President Biden was confronted by a rabbi last night, who told him: “Mr. President, if you care about Jewish people, as a rabbi, I need you to call for a ceasefire right now.” Biden could not pronounce the word, “ceasefire.” Instead, he prattled about a “pause” to get hostages out, as if the mass killing of Palestinian civilians weren’t the issue, as if the practice of “collective guilt” against innocents wasn’t destroying the Jewish people, destroying their souls, their culture, their identity.
Previously, when challenged on the mass killings of civilians in Gaza, Biden avoided the issue, choosing to quibble over the figures being provided by Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The UN has found, after the fact, that figures provided by Gaza’s Health Ministry in previous situations have been in line with the UN counts. Gazan figures now give a death count around 9,000 in the first 25 days; of whom about 3,760 were children; of whom 615 were babies. The impact upon Gaza, with its 2.3 million population, put in terms of the United States, would translate to over a half-million dead children, including over 86,000 dead babies. That’s over 340 dead babies every day, for 25 days in a row. None of them should bear the “collective guilt” of rage-driven Hamas (that is, Muslim Brotherhood) warriors. As the AP reported of the Gaza City carpenter Ahmed Modawikh, whose 8-year-old daughter was killed in the quieter times of May 2023 fighting: “It’s a curse to be a parent in Gaza.”
The horror of Oct. 7, when Israel lost over 300 soldiers and up to 1,100 others, is repeated, in death counts, every four days in Gaza. They’ve had seven “Oct 7s” and counting. And with a population of less than a quarter of Israel’s, the comparable effect is an “Oct. 7” every day, for 25 days in a row. Is it time for a “pause” to get some hostages out, or is that a sick joke? How is it possible not to have ceasefire front and center?
But there is a more difficult question being posed, which comes in various forms. Sen. Lindsey Graham says that Israel has the right to level everything in Gaza, and he invokes the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Was it true that the U.S. had every right, because Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor? That the U.S. can murder millions in Iraq and Afghanistan because radical Islamists were part of 9/11? That Judaism began with Hitler’s genocide? That the victimized receive justice and make the world a better, safer place by avenging themselves upon their victimizers, or upon whoever is close by?
China is at the head of the UN Security Council for the month of November, and they’ve announced that a ceasefire and the long-delayed implementation of the UN decisions behind the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine are front and center. Pope Francis just announced that, while the darkness of events have made it hard to even think, still there’s no alternative but peace, and that is to be based upon the 1993 Oslo Accords of Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat.
Yes, Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995 by Jewish fundamentalists and Arafat was pushed aside by both the Meir Kahane racist fundamentalists and Islamic reactionary fundamentalists. Yes, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu funded Hamas as an oh-so-clever way to undermine Arafat’s Palestinian National Authority. (Perhaps he had admired the oh-so-clever way the U.S. had armed Osama bin Laden and the Islamic fundamentalists to fight Russia…) So, now, what does it take not to be a reactionary, not to watch in horror as these vicious, deadly cycles play out?
Humans may use their love for mankind, and their mental powers, to get ahead of the game. As a warm-up, read, sign and circulate this petition, “Implementing a Global Approach to Ending the Cycle of Violence in Southwest Asia.”
And then decide that you need to know more than the unfortunate Joe Biden, at least enough to teach the basics for what the vast majority of Jews and Muslims in Israel and Palestine, and their neighbors, need to flourish, the “Oasis Plan.”
