TRUMP, HOMAN, AND KIRK (AGAIN)

Pundits continue to discuss quietly whether to take Trump lightly or seriously, literally or figuratively.  Their difficulty—our difficulty, too—is what to make of the off-hand remarks by a man without a moral compass or a political ideology, without principles or values, to guide him.  Everyone should expect both off-hand and prepared remarks (witness his speech to the UN) of an aging sociopath.  My rule of thumb is a pragmatic, preparatory one: take Trump seriously and literally because people do not talk the way in which he does without disclosing their wishes, however apparently implausible or even Constitutionally incorrect.

 

 

A question first asked 10 years ago, whether Trump is a Russian agent, is sometimes asked today.  If he were, with his sense of self-importance and lack of self-discipline, he would probably boast of that fact—which would immediately terminate him in that role.  To some, Trump’s recurrent complaints about the Russian investigations since 2015 might seem to be a tell, if not an implied answer, but I am not persuaded.  More likely, his criticisms of intelligence and counterintelligence agencies are his advance effort to discredit any discovery of links between him and his business interests, and Soviet, then Russian, governments.  Nevertheless, his attitude toward these agencies does not encourage them in their important and sometimes dangerous work.  (I ignore the possibility of blackmail suggested by salacious rumors about Trump’s engagement with more than one Moscow prostitute.  I anticipate that the Epstein papers will show his engagement in pedophilia right here in the good old U. S. of A.).

 

What underlies the question is, I think, an awareness of Trump’s relative indifference to and ineffectuality in advancing America’s interests vis-à-vis Russia’s.  Though MAGAistas might deny them, the facts, though they suggest an alignment of Trump’s and Russia’s interests, make merely a circumstantial case for Trump’s affinity for Russian interests, his sympathy for autocrats elsewhere, and his lack of sustained interest in foreign affairs otherwise.  Attention to Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict comes and goes.

 

Still, Trump has done so much to weaken America’s defensive capabilities that suspicion is inevitable.  In Trump 1.0, at Helsinki, the President made clear that he believed Putin more than he believed American intelligence agencies; in Trump 2.0, he not only still gives little credit to their reports, but also has reduced or cut funding and personnel at counter-intelligence agencies dealing with Russian disinformation, hacking, and cyberwarfare activities.  Trump’s actions provide indirect aid to Putin’s regime whether Trump knows what he is doing or does not.  Either way, he is not acting in America’s self-defense interests.

 

Trump’s choice of leaders for America’s other defense-related departments has further weakened their capabilities.  Pete Hegseth, Trump pick for Secretary of Defense, is a man with neither defense nor management experience qualifying him for the tasks of his position.  Instead of trying to come up the learning curve of his position, he directs his efforts to developing what he calls “warriors” by waging culture wars against women, diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) and LGBTQ+ personnel.  His actions not only distract him from DOD’s primary missions and strategies—he recklessly supports the use of military forces in domestic situations—, but also adversely affect both force readiness and unit morale.  The increase in DoD’s budget might or might not increase national defense; everything depends on whether the expenditures serve defense strategies to meet present and future threats as Russia becomes more aggressive in eastern Europe and the two polar caps, and China more so in the western Pacific and Antarctica.  Putin’s Russia must be pleased that Trump has found in Hegseth someone who brings nothing to the leadership cadre and would prove to be incapable of responding effectively to a serious international crisis.  The same can be said of Trump’s pick Kristi Noem for Secretary of Homeland Security.  She prefers wardrobe changes for photo ops and acts of performative callousness, now with people instead of dogs.  Meanwhile, Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, is best known for creating friction among the agencies which she supervises, most recently for cancelling thirty-seven security clearances of ranking officials or Congressional staff without consulting the White House.  In sum, Trump’s appointments to lead America’s intelligence and defense agencies are less focused on defending America from its foreign enemies than they are on fighting culture wars and on defending him from his perceived domestic enemies.

 

 

The media covered Tom Homan’s acceptance of $50,000 in return for promised contracts, the FBI investigation, and the DOJ decision to bring no charges and drop the case.  Yet, despite the famous advice of Deep Throat to follow the money in the Watergate scandal, the media did not follow the money in the Homan case for many days.  On 19 September, I asked on a number of nationwide podcasts whether Homan had returned the money.  “So where is the $50,000?  Homan took it before Trump's election; months later, the case was squelched.  Apparently, Homan had the money for months.  Does he still have it?”  Now the mainstream media are asking the question; they have added one about his taxes.  Epstein, Homan—so many scandals.

