Justice Lite: Feel Responsible
Toward the end of One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against All This, by Omar El Akad, he asks that sand be thrown on the gears of the Gaza genocide: if you’ve got a cupful throw it; if it’s a spoonful or fingernail, contribute that. This is my offering, couched in the context of a two-month visit I made to Israel and Palestine in the summer of 2005.
* * * * * * *
GETTING THERE WAS HALF THE FUN
When I was 12 or 13 I won an essay contest in our Church, The St. George’s Church of England. The essay is lost and of course the instructions for what to write about, but it was probably on the subject of free will, because my thesis was that people should feel responsible.
I wasn’t insightful or cynical enough to add: ‘and not rely so heavily on their Christian, Get-out-of-jail-free card.’ If I had been, I probably wouldn’t have won.
The prize was a Bible.
I didn’t like the guy teaching the Sunday School class, but I did like our minister, Reverend Alexander, and always hoped it had been he who decided the winner. After all, it had been announced during a regular church service and the prize awarded from his hand.
I never read the darn thing but always felt I should have, and since I was headed for The Holy Land, decided this would be the perfect opportunity. Reading it where the famous events took place would make it stick in memory too.
On the plane from New York to Frankfurt a tall and beautiful, young graduate student of Theology sat down beside me, on her way to the same summer adventure I was. The plane contained a good number of participants in our program.
Wow! I thought, a man could go astray!
I told her my ambition, skipping the part about the contest and the prize, and she approved mightily, saying, Oh! Start with The Psalms! They are so beautiful!
I had my Bible with me and, with that encouragement, flew right into it, right there in midair!
There are indeed some beautiful psalms, but these are mostly ones we already know. My father-in-law was comforted on his death bed by the 23rd, for example. But as with most great things they are scarce.
It didn’t take long to recognize that, in general, this material had been written by some very disturbed people. With the help of Chat GPT I am able to relocate some of it today. Were it not for that help, you’d just have to take my word.
Psalm 58, 6-8 (KJV):
6. Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth…
8. As a snail that melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.
Psalm 137: 8-9
8. O daughter of Babylon who art to be destroyed: happy shall he be that rewardest thee as thou hast served us.
9. Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
Psalm 69: 22-28
22. Let their table become a snare before them…
23. Let their eyes be darkened that they see not…
25. Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents.
28. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living…
Psalm 109:
10 Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
I asked Chat if that last one, Psalm, 109, were personal or directed against the enemies of Israel, and it said I had asked an excellent question! The answer, it said, was personal, because the Psalter spoke in the first person and was directing his imprecations at a singular pronoun. Chat thought he was making a deeply personal plea for justice.
Justice? OK, Chat was consulting the Psalter. I’m just the pepperer, and would not wish to exaggerate the wrongs or bad attitudes of Israel, so I’ll let it go at that.
But Jesus Fucking Christ! Talk about a need for a more merciful way! And before long He came. If only it had made a difference, a favorable one, that is.
In any event, it was clear to me then, as it must have been in the wisdom of my youth: I did not need to wallow around in that stuff.
My seat-mate and I dozed off, perhaps both dreaming of an ideal place.
* * * * * * *
IN 2025
In a way you have to feel for the Israelis: they want to get this little genocide in the rear view mirror and get on with normal living like everyone else. Certainly everyone else or their relatives or forbears have done the deed: in Europe, in Africa, North America, wherever. But now, when poor little Israel wants a genocide of her own, down rain the complaints and criticisms.
The reason for that, however is not prejudice against Israel; it is that it’s so horrible to look at every day on the news. But maybe Israel will still be allowed. We’re still waiting to see if the USA will back them all the way to the end, that being ethnic cleansing, a final solution, of sorts.
