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My Buddhist training tells me not to worry: Things are in a constant state of change, of flux. They arise and they pass away. They will arise again, perhaps in a different form, and they will pass away again. We’ve seen this play out politically in our country before…any number of times. We’ve never seen a Trump before but he too will fade away and disappear like a child’s bubble. He may do a lot of damage while he’s here, as he already has with the Supreme Court, but eventually another president will come along of a different persuasion and reverse some of the damage he’s done. Even the Supreme Court will eventually change directions.

Impermanence is the calling card of everything in the universe. Human beings are the only species who question and challenge this reality, which is why we suffer so and are never fully satisfied. No one and no thing escapes Impermanence.

Electing Trump was another example of an attempt to reject the truth of impermanence. But ultimately impermanence rules. It will defeat Trump. We die as we live, and he will die accordingly. He remains a man of little character, of little empathy, of little compassion, of little consciousness, of little humor, of little wisdom, of little soul. He is a lonely man. I pity him. I wish him well, that he sees the light and can change to become all of what he is not.

So not to worry, even as he begins his potential reign of terror, of deportation, of setting up his administration of silly walks. Live your life as you wish. Make an effort to be friendly to the cashier at the food market, say hello to fellow pedestrians, avoid hitting squirrels on the road, feed and bathe the birds, strike up a conversation with strangers regardless of who you think they voted for, help the homeless in whatever way feels comfortable, say hi to a neighbor, perhaps commenting on the weather as a follow up, pet a friendly dog and comment to its owner how well he or she takes care of it. Get creative how to make contact with people.

Like the pandemic, this Trump era may get very isolating, very charged with suspicion, distrust, polarity. This is all anticipatory. I’ve had many pleasant rounds of golf with people not knowing their political persuasion. The problem arises only when I try predicting who they voted for and basing my contact on my prediction not on any reality. Besides, Trump voters are not bad people. They are not the embodiment of Trump. Their reasons for voting for him are many and varied and often complex.

Which leads me to the next phase of this discussion. As part of my grieving process, I need to know why something happened. But that’s a subject for my next offering.

Wishing you all peace of mind, happiness, and hope.

As much as Trump and his white supremacist followers would like to deny it, we are a nation of immigrants. Ever since the Pilgrims landed, we became known as such: It is deeply embedded in our DNA and remains so today. And indeed, who among us does not have an immigrant from a foreign land in our ancestry, often trying to escape persecution or just to find a better way of life elsewhere. My own maternal grandparents came from the Ukraine. My paternal grandparents came from Germany. My wife’s ancestors came from Spain. And my wife is a naturalized American citizen from Brazil.

In a Trump/Vance-run America all of those would have been turned away along with any from so-called garbage countries/U.S. territories as Trump would designate Mexico, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and virtually all of Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Asia.

But our country’s DNA (yes, countries do have a DNA of sorts) is also embedded, since 1619, with the toxin of slavery and the tenet of white supremacy to justify that enslavement of human beings for economic gain or in more gross terms, free labor. We justified the slavery of Africans and the genocide of Native Americans by labeling them lesser than European whites. They even wrote in its Constitution they were not equal to whites, nor were they deserving of the God-given rights granted to whites: what we today call White Supremacy or White Nationalism or White Christian Nationalism. All the same.

So this election is an Armageddon of sorts: a battle between good versus evil. Equal rights for all–the backbone of Democracy–versus equal rights for a select few and deportation or genocide for others–the backbone of fascism. Lincoln showed us the former: Hitler and his Nazis showed us the latter. In fact we find out now that Hitler studied American racism, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and discrimination policies in formulating his Fascist and dictatorial state. Trump keeps Hitler’s writings on his bed table and praise and coddles Putin, a white supremacist in his own right who is seeing how far his genocidal war on Ukraine can go.

Electing Kamala Harris will not end this politics of hatred and division but it will advance us on the path towards equality and justice. Electing Trump and his crowd will set us and the planet back immeasurably on that path, quite possibly to a point of no return.

