l’m old enough to remember
that putting the National Guard
on college campuses is a bad idea.
Bernie Sanders might be old but he has said what younger men cannot or will not bring themselves to say. Read the letter here.
He has taken a page from Donald Trump's playbook.
I will say it again. Opposing Israel does not make me antisemitic. I am not. It does not make me pro-Hamas. I am not. But Israel is wrong. Netanyahu is throwing around the word 'antisemitic' like a dog whistle. A distraction. "Don't look at me! Look over here! They hate the Jew! Don't look at what my behavior. Look at everyone else's."
He has taken a page from Donald Trump's playbook.
Each of us has a responsibility to speak and to speak clearly on this subject. I don't imagine one of us has the power to change the world, however we should not stand by in silent witness.
This morning was an early 'up and at 'em' and at this stage of my life, I am not an 'up and at 'em kind of woman'.
But the good news is that I did something that I have not done in a while...
I took an afternoon nap.
(Mostly because I was so sleepy, it was impossible NOT to take an afternoon nap.)
When I woke up, William was here.
Anyways, We went out for supper this evening with William. There was a table across the way where two adults and two teenagers, were avidly discussing, of all things, books. Their favorite books. They all seemed to be quite into fantasy and science fiction. The conversation was quite animated. It just seemed to be so wholesome.
Mangey came back today when I called. He came into the house when I patted my leg in a welcoming way. He had his supper and did a little explore around the house. He stayed for about 20 minutes, but when I got up and began to walk around, he got nervous and asked to go out. I gave him some pets and gentle words before I opened the door for him.
Andrew wondered how Houdi would react to Mangey being in the house. They are acquaintances, and greet each other with a customary nose boop each time they see each other outside. They don't seem to mind each other at all.
Andrew, I am thinking of you tonight and I send my love.
I did write about the Israel/Gaza situation on my blog today. I wrote to the President, our representative and 2 senators. I do, of course feel as you do. It's annoying that they're saying that if you protest, you're anti-Semitic. My daughter sent me an article from Chicago about the protest at Northwestern University. There are Jewish students who are also protesting the slaughter of Palestinians by Netanyahu.
ReplyDelete"Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts." He has been indicted in his own country for this horror.
DeleteI read a comment today: "We are not being arrested because we disturbed the peace. We are being arrested because we disturb the killing."
I agree with what you say Debby as you know. Hounding the Palestinians from pillar to post has to stop and humanitarian aid given. We all acknowledge the terrible suffering of October 7th but Netanyahu allows the suffering of the hostages to go on.
ReplyDeleteWar unfortunately brings profit on its tail, every rocket shot down needs replacing, it has always been so.
We do acknowledge it. It is another dog whistle. A distraction from what is really going on. 'My pain is the only important thing. If you look away from my pain to comment on the pain of others, then it is a sign that you hate me.'
DeleteIt is good to hear that after all the time love and effort you have put into……I won’t say domesticating Mangey- but that’s sort of what I mean…..that both he and Houdi are on ‘speaking terms’
ReplyDeleteI think there are many people worldwide thinking of Andrew plus his extended family and sending so much love to them all.
Re-acclimating him to life inside. I think that he started out as an inside cat. Hopefully it will not take a horribly long time for him to get used to the idea again.
DeleteMy thoughts were the same when I heard about National Guards on campus. What's the alternative? Supporting the starving of children as a means to win a war?
ReplyDeleteI mean the alternative disagreeing with the Mr Netanyahu's policies.
DeleteIt is really good to see you here, John. There is no alternative, not in my mind. We have seen this before. How many times have we read or watched something about the holocaust and said "Never again"? We must not stand by silently.
DeleteGood to read Mangey is OK Debby.
ReplyDeleteHe's not okay, but we can get him there.
DeleteI'm glad you're making progress with Mangey.
ReplyDeleteAndrew has been much in my thoughts, too.
Such a shock. I'm glad he has a close family.
DeleteI find it impossible not to have a nap every afternoon. Except, yesterday I didn't. You stole my nap. I got the grass cut instead.
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry. I had no idea it was your nap when I took it!
DeleteMy nights can be very short, so I give myself the opportunity of napping almost every afternoon. I don't always nap, and when I do, it is only for about ten minutes (although it takes about a half hour to get ten minutes). Ten minutes can do a lot for me.
ReplyDeleteMy 'nap' was probably longer than some of your nights. Insomnia is tough stuff.
DeleteI can't figure out how we got here.
ReplyDeleteNeither can I, Mary. Neither can I.
