GAVEL GAMUT
By Jim Redwine
www.jamesmredwine.com
(Week of 23 September 2024)
A NEW DAWN
Instead of turning on the morning news at 6:00 a.m. today I took my coffee out on the veranda and watched Mother Nature paint her sunrise. There was an opening of a rose and grey curtain upon a magical mist across the meadow. At 6:30 there was a series of white puffs of clouds in a vee shape reminiscent of a flight of geese heading southeast.
Two hummingbirds appeared at one of Peg’s feeders about 6:45 then a covey of quail marched across the yard raising dust as they pecked for their breakfast. No other humans could be seen or heard as I anticipated Peg joining me. It was good to hear nothing but birds and see nothing but waving grass and the occasional tree standing sentinel surrounded by the glistening golden dew that coated the tall bluestem.
My thoughts turned to what a peaceful home we enjoy and how fortunate we are to be in a place where strangers wave to you on the road and speak to you on the street. I savored the knowledge that Americans are generally good and America is a special place where strangers volunteer to help other strangers and us. The reverie the sunrise brought was belied when I opened the news app on my cell phone and was assaulted by the cable news reports.
Two assassination attempts in two months. Each of the four people seeking to lead us for the next four years spouting vile invective about the other side. The TV anchors choosing their favorite victim to attack and amplifying their aspersions with innuendo and an attitude of pious indignation. Reports of terrorism in the Middle East, much of it enabled and abetted by our country’s military might and political power. The terrorism involving Israel did not begin with October 7, 2023. The origins harken back to 1948 when much of the world’s sympathy for Jewish victims of the Nazis led to Arabic victims from Zionism. The Palestinian victims in Gaza whose woes began in 1967 are now joined with what the national media appears to admire as a clever Zionist incursion into Lebanon with boobytrapped pagers and walkie-talkies provided to Hezbollah members.
Indiscriminate bombing of militants and civilians has been the Zionist approach in Gaza and in its most recent detonation of explosive pagers and walkie-talkies without regard to the innocent Lebanese bystanders. Many Israelis disagree with their government’s prosecution of its destruction of Gaza and attacks in Syria and Lebanon. This is also true of many Americans who observe helplessly as our government aids and abets the Zionist regime’s military aggression.
Young Americans on several college campuses and in several cities are putting their futures at risk by raising their voices against our government’s myopic vision of what is justice in the Middle East. Perhaps this new generation will accomplish what college students in the 1960’s and ’70’s did; finally help bring peace to foreign lands.
A major strategic error Israel’s government may have made was the failure to consider the long-term effect its actions in Lebanon would have on the highly motivated and energetic youth of America. When I returned to the campus of Indiana University in 1966, my oldest brother and I already had our honorable discharges and did not need to fear the draft. However, my middle brother was still in the army and some of my classmates were always concerned.
But about all we had was folk songs and protests rallies. There were no cell phones to be constantly stuck to our ears and communicate calls for peace. However, with today’s under 30 crowd the constitutional right to a cell phone is like the 11th Amendment to the Bill of Rights. If our government does not take action to assure America’s youth can have the confidence to use their cell phones, I pity the politicians. Our incursions into the Middle East may soon fade away just as the beautiful sunrise did. Of course, just like the next war, tomorrow will bring another dawn.
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