 

 

After a previous blog, a final word about Charlie Kirk, this one on the Right’s two reactions to the assassination of Charlie Kirk.  Paradoxically, though both reactions are very different, they are compatible with one another.  Both are extreme because the Right perceives his assassination as a symbolic threat to them.  For Kirk represented the Christian nationalism, a movement based on bigotry of all kinds, which the Right embraces.  Regarding Kirk as Jesus-lite (not Jesus-like) makes it possible to combine the two reactions, deification and assassination (i.e., crucifixion).

 

One reaction is to deify Kirk by extolling him as a family man and a crusader for civic virtues and by ignoring his civic vices.  His advocacy of free speech rights went together with his free speech bigotry.  He was much less saint than sinner.  The other is to avenge his assassination by targeting, not only the actual assassin, but also individuals and organizations on the Left for presumably creating the political environment or activist network which permitted or supported Kirk’s assassination.  The Right’s exploitation of Kirk’s assassination has an analogue in Nazis’ exploitation of the Reichstag fire about 90 years ago.  Nazis used the attack as a pretext to go after communists; Republicans mean to use the assassination as a pretext to go after Democrats.  (Query to Stephen Miller: will you hunt me down as a domestic terrorist for saying so?)

 

The Right’s reactions lend themselves to obvious criticism for its double standards, hypocrisy, false piety, violent language, violent threats, and more.  However, such criticism only preaches to the choir on the Left and annoys the cadres on the Right.  So I let what is obvious about that criticism speak for itself.

PARANOIA AND PERSECUTION TARGET TRANSGENDER PEOPLE

      I am a cis male.  I was not, am not, and shall not be anything else.  I am happy with my foreskin.  I have no experience with non-cis people.  The only people whom I know to have varied sexually from the statistical norm are a bisexual mother, a lesbian sister, and a number of gay or lesbian friends of theirs or mine.  I have lived a pretty sheltered life when it comes to matters of diverse sexual proclivities and relationships.

To listen to any number of politicians or political pundits on the Right, perhaps I should be terrified.  Apparently, transgender people are a clear and present danger to the American people and their way of life.

 

Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, famous for her efforts to ban the first transgender congresswoman Sarah McBride of Delaware from the bathroom in Congress, quickly called for the institutionalization of transgender people….[R]epresentative Ronny Jackson of Texas advocated for the same, saying: ‘We have to treat these people … we have to get them off the streets and we have to get them off the internet and we can’t let them communicate with one another. I’m all about free speech, but this is a virus. This is a cancer that is spreading across this country’ (Erin Reed, “Transgender Americans are seeing a wave of hate unleashed by Charlie Kirk’s killing,” The Guardian, 25 Sep 2025, 7:00 EDT).

 

[Charlie] Kirk opposed transgender rights and his organization sponsored rallies against transgender medical care. In April 2024, he likened doctors who perform gender-affirming care to Nazis committing atrocities. [¶] ‘One issue I think that is so against our senses, so against the natural law and dare I say a throbbing middle finger to God, is the transgender thing happening in America right now,’ he said during a speech posted in 2023 by Right Wing Watch. [¶] In the same speech, he cited a Bible verse [Deuteronomy 22:5] saying that a woman who puts on men’s clothes or a man who puts on a woman’s garment is an ‘abomination.’ (Helen Coster and Maria Tsvetkova, Reuters, “Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric inspired supporters, enraged foes,” Reuters, 13 Sep 2025, 4:06 MDT; updated 15 Sep)

 

Despite my naïveté, I am puzzled by Kirk’s mingling of transgenderism and crossdressing.  I am even more puzzled by what is it about transgender people which prompts such violent ravings.  I can think of no reason for institutionalizing transgender people, and Mace, Jackson, and Kirk offer none.  The medical profession—I still believe that trained personnel are more knowledgeable and more sensible in their field than elected officials or partisan orators—knows no reason for institutionalizing or isolating transgender people (Mace, Jackson) or denying them medical care (Kirk).  I quote from Wikipedia:

 

The major medical opinion of transgender people from prominent health organizations is that being transgender is a normal human variation, and gender-affirming care (including hormones and surgery) is medically necessary to improve physical and mental well-being. While transgender people share many health needs with the general population, they often experience disproportionately high rates of mental health issues, substance use, and chronic conditions due to the chronic stress of stigma, discrimination, and violence they face. Therefore, access to safe, evidence-based, comprehensive care is crucial to their health.

