February15, 2024 - Taylor Swift, Voting By Mail, Garland's Mistake, Political Advice to Joe, Tom Suozzi's Victory

 

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 Merrick Garland’s Mistake - Lawyers’ Ethics (or lack thereof)

Attorney-General Garland

Here’s a letter I sent to the Palm Beach Post the other day.  I will let you know if they publish it.

‘Attorney-General Merrick Garland made a mistake when he appointed Robert Gur as a Special Counsel looking into President Biden's possible mishandling of documents when he left the vice presidency in 2016.  He should have been aware that the ethics of some in the legal profession are far below those found in other professions, such as medicine, dentistry, teaching, and even the practice of cosmetology.  Gur colored his report finding nothing worth pursuing further with his own political opinions, specifically those relating to President Biden's age. 

'This is the same kind of thing that James Comey and Bill Barr, also lawyers, did in letting their personal political opinions put a negative slant on their reports on Hillary Clinton's emails and Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian involvement in our 2016 elections, respectively.  

'That the Palm Beach Post periodically publishes lists of lawyers disciplined by the Florida Supreme Court for ethical violations indicates the existence of this problem in the legal profession, something I don't see regularly publicized for other professions by whatever agency is responsible for regulating them. Garland, a lawyer himself, should have known better.’

JL

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Taylor Swift’s Politics

The media (USA Today) report that ‘nearly one in five Americans believe Taylor Swift is part of a 2024 plot to help Joe Biden’ might be correct!  Regardless of whether or not Ms. Swift's is part of it, I can at least confirm the existence of such a ‘plot’ or conspiracy because I too am part of it! 

We meet periodically to discuss how to get people to register to vote, to write ‘postal cards,’ to communicate with legislators, sign petitions, join ‘phone banks,’ and other activities that are part of the responsibility of being politically active in a democracy.

I now suspect that the strange lady showing up at some of our meetings, but not ‘signing in,’ wearing dark glasses and a Miami Dolphin jersey. intentionally to mislead us, might be Ms. Swift, while a stand-in fills her role in her world-wide tour.

JL                                          

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Voting by Mail – This is Very Important!

Florida voters have gotten used to voting by mail.  It’s safe and simple.  But just because you might have done it in the past does not mean you can automatically continue to do so.  Current State election laws require you to renew your ‘voting by mail’ status before the next election in order to receive a ‘vote by mail’ ballot.  

If you vote in Palm Beach County, do it right now by visiting https://www.votepalmbeach.gov/Voters/Vote-By-Mail or by CLICKING HERE.  For those who do not want do it online, they can sign up for vote-by-mail by calling (561) 656 6208.  In other Florida counties, visit the website of your Supervisor of Elections or call them.

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(One final word to emphasize the non-partisan nature of this blog: Encourage your Republican friends to vote in person at their polling places on Wednesday, November 6, 2024, a day set aside for Republican voters throughout the nation.)

JL                                          

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What’s Gonna Be, Gonna Be!

So here's my advice to Joe.

Face it.  The two candidates for president on your ballot in November (excluding numerous third-party candidates who will never get an electoral vote, and just mess things up, possibly affecting the outcome in a particular State, …. so please ignore them) will be President Biden and his predecessor in office, Donald John Trump.

In my opinion, anyone who votes for Donald does not care about the future of representative democracy in the United States, but many millions will vote for him, for a variety of reasons into which I won’t be going at this time.  I think Joe Biden will be re-elected, but it will be close.

My advice, which he has not solicited, to President Biden is threefold.

First, he must avoid taking overly strong positions on issues which might lose him some votes.  These include the Middle East, Ukraine, and immigration, legal and otherwise, particularly at our Southern border.  He must tread carefully in these areas, maintaining his present positions, but not advocating anything monumental. The months before the election are not the time for engaging in arguments, nor spending resources to point out that John Donald Trump is mired in both civil and criminal litigation (for which he has been indicted) that will apparently go on for many years.  Biden need not expend any resources on that.  News media will do it automatically, and for free.

I feel that primarily, President Biden should make this election about the nation’s continuing progress under his Administration (think the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPs and Science Act, the Infrastructure & Investment Jobs Act and its resulting job-creating projects, the rising stock market, and decreasing inflation.)  But he should not ignore the destructive potential of a second Trump term, using Donald’s own words.  He should mix a little about the future with a little about the past, enunciating his successes compared to Trump’s failures. Most importantly, this requires him to TURN UP THE VOLUME.