The outcome of this election will depend simply on the numbers of people who vote and, of course, who they vote for. The Electoral College makes no sense in the 21st Century. But we’re stuck with it, at least for now. Only a landslide for Dems would insure that Trump would likely not mount a counteroffensive that would put the fate of the election in the hands of a Supreme Court largely appointed by him.

“These are the times that try men’s (and women’s) souls” is a line from Thomas Paine’s pamphlet The American Crisis, published in 1776 during the American Revolution. The phrase was intended to motivate the colonists to persevere and fight for victory. I use it now to motivate Democrats to vote in massive numbers to defeat Donald Trump and his dangerous attack on democracy.

1.

Impeach Biden? For what? Doing a damn good job? Do I really need to list his accomplishments? Impeachment is reserved for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, not for retribution against the impeachments of a former faux-president. What crimes has Joe Biden committed? You don’t file for an impeachment proceeding and then come up with a charge. That’s not how the Constitution maps it out. Why isn’t there more screaming and hollering about the what the GOP led House of Representatives is trying to do? Again, we appear like fools to the rest of the world. America, the laughing stock of the globe. How often do we have to go through these charades and clown shows?

The spectacle shows even more graphically than ever how beholden the GOP is to Donald Trump. Like an addict with his dope, they just can’t let go–the dope in this case being Trump himself. Why do they hold on to the hot stove so long? Why do they persist in supporting this obvious blowhard, this failed human being, this vindictive sexist and racist con man. His failings are so apparent that a five year old can satirize them, as one already does on Instagram–very effectively, I might add. So what will it take to get MAGA Republicans to let go of Donald Trump? And is there anything–anything–you and I can do to more readily make that happen, besides of course getting out the vote, big time, next November?

What the media has settled on is the realization that MAGA Republicans, Trump’s tried and true base, are more in interested in an authoritarian government, on the same line as Putin perhaps, than democracy. Is that really true? If so, we are truly in the fight of our democratic lives. Because if Trump does win, he will not stop at a one day dictatorship, as he professes. Already, he has manipulated the political infrastructure to make it happen. The Supreme Court packed with the extreme right wing of the political spectrum. The Speaker of the House a religious fanatical nut job ready to reverse an electoral college tally at will. A Republican National Committee completely beholden to King Donald. A network of scammers and death threat thugs ready at the phone, the text, the email, the front door. White supremacists, still active, still meeting, still totally loyal to their Supreme Commander, armed and ready to do his bidding. Even, possibly, secret Trumpsters embedded in local police departments, state militias, and even regular Army units.

I paint a grim picture, I know. And I do apologize for that. But I don’t know how else to present it. I can’t candycoat it. My maternal grandfather didn’t candycoat the Pogroms perpetrated against the innocent Jewish communities of Ukraine in 1910 and he left for America. My paternal grandfather didn’t candycoat the growing anti-semitism in Germany in 1914 just before WWI and he left for America. On the other hand, other Eastern European ancestors did candycoat the advent of Hitler, called him a flash in the pan in the late 30s and even early 40s. I am here alive today because of the courage of my two grandfathers. I will honor them as I face head on the danger Donald Trump and his MAGA minions present to our free nation.

So it is more a state of mind then any particular action. We are not about to flee to Europe or my wife’s Brazil. If for nothing else, I need my pension’s health insurance, a lifeline as I struggle with late in life medical issues. So the conservatives’ mantra, Stand Your Ground comes to mind, not an image of a racist with a gun to the head of a black jogger in the suburbs; but a man–me–reclaiming his flag and opposing MAGA with every ounce of his being.

I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m no Thomas Paine. I’m no Thomas Jefferson. I’m no Abraham Lincoln. I’m no John F. Kennedy. I’m no Martin Luther King Jr. I’m no Winston Churchill. I’m just, as you, a citizen who sees a great nation increasingly duped by a con-man, a fraudster, a cult leader, moment after dangerous moment enticing his followers to drink the nice delicious Kool Aid he’s prepared for them, a mutant Jim Jones on steroids who wants to run down the planet like Nero did Rome.

