Meanwhile,
as the Trump Administration prepares to deport Iraqi Christians back to
almost certain death in a country they've not seen in decades . . .
crickets from Republicans seeking to distract attention from our very
own "What fresh hell?" regime.
For God's sake, man!
Every damn time an alert sounds on my laptop or iPhone, I wonder what
fresh hell is breaking loose now from Mad King Donald or our
dysfunctional, pathological government. Every damn time. It's usually a
doozy, and it's usually happening SEVERAL TIMES A DAY.
Yet
you're outraged about what the g**damned Palestinian Authority is doing
as you don Ray Charles sunglasses and stick your fingers in your ears and hum the "Star-Spangled
Banner" while contractors measure the Oval Office for padded rubber
wallpaper? Really?
How damned stupid do you think we are? (Obviously, stupid enough to have elected Donald Trump and yourself.)
Yeah,
I am just so zip-a-dee-doo-dah, orgasmically THRILLED that you intend
to kick some Palestinian Authority ass as you inexplicably exhibit ZERO
concern that your own House leadership is considering Flat Eartherism so
it could have a shot at sailing the ship of state off the g**damned
edge.
And I can't even begin to express how grateful
this woebegone nation is that you're devoting precious minutes and
hours to some *obviously* existentially important Palestinian baiting
while North Korea fires off ICBM after ICBM, and President Donald J.
Trump may be the most unequipped person on planet Earth to deal with a
REAL Korean crisis, as opposed to your ordinary, everyday Korean crises.
Good grief, don't you people even LISTEN to yourselves anymore? Is it possible that y'all are really that non-self aware?
Nah, can't be. I think you're just that flippin' cynical.
God help us, because we sure as hell aren't capable of helping ourselves anymore.
Sincerely yours, Hoping We Don't Get Nuked Before I Can Vote for Your Opponent
This "protest" in Tel Aviv begins with the crowd chanting their hatred for Ahmad Tibi, an Israeli Arab politician and physician . . . and member of the Knesset. In fact, he's deputy speaker of the Israeli legislative body. "I wanted you to know the next child to get hit is yours. . . . I hate Tibi the Terrorist!" the protesters chant. "Tibi! Dead! Tibi! Dead!" Then after calling for all Arab Israelis to be stripped of their citizenship, the crowd unveils another pithy chant about the military strike against Gaza: "There's no school tomorrow. There are no children left there!"
AND THEN you have the ongoing vigilante attacks against Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. . . . For the life of me, I can't imagine why Palestinians would want to fire rockets at a country where this is just another "slice of life." Funded in large part, by the way, by American tax dollars.
What could go wrong? IN A LAND where the bloodiest parts of the Old Testament are never forgotten -- and, indeed, are still as new as tomorrow's sunrise -- it's always Mississippi 1959. With Palestinian suicide bombers and rockets and Israeli bombs and missiles.
For all this country's faults and sins, at least the U.S. government never bankrolled the Ku Klux Klan or the Black Panthers. At least not in this country.
It's a horrible thing when you're 89 years old and the brain's equivalent of a spam filter no longer works so well. "Captcha" by a Jewish activist and his camcorder was only a matter of time for poor Helen Thomas, who is being singled out as some sort of singular anti-Semite bigot. I can't judge her heart, so I couldn't tell you.
What I can tell you is that I'm shocked that people are shocked.
LISTEN, she was born Greek Orthodox, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants by the name of Antonious, which later was changed to Thomas. As far as I know, neither the country of Lebanon nor the Greek Orthodox Church are hotbeds of support for Zionism or the state of Israel.
And, to be fair, neither is the state of Israel exactly on hugs-and-kisses terms with Lebanon or Greek Orthodox Christians. To wit, from a 2004 article in Haaretz:
A few weeks ago, a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman in Israel attended a meeting at a government office in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul quarter. When he returned to his car, an elderly man wearing a skullcap came and knocked on the window. When the clergyman let the window down, the passerby spat in his face.
(snip) On Sunday, a fracas developed when a yeshiva student spat at the cross being carried by the Armenian Archbishop during a procession near the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City. The archbishop's 17th-century cross was broken during the brawl and he slapped the yeshiva student.
Both were questioned by police and the yeshiva student will be brought to trial. The Jerusalem District Court has meanwhile banned the student from approaching the Old City for 75 days.
