Jerome Irwin
THE HOLY MEANING OF MEMORIAL DAY
With each Memorial Day that comes and goes every year, the worldpauses to recognize and keep alive in their memory the supreme sacrifices of all the fallen men, women and children whohave everbeen forced to puttheir bodily selves and lives on the line for the freedom and democracy of themselves and othersand, in the end, ultimately paid for the privilege with their very existence in this world.
When a nation lowers its flags to half-mast, it’s meant tosymbolize the livinglegacy of humanity’s love for freedom and democracy that always must be paid for with the lives ofso many fallen loved one’s. Furthermore, the very act of lowering the flagremains a defiant assertion that the lives of so manyinnocent ones weren’t sacrificed in vain in defense of the freedom and liberty of their families and nation’s inherent, God-given right to forever remain a free and independent people.It’s always a defiant assertion of continued resistance to whatever fascist-ideological-militaristic-political-corporate forcesshow so little care or concern for the sanctityof the life of othersas to deny them theirsame fundamentalright to also live a long natural life as dignified, free human beings.To be a citizen of whatever nation already enjoys these liberties, or continues to fight for the sacred rightto choose the citizenship of whateverone’s nation still isn’t free, is what Professor Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the Univ. of Michigan, means when he says, ‘Citizenshipis Man’smost Basic Right for it is Nothing Less than the Right to Have Rights.”
Yet this is where the narrow definitions of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’,held bymanyWhite Caucasians in theUnited States and Semitic Israelites in Israel in particular, have become such a pathetic mockery unto themselves, if not an endless contradiction in terms by the way they so openly and wantonly deny the same basic human rights by their constant gross mistreatmentof those others like African Americans, Palestinians and many other non-white, non-Semitic peoples in their midst who are under their dominant, ruthlesscontrol in various different ways.
Still, among many white Caucasians in the United States, thesacred, annual,memorial dayof remembrance, to this day,continues to embodymany of the same sentiments first began in the United States at the end of thatthen young country’s Civil War when brother set against brother, and sister against sister, waged a ruthless, frenzied, relentless blood bath against one another over their differing interpretations of what is meant by such principles as ‘freedom’, democracy’, ‘citizenship’ and all the rights, responsibilities and obligations that go with each.
Disguised within that heinous civil war, was verbiage that represented two thousand years and more of human desire to dominate,enslave or reinterpret the ‘democratic rights’of other less-privileged peoples for their own selfish, prurient desires and interests. By its bloody end, it had killed more of its citizenry than in any war, before or since, between them. Still basically left unresolved are the issues between one side that intended to hold fast to a racist, apartheid belief of the way life should be lived, and the other side who didn’t. One side still adhering to the belief that human beings of one color, religion or political belief could forever hold in bondage, against their will,those others who simply happened to be of a different color, race or religious belief.
Ever since, that Memorial Day has become a time taken each year when American Democrats and Republicans alikeput some meat on the grill, pour a favored drink,pause for a moment to kick back between sips and reflect upon the lives of all those fallen loved ones they knew or knew of who were prematurely taken away from them, whose memory, from theirperspective, serves as a reminder of the truism Freedom Isn’t Ever FreeNor is it Ever-Lasting.
For others, it’s a time taken to remind the living of all those in their midst who still remain enslaved, oppressedand hated by whatever leader and his or her followers who consider them undeserving of the same untrammeled human rights they so readily enjoy. Such as the victimized Palestinian peoples whose homes continue to be razed, bulldozed, razed or invaded by gangs of Zionist extremist thugs who then illegally occupy portions of Palestinian homes and refuse to ever leave again. Such outrageous actions considered perfectly normal and acceptable by ruthless colonizing Jewish settlers who profess radical Jewish orthodoxy, Israeli government officials who support their illegal criminal actions and the many American Republican and Democrat politicians and their citizen-supporters who are prepared to forever cast a blind eye towards such despicable behavior. Were the reverse ever to be the case, and it was aggressive, ruthless colonizing Palestinian settlers seeking to recover their stolen homes and lands who were invading Jewish homes, imagine the international outcry and outrage that would be raise, and the military repercussions that would quickly ensue over such undemocratic, fascist actions.