DeleteSomehow I don't know about Andrew...so my thoughts are confused there. So glad to see you also writing about the student demonstrators. My granddaughter was part of one yesterday, but is going to be out of town this weekend (hopefully not at another demonstration). I support them, but worry about their welfare. Yes this is not anti-semitism in most cases. It is anti-war victims.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the time has come for non-violent demonstration. We all need to speak up at this point.
DeleteNetanyahu (and his right-wing government) IS very Trumpian. I feel horrible for the Israelis who experienced that assault on their country last October, and I hope the hostages can still be freed alive -- but that doesn't justify Israel's genocidal behavior in Gaza. I have no doubt Netanyahu and his cronies DO want all the Palestinians dead, and they're making it happen. And that has turned the world against them, when they had an opportunity to make the world their ally with a more targeted response.
ReplyDeleteI never really connected the dots until he wrote about the college protests. His portrayal of the events was, by design, meant to vilify and direct anger at them. That is exactly what Trump does to deflect from his own anger. And once I made that connection, I saw something else: that the most vocal trump supporters are the ones who fervently support Netanyahu. I can take that even one step further. The Evangelical is destroying this country. Now they have taken their destructive zeal to the world.
Delete* deflect from his own criminal behavior.
DeleteIt is all too horrible.
ReplyDeleteIt absolutely is.
DeleteWhile what Hamas did in October was horrific it does in no way condone the slaughter of innocent civilians that the Israeli army is currently engaged in. They (and Netanyahu) are guilty of genocide, the very thing that give birth to their nation. Steve's comments are right on point.
ReplyDeleteI really believe that we have got to start saying these things out loud. All of us.
DeleteBoth Hamas and Netanyahu are wrong. Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields and Netanyahu uses Palestinians as cannon fodder. This war will ensure a new generation of traumatized people who can be easily convinced to hate and fight. It never fucking ends.
ReplyDeleteThey absolutely are. Hamas is a terrorist group. Do you remember the My Lai massacre, Pixie? I've been thinking about that. Remember Calley? I mean, we, as a nation, were horrified that our troops could commit such attrocity. Unarmed men, women, children, and babies. Everything stopped while we considered the brutality of this.
DeleteAnd now, 60 years later, we are watching the slaughter of unarmed men, women, children and babies on a scale that we have never seen before...and it has, somehow, become defensible.
Hamas IS a terrorist group, and I have no problem with Israel going after them. However, murdering tens of thousands of people who are NOT Hamas is not acceptable. We, as a nation, should not be supporting this.
I didn't know about the My Lai massacre, I was six when it happened, but I looked it up. There seems to be no end to the atrocities humans are willing to commit. It makes me sad to be a human some days.
DeleteI am old enough to remember a lot, and it has given me a soap box I use for various subjects. This part of the problem began in 1948, when Churchill, a colonizer who forgot what happened when his country attempted colonization of this country, decided it was a good idea to have a Jewish nation colonize the wild west of that side of the Mediterranean. Instead of building sky scrapers to house their citizens, like the Japanese, the Jewish nation simply kept deposing the indigenous peoples. We all watched and know the trouble. Now it is a horror. Netanyahu and Hamas must be grounded, brought to the table. World leaders haven't succeeded; go college students. We marched for many causes these years gone by, and still know the drill.
ReplyDeleteIt is time.
DeleteI have written two comments only to have them disappear, poof! But I remember clear back to Eisenhower's time. So many major world events! Air raid drills, Kennedy's election and assassination, Bay of Pigs, demonstrations for Civil Rights and against the Vietnam war...I was nursing my first son while watching the moon landing, my third son while listening to the Watergate trials. One thing I have learned is that this world, well, we will never get along with each other. The world is like a small suburban neighborhood where people look over into each other's yards and fight over what they see. So sad, that it should still be so after all these years of "civilization". I try to just keep my head down, live my life and hope the continual strfe will not embroiled my loved ones. Selfish, but there it is. And Lord knows, my loved ones have, over the years, been impacted, most recently my grandson who served on the Navy and was in tbat mess in the Mid-East seas.
ReplyDeleteMy nephew just retired from the Army last year, and I am glad he's done. I understand your 'selfishness', although I would be loathe to call it that. It is almost self preservation. I do not watch the news anymore. I read it compulsively, from many different sources, but I cannot bear to watch it on television. I think that it is almost a self preservation mode: you become so overwhelmed by what is happening (and is outside your control) that you just naturally narrow your focus to what you can control.
DeleteI guess that as I see others speaking out, and being criticized for it, I feel a compulsion to add my voice to theirs. The more voices there are, the louder we become. It is what happened with the Vietnam protests. So many people joined their voices, it got so loud that it became impossible to ignore.