Thanks for this, Yasha. From here the level of denial - like the nature of "coverage" - just looks and more insane. One of my former colleagues, missing for over a year, was just returned as a bag of remains. There's no moral compass to
be found in any of this. But to barefacedly keep claiming it as somehow defending a(ny) religion is truly obscene.
About the complicity of NATO countries, and the inaction of the rest, I wonder if this has to do with what Elaine Scarry called the Nuclear Aristocracy. I didn't read the book, but her thesis, from what the review I read years ago in Counterpunch said, is that countries with nukes can get away with much more than others simply because of what Moshe Dayan said: "Israel must be a mad dog, too dangerous to bother".
Dominic de Villepin said last week that the EU should cut all relations with Israel, cease all arms sales and support sending its leadership to the Hague. Jim Kavanagh has said that Turkey should mount an aid flotilla with armed escort and land on Gaza to deliver relief while daring Israel to strike at them. Others have voiced similar solutions.
But all I can see is those solutions working as the trigger to the events that form the setting of the novel you're writing, Two Pigeons/Radiance.
Yes, they have an interest in keeping Israel as their attack dog in the Middle East. Yes, this is about money and power. But even if it weren't, I think NATO leaders, as well as everyone else, would go full Herman Kahn/Dr. Strangelove and do calculations of what would cause fewer deaths. And letting the Palestinians die might well look as the preferable option to them.
I think Israel is by far the most dangerous and paranoid nuclear power, precisely because of the mentality Zionists - and the vast majority of Israeli Jews seem to have fallen into the grip of this pernicious ideology - have developed and you describe in this letter. We've just seen how even the extremely perilous, continuing antagonism between Pakistan and India isn't as dangerous: both countries know to de-escalate and how. In my mind, the moment Iran so much as announced they had the bomb, Israel would send theirs flying in pretty much the all-round-volley fashion your novel describes. If we just think of the Samson Option, it's lunatic stuff.
I imagine Israeli double-passport intellectual elite might get fed up and leave that deranged place, to the point that Israel would become an economically impaired, dysfunctional backwater without anything to offer the world. Some say half a million have already left. But I don't set much store by that kind of optimism. They could go back to being shepherds and would still be shepherds with nukes on hair trigger.
The tragedy is that a large number of Americans and Israelis won't ever connect the coming tyranny, ruin and death with what they've been doing to Palestinians. They're unable to make those kinds of connections because they don't recognize the simple truth that you state: We live in one world and we're all connected. They're the spiritually and morally bereft that Jesus described:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!
"He was just a normal guy into leftwing politics who was driven insane by non-stop slaughter he's been seeing on social media everyday."
"I write this because I can see a bit of myself in Elias. If I didn't have anyone to live for...if I didn't have a daughter and a wife and was all alone--I could easily see myself driven to the edge like him."
"You can thank my family for preemptively disarming me."
I hope you will always remember what you just wrote about your daughter and wife. You are an extremely fortunate man who has been blessed with the type of love, affection, and meaning that has successfully contained your own anger, resentment, and self-righteous indignation. Count your lucky stars.
This isn't 100% on-topic, but it is germane to a discussion about feelings of powerlessness, in particular for educated, well-read individuals like the embassy shooter and inclusive of our own elected representatives (and appointees within the 3 branches of government) over the major issues of our time - and why elite and "overworld" corruption and absolute lawlessness seem to not only go unchecked, but are now ENCOURAGED, accepted and carried out openly and brazenly - completely free from any fear of consequences via "checks and balances" supposedly built into our system of government.
I recently discovered a book from around 2022 that I'm only halfway through, but even as a jaded, well-read over-educated consumer of history, journalism and "journalism" Aaron Good has helped really open my eyes. Essentially, in his argument - and building on those of previous analysts and historians - we live in a 'tripartite state' in a permanent state of "exception." This explains why our 'democratic' elected government seems either unwilling or unable to actually represent the wishes or needs of the 'democratic' republican metropole in good and meaningful ways.
To put it simply, the US government was effectively bifurcated into "Trumanite" and "Madisonian" factions - where the former is the "security state" and its offshoots while the latter is the allegedly 3 co-equal branches of "democratic" republican government. Good adds his own elements of the 'tripartite state' and I don't want to write a book report, but I do very much recommend it if you're a closet frustrated empathetic and often frustrated anti-imperialist lefty like me, looking to understand the WHY. Personally, I'll even call the book potentially radicalizing. I'll add that it helps to understand both the deep and surface level politics / geopolitics / and flouting of any supposed (national or international) rule of law surrounding the US and Israel.
Thanks for this, Yasha. From here the level of denial - like the nature of "coverage" - just looks and more insane. One of my former colleagues, missing for over a year, was just returned as a bag of remains. There's no moral compass to
be found in any of this. But to barefacedly keep claiming it as somehow defending a(ny) religion is truly obscene.
