* * *
I am convinced
that none of the litigation involving our indicted and defeated former
president will be fully resolved by the November elections. Lawyer-initiated delays, appeals, and the
time needed to even consider frivolous excuses will assure that in all 50
States, Donald Trump will be on the ballot with slates of electors pledged to
support him.
 |
| The Supreme Court in Action |
Like a football team on fourth down on their own twenty-yard line, the Supreme Court will ‘punt,’ coming up with legalistic, technical reasons (some are calling them ‘off-ramps’) for doing nothing and not making meaningful decision about the defeated former president’s eligibility to run for office, or in regard to the numerous court cases stemming from the charges made by our government’s lawyers against him. His having appointed three SCOTUS justices might be the reason for this.
The bottom line
is that a judicial system accustomed to taking its time to do anything will
have failed a country needing its clear decisions before the next presidential
election. That being the case, it is the American voting public that must be
the judge and jury in these cases. The
judges have abdicated their roles.
Folks, put on
your black robes. The Supreme Court has
put theirs in a closet somewhere.
Most of the
evidence that has been or will be presented in court is available to you, the
voter, on TV and in the newspapers. You can be the judge and the jury in
deciding whether the charges against Donald John Trump have any merit, and
whether he should be returned to the White House.
The judiciary
will find a way to avoid its responsibilities, and therefore, it is your
decision, your Honors, to make on November 5, 2024, not theirs any longer.
JL
* * *
No Such Thing as a Loyal Republican
The Trumpublican Party has turned on one of their own, Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, for his support of a bi-partisan bill to help solve the immigration problem on our southern border. He risks following the path pioneered by Liz Chaney.
Clearly, following the dictates
(that’s what a dictator orders to be done) of the G.O.P’s likely
presidential candidate has a far higher priority than doing what's best for the
country. Even though the measure
contains most of what Republicans have been asking for, its passage, Trump
feels, might reflect favorably on President Biden. So letting the crisis persist becomes
Republican policy. Ugh.
'Traditional'
Republicans should open their eyes to the fact that today's G.O.P. is not a
decent place for them to call home. It
ain’t their fathers’ Republican Party. While
not expecting them to become Democrats, Republican Senators can at least
declare themselves to be 'Independents' and act that way, as Senators Sinema,
King, and Sanders have done for various reasons, free to let their consciences (and
their constituents wishes) be their guides.
As for traditional
Republican voters back home, they have three choices: 1. Vote for Democrats, 2. Skip voting
entirely, or 3. Hold their noses and vote for Republicans. (They should
remember that It is impossible to hold one’s nose for four years, as many
unsuccessfully tried to do from 2016 to 2020.)
JL
* * *
Every time I think I’ve written what I thought was a comprehensive, definitive, piece about Israel, the situation there boils over and I start typing again. The following is my summation, as of this moment, of the problems facing Israel and a tentative solution. I am certain many reading this will disagree with me. Your constructive criticism is invited which, with your approval, can be included on Jackspotpourri.
* *
Benjamin Netanyahu depends on allies from Israel’s extreme right to
maintain a majority in the Knesset. By
themselves, these extremists are a small minority in that body. Many Israelis do somewhat agree with them
though, but only because they are not being offered any practical alternatives
at this time, especially in the light of Hamas’ October 7 attack. Netanyahu, whose
Likud Party falls short of having a majority on its own, depends on the support
of these extremists to form a government and has given several key cabinet
posts to their leaders.
This dependence on extremists creates problems for what I believe are
the majority of Israelis. Right now, their criticism of the extremists who
support Netanyahu is muted while all Israelis unite to defend their nation from
Hamas, work to permanently destroy it, along with hoping efforts to bring about
the safe return of the hostages Hamas holds will succeed. Sooner or
later though, they will have to deal with the increasingly unpopular Benjamin
Netanyahu and the extremists he has brought into his government.
Basically, the extremist Israeli position is a mirror image of that of the
Palestinian extremists, currently manifested and spearheaded by Hamas, which
believes in fighting to establish a Palestinian state that extends ‘from the
river (the Jordan) to the sea (the Mediterranean)’. To Israelis, this sounds
like a frightening Arab version of Nazi Germany’s effort to be ‘judenrein.’
But getting back to that ‘mirror
image,’ the Israeli extremists look back thousands of years to when all the
territory comprising today’s Palestine was their homeland, a powerful state
which only disappeared after being subjugated by the Romans, who had no
tolerance for the religious beliefs of those whom they conquered. Consequently,
all but a tiny remnant of Jews left what had been their homeland for more
welcoming parts of the world in what became known as the Diaspora.
Late in the Nineteenth century, motivated by antisemitism in a Europe, to
which many Jews had migrated, the idea of returning to their historic homeland,
Israel, was popularized by Theodor Hertzl. This became known as Zionism. In the
Twentieth century, the Holocaust made Zionism more than just a hope, but a
reality. (The anthem ‘Hatikvah’ translates as ‘the hope.’)