Secondly, President Biden must light a fire under Vice President Harris.  When a candidate for president is 81 years old, that automatically ups the importance of the vice-presidency.  Kamala Harris must demonstrate her capabilities along with projecting an image of strength as she did early in her 2020 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.  If it appears that she is failing to do both very quickly, replacement on the ticket should be considered.

Thirdly, if Donald John Trump manages to win the election and Congress, both within the realm of possibility, the future of our representative democracy can only be saved by the Supreme Court.  As an insurance policy to protect the country should that happen, President Biden should right now, while the Democrats still control the Senate, nominate four additional Justices to the SCOTUS, thrice corrupted with reactionary ‘originalist’ appointees made by Trump during his administration, who view history through a rear-view mirror.  This is permissible under the Constitution, which is silent on the number of SCOTUS Justices, and once nominated, only require a simple majority vote by the Senate.

I know President Biden would be criticized for doing this, a purely political tactic, but it is necessary in view of the dangers another term for Trump will bring: a national ban on abortions, easy and simple access to weapons for every American, Department of Justice prosecution of his political opposition, blindness to the effects of climate change, freeing the very wealthy from paying their fair share of taxes, and an end to regulation of major businesses and of our financial marketplaces.

3 + 4 = 7 > 6  

Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, Brown plus four new appointees will leave Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Chief Justice Roberts as a minority on the SCOTUS.    

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Finally, as screwed-up, divided, and unpredictable as the American voters are and have been, all it takes is a crisis to bring them together.  This unification occurred in 1776 (the crisis then was the refusal of the colonists’ British ‘masters’ to grant independence), again in 1861 (the crisis then was the secessionists’ determination to expand slavery Westward), and in 1941 (the crisis then was the desire of the Axis powers to rule the world).

You will note that about eighty years separated each of these three crises.  It has been about 84 years since Pearl Harbor, so we are about due for another one.  

Today’s crisis is the threat to representative democracy in the United States posed by the vast number of American people, not quite a majority, who have lost faith in democracy and are willing to give an autocratic form of government, if not a dictatorship, a chance.  Donald John Trump personally is not the threat representing this crisis.  It is the American people who support him, and who have mobilized the Republican Party as their tool, who are the threat.  Some of their reasons to do so are malign.

Defeating them, or at least effectively dealing with their anger, will be more difficult than defeating the Redcoats in the 1770s, Johnny Reb in 1860s, or the Axis powers in the 1940s.  The nation’s motto, E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one) demands unification at this time.

Our best chance of achieving that without bloodshed, in addition to the threefold advice I offer to President Biden in the paragraphs above, is democracy’s giving the Republican Party enough rope with which to hang itself in the full view of the American people.

JL                                          

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Suozzi Wins in New York’s Third C.D.

An Omen!  

In his victory speech after his winning election in New York’s 3rd Congressional district to replace a disgraced, indicted, and expelled professional Republican liar, Tom Suozzi (a former Democratic centrist congressman who had given up his seat to unsuccessfully run in the Democratic 2022 primary for New York’s governorship) identified specific groups, thanking his Jewish, Irish, Italian, Black, Latino, Korean, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Japanese, and Chinese supporters, to raucous cheers, for helping him win by an unexpectedly large margin.  Democrat Suozzi is also a former Nassau County executive and Mayor of Glen Cove.

It was clear that the groups that form Long Island’s traditional conservative Republican base were absent from Suozzi’s list of those increasingly inhabiting and dominating the Third Congressional district.  It sounded to me like the resurrection of the alliances that kept the Democrats in power during the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

And that is a good sign.

One bad sign, however, something that I have not seen reported in the media, was the brief attempt during Suozzi’s speech of a demonstrator with a Palestinian flag who attempted to push onto the platform but was quickly turned away.  I witnessed the episode, which took no more than one or two seconds, on MSNBC, my source of viewing the speech delivered live.  Suozzi, who must run again in November, should take note of this as also must President Biden.  

In trying for a win in November, Republicans are not above using Biden's support, however hedged, of Israel's defensive war against Hamas as an issue.  Remember that Donald John Trump has practically encouraged Vladimir Putin to attack NATO members who are behind on their dues.  When you think that Republicans have sunk to the lowest levels possible, they always find something even lower to sink to.  The 2024 General Election may be that party's last rodeo. 

JL                                          

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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.  This is an election year.  Spread the word.

JL

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February 8, 2024 - Voting by Mail, Politics, the NPVIC, and Basketball Woes

 

Voting by Mail – This is Very Important!