This is the primary battle in the war for autocracy and against democracy. America is the hope of the planet and always has been since its inception. If democracy fails here, mankind will not survive itself.

2.

Putin’s War in Ukraine represents the second front on the battle in the war of autocrats. In 1989, I considered the fall of the Soviet Union to be the seminal event of the 20th century, the signpost of an era of peace, prosperity, and cooperation between former cold war enemies. The fall of the Berlin Wall told the whole story in one dramatic, destructive yet constructive event. But it wasn’t long before an inept, inebriated Russian prime minister gave way to a former KGB agent, who quickly turned power hungry, vindictive, and murderous. The dream soon turned nightmare, and the nightmare metastasized further into a brutal war instigated by a madman named Vladimir Putin.

And now MAGA Republicans are again doing Trump’s biding and denying military supplies to the outnumbered and out-armed Ukranians. Why? Probably because Putin is a buddy of Trump’s, someone Trump admires and wants to emulate. What else can their motive be? If Russia wins this war, he may set his sights on other vulnerable countries. Trump has already professed his desire to leave NATO and leave Europe relatively defenseless against Putin. Putin, with his allies in China and Iran, could well accomplish what Hitler could not. Need I say, the fate of the Western world hangs in the balance.

3. Hamas’s War against Israel is no small regional thing. It is a highly engineered propaganda war designed to bring the wrath of the world once again down on the Jews and drive Israel into chaos and destruction “from the river to the sea”, a standard Palestinian trope for the destruction of the Jewish State. On October 7, Hamas staged a genocide against Israel so horrific that to cite specifics would rival what the Inquisition, Hitler, and The Crusades did in their time. Hamas rules Gaza with a the iron hand of a brutal autocracy, but has managed to paint itself as the oppressed victim to poorer countries and now even to the left wing of Western richer countries. It rivals ISIS in its goals and tactics. It is closely allied to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, another labeled terrorist group–a terrorist group and sworn enemy of its neighbor Israel. Despite increasing calls for a cease fire, Hamas, which still holds at great peril to them and their families, some 130 Israeli hostages from Oct. 7, must be thoroughly defeated and driven from the region. Only Israel is held to an unrealistic standard when it comes to how they retaliate.

Why? For many, many centuries, Western peoples have hated and still hate Jews for reasons that have long lost their rational connection to any actual truths or sanity. The world, the Middle East, and particularly we Jews, need the democratic state of Israel to exist now and forever. It helps us sleep at night. Yes, establish a viable state for the Palestinians but only,BUT ONLY, if they agree to acknowledge Israel and its people as a valid country and live in peace and cooperation with its neighbor as Israel must do as well.

***

In my lighter moments, I write songs. Just type in my name to your favorite streaming service, and check them out. It’s a way to balance out some. Used to be you could go to a store and pick up a CD of my tunes. Not so much now. But I hear CDs are staging a comeback. Who knows? Keep checking these pages. And now that an LA music company has contracted with me to represent my songs, that might just happen sooner rather than later. They join an Italian company who has another of my tunes, What I Feel For You. Good things are happening.

Let’s get our facts straight. The stated goal of Hamas is to destroy Israel, pushing it into oblivion “from the river to the sea,” as U.S Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) parroted recently in her de facto support of the Hamas terrorists. From the time they were elected by the Palestinian people after the more moderate Palestinian Authority retreated from Gaza, they have launched Iranian-made missiles at Israel, built clandestine tunnels under Gaza used to attack Israel, manufactured weapons in the basements of hospitals and schools, stripped their people of basic civil rights, and on October 7th waged a genocidal war on Israel with an attack that included rape, murder, decapitation, shooting and burning of civilians (including babies!), and forcefully kidnapping some 240 hostages and taking them, kicking and screaming, to Gaza, where they are still being held, God only knows where, dead, alive, or maimed.

