Israel and Gaza—Custer’s Last Stand

A quiet half-hour over toast and jam (two slices) this afternoon set me to thinking in an uncluttered, free-spooling manner. My wife is in Brighton, England for three weeks, to do some heavy-lifting on a novel that’s been too long neglected and I’d just returned from a visit to my Bulgarian mechanic, who I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone within driving distance of Prague. In other words, my mind was free to wander for a bit, but it’s under tight rein, this mind of mine and settled upon the ghastly news from Gaza and the current frenzy of world opinion.

It’s not good, this mini-holocaust that’s transpiring and it’s neither necessary, humane within our understanding of humanity or headed into a useful and logical end-game. Custer’s Last Stand against the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho American Indian tribes at Little Bighorn came to mind. That occurred 138 years ago. Too long to remain in the quarterly-interest-rate mindset of today, but so prescient in the Palestinian-Israeli…