Why Am I Still Doing This at Ninety Years Old
That’s one of those questions you really don’t want answered, so you ask your wife, because you know she’ll be kind and not tell you the truth…that you’re way past your sell-by date.
Predictably, she came through as hoped for: “Because you care, and you have the life-history to measure against, because you are you, and I love you for it.”
The picture that provoked the question is from a Guardian article by Mohamad Bazzi, titled “Is this what war looks like now?” Subtitled, “Before the war on Gaza, the seed of Israel’s strategy of wholesale destruction was planted in a 2006 war on Lebanon. Today, the playbook repeats itself.”
Jesus, it’s 81 years since I watched Warner-Pathe News at a Cary Grant movie. It showed me and my family the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Germany. We were stunned into silence that early evening…and here we are again…
It’s twenty years since the Israeli destruction of Beirut, the former Paris of the Levant.
Eighty-one years since the Holocaust, twenty years since Beirut’s destruction, three thousand plus years since I began my political essays, 91 years old in another three weeks, and nothing changes, no one gives a shit.
No healing is done, only the enemy and victims have traded places. And the victims are always the same, powerless Jews in the first instance, and powerless Lebanese, Palestinians, and Iranians this morning, greeting my first cup of coffee.
Israel’s motto was, and is “Never again,” and I can but wonder who they meant by that?
In international terms, it’s a stunningly moral statement, and worthy of a standing ovation in every nation on the planet.
In terms of Israel’s more apparent meaning (according to me) it’s quickly become “Only Israelis need apply.” the moral basis fades along with their current, and ongoing genocidal attacks on neighbors. According to Wikipedia, the number in agreement that a genocide is occurring (and continues to occur) includes countries whose governments or senior officials have explicitly used the genocide word.
Those include South Africa, Spain, Ireland, Turkey, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan, Namibia, Venezuela, Chile, Mexico, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, Tunisia, Yemen, and many others.
Remarkably, they do not include either the United States, or Great Britain. Britain was responsible for placing Israel in the middle of the Middle East, two weeks before their Palestinian mandate ran out in a nick-of-the-time moment. The U.S., who had no better ideas, armed Israel ever since its inception, standing by in not-so-innocent amazement as a logical two-state solution continued to fail.
Two great, and supposedly democratic nations of the world that couldn’t find their ass with both hands when history called.
Even so, I will not throw my hands up in despair, partly because of my wife’s support and partly because I am a hard-headed old fart.
But it’s tough…and uphill…and unending…
Only 1% of my age group (those born in 1935) are still alive. A great number of those left are sitting on couches watching reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, fumbling around in one stage or another of Alzheimer’s, or taking up space in nursing homes.
I am not there yet, but those who actually lived America’s history are getting fewer and fewer..
Nor am I a guest on Stephen Colbert’s Tonight Show in the few weeks remaining, prior to its cancellation. Stephen will be missed.
I can’t say the same for those who follow my writing, but I’ll be damned if I’ll quit.
Sleep well, too many people in the world at war tonight will get no sleep at all…