Hamas has not stated any demands for their release, nor are the hostages being treated as prisoners of war, so, the prognosis of their survival and safe release is dire, perhaps fatal. If Hamas let’s them go in exchange for an Israeli military pull back to the border, they must figure that once the hostages are safe, IDF will return with guns and bombs and troops aplenty until they are all extracted from their rat holes and killed. Therefore, unless the IDF can find the hostages and free them, Hamas demons will probably kill them all as they tried to do on October 7.

That, Pro Palestinian Protestors (PPP), is a genocidal war crime, not anything Israel is doing to Palestinians. What the IDF is doing is what any country that’s been attacked would do: retaliate, hoping to find the hostages alive and to kill as many Hamas terrorists as possible, difficult since they wear no uniforms and shield themselves amongst and with Palestinian civilians including houses, hospitals, and schools. That is another war crime against even their own people.

The Hamas regime has managed to gain power and transform Gaza into a totalitarian state. Consequently, there are no Bill of Rights. And the only education allowed is one that teaches its children to hate Israel and to kill Jews. It is Hamas’s violent and distorted version of Islam, which is, at its roots, a peaceful and God-loving religion. Hamas is essentially equivalent to ISIS. If a Palestinian citizen speaks out against them, they can expect severe punishment. Hamas has created an Orwellian state.

Israel is a democratic country but is not perfect, nor are other democracies. Its coalition extremist right wing government is aggressive and anti-Palestinian, as evidence by Israeli settlers who are driving out Palestinian squatters who have lived there so long they should now be considered natives. In 1948, Palestine was ceded to Jews by the British as the legal state of Israel, which then offered a large area of land as a separate state for Palestinians who chose to leave. Their leader at the time, Yassir Arafat, turned that offer down, declaring that the state of Israel did not and should not exist. Some Arabs stayed and were actually accepted as full citizens even though they were not Jewish. Israel’s intent at that time was to live in peace with its neighbors. It did not enter the area with guns ablazing. It was only when attacked by all its neighbors that it defended itself, as any country would. And it was attacked immediately by several of its surrounding Arab countries. Israel, however, managed to stave off the multi-front attack. This happened again in 1967, and the Six-Day War, a defensive war for Israel, again ended with Israel the victor, this time capturing a large area of land on the West Bank of the Jordan River. In a defensive war, many scholars, and the UN, have judged that captured land can be kept by the defensive victor, in this case the West Bank of the Jordan River; ergo, Israel settlers may be legally justified in taking back this land from Palestinians who adopted it as their de facto country.

However, bulldozing Palestinian homes and muscling out entire families is not the answer, at least not according to the dictates of the Torah, the Golden Rule, and common decency. Any solution to this present crisis in Gaza must include what is happening in the West Bank. Something comprehensive. Something inclusive. Something just. Some compassionate that leads to a lasting peace. Otherwise, the same pattern of violence and revenge will follow. I suspect this is not possible to attain with the present extreme right wing Israeli government in power, led by Netanyahu with his religious coalition who could care less for the welfare of the Palestinian people. It is also not possible with the current Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and certainly not with an Hamas-controlled Gaza. Both have perpetuated the violence and intolerance against the existence of Israel.

But Israel is not about to pack up its bags and leave. Not on your life. To those demonstrating and professing the dictates of PPP, you are supporting stated Palestinian principles, and, in doing so, you are against the continuance of the legal and democratic state of Israel. You may not like to hear this but you are therefore anti-semites who are linked with the Jew haters of history which, even today, continue to rise like pus from an infected wound.

Yes, you can be against some of the policies of Israel and still support Israel as a nation, just as some, like myself. But, no, if you support the abolition of Israel, as do Hamas and the Palestinian citizens who tolerate them, then you leave Jews worldwide without a homeland to retreat to, and you are then anti-semitic. You can’t have it both ways.