But the Armenians are far from satisfied by the police action and say this sort of thing has been going on for years. Archbishop Nourhan Manougian says he expects the education minister to say something.
"When there is an attack against Jews anywhere in the world, the Israeli government is incensed, so why when our religion and pride are hurt, don't they take harsher measures?" he asks.
According to Daniel Rossing, former adviser to the Religious Affairs Ministry on Christian affairs and director of a Jerusalem center for Christian-Jewish dialogue, there has been an increase in the number of such incidents recently, "as part of a general atmosphere of lack of tolerance in the country."
Rossing says there are certain common characeristics from the point of view of time and location to the incidents. He points to the fact that there are more incidents in areas where Jews and Christians mingle, such as the Jewish and Armenian quarters of the Old City and the Jaffa Gate.
There are an increased number at certain times of year, such as during the Purim holiday."I know Christians who lock themselves indoors during the entire Purim holiday," he says.
Former adviser to the mayor on Christian affairs, Shmuel Evyatar, describes the situation as "a huge disgrace." He says most of the instigators are yeshiva students studying in the Old City who view the Christian religion with disdain.
THE OTHER THING I can tell you is that Thomas has company. Here's one bouquet thrown her way by a fellow Lebanese-American:
I was going through the news and found this article...all i can say is Helen Thomas is one brave woman! of course she made a mistake by using the word "Jew" because jews arent the issue. Zionists are the issue. i think sometimes people get confused with the difference between the 2. i love Jewish people! they went through a lot because of their religion. however zionists are another story!
So Helen Thomas, your awesome! next time use the word zionist...because there is a BIG difference. there are jews who are against the zionists nation.
ps...considering her position, i'd say that shes fed up with that country using the USA!
THE TROUBLE with this country's chattering class is it doesn't understand it's not the norm. Helen Thomas is not a singular bigot and, at any rate, people have lots of reasons for their long-nursed hatreds -- some of them good ones.
That starves journalism of a certain depth to its practice. And it even denies bigotry's victims -- in this case, Israelis -- a certain opportunity for self-examination.
I'm not sure, but I think this sort of thing in Judah led directly to the Babylonian captivity.
It's really kinda appropriate that "schmuck" and "dreck" are Yiddish vulgarisms. As in, "It takes a real schmuck to foist dreck like this on an unsuspecting public."
It's no surprise this thing has gotten all furcockt, has netted Israel less than bupkis in PR value and, frankly, has a bunch of people about ready to plotz. If I were Joe Biden, I'd be soliciting contributions from Hamas to run this ad on American network TV.
That'd teach those Israeli nudniks a thing or two. Oy veh.
A Hebrew-speaking Palestinian doctor and peace activist is on the phone with an Israeli correspondent, on live television.
SUDDENLY, two Israeli tank shells rip into his house in Gaza. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. picks up the story from there:
"My daughters!" he screamed. "Oh, God, my daughters!"
Three of his daughters and a niece were killed.
Abu al-Aish had been planning to take his family and start fresh in Canada, but no one in crowded Gaza or nearby Israeli towns was immune to shells or rockets during the conflict, which left than 1,200 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.
Less than 24 hours before Israel announced its ceasefire in its assault on Hamas, his daughters and niece were killed by Israeli fire.
Gazan officials identified his dead daughters as 22-year-old Bisan, 15-year-old Mayer and 14-year-old Aya, and the niece as 14-year-old Nour Abu al-Aish, the Associated Press reported.
Eighteen members of his extended family were in the house at the time, and at least two of his five surviving children were wounded in the shelling, AP said.
On television, the Israeli correspondent, [Shlomi] Eldar, choked up as the doctor's wails were broadcast across the nation.
WELCOME TO the Old Testament vs. the Koran. Welcome to a world where Jesus is, at best, a prophet who didn't get the last word. That, or a nut and a blasphemer. Do you recall that "love your enemies" crap from Matthew, Chapter 5?
43 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? 48 So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
THAT'S NOT OPERATIVE in the Holy Land, at least for the vast majority of folks who live there. No, this is more like it:
Remember, LORD, against Edom that day at Jerusalem. They said: "Level it, level it down to its foundations!"
Fair Babylon, you destroyer, happy those who pay you back the evil you have done us!
Happy those who seize your children and smash them against a rock.
Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."
WELCOME to a Town, a Territory, a Region Without Pity.
Its agony will end when "the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out."