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Posts Tagged ‘Palestine’

“Not a Fan”

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 16, 2025| 2 Comments »

Happy Hanukkah! I’m a big fan of the holiday season. I love FaceTiming with the Twins and watching their little hands crinkle the wrapping paper of the toys we sent them. Singing the blessing as the Pumpkin lights the menorah and then devouring the Bride’s potato latkes. Setting up my horseshoe Christmas tree brings me joy.

The Groom returned Sunday night from a working trip to Australia and New Zealand. He was flying home when we heard about the massacre on Bondi Beach. Another incident of antisemitism was not surprising, but in Australia? The video however was instructive, showing the pair of father/son killers shooting methodically with what looked like long-barreled hunting rifles – because assault-style guns are banned there. And then out of nowhere, a HERO tackles one of the gunmen – 43 year old Ahmed al Ahmed, a father-of-two, grabs the gun out of the killer’s hands.

And I really don’t care if this man is an atheist, a Lebanese Christian, or Muslim.

I’m a fan of finding the light at our darkest hour. Ahmed deserves to be celebrated! The Aussies have started a Go Fund Me for his medical bills and they’ve raised over a million dollars. The PM is dedicated to reviewing their gun laws. And all that’s great, but what about the two other Australians killed trying to stop the gunmen with bricks? What about the 15 families affected by the murder of their loved ones – the 10 year old girl, the two rabbis, the Holocaust survivor? My heart breaks for their families.

Bob was wondering if the attack over the weekend at Brown University was motivated by antisemitism. He said it’s known to attract progressive thinkers and may have a higher number of Jewish students, so I looked it up. And when compared to other Ivies he’s right – around 24%! “Today, Brown has the highest percentage of Jewish students of any Ivy League university and has the 10th most Jewish students at any private university in America.” https://www.browndailyherald.com/article/2025/11/canfield-28-130-years-after-browns-first-jewish-students-graduated-jewish-life-on-college-hill-is-thriving

The killer of two students, who wounded many more, is still at large so we don’t know his motivation. We do know our president is determined not to do anything to address gun violence in this country, and the Director of the FBI is incompetent. I am not a fan of Kash Patel.

And when Mr T rambled on X about the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner, how he’s not a fan of Reiner and disparages his work in Hollywood, and turns this most tragic, horrific event into a soliloquy about himself, I was not surprised. Mr T’s stream of evil consciousness should be apparent now to everyone, to both parties, all religions and the world at large. What kind of monster does this? The kind who called John McCain a “f-ing loser,” yet another person our idiotic president is not a fan of…

I AM NOT A FAN OF YOU MR T. Do you think you’re still on the Apprentice looking for ratings? You’re committing war crimes off the coast of Venezuela. And it’s not about drug dealers, it’s about the OIL. You’re itching to start a war to take the pressure off your involvement with a known pedophile. What did you say to Epstein to make him double over laughing? Why were you photographed surrounded by young women on his island? What are you hiding?

On this third night of Hanukkah, my wish is for sunshine laws to pry open the Epstein files. That’s all I want from Santa too. BIG Santa fan here! Amen.

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Canary on a College Campus

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on April 8, 2025| 1 Comment »

The news is seeping into my dreamy grandmotherly days.

Yes, I’m washing baby bottles, cuddling babies, and pitching in with household chores because twins… and every now and then I catch a glimpse of the rest of the world. I know there was a Hands Off protest in almost every major city around the world this past weekend. And I’m glad to see so many groups coalesce around the fight against totalitarianism.

But what really got to me was seeing Jewish and Palestinian students at Columbia University chain themselves to a fence in opposition to the school’s funding of Israel.

Don’t let the T administration fool you – they are twisting a biblical feud into a supposed fight against antisemitism. But by arresting, deporting and basically disappearing hundreds of valid college students studying here, in this country, legally btw, Mr T has shown his true colors. What has been happening on college campuses lately is truly Orwellian.

What were their crimes? Speaking freely about their opposition to bombing women and children in Gaza? Signing a petition equating the Israeli government with an apartheid system?

It may be hard to believe, for some MAGA Americans to believe, but Jewish Americans can love the state of Israel and still disagree with Netanyahu and his government’s policies. Just like we can love our country and wish with all our hearts that Harris was elected. Mr T is not doing us Jews any favors!

And this morning I read about a covert group, Canary Mission, that has been tracking activists in university settings all around the country for years:

“The group, which says its mission is to single out those who promote “hatred of the U.S.A., Israel and Jews on North American college campuses,” listed the names of seven students and academics, including three current and former professors at Columbia University.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/us/israel-gaza-student-protests-canary-mission.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

And a play about the McCarthy commission and Walter Winchell just opened on Broadway starring George Clooney, along with my neighbor Ann’s son, Mac Brandt. Ann escaped the Altadena fire and attended the opening night in NYC. I wonder, can we learn from our history?

Seventy years go, in Hollywood many Jewish artists made McCarthy’s black list. Today, our government is making another list in the guise of antisemitism. The canary is not only singing, it’s screaming.