Israel will not turn its other cheek, for its cheek is too bloodied and sensitive from the treatment of those Jew haters. Israel is at long last a return to its ancestral homeland for the Jewish people. I know even if Trump and his MAGA cult ever retake America (their current poster is a Hitler-sounding, “Peace through Strength”), or if Putin conquers Ukraine (and he continues to mimic the pogroms of his predecessors), I and my Jewish brothers and sisters can have a place to retreat to where we will be accepted and welcomed and honored.

As far as the present war in Gaza is concerned, calls for an unconditional cease fire are absurd. What country would stop fighting unconditionally when 240 of its citizens are being held as hostage by the enemy? None. So why should Israel stop fighting without Hamas returning the hostages unharmed to the border? It should not, without such an agreement and action. And those who are making such demands of Israel are–I know you won’t like this but what else can I believe–anti-semites.

In the name of our ancestors, never again will we give up that homeland. But, hopefully, with wise and compassionate governance, Israel can and will share it, and offer prosperity to those willing to embrace Israel with friendship and acceptance. That’s the sine qua non required from both sides for this long standing dispute to resolve, and peace to embed itself in the Middle East, along with an end to worldwide anti-semitism that continues to plague and haunt us.

Oct.7, 2023. It’s as important a date as 9/11, or 12/7/41, or 11/22/63. It is a date that will go down in infamy. But it is already being distorted in this upside down world of ours. Already what happened on that day in Israel is being redrawn as an event that wasn’t done to Israel by Hamas Palestinians of Gaza but that was done to the Palestinians of Gaza by Israel. And thousands in the West and the Middle East are marching and demonstrating in the streets with that view in mind. This is of extreme concern to me as it relates to what Donald Trump has tried to do after the presidential election of 2020 had him obviously losing by a large margin to Joe Biden. He tried to take a fact and twist it to convince people that the election was stolen from him by the Democrats. The same was true of 1/6/21 when all of us saw the facts as they unfolded on TV of an attack on the U.S. Capital by out of control rioters beating, injuring, and trampling upon Capitol police, breaking windows, and causing such fear among the legislators inside that they had to flee and hide for their very lives. We all saw that, as sure as I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on TV in 1963. No one then disputed that as some Republican lawmakers today assert that these violent insurrectionists were just on a tour of the Capitol. Or that these hooligans were actually patriots trying to prevent the Congress, along with the Vice President, from doing their Constitutionally-ordained job that day.

Now, as we approach the third anniversary of that infamous day, Donald Trump, his allies, and still most of his Republican Party, including the now Speaker of the House, still believe the election was stolen from Trump. This is much more psychotic thinking and behavior than the many psychotic folks I counseled in my 35 years as a masters level mental health practitioner.

Likewise, the people now who are demonstrating for the Palestinians even after what Hamas did to Israelis on 10/7 are also as psychotic as America’s MAGA cult. But what is really upside down is that many of these demonstrators are progressive Democrats who are shoulder to shoulder with Palestinians who do not believe Israel and its Jews should exist. That’s what Hitler believed. So, the far left and the fascists have, for all intents and purposes, joined hands.

That’s crazy, and that’s of tremendous concern to me. Do you follow what I’m saying? That leaves a Democratic Party so split, that again Donald Trump can take advantage of that to get elected again in ’24. Why? Because in ’16, I know for a fact that many Democratic progressives decided not to vote for Hillary because their guy, Bernie Sanders, was not nominated. They, therefore, were a major factor in Trump’s win. So these progressives taught, they thought, Hillary and the Democratic Party a lesson while paving the way for at least four years of a megalomaniacal, narcissistic, misogynistic, blowhard would-be dictator. And now history may repeat itself if progressive Democrats again decide not to vote since Biden is giving full support to Israel at the expense of Palestinians who, I might add, continue to hold hostages if,…if…if those hostages are still alive. And if they are alive, you can bet, based on previous verified Hamas tactics, they are holding those hostages in places where the Israelis are bombing or near other civilians where bombs may fall. That’s how Hamas has operated in the past by placing missile sites near civilian centers.