 

In other words, transgender people are people with an internal mismatch between their sex and their gender.  Ironically, Kirk’s “natural law” is against what nature itself creates, namely, some people who are biologically, physiologically, and psychologically misaligned.  Hormones, surgery, and therapy are medical means to realign them.  Kirk’s equating Nazi atrocities with medical relief is an obscenity revealing his moral obtuseness or rhetorical malpractice.  Nazis acted on people against their will; American doctors operate on people requesting their services.

 

And the “chronic conditions” which transgender people suffer, people like Mace, Jackson, and Kirk have caused.  Their means: insulting, stigmatizing, snubbing, shunning, threatening, bullying, and violence.  Jackson’s approach promises, not appropriate treatment, but cruel punishment.  He would “treat” transgender people by isolating them from all others—“off the streets,” “off the internet,” and incommunicado even from other transgender people.  Jackson favors “free speech, but.”  His metaphors—to him, the transgender condition is a “virus” or a “cancer”; non-metaphorically, it is none of the above—reveals that his ignorance fuels his fear of contagion and that his fear of contagion fuels his vitriol.  Such are the primitive responses to the unfamiliar by pre- or non-scientific people.  Such is the way people used to treat “lunatics” or lepers until science learned how to deal with their conditions.  A notable exception is Jesus, famous for showing compassion to lepers, and touching and curing them.  Like “free speech but,” Mace, Jackson, Kirk, and many like them profess a “Christian faith, but,” one devoid of compassion for transgender people who face both personal struggles and social pressures.

 

Their fear of a medically unfamiliar condition—unfamiliarity probably resulting from self-repression—leads to these metaphors of diseases and fears of contagion.  Such is their paranoia.  It seems strange.  I assume that transgender people look so much like people that it is hard to tell the difference.  I quip, of course, but to make a point.  Every transgender person is a person and, if born or naturalized in the United States, a citizen thereof.  So there is no basis whatsoever for treating them otherwise, particularly depriving them of the rights enjoyed by others.  I suppose the response by transgender paranoids is to claim a belief in “due process, but.”

 

The exploitation of this widespread paranoia makes for divisive and dangerous politics.  Of course, Trump takes the lead in denigrating transgender people and depriving them of their constitutional rights.  A successful attack on this group might lead to attacks on other groups.  That threat is heightened by his attack on birthright citizenship.  If his challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment were successful, Trump might be able to jeopardize the rights of any disfavored group because alternative definitions of citizenship would require the stipulation of approved or disapproved characteristics of race, sex, gender, religion, ethnicity, ancestry, or geographic origins.  By paring off first this, then that, minority group, he would be able to purify America of the groups of people who he deems pollute its white Christian population.  Thus, the attack on transgender people is more than an assault on a disfavored group; it is also a part of a campaign in a larger war by Christian nationalists against constitutional democracy.

THE WAR WITHIN CHRISTIANITY: JESUS FOLLOWERS VERSUS CHRISTIANS IN NAME ONLY

      Every so often, I read something about a war against Christians in America.  Since this generic label applies to a majority—about 62%—of Americans, such a war is an incomplete, improbable fiction.  The attackers are never identified.  Could they be Jews, all 2.4% of them?  What about Muslims, all 1.2% of them?  The location of the combat zones, the sites of attacks, and the weapons used go unnamed.  The contested issues are unstated.  Some war.

I know perfectly well that Bible-thumpers, allied podcasters, and some politicians use the word “war” metaphorically and hyperbolically.  Still, their use of the word betrays paranoia or opportunism.  They have good reason to be paranoid.  The number of people identifying as Christians has lately dropped dramatically, about 16% in 18 years.  The drop reflects an increase in “nones” and lower rates of Christian identification by younger people.  Yet these various drop-outs or never-dropped-ins hardly constitute a hostile force opposing Christianity in a 21^st-century religious war.  More likely, they do not care enough about Christianity to spend time and energy thinking about it or, for that matter, any other religion.  Christian fulminators wage “war” against a nonexistent enemy on a battlefield between their ears.