Dinner on the deck with the twins in their Moses baskets.

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Compelling Speech

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2024| Leave a Comment »

There is a movement afoot in our country that is downright dangerous. A friend recently told me that silence is best, whenever Israel and Hamas and college protestors might come up in polite conversation. But as I’ve said before countless times like a mantra – it is silence and indifference that led to the Holocaust. At first with small things, like where Jews could go to school, and later with bigger things like where Jews could live and finally sending Jews off to “work camps.” It doesn’t happen all at once, genocide is a big word that begins slowly, with small changes in rules and regulations.

Between packing today for our twice Covid-Osteoporosis-delayed Italy trip, I happened to read about PEN America cancelling our country’s highest literary award ceremony. Why? Half of the participants dropped out of the running because they wanted PEN members to sign a petition stating that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. And an anonymous group on X has created a spreadsheet, titled “Is Your Fav Author a Zionist?” complete with color-coded categories like “pro-Israel/Zionist!”

“Over the past several months, a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel. This phenomenon has been unfolding in progressive spaces (academia, politics, cultural organizations) for quite some time. That it has now hit the rarefied, highbrow realm of publishing — where Jewish Americans have made enormous contributions and the vitality of which depends on intellectual pluralism and free expression — is particularly alarming… Compelling speech — which is ultimately what PEN’s critics are demanding of it — is the tactic of commissars, not writers in a free society. Censorship, thought policing and bullying are antithetical to the spirit of literature, which is best understood as an intimate conversation between the author and individual readers.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/27/opinion/publishing-literary-antisemitism.html

Compelling a literary society to speak in a certain way, to denounce a whole group of people, (and believe me at least 80% of Jewish Americans believe Israel has a right to exist, which makes us Zionists I guess) is using the same playbook as banning books IMHO. There have been over 4,000 book bans in schools in just the first half of this year! Parents, going to a public School Board meeting to try and weave their ideology or religious views into the curriculum, are misguided at best and malicious at worst. Our Founding Fathers would roll over in their graves because our very liberty is dependent on separation of church and state.

Of course being able to speak and write what’s on your mind presumes we live in a free society. But do we? Over 339 writers are being held in jails around the world, mostly in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. In this country, an ex-President can denigrate a judge’s family without being thrown in jail, he can mock reporters with cerebral palsy and talk about grabbing women by their privates. Nothing happens. In fact, he just might get re-elected. But when a comic, say Kathy Griffin, put a bloody picture of T’s head on social media, she was investigated by the DOJ and the FBI and was cancelled. Still, the twice impeached ex-Prez can call for a bloody rebellion…and that’s his free speech I guess.

This morning Bob only scooped five cicadas out of the pool, instead of 50, so maybe we’re over the hump? They should be gone by the time we return from Italy. Last week, Bob and I attended a 6th Grade debate in the halls of the TN Capitol; Hamas and Israel didn’t come up. But I was proud to hear these 12 year olds discuss AI and gun control. Our future Activists are bright and engaging, compelling even, and gave me hope. If only we could start a middle school through high school for Palestinians and Israelis.

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Campus Woes

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2024| 2 Comments »

My brother, Dr Jim, reminded me that our Father graduated from Columbia’s Pharmacy School back in the 1930s. I knew that Jim was a Columbia alum before heading to Vietnam, and found out that Bob’s cousin was set to graduate from its School of Social Work! We first met Zoe when she was born in Rumson, and now she’s a beautiful young woman about to embark on her career. Only she asked her parents not to come to her graduation, beause she didn’t think it would be safe.

This is what it’s like to be Jewish today.

Graduations across the country are being rescheduled and cancelled all together. Why? Well, it’s complicated and quite simple, a contradiction to be sure. Israel is fighting a deadly enemy at its border… and Palestinians deserve to live freely. We are all adult enough to hold these two constructs in our minds. But there are biblical grudges and terrorist power plays. The extremists on both sides are destroying the dream of two states.

What if a terrorist group took over Mexico? What would we do? Never mind: “Organized crime groups are turning Mexico’s elections into a literal battleground, making the campaign this year one of the deadliest in the country’s modern history. More than two dozen candidates have been killed leading up to the June 2 vote; hundreds have dropped out of the race. More than 400 have asked the federal government for security details. The campaign of intimidation and assassination is putting democracy itself at risk.” https://wapo.st/4bCae1Y

MORE THAN 24 CANDIDATES ARE DEAD? I had no idea; and yet here, right here in these United States, we have a candidate who rambles on about a serial killer at a rally, postulated he could get away with murder on Park Avenue, and most likely considered hanging his vice-president if it meant he could stay in office. I Just. Don’t. Get It. And granted, i’m not watching the Manhattan trial of Mr T, I’d rather watch paint dry. Because right on schedule, our robin babies graduated to the backyard!

It was the day after a night of tornado warnings – a beautiful, cool sunshiny morning.