Now those same progressives are celebrating the monsters and barbarians of Gaza over democratic Israelis. While Hamas still holds some 240 hostages, some of whom are Americans, they are calling for a suspension of military aid to Israel because Israel, not Hamas, is violating human rights. That’s crazy. That upside down. Is Israel perfect? Are we perfect, or any government? No, of course not. Israel defends itself when attacked, just as any country would defend itself when attacked. So why does Israel get blamed and vilified for defending itself so forcefully after an attack such as the one perpetrated against it on 10/7?

There is only one reason. Israel is the homeland of Jews. And ever since Judas ratted on Jesus for a bag of silver, Christians have had no difficulty blaming whatever on the Jews, and have been up to this very day. What they don’t seem to recognize is that Judas was a Jew, but so was Jesus and all of his disciples. After Jesus died, his followers invented another religion called Christianity and vilified Jews for not accepting Jesus Christ as their savior. Have I lost you? After that conspiracy theory was introduced, it followed that Jews were the reason for all the world’s ills. And so fast forward to now, and all Jews, apparently equal to all Israelis, are accused of war crimes for defending themselves while the Palestinians get a pass and even cheered by left wing progressives for constantly throwing missiles at Southern Israel and butchering men, women, and children (did I mention they shot and burned Jewish babies as well! Has Israel ever done that to Palestinians?) on Oct. 7, still holding, hopefully still alive, some 240 hostages.

I grew up in supposedly liberal Philadelphia hearing Jewish slurs, jokes, and derisive comments. As a kid, it scared me, it intimidated me, and I kept my mouth shut. But now as a Jewish elder, it’s time to shout out not shut up. The Jewish battle cry now is Never Again, which is absolutely appropriate given the way we have been treated throughout recorded history. Some of you may not know what that refers to. In fact non-Jews too easily disconnect from the way Jews are treated because they themselves are not treated that way. The Holocaust. Some actually say it never happened. But it did and that fact can be proved in court which is how we verify that something is a fact. And indeed the court at Nurenberg after the war did prove that the Holocaust actually happened and put to death some of the Nazi perpretrators. But the Nazis were unable to wipe out, to commit total genocide, on the entire Jewish people. After the Holocaust, Never Again.

But it did happen again…on Oct. 7, 2023. One of Hamas’s leaders is saying now that Hamas did not kill civilians on that day. He lies but that is what dictators do. They make up history. They distort. They put false ideas into the heads of not only their immediate followers but the heads of sympathetic and gullible heads throughout the world, such as many of progressive Democrats in America. And they latch on to the lies and pass them on to others until the masses start doubting, start questioning, start believing what the liars are saying. We see that today with the followers of Donald Trump in America. Historians report that that is what happened in Germany during the Hitler years.

The fact is that some 1400 innocent Israelis were murdered in a surprise attack that morning by heavily armed Hamas terrorists on motorbikes and trucks who blocked off roads of escape and fired at anyone–anyone–they could find. Many were people attending an outdoor music festival during a Jewish holiday. Many were living on peaceful kibbutzim whose liberal inhabitants actually supported and aided the people of Gaza in the recent past. What these terrorists did to these Israeli was arguably worse than bloody Russian pogroms against its Jewish citizen at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, and, though on a smaller scale, Hitler’s treatment of European Jews between the late 30s and mid 1940s. It was a more devastating bloodbath than Attila the Hun could have devised hundreds of years before. This was Jewish hatred, extreme anti-semitism, brought kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Two thousand years of hatred of the Jews, culminating in a one day massacre of rape, torture, butchery, and wanton murder in the land where wise Kings David and Solomon once ruled.

What dictators and totalitarian regimes like Hamas also do is take and hold their power through fear. Fear of torture. Fear of retribution. Fear of imprisonment. Fear of death via death threats, as we’ve seen from Trump’s MAGA hordes. In Gaza, people knew what Hamas was planning but they daren’t say a word or even a whisper. Informants were everywhere. People disappeared regularly. Innocent people died when Israel retaliated against missile strikes on buildings where the weapons were purposefully made and placed in buildings where innocent Gazan families lived. Any complaints were noted and families were punished. This is how Hamas held control over the Palestinian society in Gaza, that American progressive demonstrators in the streets of Manhattan are supporting.