 

Paranoia has its uses.  Blaming secular influences for the decline in Christian identification, not to mention affiliation, is more comfortable than introspection scrutinizing one’s beliefs and behavior.  One influence is the growing influence of science and technology; their mechanistic assumptions on and approaches to the world and human experience have a corrosive effect on theological beliefs.  Increasingly, they make centuries-old Christian mysteries of the Eucharist and the Trinity seem weird, not wonderful.  Anyone exploring these mysteries might learn that they have pagan origins and were kluges for purposes of proselytizing of Jews and pagans.  The idea that wine and bread partaken to celebrate the Eucharist become (Catholic transubstantiation) or coexist with (Protestant consubstantiation) Jesus’ blood and body is strange.  Though the Last Supper purports to be a Passover celebration, nothing in Judaism involves eating a god literally or symbolically, as was common practice in pagan religions.  The Trinity, the mystery of three persons constituting one god, a compromise between Jewish monotheism and pagan polytheism, is even stranger.  I have no idea whether the pagan origins of these mysteries would appeal to or repel someone exploring them.

 

An uncomfortable truth explaining this decline is the debased or hypocritical example set by so many self-proclaiming Christians.  The disparity between Jesus’s central teaching—love for the poor, the dispossessed, the stranger, the enemy—and what these Christians loudly preach and practice—hostility to the impoverished, the homeless, immigrants, the sexually unconventional, minorities—does little to make Christianity morally appealing.  Churches trying to retain or gain members, not by Jesus-like service, but by rocking church with music, emphasizing emotional worship, promising worldly success, or rousing prejudices might appeal to some but would likely repel even more, as religiously vacuous or morally vicious.  Antithetical to his teachings are bigotry of any kind, pretenses of moral superiority, and Christian nationalism.

 

Almost all Christian denominations accept either the Nicene or Apostles Creed, which offer statements of theological dogma, and about Jesus’ miraculous birth and miserable death, with nothing about his life or teachings.  To this gap in the creeds between his birth and death, denominations respond similarly by filling it but differently by using different messages, which all call Christian.  Mainline churches fill it with Jesus’ teachings of tolerance and love of others; fundamentalist churches stuff it with current moral or political issues which are used to rationalize the opposite, intolerance or hate.  The Catholic Church straddles this divide.

 

Fundamentalists use such stuffing inspired less by texts in the New Testament than by texts in the Old Testament (not identical to Holy Scriptures).  Their readings of Jewish law, though repudiated by Paul and many church leaders, naïvely misinterpret or perversely misrepresent what they cherry-pick to serve their modern moral or political purposes.

 

Take, for example, fundamentalists who invoke Leviticus 18:22 to revile those who deviate from heterosexual behavior.  To serve their purposes, they misrepresent this proof-text as a strong condemnation of the sin of same-sex behavior.  The King James Version reads, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination.”  The Jewish Tanakh translation reads, “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence.”  The meaning of “abomination” is a thing disgusting or hateful; of “abhorrence,” a thing repulsive or disgusting.  What fundamentalists interpret as a prohibition of homosexual acts—the text makes no mention of lesbian acts—is really guidance reflecting moral revulsion.  As such, it lacks the status of a commandment; the acts are not sins but matters of distaste—which opens the door to considering unconventional sexual acts matters of taste.  Moreover, fundamentalists ignore that the text exists in a cultural context; it intends to differentiate between what neighboring pagans do and what Jews should not do.  That is, it has the status and purpose similar to those of Jewish dietary laws—cultural and social distancing from non-Jews more than religious prohibition.

 

Jesus was a man of works and faith—his was Judaism—which, in Christianity, led to a problematic relationship between them.  Catholics believe justification is by works and faith; Protestants, that it is by faith alone.  Works are demonstrable; faith is not, only believed or professed.  Anyone can profess a faith, whether sincere or not—which makes it easy to claim a Christian identity.  Christians proclaiming their faith without performing works are Christians in name only, or CINOs.  I unreasonably suspect that those who conspicuously wear crucifixes—“On her white Breast a sparkling Cross she wore, / Which Jews might kiss, and Infidels adore” (Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, II, 8)—are CINOs.  I reasonably believe that those who accept or express prejudices against others, withhold personal and oppose societal assistance to the disadvantaged, oppose equal rights for individuals or groups of different backgrounds or persuasions, or deplore other peoples’ choices in life or of lifestyles different from their own are CINOs.  An example is the late and presidentially lamented Charlie Kirk.