IT MAY TAKE ANOTHER MOSES-LIKE BIBLICAL CHARACTER TO FINALLY FREE THE PALESTINIANS
It’s said that in ancient biblical times Moses and his brother Aaron were finally able to persuade Egypt’s Pharoah to release the Israelites from their bondage. But before that ever happened it took the horrific deaths of all of Egypt’s first born children before Pharoah relented and consented to let the Israelites free of their imprisonment. Yet even then it still only happened after the total destruction of Egypt’s army in the Red Sea that the Israelites were completely freed from their bondage.
But what similar biblical-like scourge of Israel’s modern-day society and population, or equally calamitous natural disaster that totally destroys Israel’s entire IDF armed forces, will it finally take before Israel’s own new ‘Naftila Pharoah’ once and for all releases the Palestinians from their equally-nightmarish bondage?
THE SAME RACIST, APARTHEID SHOES FITS THE FEET OF THE MODERN SEMITIC ISREALITES
Since the NAKBA WAR first began in 1948, 78% of the geopolitical entity, then known as Palestine, was instead initially unilaterallyclaimed to be Israel, as if some Jewish Christopher Columbus had suddenly arrived on their shores and planted within its sand a new Jewish flag as a virtualfiat accompli. Eversince, many untoward biblical-like human violations have continued to happen.
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The forced exodus,by Zionist extremists, of some 700,000 Palestinians from their traditional homelands was followed by the military conquest, destruction and depopulation of over 500 Palestinian villages and settlement, along with their geographical erasure and the Israeli-Jewish names that were imposed in their place; along with the denial of the Palestinian’s ‘Right of Return’, replaced instead by Jewish refugees erstwhileown biblical ‘Right of Return’ claims, ever since upheld by one bogus new international law after another.
This entire unseemly turn of events, that led to the complete and utter shattering of Palestinian culture and society, became infamously known as the Nakba Catastrophe. Depending upon whether the reader is on the side of the Israelites and their American allies who perpetrated thisunholy war against the Palestinians, or the Palestinians themselves who became the victims of the war, countless observers, worldwide, have sought ever since to document the horrendous, despicable things that havecontinued to happen to Palestinian peoples and Palestinian culture and society for nearlythree quarters of a century.
Following the end of WWII, when the world’s British-American-French-Russian leaders, and stillmany other leaders of lesser nations, joined in league with them, like so many Pontius Pilate’s,to collectively wash their hands of the plight of Palestine and its peoples, the world has conveniently chosen to look the other way, and, with the blessings of all, allowed the trickle of Jewish refugees, religious orthodox extremistsand Zionist terrorists to continue to invade Palestine. Thenever-ending violent floodof displaced Jewish immigrants and refugees continues to this day to remove Palestinian indigenous peoples, by whatever means possible, from all their remaining settlements, villages, towns and cities, whilecontinuing to take whatever more land and natural resources they want;much like the European colonizers from the 15th century on did in the New World when they so arrogantly and indifferently removed the indigenous peoples of the America’s from their own ancient homelands.
But what occurred seventy-five years ago to the Palestinians is no different than what has been occurring in the history of the human world ever since the beginning of life on earth, at the hands of whateverruthlessly-oppressive, conquering, greedy, feudal mentality thatmalevolentlyhas ever tried to pass itself off as a benevolent entity, directed by God, with all the God-givenrights and ideals that go with it.
Yet, as in the case of the Jews and modern Israel,this is the way of things in the Human Story, that, to this day, continues to strip away from the last few remaining Palestinian indigenous peoples whatever natural resources they still are in possession of, while, simultaneously, pouring billions of dollars into weapons of mass destruction and spreading those WMD’s to others to protect their own hegemony over all those other Islamic and Semitic peoples in particular they fundamentally hate and would prefer to disownor exterminate rather than care for their health and well-beingor that, as well,of every other human and nonhuman alike on the entire planet.
What continues to occur in Occupied Palestine only does so with the express approval and materialistic-militaristic-political-economic support of the World’s United Nations and its Security Council, dominated and lednow by a new American President, who is of the Christian Catholic faith yet takes great glee and pride in referring to himself “As a Zionist”.
