung. My grandfather was fluent in Polish, German, Yiddish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Russian, and had some Czech as well but none of those languages was English, a language that my grandmother had picked up easily.

This woman that the Immigration Officials deemed a potential public charge went on to give birth to three American citizens: a daughter who became a registered nurse and one of the founders of the Connecticut Nurses Association, a son who was a tank mechanic in the 3rd Army during World War II and who was at the liberation of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and another son who was a radio operator and waist gunner in B-17s honored for saving his entire crew when their first plane, The Old Shillelagh, was shot down over the North Sea following the Regensburg Raid and was wounded in bailing out of their second plane when it was shot down over southern France in 1944. He became a prisoner of war and wasn't repatriated until January of 1945. Because of the service of their sons to the nation both my grandparents became U. S. Citizens.

I am an American in every way one can imagine. I am the embodiment of 300 years of immigration to this great nation. I have ancestors who served in the Continental Army during our Revolution and who served in both World Wars. I have studied American history since boyhood, both the common history and many of the more esoteric parts of the last 2 and a half centuries of our nation. I have been to Gettysburg and Saratoga, Fort Ticonderoga and Lexington Green, to Concord Bridge and Antietam and to Fort McHenry. I have been to Washington, D. C. several times and visited the memorials there. I have been moved to tears reading Lincoln's words inscribed on his memorial and at  the sight of the Iwo Jima Memorial near the Arlington National Cemetery. My present for my 14th birthday was attending the Centennial reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. I've been to the Smokey Mountains, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Acadia and many of our great cities. I have thrilled to see the U.S.S. Constitution, Old Ironsides, under sail and reenactors of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry march down Beacon Street in Boston as if they were on their way to glory at Fort Wagner.

I am an American. I believe in our form of government as established by our Constitution, its amendments and the laws promulgated on that Constitution. I believe that the words of its preamble, as was intended, define the broad purpose of our democracy. That "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Because I am an American I can say without the least ambivalence that the 8 Senators and 139 Representatives who opposed certification of the votes of the Electoral College are not Americans. They have set themselves in opposition to the most basic tenet of American democracy: that the majority vote of the people determines our elected officials. I can also unequivocally say that none of the riotous mob of seditionists that stormed our Capitol on January 6, 2021, whether they entered the building or not, are Americans. Those traitors and insurrectionists acted in concert to undermine our "more perfect union". Those traitors and insurrectionists acted to promote injustice, disturb the "domestic tranquility", attacked those trusted with our "common defense", opposed "the general welfare" of the people and sought to take "the Blessings of Liberty" from "ourselves and our Posterity" by destroying the Constitution ordained and established for the United States of America.

No amount of quasi-patriotic rhetoric can absolve the Republiscum in the Senate and the House of attempting to impose a dictatorship on the United States. No flag lapel pin, no Gadsden flag, not even an American flag waved by coup plotters and participants can make these scum Americans. Certainly no one who waves the Confederate battle flag or the Stars and Bars anywhere in this land, let alone inside the U. S. Capitol, is truly an American. No con man usurper of the presidency can call himself an American by instigating an insurrection against the will of the people.

We, the people of the United States, need to look at our definitions of what we mean by "an American". In recent years we have heard scum from the Republiscum Party and ultra right-wingers in media attack the birthright citizenship granted by the 14th Amendment. Were it not for that birthright citizenship my father, the decorated World War II veteran, would not have been a citizen. I must grant that even the adherents of the Republiscum Party and The Orange Führer are citizens of the United States but they are most definitely not Americans. Not one of them should be allowed to remain in public office. Not one of them should be allowed to run for or hold public office ever. Nor should any of these fascist scum be allowed to serve in any branch of our military, police or other law enforcement forces. The danger to our democracy is far to immanent and great to allow these insurrectionists public office, public trust or firearms.

We are at a turning point. Will we allow the seditious scum to continue to undermine our democracy and accept the probable dire consequences of their attacks on our Constitution, or will we decide that those who do not hold American values are unfit to serve the public at large? If we do not define them, as by their actions they have defined themselves, as opposed to everything that makes us Americans, we are undermining our democracy from within.

I am well aware that what I am calling for raises the vile shadows of HUAC, the Blacklist and McCarthyism. Let me point out that thousands of supposed "communists" never stormed the U. S. Capitol. No president of the 1940s, 50s or 60s every called for insurrection to keep him in office. Even Richard Nixon balked at that. We have allowed the McCarthites, the Goldwaterites, the Reaganites and the rest of the Republiscum, the militias, self-styled Minutemen, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, Klansmen, Nazis and right-wing evangelicals who hide behind religion to carry out their anti-American goals to grow and fester within our body politic until their attacks on our democracy metasticized into The Orange Führer and his seditious minions both in government and outside storming the Capitol. Let us not confuse a real cancer in our nation to an imagined and feared one. The answer to this cancer is radical surgery. Anything less begs for it to recur in a more deadly form.