 

No earthly referee decides between those who differently claim to be Christians, both Jesus followers, Christians of good works and faith, and CINOs, Christians professing faith but opposing the public good and general welfare of the state.  Here, to discredit CINO posturing and advance the Christianity of Jesus’ works and faith, Jesus followers, whether Democrats or Republicans, must bear witness to works and faith by calling out the hypocrisy of CINOs and by making greater public efforts to do good works and by casting votes to serve the unfortunate.

A NOTE ON CHARLIE KIRK

      The assassination of Charlie Kirk, labeled a conservative activist, is a deplorable event.  And leaders on both sides of the political divide have been quick to deplore it.  On the Republican side, however, comments have gone well beyond deploring his death.  Republicans are apotheosizing him for his political crusading and demonizing Democrats as sponsors of political language and political violence which they claim contributed to his death.  Never mind the more inflammatory language and more frequent violence of Republicans in the past decade or so.

 

I paraphrase what is claimed but not confirmed that Winston Churchill once said, “I have wished for the death of no man, but I have read some obituaries with great satisfaction.”  I had heard of Kirk but knew and cared little about him.  Now I know more and still care little about him.  He was a young man with a wife and two children.  I regret his assassination, and I sympathize with his surviving family, grieving his death and suffering their loss.

 

But I go no farther.  He was a leader of others like him: white, male, self-professed Christian.  I credit him with being a Christian in name only.  For he was a Christian nationalist who, as he wanted a return to an America as he selectively imagined it to be before the 60s, was a bigot in every way imaginable: racist, sexist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and anti-LGBTQ+.  However nicely he packaged himself, by himself or with his family, he was spiteful in his views of people unlike himself.

 

He is not one to eulogize.  It is hardly surprising—indeed, it is fitting—that those who have been highest in their praise of him promise less justice than retribution which perfectly accords with the hatred of others unlike him which he lived in his life and livelihood.

 

What his death means for those who do not excuse the nasty character and mean-spirited morals of a bigot because of his attractive appearance and nice manners is political retaliation by the Trump administration.  Even if it turns out that Kirk’s killer was a Democrat—though he was raised in a Christian, conservative family and might be a Republican—, no other Democrat is responsible for his action.  But Trump takes one person as representative of all persons of his or her group and promises to punish as many Democrats as he can possibly associate with this presumably Democratic killer.  If Kirk's killer turns out to be a Republican—oh, wonderful irony—Trump will nevertheless use the language and violence shtick to attack Democrats.

To say that Trump thus represents all Republicans would be a logical retort.  But tit-for-tat is wrong.  For those who reject everything which Kirk stood for, the proper response is to carry on in their commitments to love, justice, and democracy. 

THE LAST FREE AND FAIR ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST YEAR

       The last free and fair nationwide elections took place on 5 November 2024.  Those who expect to vote (against Trump and Republican incumbents or challengers and for their rivals) on or before 3 November 2026 are going to be disappointed.  The elections, if held, will be disrupted or suppressed by DHS, INS, BP, and FBI officers; federalized national guard and active-duty military forces; and police forces in some states and cities.  Trump’s pretextual reasons for interventions by government forces to interfere with or even cancel the elections will be emergencies claimed to be caused by election fraud or public disorders.  And the courts, the Supreme Court in particular, may reverse or invalidate some elections.

Trump has said that government forces will target major Democratic cities in Democratic states for such interventions.  He has practiced with interventions purportedly because of immigration in Los Angeles and crime in Washington, D.C.  He has mentioned other cities for interventions, including Chicago, Baltimore, Boston, New York, Portland, and San Francisco.  If a “blue wave” seems in the offing, Trump’s pretextual reasons might be invoked even in cities which lean blue in red states: in Florida: Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Gainesville, St. Petersburg, West Palm Beach, Tallahassee, Fort Lauderdale, Key West, and Sarasota; in Ohio: Akron, Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati; in Texas: Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso, Fort Worth, Denton, Corpus Christi, Richardson, and Plano.  All of these cities have large numbers of Democratic voters to whom Trump might seek to deny the vote by administrative abuses, intimidation, disruption, or suppression.  This targeting associates only Democratic cities with immigration and crime.  In the long run, Trump might try to delegitimize, even outlaw, the Democratic party, as implied by his aide Stephen Miller, who stigmatized the Democratic party by labeling it a “domestic extremist organization.”