One could argue that the vast majority of elected Democrat and Republican congressmen and women of the United States Congress,who share the power with their Christian-Zionist leader, have virtually sold their souls to the devil to forever maintain their ultimate ruthless veto powers to negate any fundamental changes to be made to the nightmarish realities that Palestinian people continue to endure as if they were fellow gallowsinmates, trapped in some kind of macabre modern-day Jewish-American ‘Auschwitz’ concentration camp or Polish Ghetto compound.
In modern historical times, the plight of Native Americans and First Nation peoples often cited to callworld attention to this same dismal, reprehensible evolutionary process of Homo Sapiens as aspecies; remains no different in the way the world in general, and the United States and Israel in particular, still continue to avoid dealing with the plight of Palestinian people who could be said to represent the modern poster childof this still open, cancerous, weeping abscess caused by all the world’s past, present and future conquerors and invaders, and all the violated indigenous peoples and their natural ways of life that continueto be decimated by the same vile ones that, in the 21st century,still profess the same dominant human mentalitynow characterized,not asthe behavior and actions of conquerors and invaders, but as giftedelite billionaire-plutocrats, visionary CEO’s, and Hedge Fund Managers that the vast majority of the world’s masses, who, in truth, still are nothing more than the serfsof old, themselves, and continue to do the bidding of the lords to which they feel beholden,long to emulate and fantasizeone day alsobecoming themselves.
In a very real sense, the world’s masses, collectively, aren’t unlike the freedom-less Palestinians, trapped, as they are, in their ownhostile occupied lands,ruled by either ultra-Jewishnationalists or ultra-American billionaire fascists, corporatists and plutocrats.The plight of real freedom for all human beings in 2021 in the world, and the flight of real democracy, trapped as all humans arein the same hostile, occupied lands of these same elites who don’t really care a fig if any of us, or all of us, actually live or die, whether from some COVID, Nuclear War or Climate Crisis disaster, so long as they have their holy hideaway secured in some protected Jerusalem, Kauai, inter-planetary space station, or heavenly place they envisage themselves one day being raptured up to, far away from all the human ugliness on earth.
BACK ON EARTH IN THE HERE AND NOW
Some kind of massive, planet-wide, evolutionary-revolutionary revoltobviously needs to happen somewhere, at some point in time or space. But will it ever happen? Probably not! The cataclysmic results will simply gradually continue to happen by default of their own accord until some ultimate, violent end is reached.
So. Benjamin Netanyahu now has been shown the door, with the possibility of facing serious criminal charges by the United Nation’s International Court of Justice for crimes committed against humanity. That is, unless he and his old American pal and fellow ‘partner-in-crimes against humanity’ – the ever-smiling’ Joe Biden – can again exercise America’s veto powers to stiflewhatever charges of criminality or new political-religious coalition government is yet to be formed within Israel and whatever new Israel’s egalitarian relationships with the Palestiniansmay yet occur.
Yet, clearly, whatever changes will occur in the government of Israel, thereexists no real love or respect towards the Palestinians among the new coalition of radical ultra-right-American and Israeli Zionist religious political parties, or their zealot orthodox leaders and rabid followers,who care not a witabout the plight of Palestinians,and would probably not be too upset to see them all driven into the Jordan River with a fleet of Caterpillar D40 military-grade bulldozers and be done with it.
To put the American/Israeli/Palestinian conflict within a wider historical context, the conflict, no matter what new religious-political coalition is arrived at,basically will remaina life and death struggle between a would-be closed racist Israeli-American Jewish-Christian Theocracy and an all but moribundMuslim societyforever kept barely on life-support within Israel’s confines.
Once again, the on-going situation in the Old World akin to the era of conquest in the New World when the aggressive advancements of fanatical Christian ‘Pilgrim’ colonists were violently resisted everywhere by indigenous native peoplesover their stolen lands and radically different worldviews; with both forever looking at the other with utter disdain, as if they weremutual aliensand obstacles to one another’s raison d’etre.
Whatever Israel’snew political-religious-ideological coalition mix ultimately is to be, therewill only continue to remain little real common ground among the radical right-wing American-Israeli Zionist religious political parties and their orthodox zealot leaders to make any more significant positive, meaningful changes than already have or haven’t been madebefore on behalf of the Indigenous Palestinians.