After the fall of the Roman Empire, control of Palestine ultimately
ended up in the hands of the Ottoman Empire, which was not unfriendly to Jews
returning to what had once been their homeland. After all, the Muslim Ottomans thought,
at least they weren’t crusading Christians.
Over four hundred years of Ottoman rule, some Jews did exactly that,
purchasing land and establishing communities in Palestine. Into this environment, as Hertzl’s Zionism
took root, some antagonism between the growing Jewish population and the
Palestinian Arabs appeared, occasionally erupting into violence.
After the First World War, the Ottoman Empire disappeared, and Palestine
became a ‘mandate’ administered by Great Britain. In 1947, the United Nations
partitioned it into two areas, one for Jews, which became the State of Israel
in 1948, and one for the Palestinian Arabs, who refused to form a State,
counting on their Arab neighbors to rid Palestine of the Jews and provide them
with a state running ‘from the river to the sea.’ Militarily, they repeatedly failed to do
this, and since 1967, the State of Israel has also occupied the territory that
would have been a Palestinian state, territory they never really coveted,
except for strategic areas such as the Golan Heights. And that, more or less, is where we are
today.
The Israeli
extremists’ mirror image of the Palestinian extremist vision of a state extending ‘from
the river to the sea’ would be
a State of Israel with its borders expanded to what they were before Israel
fell before the Roman legions many centuries ago, and that is the desire
of Israeli’s extremists. The Palestinians could remain if they chose to, but
their citizenship there would have some limitations, since an expanded Israel
would clearly be a Jewish state, or they could leave if they wish, despite no
Arab nation throwing out a welcome mat for them.
Both goals, an exclusionary Jewish state or an exclusionary Palestinian
state, are one-state solutions, doomed to failure.
Netanyahu’s
government, and prior Likud leaders, have gone along with allowing extensive
Israeli settlements in the territory that would have been the Palestinian state
under the UN’s partition plan.
Approximately 700,000 Israelis live in such well-established, usually
fenced-off, and armed settlements there, supported enthusiastically by the
right-wing Israeli extremists to whom Netanyahu owes his position. To my way of thinking, that is the crux of the
problem. Because Netanyahu caters to
Israeli extremists is no reason for us to also take that position. Many,
if not most, Israelis do not support them either, although they are hesitant to
attack their government while it is fighting a war against Hamas and trying to
negotiate a return of hostages held by Hamas.
To put this in a
demographic perspective, The State of Israel’s total population is a bit under
nine and a half million, of which about 73% are Jewish and about 21% are Muslim.
Beyond its borders in the occupied
territories are two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and perhaps three
million on the West Bank. Looking at the
entire area, encompassing the State of Israel and the occupied territories
including Gaza, population-wise, it
seems safe to say that Palestinians account for more than 40% of the people
there. These numbers, which cannot
be ignored, seem to point in one direction, and that is to a two-state
solution. The presence of
these 700,000 Israelis in the settlements constitutes an obstacle to that. (Quietly, almost on tip-toes, the United States
government is slowly swinging toward a position recognizing that and beginning
to criticize the militancy of some settlers and of the Israeli troops stationed
there supposedly to defend them.)
My feeling is that
there must be such a solution because a one-state solution would not provide an
answer for those, either Israeli or Palestinian, who would be excluded from, or
at best be second-class citizens of, whatever single state were established,
and would be willing to fight to maintain their dominant identity there. That would guarantee continuing violence by
Hamas-inspired extremists or by armed Israeli settlers. The attack by Hamas
from within Gaza is an example of this, going so far as to include Israel’s
armed forces in the struggle.
Months ago, on
this blog, I outlined the way to a two-state solution. It starts with incrementally moving those
700,000 Israelis back to within the borders of the State of Israel over twenty
years, from what then would become part of a disarmed Palestinian state that must
first agree to permanently live peacefully next to the State of Israel. These Israelis would be compensated and
resettled within Israel. The borders of
the two states would approximate what the 1947 United Nations partition laid
out.
To this I now add that the peaceful intentions of such a
disarmed state would have to be guaranteed and financed by Sunni Muslim states
such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, all of which desire and would benefit
from peaceful relationships with the State of Israel, undeniably motivated in
part by the need for unity against a common adversary, Iran.
As for obvious
Iranian objections to such an arrangement, either directly or through its
‘proxies,’ that would be a challenge to be dealt with by the United States independently
as well as through the world’s financial community, without whose support Iran would
be bankrupt. Iranians must have a market for their petroleum. They cannot drink
it.
If snags and
problems develop in bringing about this two-state solution, remember that it
would take place incrementally during the twenty-year period mentioned above, providing
the time and opportunity to make changes and modifications in its details. Certainly, this is preferable to the violence
and war which would accompany any one-state solution.
JL
* * *
Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com.
Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.
If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them.
There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog.
Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.
Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it, particularly if they are a registered voter.
JL
* * *
No comments:
Post a Comment