Florida voters have gotten used to voting by mail.  It’s safe and simple.  But just because you might have done it in the past does not mean you can automatically continue to do so.  Current State election laws require you to renew your ‘voting by mail’ status before the next election in order to receive a ‘vote by mail’ ballot.  

If you vote in Palm Beach County, do it right now by visiting https://www.votepalmbeach.gov/Voters/Vote-By-Mail or by CLICKING HERE.  For those who do not want do it online, they can sign up for vote-by-mail by calling (561) 656 6208.  In other Florida counties, visit the website of your Supervisor of Elections or call them. 

JL                                          

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The Street Sign Republicans
Don't See Along Trump Avenue

Carlson, Trump, Loyalty, and Republicans

It is hard to believe that there are people in this country who take Tucker Carlson, presently in Moscow, seriously, but there are.

Despite their bluster, I get the feeling that the remnants of the Republican Party, now in its death throes as the defeated and indicted former president attempts to re-create it in his own personal image as ‘der Fuhrer,’ are now scurrying for shelter. 

They throw roadblocks up in Congress, they frantically propose unpassable cosmetic legislation to counter real bi-partisan measures, they pray for endless delays in the litigation Donald John Trump (likely to be stripped of whatever presidential immunity he claims) faces, they pursue impeachments that would never survive a Senate vote, and they hope that their loyalty to Trump will save them in the end.  

It won't.  It never has.  With Trump, LOYALTY IS A ONE-WAY STREET.  The trouble is that there are no street signs to alert Republicans to that, and they depend on all the wrong sources for information ... like Carlson.

JL                                          

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More Politics -Today’s Wrap-Up

It is clear that the Trumpublican Party is not interested in passing the bi-partisan Senate immigration legislation, most of which they have long advocated, because their indicted, defeated, former president wants it as a campaign issue when he runs for president again.  The last thing he wants to do is allow President Biden to receive credit for what he failed to accomplish.

And believe me, the former president will be on the ballot in all 50 States, as the Supreme Court finds a lawyerly ‘off ramp’ to the court challenges to his candidacy.  When they make a decision, it will be to ‘punt,’ and those who dislike Donald will not risk a ‘roughing the kicker’ penalty because there are bigger cases coming down the pike at the SCOTUS, specifically dealing with the January 6, 2021 insurrection and the former president’s immunity claims in regard to it, necessitating their remaining in the Supreme Court's good graces.

Trump has no other issue that might appeal to voters living outside of his shrinking MAGA base.  Right now, like petulant children, Trumpublicans are holding other important issues like support for Ukraine and Israel as hostages, so they can keep an immigration crisis alive for Trump to use as a campaign issue. He has nothing else to lie about because the economy has improved under President Biden, the stock market is up, inflation is down, and a majority of Americans support abortion rights and gun controls. 

An immigration crisis is all he has to run with so solving it is not in his interest, even though it is paramount in the nation’s interest, which is something that has never been of concern to Donald.  This tactic resembles the refusal of Arab nations to try to end the Palestinian refugee crisis.  Doing so would take away their major weapon in opposing the State of Israel.

Yet these idiots in the House still are wasting time trying to ‘impeach’ the Homeland Security Secretary without any evidence, claiming that he failed to do what they refuse to even consider doing at this time, passing ‘ready-to-go’ bi-partisan immigration legislation.  Kissing Trump’s butt is the House majority’s highest priority because the small percentage of voters who blindly follow his commands often comprise their margin of victory in their Congressional districts.

I feel that Trumpublicans will go down to an overwhelming defeat in November, losing the presidency, both Houses of Congress, and many State governments to the Democrats.

But because of our convoluted election process, such a result cannot be guaranteed.  The possibility remains for a triumph by the evil anti-democratic forces that our representative democracy's Achilles Heel permits to exist.  I refer to the obsolete Electoral College, the role of States in gerrymandering and regulating voting, a Supreme Court lacking checks and balances once appointed, and the First Amendment's providing a cloak of legitimacy for professional liars.

But intelligent voters, using their heads, can make sure our representative democracy survives.  You have to do your part!  And that includes working to get others to commit to that task.  Consider these your 'marching orders.'

JL                                          

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Flushing College Basketball Down the Tube

Rick Pitino, now entering his 70s and continuing to coach basketball, this time at Saint Johns, recently had some comments on the state of recruiting, transfers, and rules for compensation of players through NIL (use of players’ Names, Images, and Location) programs in today’s college basketball. 

