#campdavid — Public Fediverse posts

1981 Mountain Dew Commercial. Joe Biden, debate prep at Camp David. Works for me. #mountainDew #debate #campDavid #joeBide #1980s #presidentialdebate #democrats #democratsoftiktok #jacked #amped

⬆️ #EcstasyAndAmnesia #GazaStrip

As happened 30 and 50 years before, in the months after #CampDavid and well into the #SecondIntifada, the rhetoric was as militant as ever, and triumphalist too.

Moderates held that a #controlledOutbreak of #violence could improve the #Palestinian position in any future negotiation 🙄

Less-moderate voices hoped that violence could replicate #Hezbollah’s success in forcing a full #Israeli withdrawal from #Lebanon without Israel receiving anything in return

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War is Hell (and Worse)

In the Nov. 16 “Off the Road,” observing Veterans Day, I reflected on Vietnam War experiences as my portal to the Taoist martial and healing arts, internal energy work, and meditation. That was my story then. But gnawing in the back of my mind were brutal, ongoing wars that make it difficult to celebrate old soldiers now, no matter how far removed from current conflicts.

Granted, people under siege, dispossessed, restricted and vilified, must fight back. The existential threats facing Israelis, Palestinians, and Ukrainians spur them all to war, to defend rights and ensure a future for their children. War is hell, but the assaults on civilian populations in Israel and Gaza, as well as in Ukraine, go beyond the pale of even hellish behavior. We must condemn such violence.

Sitting in front of our televisions or other Internet windows today, we’re witnessing how war dehumanizes our race – and, yes, there is only one. The human race appears not to be evolving as a civilized species – or as survivors. Blinded by hate, people are still trying to kill each other.          

The war in Gaza has been particularly savage. In less than two months, more than twice as many women and children have been reported killed in Gaza than in Ukraine after two years of bombardment.  Gaza is a small strip of land with 2.2 million people, about 16,000 people per square mile; Ukraine has 36 million people, about 162 people per square mile. Of the estimated 14,000 Palestinians killed thus far, nearly 70 percent have been women and children, according to the United Nations.

Targeting civilian populations during war is a crime, punishable under international law, such as it is. It surely seems that war crimes are being committed in the blitzkrieg against a Palestinian population that has been dispossessed and marginalized for 75 years, clinging to a corner of land settled by their forebears centuries ago. The assault on Gaza by Israel has created a humanitarian crisis of historic proportion, continuing even with a pause in fighting for hostage releases.

The war crimes by the Hamas terrorists are particularly vile — savage murder, rape and brutalization of Israelis, most of them young people attending a music festival, but also families in kibbutzim along the border, where the terrorists killed fathers, and seized the women and children as hostages. The evidence being compiled by investigators, including videos made by the Hamas assailants as they raped and massacred innocents, speaks volumes about the dehumanization of war and the hypocrisy of religious zealots.

My introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in 1972, was confused by U.S. media coverage, when Black September, a Palestinian terrorist cell, kidnapped and later slaughtered 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, after their demands for the release of Palestinian prisoners were not met. A few years later, to straighten it out in my mind, I undertook a case study of media coverage of that event, and an analysis to guide future such coverage, earning an MA in Journalism with the thesis. It was eye-opening then, and illustrates what we’re seeing now. Despite some thoughtful written reports, current coverage of this historically long and bitter conflict is heavy with dramatic events and horrible images, presented with little perspective. We’re moved, but we’re not informed.

The Munich Olympic Games was perhaps the most extreme example, when the lead reporters on the scene were sports reporters. The deadly contest that erupted at the Games shocked them as eyewitnesses to a cataclysm, and their reports were highly emotional and generally ill-informed. But even national news reports initially produced dramatic reports that inflamed emotions and skewed public perception. My study suggested that journalists have an obligation to report events in their broadest contexts, and should be schooled in systems analysis before wading into distorting current events.

What media seems to have lost in reporting on the era of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, glaringly obvious in the current warfare, is the abandonment of perhaps the only solution to the festering problem of the homeless Palestinians, which was created when Israel won UN approval to declare statehood, with a major assist from the United States, still its patron and protector.

We are committed, as well we should be, to a Jewish homeland as reparations for centuries of persecution and the horrors of the Holocaust. But other parties of that 1948 agreement feel persecuted as a result, begging us to seek another just solution. The U.S. position, cemented with President Carter’s Camp David “Framework for Peace” between Egypt and Israel in 1978, is to create a Palestinian homeland, with its own government. This “two-state” solution has been jettisoned by Netanyahu and his hard-line supporters, who have no plan for peace on the table, except to crush their opponents. This is the same stated goal of the Palestinian hard-liners who resort to the most horrific terrorism.

The latest outrages mean it may be many years before the passions cool and reason can reign in the Middle East — and we must hope that it can prevail. Even though we are far from the battlefront, we must worry about our own security. ‘Tis the season we are most vulnerable to terrorists, as we gather and celebrate the end of the year, pray to our Gods, cheer on our home teams and, in some cases, get drunk and disorderly.

As for me, I’m off the sauce and on my guard. I plan to stay sober into the New Year as I focus on recreating my lost novel. I’m making progress, and will share with readers in future blogs. Meanwhile, I invite readers to check out my first novel, The Return Trip. If you’re planning to give it as a gift, it’s recommended for adults.

Happy Holidays to all. May we all live in peace.

#BlackSeptember #CampDavid #FrameworkForPeace #GazaBombardment #IsraelHamasWar #MediaCoverage #MunichOlympics #Netanyahu #Palestinians #PresidentCarter #RapeAndMurder #TaoistMartialAndHealingArts #TargetingCivilians #TheReturnTrip #Ukraine #UnitedNations #WarCrimes