Even as far whatever Israel’snew coalition will accomplish in the way of treaties and diplomatic relations with Muslim countries like Egypt, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Morocco, these Muslim countries themselves have a lot of blood on their hands to account for over their mistreatment of their own indigenous peoples, andfor what they have or haven’t yet specificallydone over the decadeson behalf of the stifled freedomsand democratic rights of the millions of innocent men, women and children, still trapped in Israel’soppressive refugee camps, open air prisons and ‘reservation’s. Palestinians still citizen-less, with no rights to their sacred traditional lands, with no legal protection againstJewish Haganahsquatters,who continue to invade their homes and murder with impunity?
The only big question left to answer is where do the Palestinian’sfit into the shadows of privileged, free Jewish Israeli citizen’s and the still on-going celebration of their seven decades-long outrageous occupation?Where does thecurrent tentative ceasefire between Israeli IDF Armed Forces and Hamas Resistance Fightersfigure into a coalition headed by Israel’s new PM Naftila Bennett, a former Netanyahu protégé, and radicalorthodox, ultra-nationalist ZionistIsraeli, sometimes described as being somewhere in-between a fascist Benito Mussolini and brutal Jeff Bezos.
LEOPARDS AND TIGERS SELDOM CHANGE THEIR SPOTS OR STRIPES
Naftila Bennett, in 2012, published a plan called “The Israel Stability initiative”, that was based upon an earlier initiative by Adi Mintz, mockingly then called “Peace on Earth”, that called for the universal annexation of the West Bank that Bennett prefers to call by its Biblical Hebrew names of ‘Judea’ and ‘Samaria’. Bennett, rabidly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian State, later warned that the creation of a Palestinian state would be suicidal for Israel and has previously said, for the record, “I will do everything in my power to make sure they never get a state” (“The Settlers Move to Annex the West Bank – and Israeli politics”, the New Yorker, David Remnick, 01/21/2013)
Bennett also has outrageously suggested in the past that the international UN’s Oslo Accord be redefined by creating a tripartition of the Occupied Palestinians Territories. With so-called ‘Area C’ (annexation of the Gaza Strip), which constitutes 62% of the occupied area, to be transferred to Egypt under its control, with Palestinians merely offered permanent residence status. While Area A and Area B would remain with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), yet would be placed under the security and thumb of the IDF and Shin Bet, Israel’s intelligence community, controlled by: AMAN (military intelligence) and MOSSAD(foreign intelligence). Thereby accomplishing, as Bennett once so eerily put it, “to ensure quiet, suppress Palestinian terrorism, and; prevent Hamas from taking over the territory”.
The otherwise opposite dream on the part of some Israelis and Palestinians, to somehow find a way to work and live together, and achieve some level of peace and equality between the two sides, would seem to remain hopelessly in doubt with Bennett’s seemingly unbending belief that Israel must simply have to unilaterally learn to live with the Palestinian problem without any kind of “surgical action” of separation between the two states.
Bennett’s equally-fervent opposition to any kind of Two State Solution also becomes manifestly apparent in a blunt anecdote Bennett has recounted on a number of occasions in the past when he says, “I have a friend who’s got shrapnel in his rear end, and he’s been told that it can be removed surgically, but it would leave him disabled… So he decided to live with it. There are situations when insisting on perfection can lead to more trouble than it’s worth.” (“Bennett’s ‘shrapnel’ comment may have been blunt but his message was clear: No Two State Solution”, Haaetz, Yossi Verter, 6/21/2013).
In still another interview in January 2013, Bennett further stated, “There is not going to be a Palestinian state within the tiny land of Israel…It’s not going to happen… A Palestinian state would be a disaster for the next two hundred years” (“There won’t be a Palestinian state within Israel”, The Guardian, Harriet Sherwood, 1/06/2013)
In October 2016 Bennett as much as admitted this to absolutely be the case when heremarked, “On the matter of the Land of Israel, we have to move from holding action to a decision. We have to mark the dream, and the dream is that Judea and Samaria will be part of the sovereign State of Israel. We have to act today, and we must give our lives. We can’t keep marking the Land of Israel as a tactical target and a Palestinian state as the strategic target.”
One month later, Bennett again seized the opportunity to note that the election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States gave him hope that the two-state solution would become a mute point, claiming, “The era of the Palestinian state is over.”
