Where do we stand? What do we stand for?

Someone among you will charge me with ignorance of the nuances of diplomacy and foreign policy; guilty, as charged. Others will challenge that I don't understand Israeli or Palestinian trauma and scar tissue. Also probably true. 

But nonetheless, as a citizen, I can read: On Feb 23^rd of last year, The White House issued National Security Memorandum #18, “for” the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, Commerce, and Energy, and “for” the Director of National Intelligence and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The subject: United States Conventional Arms Transfer Policy.

Having read that policy promulgated by the Biden White House (I urge you to do so: I couldn't get the link to work, so Google National Security Memorandum #18,) I must express my revulsion at our complicity in the Israeli – Palestinian struggle over how two peoples can occupy the same territory. Our veto of the UN call for a ceasefire is for me the final straw. Our nation’s back appears broken.

The ”policy” states

“Sec. 4.  Arms Transfers and Human Rights.  United States national security is strengthened by greater respect worldwide for human rights and international law, including international humanitarian law.  The legitimacy of and public support for arms transfers among the populations of both the United States and recipient nations depends on the protection of civilians from harm, and the United States distinguishes itself from other potential sources of arms transfers by elevating the importance of protecting civilians.  Strong United States human rights and security sector governance standards for arms transfers — in addition to ensuring compliance with end-use requirements and providing human rights and international humanitarian law training, as appropriate — encourage recipient governments to respect international law, human rights, and good governance, and help prevent violations of human rights or international humanitarian law.” 

That’s pretty clear, isn’t it?: we must curtail transfer of weapons to Israel.

Second, it appears to me that we should stop urging the two-state dead horse lying athwart Gaza, Israel, and the occupied West Bank to get up and move forward. The two-state idea is DOA, thoroughly killed by fundamentalist Jews and resentful Arabs in their disdain for one another’s views.

We also must stop dreaming of a single state in which Palestinians are treated as equals under the law; even Arab citizens of Israel are not equal, and are, today, having their citizenship rights further threatened by Bibi’s ultra-right partners who blackmail him with threat of jail.

Our veto of the security council’s call for a cease-fire shredded whatever residual respect the world might still have held for us as an exemplar of human rights and signatory of the UN Resolution on Human Rights, the lasting legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt. She would be ashamed, as am I.

“My Promised Land”, as Ari Shavit termed it, is a poisonous desert of distrust, discord, and duplicity. But we should be involved. We should be even-handed. We should encourage dialogue and listening. We should generously give medicine, food, supplies to and succor any people in need. We should press for an end to killing and support any cessation of hostilities, no matter how short or temporary, for only when the guns and bombs fall silent, can people hear one another. We should support and encourage – despite that this will be seen as “meddling” – those opposed to extremism on either side.

It's time to live up to our own ideals, even as the Israeli government, Hamas and the PLO do not live up theirs. 

My Month

Since the 12^th of January, Ann & I have spent 13 evenings here by ourselves. We have entertained friends and family four times, and attended one theatre production, one opera, eleven chamber music events, one symphony performance, and had four dinners out – three with each other and one with a large group of friends. I know – that’s 35 days out of 31 – it’s  nuts! E.g., Saturday, the 27^th : morning at Met’s Live in HD of Carmen and evening at SCMS's Winter Chamber Festival.

I’m not telling you this to tout lofty cultural taste or confess a psychotic, peripatetic drive but merely to confess it’s what we choose to do; perhaps a little too wound up in Seattle’s annual dead spot, especially in this year of no snow.

Well, that’s who Grandpa is, I guess. Still too tightly wound. (Is that wound, rhymes with sound, or wound, rhymes with spooned, which is how he likes to sleep?)