You mean your former colleague was serving in Gaza?
No he was with an NGO and went missing
Oh wow. In Gaza?
In Gaza but it was very early on
About the complicity of NATO countries, and the inaction of the rest, I wonder if this has to do with what Elaine Scarry called the Nuclear Aristocracy. I didn't read the book, but her thesis, from what the review I read years ago in Counterpunch said, is that countries with nukes can get away with much more than others simply because of what Moshe Dayan said: "Israel must be a mad dog, too dangerous to bother".
Dominic de Villepin said last week that the EU should cut all relations with Israel, cease all arms sales and support sending its leadership to the Hague. Jim Kavanagh has said that Turkey should mount an aid flotilla with armed escort and land on Gaza to deliver relief while daring Israel to strike at them. Others have voiced similar solutions.
But all I can see is those solutions working as the trigger to the events that form the setting of the novel you're writing, Two Pigeons/Radiance.
Yes, they have an interest in keeping Israel as their attack dog in the Middle East. Yes, this is about money and power. But even if it weren't, I think NATO leaders, as well as everyone else, would go full Herman Kahn/Dr. Strangelove and do calculations of what would cause fewer deaths. And letting the Palestinians die might well look as the preferable option to them.
I think Israel is by far the most dangerous and paranoid nuclear power, precisely because of the mentality Zionists - and the vast majority of Israeli Jews seem to have fallen into the grip of this pernicious ideology - have developed and you describe in this letter. We've just seen how even the extremely perilous, continuing antagonism between Pakistan and India isn't as dangerous: both countries know to de-escalate and how. In my mind, the moment Iran so much as announced they had the bomb, Israel would send theirs flying in pretty much the all-round-volley fashion your novel describes. If we just think of the Samson Option, it's lunatic stuff.
I imagine Israeli double-passport intellectual elite might get fed up and leave that deranged place, to the point that Israel would become an economically impaired, dysfunctional backwater without anything to offer the world. Some say half a million have already left. But I don't set much store by that kind of optimism. They could go back to being shepherds and would still be shepherds with nukes on hair trigger.
The tragedy is that a large number of Americans and Israelis won't ever connect the coming tyranny, ruin and death with what they've been doing to Palestinians. They're unable to make those kinds of connections because they don't recognize the simple truth that you state: We live in one world and we're all connected. They're the spiritually and morally bereft that Jesus described:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!
Excellent essay, btw. Thank you for trying.
"He was just a normal guy into leftwing politics who was driven insane by non-stop slaughter he's been seeing on social media everyday."
"I write this because I can see a bit of myself in Elias. If I didn't have anyone to live for...if I didn't have a daughter and a wife and was all alone--I could easily see myself driven to the edge like him."
"You can thank my family for preemptively disarming me."
I hope you will always remember what you just wrote about your daughter and wife. You are an extremely fortunate man who has been blessed with the type of love, affection, and meaning that has successfully contained your own anger, resentment, and self-righteous indignation. Count your lucky stars.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it.
This isn't 100% on-topic, but it is germane to a discussion about feelings of powerlessness, in particular for educated, well-read individuals like the embassy shooter and inclusive of our own elected representatives (and appointees within the 3 branches of government) over the major issues of our time - and why elite and "overworld" corruption and absolute lawlessness seem to not only go unchecked, but are now ENCOURAGED, accepted and carried out openly and brazenly - completely free from any fear of consequences via "checks and balances" supposedly built into our system of government.
I recently discovered a book from around 2022 that I'm only halfway through, but even as a jaded, well-read over-educated consumer of history, journalism and "journalism" Aaron Good has helped really open my eyes. Essentially, in his argument - and building on those of previous analysts and historians - we live in a 'tripartite state' in a permanent state of "exception." This explains why our 'democratic' elected government seems either unwilling or unable to actually represent the wishes or needs of the 'democratic' republican metropole in good and meaningful ways.
To put it simply, the US government was effectively bifurcated into "Trumanite" and "Madisonian" factions - where the former is the "security state" and its offshoots while the latter is the allegedly 3 co-equal branches of "democratic" republican government. Good adds his own elements of the 'tripartite state' and I don't want to write a book report, but I do very much recommend it if you're a closet frustrated empathetic and often frustrated anti-imperialist lefty like me, looking to understand the WHY. Personally, I'll even call the book potentially radicalizing. I'll add that it helps to understand both the deep and surface level politics / geopolitics / and flouting of any supposed (national or international) rule of law surrounding the US and Israel.
https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510769144/american-exception/
Thank you, Yasha, really powerful
Very well stated. As such, you should expect a visit from black-clad G-men at your front door any day now.