Will this hatred of the Jews never end? Will evangelical Christians ever drop this delusion of end times where Jesus returns to Jerusalem taking believers back with him to heaven while the non believers, the Jews, will go to hell? This is just as delusional and insane as the bizarre hallucinations I heard my clients utter. And yet in this upside down world, the evangelical is sane and respected while the Jew is dirty and damned.

Israel is not perfect. No country is. The extreme right wing West Bank Israeli settlers who, out of greed, harass and persecute Palestinians there, are just wrong. I abhor those people and wish they be removed, by force if necessary. Whether Jews or not, they have no right to treat peaceful Palestinians with derision, violence, and injustice. These extreme right wing bullies need to be stopped, removed, and the land allowed to remain in Palestinian hands. But for the most part, the Israel government and military have enabled them to act as they wish.

Over the years Israel has been an extremely positive force in this world, accounting for many scientific, agricultural, archeological, and medical discoveries. The only effective democracy in the Middle East, it has brought life to an arid desert. And it has brought hope to Jews around the world who felt they have finally a homeland and are welcome to return to Zion, the promised land, the place where a Jew can be a Jew without fear of being spit upon, vilified, discriminated against, banished, even murdered.

To those misguided people in the West who now protest against Israel, and in doing so, celebrate what Hamas has just done, you are protesting the wrong people. Your protest should be directed to the dictators Hamas. To do otherwise is delusional. Gaza must remain in Palestinian hands, yes, but without the cruel reign of the Hamas regime.

What else is delusional, detestable, and unconscionable is thousands of people parading the streets of cities worldwide screaming for the elimination not only of Israel but of all Jews everywhere. It’s what the Nazis wanted. The Final Solution they called it. Genocide. Another Holocaust. And on Oct.7, 2023, the Hamas Palestinians from Gaza showed how it was to be done. Through rape, murder, butchery, inhumanity, and barbarism. Authentic human beings do not contemplate doing such things to other human beings. And human beings who do such horrid things to other human beings as they did on Oct. 7th are not true human beings. They are demonic monsters and should not under any circumstances be celebrated as they have been throughout the world. Nor should they be controlling Gaza with the kind of fear and terror they use there. Isis and Hamas are no different.

I am a Jew. My parents and grandparents were Jewish. Many non-Jews have a different relationship to Oct.7th. They are considerably more removed emotionally. They can quickly and figuratively change the channel and wipe it from their minds like they would any event that didn’t affect them personally or their families or their immediate communities. But a Jew like myself, no matter how religious or where we live, cannot so easily turn away from barbarous treatment of a 22 year old German Israeli woman named Shani Louk, who was kidnapped by Hamas demons from a music festival in Southern Israel and experienced horrors as she was tortured and paraded around Gaza City while ordinary Gazans cheered and celebrated. Shani Louk was then murdered, her body desecrated and discarded, later to be found by retaliating Israeli soldiers. She was later verified as dead only from DNA taken from a skull fragment found in her remains.

So, to the Western mobs drooling and snarling, Nazi-like, for Jewish blood, I say Never Again. We Jews will not go quietly. We are a good and peaceful people. But if we are attacked, as was Israel on October 7th, we will fight back with all the strength, will, determination, and grit that we’ve got, as every other country and its people on Earth would do.