There was mild whooping and clapping as our birds flew the nest. Bob and I watched the first baby robin, perching on the edge, take off right into our maple tree! I was expecting a gentle flapping of wings with a soft landing in my begonias. But it was a flawless finish for the alpha robin. I immediately called the Bride and listened to the whole family ohhh and ahhh. And as we were busy kvelling, the second baby flew all the way out to our back fence, landed on the grass and promptly hopped up into Bob’s raised bed of vegetables.

It was 7 am and I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee. And I really needed that first cup because I’d been sleeping with one eye open. The last, smallest robin was still sitting in the corner, crying for his mama. We watched her return with a worm, or maybe it was a cicada, and she must have had ‘the talk’ with him because she didn’t come back. Over the course of the morning, we noticed the baby move closer to the far edge, but we gave up our post by the back door and went on with our day. We noticed our empty nest around lunchtime, and we vowed to keep the Little Emperor away for awhile.

I thought to myself, “Now we are empty-nesters again.” The week before the flash flood warnings and tornado sightings, I’d been waking almost every night to check on the robin’s nest. One night I thought i heard an owl. Another night, gigantic squirrels were bowling on the patio’s tin roof! I was returning to that sleep-deprived delirium of bringing home a newborn.

I read that Jerry Seinfeld spoke at Duke’s graduation on Sunday, Bob and the Bride’s alma mater. The comedian who joked about ‘nothing’ seems to have found his voice. Only a couple dozen students walked out of the stadium when he appeared, out of 7,000. They rose and left peacefully, because Jerry has the audacity to support Israel, to proudly declare his Jewishness. This is part of what he said to the Duke Class of 2024:

“Whatever you’re doing, I don’t care if it’s your job, your hobby, a relationship, getting a reservation at M Sushi,” he said. “Make an effort. Just pure, stupid, no-real-idea-what-I’m-doing-here effort. Effort always yields a positive value, even if the outcome of the effort is absolute failure of the desired result. This is a rule of life. Just swing the bat and pray is not a bad approach to a lot of things… also fall in love, not just with people, but anything and everything.”

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Sunrise

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on October 11, 2023| 2 Comments »

I was going to write about our glamping getaway with friends to Wildwood. But then I thought I’d have to start off before our Granville, TN jaunt, with our trip to the Emergency Department of the Bride’s hospital. And then Hamas attacked Israel.

At sunrise on Saturday the war began. The terrorists entered the country by land, sea and motorized paragliders – launching over 2,000 rockets and overwhelming Israel’s Iron Dome defenses. The descendants of Abraham are caught once again in a biblical battle and my heart aches for all the innocent Jewish and Arab citizens who are caught in the middle.

But make no mistake, their hatred runs deep.

Before glamping with friends last week, our whole southern family met up with my step-brother Eric at the Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky. If you recall, the Flapper married Eric’s father, her third husband Mr B, when I was in middle school. He was a distinguished judge in town, and he and Bob’s father shared the honor of being first and second presidents of the Dover Jewish Center Brotherhood.

Eric and I have been wanting our Grands to get together forever; he has three granddaughters living close by in St Louis, about the same age as our Bug and Pumpkin. Eric spoke fluent Hebrew and worked on a Kibbutz after college. When Vietnam happened he was drafted, and because he is a pacifist, he served as a med-evac Huey pilot. He introduced me to Arlo Guthrie and the fine art of passive resistance.

I was looking forward to hearing his thoughts on the politics of Israel today, on the extreme Orthodoxy that would like to turn Israel into a theocracy like Iran… before Saturday.

Many years ago I was visiting Eric and his wife Bev with the Flapper for their daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. He’d been a practicing dentist for over 30 years at that time. We were sitting in their living room with friends of theirs from Israel, one a young lawyer and judge who I’ll call Anat. I’d been complaining about Newark airport, about an Army soldier being searched before boarding our plane. It was the early 90s, long before TSA. And Anat said,

“You don’t think they would dress like a soldier?”

No, I hadn’t thought of that. Just like I didn’t think a plane hijacking meant a suicide mission. But her eyes changed, her posture changed, her essence changed before my eyes – Anat became a soldier. And so I immediately thought of Anat’s beautiful family in Ramat HaSharon, Israel on Saturday. I texted Bev to see if they were OK, and for now they are safe. I checked her facebook page but it was all in Hebrew, nothing past mid-September when the Holy Days began.

They should have been celebrating the end of Sukkot, a Jewish Thanksgiving and more. Last Saturday marked the end of reading the Torah in synagogues everywhere, and opening the book again to the first of the Five Books of Moses. It is a joyous time. Instead they are under attack from an enemy that wants to annihilate OUR people, the Jewish people. Their hatred runs deep. The British tried to draw boundaries on an area of nomadic tribes with fluid borders. But since shortly after the Holocaust, since 1948, Israel has been a sovereign state, a democracy, the size of New Jersey, surrounded by Arab states.

Make no mistake. Israelis do not slaughter Olympic athletes, or fly jets into buildings. They don’t strap bombs on themselves and walk into markets or behead journalists and children to post on Facebook live. Hamas must be stopped.

The sun is rising on part of my family in California – can you tell who is Jewish?

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