He painted the NCAA’s rules as toothless and unable to stand up in court against players acting as individual athletes, with skilled lawyers, who make themselves available to any school who wants to recruit them.  Even though Pitino hired, oops, I mean recruited, ten available and established players from other schools for his St. Johns team (any of whom who could hire a good lawyer and walk away from St Johns next season for a better deal), he condemned the existing system as destructive of maintaining a ‘culture’ and an ongoing ‘program’ for any college with a basketball team.  ‘Culture?’  I thought that had something to do with yogurt, not basketball.

My hypothetical example:  If some privately-owned barber college or trade school managed to receive accreditation as a real institution of higher learning, bought its way into a financially hard-up existing conference, and offered several million dollars worth of scholarships and NIL money to a dozen highly talented basketball players from real colleges, they might even end up in the finals of the NCAA’s March Madness.

Pitino made his remarks after his St. Johns team was defeated by the University of Connecticut, whose team, incidentally, was led by likely All-American Cam Spencer, who deserted Rutgers to play his fifth year of eligibility at UCONN (his third college), dooming the Scarlet Knights to an unexpectedly poor season.  Meanwhile, not innocent themselves, Rutgers' football operation has recruited the University of Minnesota’s quarterback to lead their backfield this Fall, a possible improvement over their existing quarterback.

Hired hands in the persons of agents and lawyers specializing in this kind of stuff are flushing all college sports, at least at the top level where ticket sales and conference TV rights bring in the big money, down the tube.

Colleges and universities are primarily educational institutions and not just way stations where athletes can incidentally hang their hats for a while as they proceed along their career paths.  Fortunately, some college presidents do remember that, the University of Chicago and MIT being examples.

Many do not and you can find them at the top of schools in the SEC, the Big Ten, the ACC, and the Big 12, earning a fraction of what their football and basketball coaches make.  Meanwhile, the PAC has passed away, its carcass picked over by some of the aforementioned colleges who are pumping this infection downward to lesser schools, latched onto to fill their TV schedules. 

JL

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The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

I sat through a 'zoomed' lecture the other evening about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), a program that would result in the popular election of our president without the many years it would take to abolish our Constitutionally-mandated Electoral College system that occasionally results in a candidate who lost the nation-wide popular vote ending up in the White House, like Donald Trump or George W, Bush. The Amendment process to accomplish such a change to a popular vote decision might take many, many, decades, probably less than the NPVIC would take to become a reality.

Right now, the electoral votes of all but two States go entirely to the winner of the most votes in that State, even if the winner there won by one vote. (New Hampshire and Nebraska divide their electoral votes proportionately.)  This is unfair to voters in populous States, underrepresented in the Electoral College, and beneficial to small, overrepresented, rural States. In California, for example, one electoral vote represents about 717,000 people.  In Wyoming, one electoral vote represents about 193,000 people.

Because campaigning will not change the results in solidly Democratic or Republican States like California or South Dakota, candidates don't waste campaign resources on getting the electoral votes of such States.  The campaigns are directed to States that might go either way, ignoring the rest. The NPVIC would eliminate this, making every vote cast in the nation, in every State, equally crucial. 

The Constitution makes it the responsibility of each State to determine how to cast their Electoral votes, and that is the NPVIC's approach.  It takes 270 electoral votes to elect a president.  If enough States pass a law providing that the candidate who received the most popular votes, nationwide, automatically receive the electoral votes of that State, regardless of the presidential voting results there, that would in effect elect the president by a popular, nationwide vote, once the number of electoral votes thusly available were at least 270.

Right now, enough States have bought into this program so that it would produce 205 Electoral votes, 65 shy of enough to elect a president.  Getting additional States to get involved is difficult at this point because many of the States not yet in the program are small ones that are not interested in having a popularly elected president, which might be to their disadvantage.  But times can change. 

Certainly, those 65 Electoral votes might be picked up by 2028, 2032,  2036, or 2040, all far sooner than the many, many, years getting rid of the Electoral College would take via an Amendment. (That would require the approval of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and the legislatures of three-quarters of the States, a daunting requirement.)

JL

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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.  Try it!

Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it, particularly if they are a registered voter.  This is an election year.  Spread the word.

JL

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February 3, 2024 - 150 Million Supreme Court Replacements, Non-Existent Republican Loyalty, and Israel Commentary

 

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To Your Honors, the Voters

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

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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

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Latest Thoughts on Israel 

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.

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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

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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

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