As is eventhe similarcase with Israel’s new right-wing President, Isaac Herzoghimself advocates the world’s Diaspora of Israeli Jews, to support, rather than a One State or Two State Solution for Palestinians, an otherwiseweak-kneed alternative political process that merely calls for “managing the perpetual conflict”; so as to maintain the “Jewish state,” without demanding any real, fundamental changesto Palestinian peoples political status beyond giving Palestinians some “dignity”, whatever in the hell that means, while somehow preserving, however impossibly-remote and unrealistic it may be in the distant future, some kind of vague hope for ‘freedom’ and atwo-state solution for Palestinian people.
Herzog’s solution somewhat like the oppressive cotton plantation owner in America’s Ante Bellum South who asks all hiswhite racist citizenry in their comfortably-segregated, apartheid way of life to simply condescendingly act a bit kinderand gentler towards Palestinians and their state-less, non-citizen status, in spite of the fact that they will perpetually remain virtual vassals and slaves forever, with no real fundamental rights.
ISRAEL’S NEW POLITICAL COALITION BETTER OR WORSE FOR PALESTINIANS
The sad reality is that Israel’s coalition of weak left to hard right andultra-right parties could prove to bethe Palestinian peoples’ worst nightmare to datewhen it comes to any future real possible One State or Two State Solution. Palestinian’s continuing statusno doubt will remain as stateless, non-citizen captives, perpetually spied upon by IDF, Aman and Mossad forces, under even more severe draconian conditions than ever before.
It also remains a given that the world body of ‘United Nations’ will also continue, as is,in the future under the smothering, ruthless veto powers of every future American President and U.S. Congress, that, up ‘til now,never has fundamentally shown enough care about the welfare of Palestinians to ever manifest therequisite backbone and guts to intercede on their behalf, with either the use of U.N. troops, severe Boycott, Sanction, Divestment (BDS) actions or court trials before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for murder and mayhem, against Palestinian children in particular.
NAFTILA’S PRONOUNCEMENTS ON THE ONE STATE-TWO STATE ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
The long and the short of such citations is thatallthose who have aspirations to achieve, or hold on to, the dreams for a free and independent Palestinian nation-state must alwaysfirmly call to mind, in the midst of all the darkness and ugliness of Middle Eastern politics, the apt observation of University of Michigan’s Richard P. Mitchell History Professor Juan Cole concerning the real principled meaning of Citizenship in the world when he once declared: Citizenshipis Man’smost Basic Right for it is Nothing Less than the Right to Have Rights.”
So, in honor of all the ‘Memorial Days’ hence in the future, let each of us further probe the depths of our own souls, minds and hearts, still one more time, and ask ourselves, whether we are a Palestinian, Israeli, American or whomever at heart,and whatpeaceful, kind, forgiving, healing memories of some one person, place, event or moment we have had in our common relationshipswith one another as human beings who only ever wantedwhat we all desire for ourselves, our families and our communities.Let’s turn that memorial remembranceto the long view wisdom of whatthe late great and wise philosopher Joseph Campbellonce sought to remind us of in a poem about our lives and the world in which we live:
“Reflections on the Art of Living”
When we talk about
Settling the world’s problems,
We’re barking up the wrong tree.
The world is perfect. It’s a mess
It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out
Our own lives.
Yet, while firmly keeping Campbell’s affirmation on the art of living always fresh in our minds, let’s also keep constant in all our minds and silently chant to ourselves, as well as loudly to others,the ever-hopeful affirmation, “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.”
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Tags: Memorial Day Meaning, Memorial Day Celebrations, Naftila Bennett, Benjamin Netanyahu, Joseph Campbell, Professor Juan Cole, Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Zionism, Israeli Apartheid, imperialism, authoritarian rulers, occupation, terrorism, oppression free-Palestine, Palestine-Israeli final solution
Bio Note: Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American writer who once upon a time in university was a Criminology student while working in one of America’s local police departments. For decades, Irwin has especially sought to call world attention to problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by a host of environmental-ecological-spiritual issues that exist between the conflicting world philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.
Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a spiritual odyssey among the native peoples of North America that has led to numerous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & the U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; the many violations constantly being waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul
jerome_irwin@yahoo.com