 

Those who expect to vote and the commentators who assure them that the president cannot constitutionally impede elections—optimists all—do not, or refuse to, recognize the conditions which might adversely affect the conduct of free and fair elections.  These optimists disregard the evidence that Trump is less and less restrained by norms, rules, laws, or constitutional provisions.  They disregard that he acts in violation of them and is less and less responsive to, if not defiant of, court decisions contrary to his actions.  Indeed, he relies on the interval between his actions and court decisions to achieve much of what he wants to achieve.  They disregard that he has issued illegitimate executive orders which might, if obeyed, affect voting procedures and vote counts.  They disregard that the six reactionary Supreme Court justices have been using, and will continue to use, the emergency docket, more commonly known as the “shadow docket,” to ignore precedents or reverse administration-restraining district and appellate court decisions by diktats, not decisions, in favor of the administration.  On election day, the entire federal system will be flooded with cases filed on an emergency basis by Democrats and Republicans.  In cases quickly presented to the Supreme Court, it might issue rulings, as it did in Bush v. Gore (2000), which make Republicans winners.

 

Trump’s efforts to influence the midterm elections have already begun because of his and other Republicans’ sense of urgency verging on desperation and panic about the likelihood of losing control of the House of Representatives and the possibility of losing control of the Senate.  Their sense of urgency can only increase as Republican election prospects worsen because of voter unhappiness with inflation, unemployment, immigration abuses, and coercive government actions.  This unhappiness will likely increase and turn more and more Americans against Trump and the Republican party in two very different circumstances.  One would be the release of the Epstein files.  The other would be the killing and wounding of civilians by government forces.  Those of a certain age recall that the Ohio National Guard killed four and wounded nine students at a peaceful anti-war protest at Kent State University in 1970.  The disgust at the former and the shock of the latter would greatly worsen Republican prospects.

 

Already fearful of a blue wave which might become a blue tsunami, Trump and Republicans can imagine innumerable, frightful scenarios of possible consequences.  All assume, after all the votes are counted and confirmed, and the challenges dismissed, that Democrats gain a near-veto-proof majority in the House and a near-filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  Democrats will have a long list of candidates for impeachment and conviction, including cabinet officials, other Senate-confirmed officials, political appointees, and perhaps Supreme Court Justices.  They might offer Trump a deal: you pardon no one, and we do not impeach you.  (Nevertheless, I dream that they impeach and convict both Trump and Vance—which results would elevate the Democratic Speaker of the House to the presidency.  I can dream, can’t I?)

 

In response, Trump and Republicans will do whatever it takes to forestall such scenarios in their fight to retain power in the federal government and many state governments.  By the 2028 general elections, the effects of Trump’s policies will be worse, and Trump and Republicans will know that their policies and programs across the board are, and are likely to remain, unpopular with the large majority of voters.  In anticipation, they will continue efforts to rig, undermine, or entirely wreck elections.  They might attempt to avoid their defeat by demonizing and, through the Department of Justice, FBI, and DHS, treating the Democratic Party as a “domestic extremist organization.”  To this end, Trump might use or manufacture an incident like the Reichstag fire of 1933 to suppress or eliminate his rivals.  One thing is certain: Trump and Republican demonization of and antipathy to the Democratic Party and Democrats will make it impossible for them to peacefully relinquish power and enter into virtually permanent political impotence.

 

 

NOTE: The assassination of Charlie Kirk might be such an incident, which occurred after I drafted this blog on 9 September.  Jonathan Chait in his 11 September The Atlantic article “Trump’s Dangerous Response to the Kirk Amendment” amplified my concern about Trump’s exploiting an incident to harass his political opposition.  I strongly recommend reading Chait’s article, which cites Trump’s threatening words applied only to “radical-left political violence.”

THE CHOSEN PEOPLE HAVE FAILED ISRAEL

     I do not write this blog as a Jew; “as a Jew”—for that matter, as an X”—is presumptuous because it implies that all other Jews (or X’s) think or write similarly.  They do not.  As they say, two Jews, three opinions.  So I am just one Jew speaking for myself only; any resemblance of my opinions to the opinions of other Jews is entirely accidental.

