Gentle Reader, almost all of the past week’s news has focused on the continuing situation in Gaza and the Middle East, and the ramifications therefrom, much of which has erroneously been characterized as anti-Semitic.
It has been amazing to the old curmudgeon how little knowledge there seems to be in those whom one would expect to possess the most knowledge and expertise, i.e. the college and university students and faculty, as well as our lawmakers and governing officials, but none of whom seems to know or to be interested in finding out about the history and background of this situation. It was embarrassing to see the Queen of Jordan on Sunday’s “Face the Nation” give a dazzling display of the kind of knowledge and understanding of the situation in this region which everyone dealing with it should have, but sadly does not.
The basic problem the U.S. has, and always has had, is how does one deal with an entity which is both a state or government organization, and simultaneously a religious organization.
In the late Nineteenth Century leading Jewish world leaders began to debate this issue when it first became an idea to establish a Jewish homeland, an idea which was fed when the British official Lord Balfour wrote a letter, since referred to as the Balfour Declaration, supporting the idea of such a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then part of the Turkish Empire.
People favouring such a Jewish land became known as Zionists, from the Biblical name of Zion.
This led to a bitter division between the Zionists who envisioned a Jewish State, with all the attributes of a civil government, like those in Europe, where so many of the leading Jewish figures lived, or had lived.
But many, possibly a majority of the leading Jews were Anti-Zionists on the theory that the religious organization could not successfully run the state government while running the religious organization, and likewise the state government organization could not successfully run itself and simultaneously run the religion.
It would certainly appear at this point that these early Anti-Zionists were absolutely right. No Jews that I have ever known would deliberately set out to kill twenty thousand children. Yet the Jewish state’s Israeli Defense force has done just that in its attacks on the people of Gaza.
No Jew that I have ever known would ever go to a synagogue and pray for the death of a million of his neighbors, but his government is pledged to destroy them, and has killed many thousands of them.
It is time for Israel to choose whether it is going to be a secular or a religious state and behave accordingly. Likewise, the U.S.A. should treat Israel as a secular or a religious state, but not both.
We owed the Jews a debt for our neglect in allowing Hitler to rise and carry out his genocide, but we have paid that debt, some would say with interest, and how we are accumulating a debt to the people of Gaza for the same neglect in allowing Netanyahu to rise and carry out his genocide, except we have aided and abetted him in it, so we will have a greater obligation there, but the number is much smaller, and we can apply the money we would have sent to Israel instead to Gaza.
But, the greatest thing confronting right-thinking folks now is to save the Jews from themselves and help them to rid themselves of Netanyahu and the rest of the far right-wing Zionists that are giving great and noble Jewry a bad name.
Sunday’s News Sentinel devoted three full pages in the front section, (Pages 12A, 13A and 14A) to the topic of possible expansion of the McGhee Tyson Airport, and the desirability of that happening.
Here are typical examples of some of the headings in the article:
Could Knoxville’s airport woo Southwest with new incentives?
McGhee Tyson is giving airlines more money than ever to lure new flights as Knoxville grows.
It’s not a will-they, won’t-they situation but simply a matter of time.
McGhee Tyson throws $1 million in incentives amid rapid growth.
This, no doubt, reflects the attitude of much of the business community in Knoxville at the current time, although in our humble opinion it is a mistaken attitude. Knoxville and its airport does not need to grow. If anything it needs to shrink a bit, but there is always a group that makes money by growth or expansion. There always has been, there always will be. It will take a major setback, catastrophe, or disaster to put the brakes on the expansionist forces. People who liked Knoxville as it was twenty years ago are not going to like it very much into the future. Take it from a fellow who first became acquainted with the town in the mid nineteen-forties, it’s doubtful you’ll like the twenty-forties.
A final note: A few days ago, when I observed the thorny briars laden with white blossoms, it occurred to me that the chilly weather we had a few days ago were what the late Miss Helen Lane, Crab Orchard’s celebrated weather forecaster, would have told us was “Blackberry Winter.” I don’t about you dear reader, but the old curmudgeon still misses Miss Helen and her “signs,” such as the number of fogs in October, and the width of the dark bank on the wooly worms, and other such highly refined scientific indicators of future meteorological occurrences. Much mountain folklore left us when Miss Helen took her leave. I fear we shall never see her like again, the mores the pity.
The opinions expressed in this column do not reflect the views of this newspaper.