I’m not sure I can put this into words, the emotions are quite intense. Yes, I grieve for the Israelis who were tortured and murdered, at times entire families exterminated all together, screaming, begging, asking of the butchers why, what do you hope to gain. Why are you doing this? And only to be answered with continued demonic butchery. Even more heinous than what the Nazis did during the War. These Hamas monsters cut off the breasts of women still alive, cut off fingers and feet of live children, and shot and murdered daughters clinging onto their fathers, then kidnapped the fathers away to who knows what fate. I grieve. I boil with anger and rage. And now reports from this country, America, of mobs literally celebrating what Hamas did, celebrating the killing of Jews. Celebrating the tearing open of a Jewish mother’s womb, killing the baby then killing the mother in front of her family. I grieve. I boil with anger and rage. As JFK once announced, standing at a wall that divided freedom from tyranny, I am a Berliner, I announce, I am an Israeli. I am a Jew. I am a Muslim. I am homeless. Yet I stand against Hamas and all who profess allegiance to their cause, pretending they are anti-Israel and not anti-semitic. I stand too against the Palestinians who elected them and keep them in power, giving tacit, and possibly not so tacit, approval of their reign of terror.

Let’s not fool ourselves though: Hatred of Jews has existed for well over 2,000 years, and is still alive and thriving today…throughout the world. Why? God knows, but even God scratches his/her/their head and wonders why. Myth. Misinformation. Mythology. Meme. Conspiracy theories that started a thousand years ago and still extant, spewed forth generation after generation. The hatred, therefore, runs deep, often oozing to the surface like puss from a ancient wound. Like now. Like Hamas. Like anti-Jewish protesters in the streets of America.

The Buddha taught some 2500 years ago that human beings were plagued by three basic foibles: Greed, Hatred, and Delusion. I have looked deeply within at my own tendencies to fall into these mental traps–traps sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant, sometimes denied, sometimes inflamed, almost always repressed. It takes lots of internal reflection to chase these ghosts from within, hold them up the light, see them for what they are and let them go. A lot of hard work. Therapy. Meditation. Prayer. They are embedded in our psyches and, like pine tar, get sticky and near impossible to let go of.

Jews, like canaries in long ago coal mines, are an indicator species. So are the mentally and physically disabled. So are the addicts. So are the homeless. So are ex-cons. So are women. So are children. So are those sexually different from the norm. So are Muslim Americans. So are Hispanic Americans. So are African Americans. So are Native Americans. So are weight-challenged people. All indicator species. Why? Because how we treat them, how we regard them, how we think about them when we first see them is an indicator of the consciousness, the compassion, the tolerance, the empathy, are the indicators of the very humanity of a society.

What is your level of consciousness? What is your level of empathy? What is your of level tolerance and compassion for those around you who are different in color, in ability, in gender, in sexual orientation, in station in life?

President Kennedy, an American, called himself a Berliner and sent a powerful message to those imprisoned behind the Berlin Wall of that time. Can you do the same for those in our society who are different from the norm on the surface, but people who are, essentially, the same as you inside? And what of the Golden Rule? Can you apply it routinely everyday, all day. Are you teaching it to your children and grandchildren? Do you still even know what the Golden Rule is?

Just in case, let me end with my simplified version: To treat and regard others as you would like to be treated and regarded. Others, of course, include all sentient beings, which pretty much includes all who live and breathe on our planet and beyond.

Take good care of yourself…and others. Protect democracy. The alternative is literally hell on Earth…as we have seen from history.

***

I will be taking time now for reflection, contemplation, grieving, and Buddhist dhutanga practice. It will be my last post for a time. Maybe forever. We’ll see. After all, I get one person who consistently shares my posts, which I deeply appreciate. No one ever “likes” my posts, nor does anyone leave comments. And of course, no one has offered a paid subscription. So without that encouragement, that overt appreciation, I’m, as Bob Dylan put it “…burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail, Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail,
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

Yep, I’m needin’ shelter from the storm, and right now, this blog ain’t givin’ it to me. Good luck to ya, take good care, and see ya’ll later. My books will still appear online, and my songs will be available on many streaming platforms. And eventually I’ll put all these posts over the last few years into a book…when my wife lets me!
And I’ll also continue golf360.substack.com. Playing and writing about golf is a great form of enjoyment which encourages the practice of Zen Mind, Beginner Mind as I, a five year cancer/heart failure survivor, approach my 78th birthday on Halloween.