I cannot convey the breadth, depth, and intensity of my feelings about the outrageous conduct of the state of Israel in its military campaign in Gaza.  Everything which it has done there since October 2023 has violated and desecrated everything which I believe worthy about Judaism and which I believe inspires Jews to righteousness: first and foremost, the value of human life.  Still, Judaism has not failed itself any more than Christianity and Islam have failed themselves for the lapses of their followers, and Jews have failed in this conflict as Christians and Muslims have failed in conflicts.  Jews will have to answer for this genocide as Christians have had to answer for the Holocaust.  But, in this blog, I present as dispassionate an analysis of the conflict in the context of its time and places—Israel, West Bank, Gaza, and America—as I can.  I could vent, but venting would serve no useful purpose.  I hope that this blog can.

 

Jews are the Chosen People.  That phrase has struck many non-Jews as implying the moral or religious superiority of Jews, then characterized by non-Jews as a proud and stiff-necked people.  Non-Jews have the right to their opinions, but that right does not mean that their opinions are right.  In this case, they are wrong because ignorant.  When God selected the Hebrew nation to be his people, he obliged them, as followers of his law, to be a light to the other nations, a moral example of righteous living.  God granted that the other nations could be righteous according to the seven Noahide laws, namely, six against blasphemy, idolatry, murder, sexual immorality, theft, and eating a limb from a living animal; and one for establishing a system of courts of justice.  (One of these laws puzzles me, but I shall keep my opinion to myself.)  By obeying these laws, anyone of any faith would be redeemed after death and have a place in the afterlife.

 

Being the Chosen People implies no superiority; it imposes upon the Jewish people a moral burden to live righteously in their collective life as a nation.  Today, the Jewish people constitute a nation far-flung, with its major populations no longer in Europe (thanks to the Nazis and other European antisemites who facilitated the Holocaust), but in the United States and Israel.  Created by the United Nations in 1947 and established by victory in war against Arab states in 1948, Israel intended to be a Jewish democratic state and hoped to live in peace with its neighbors.  Arab intransigence made peaceful co-existence impossible.  But the arguments and the conflicts about who has what rights in the land previously known as Palestine and in the city of Jerusalem remain unresolvable.  Both sides should be blamed for this unending state of hostile relations.

 

Until October 2023, Israel and its Arab opponents had fought wars in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, with various incursions, skirmishes, uprisings, and terrorist attacks in between and since.  Over time, Jews in Israel and America became increasingly doubtful that peace between Jews in Israel and Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, with or without a Palestinian state, was possible.  Facing an implacable foe, Jews slowly moved to support a government which responded more aggressively and callously to provocations.  The Israel Defense Force, which had long operated with restraint in its combat operations, became increasingly aggressive at the direction of the Netanyahu government.  After the Hamas attack, Netanyahu had many reasons, both political, to erase his policy failures enabling the Hamas attack, and personal, to avoid prosecution, to intensify the war.  The Hamas attack which brutally killed about 1200 civilians and captured about 250 more as hostages aroused Israelis to seek both vengeance and the release of hostages.  Netanyahu adopted a war policy which has evolved to total, unconditional surrender or total extermination of Hamas, scorched earth of Gaza, and ethnic cleansing or genocide of Gazans.  Current results: more than 63,000 Gazans dead, more than 150,000 injured, more than 20,000 children orphaned, and the population of about 2,000,000 exhausted by constant relocations, hungry to the point of famine, suffering from or liable to disease, and fearful of further death and destruction.  The disproportion between the atrocities of the original Hamas attack and the obscenities of Israel’s war of retaliation make the latter nothing less than a war crime and a crime against humanity.  Whatever its past claims to sympathy for its plight at its founding and its struggle against Arab opposition for decades and to respect for restraint in responding to that opposition for decades, Israel no longer deserves either sympathy or respect for the monster it has become.  Israel is not a light of righteous living to the nations; it is a state of darkness visible.

 

However, Israel the state only imperfectly represents Israel the people, or Israeli Jews.  A large majority initially supported the Netanyahu government’s response to the Hamas attack, but it has slowly shrunk.  Meanwhile, a large and growing minority is turning against it, as recent street protests indicate.  However, even if Israeli Jews succeed in pressuring their government to cease and desist from combat operations and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Gazan population, they cannot at this late date redeem their government’s conduct of the war.  (I note that Gazans, who now suffer grievously, then cheered the Hamas attack; they have suffered disproportionately, but they are not entirely innocent.)

 

Moreover, although neither Israel the state nor Israel the people represent American Jews, their sympathies and antipathies about the conflict in Gaza have paralleled those of Israeli Jews.  As Israeli Jews have been divided, so American Jews have been divided.  Yet no one has accused Israeli Jews who protest their government’s conduct of the war, demand an end to hostilities, or insist on humanitarian assistance to Gazans of being antisemitic, but prominent American politicians accuse American Jews who similarly protest, demand, and insist of being antisemitic.  And, in Israel and America, some number of Jews want justice for Palestinians in the creation of state for them in the West Bank and Gaza; there is nothing antisemitic about such a position, however unpopular or seemingly unrealistic it has become.  Which is not to say that some American non-Jews are not antisemitic in their sympathies for Palestinians and Gazans, and in their political expressions and actions.  Which of those cross the line into illegal conduct must be decided on a case-by-case basis, but there is nothing inherently illegal about a pro-Palestinian position or necessarily antisemitic about it if it does not imply or insist on the elimination of all Jews in the state of Israel.  The First Amendment protects that position, and Jews, if they know what is good for them, should support that protection though disagreeing with the position.  (For a definition of antisemitism better than the widely adopted definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, see my blog “Antisemitism: A Better Definition and Its Importance.”  New Mexico has officially adopted it in an apparent political gesture.)

 

American Jews confront criticism that Israel is a colonialist and increasingly imperialistic undertaking prompted and justified by Zionism.  There is half-truth to this criticism, but much depends on the meaning of the terms and the nuances of history.  One non-truth is that the influx of Jews into a land in which Jews have always lived has colonized it; instead, they just added to those already there.  (By contrast, Europeans who came to and settled in North America were colonialist and imperialist.)  It is enough to say that the meanings have changed with altered historical circumstances.  For twenty years, Israel was content within its pre-Six-Day-War (1967) boundaries and was neither colonialist nor imperialist nor regarded as such; its success then and six years later demonstrated its power, and its power gradually corrupted Israel by enlarging its definition of Zion, or the homeland, to include, to some at a minimum, the lands of Judea and Samaria in the West Bank.  Israel’s encouragement of and support for settlements in this area are acts of incremental imperialism without justification under international law.

 

Israel can disarm this criticism and partly redeem itself by complying with international law, removing all settlements and other encroachments outside its original boundaries in the West Bank, and assisting the rebuilding of Gaza for its inhabitants.  The sacrifices and difficulties of these efforts would be punishment for Israel’s abuses of Palestinians.  These efforts would also be a self-correction, an example to all nations, of a state and its people with the integrity and courage to return to, after having departed from, the traditional mission of this Chosen People.

 

However, I do not believe that any Israeli government, despite the desires of many Jews, Israeli and American, can autonomously take such steps and renounce power and land any more than most other governments can.  (The notable exception is America, which did not occupy Cuba in 1898 and which returned rule to the Philippines in 1946.)  Which means that Israel will continue ethnic erasure and incremental imperialism, slowly squeezing the Palestinians in, then out of, the West Bank and Gaza.  Only the intervention of European and Arabian governments can squeeze Israel back by carefully implementing a concerted policy of boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) to reverse Israel’s policies and practices, but not to eliminate the state.  (An example of such an effective BDS effort is the ending of apartheid in South Africa.)

 

Still, I hope that Israeli Jews will surprise the world as they did in routing the Arab armies in Israel’s first quarter century.  The end of hostilities is likely to lead to the fall of Netanyahu and his government, and the diminished influence of ultra-conservative Orthodox Jews.  Its successor will have to deal with the international opprobrium of its barbaric war in Gaza and its brutal occupation of the West Bank.  It might have to deal with a punishing BDS regime (focused on its weapons industries) hurting its economy.  The response might be a war-weary Israeli citizenry withdrawing support for the settlements and approving accommodations of equally war-weary Palestinians in an adjacent state, with international control of Jerusalem and willing assistance by the three major religions in administering their holy sites.  If so, Israel’s light might not yet burn brightly for the nations of the world, but it might begin to burn brightly for itself.