To be sure, Israel’s troubles are partly of her own making, and she has been a bit cavalier about expanding the list of likely enemies: attacking nearly everyone in the neighborhood, seizing extra territory from Syria and Lebanon (Israel does not define her borders, and in every version it would seem there’s a bigger one trying to get out); blowing international aid workers off the road, killing hundreds of journalists; bombing hospitals, schools, tent cities, infrastructure; terrorizing Mercy missions on the high seas; exploding people’s cell phones as they go shopping; and lately (July and August), using starvation as a weapon of war, shooting people as they approach the few food distribution sites allowed, those being run by Israeli and the U.S.A.
There were bound to be a lot of unhappy Muslims around the world, but last week Israel bombed a Catholic church, killing the priest, potentially adding another sizable number of distressed religious folk.
Arrest warrants have been issued for top level Israeli politicians and military leaders; and rightly so. Even if they cared nothing for Palestinian lives, you would think they might spare a thought for their own children’s ruin in a sustained, murderous venture such as there’s been. Suppose one saw innocent people being gunned down. The memory of that could well spoil one’s life. And suppose one had done it himself. How could he face the future knowing what he had done.
ChatGPT says 17 IDF suicides in 2023, 7 post-war; 21 in 2024; and 16 so far in 2025, totaling 54 since the start of 2023. That was a sharp rise from prior years: 14 in 2022, and 11 in 2021, and they are attributed to the stress and trauma of combat.
If the actions of Israel, the state, weren’t enough, her allies in the ‘civilized world’ have exacerbated difficulties by attempting a rearguard action to combat ‘antisemitism.’ Both sides in this dispute, (if one may euphemistically call it that; it’s really more like a mugging) are semitic peoples. If one wanted to fight antisemitism, Israel would be the primary target; it is the nation currently doing the most harm to semites. A close second would be the USA, for providing the explosives and diplomatic cover.
When I hear the word, ‘antisemitic,’ in this context I think, anti-semantic? Someone is not making sense. But perhaps this is being picayune; we know what they mean; they mean: Don’t be angry with Jews.
And I, for one, am not. My son married a Ukrainian, Canadian, American Jewish woman, and they have three boys. So not only are some of my best friends Jews, (a claim not likely to cut much ice) but so are some of my best relatives.
And for that matter, I, myself, am zero point two percent Ashkenazi Jew, a fact I just learned in the last year or so from 23 And Me. I’m a lot more Neanderthal but one statistic or the other may explain a lot: I drive a 35-year old car that needs paint; I really like chicken soup; and I have a mean streak, though I try to keep that suppressed.
But back to the subject at hand, Jews, and especially Jewish organizations, are the most important allies Palestinians have. It has been so for decades but is now more than ever.
Jews can, and do, oppose this genocide with maximum vigor and credibility. They are absolutely key to stopping it and resolving the root problem. A couple of examples: I spent one day in Jerusalem with the Israeli Committee Against The Demolition of Houses, ICAHD, helping rebuild a house the Israeli Defense Forces, IDF, had knocked down several times. The work team consisted of Europeans on a tour with ICAHD, Palestinian workers and ourselves, overlapping with them for that one day to hear a lecture and get the flavor of their work. On another day our group sat with the Israeli Human Rights Organization, B’Tselem; the thrust of their work at the time was documentation, partly by giving cameras to Palestinians. The point is, these are are Jewish organizations, and for that matter, Israeli.
In 2005 the term Apartheid was not in use by B’Tselem to describe Israeli Society. But it is now, and is applied by them and Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, all major, unbiased Organizations. Their reasons for employing it are thoroughly documented online. On July 28, 2025, along with Physicians For Human Rights— Israel, B’Tselem upgraded its criticism to genocide in a report called, ‘Our Genocide.’
* * * * * * *
In 2005, it seemed to me, that Palestinians in the West Bank. were already living under Apartheid, one population holding the other at gunpoint, pretty much continuously. Israeli Jeeps with young soldiers toting machine guns drove up and down the streets of Palestinian cities, and the best roads between those cities were not available to Palestinians. They were for Jews and foreigners only.
We toured Israel and Palestine on the weekends, and when our bus took the main highways, we could get pretty much anywhere in a jiffy. But as a demonstration of what the Palestinians had to face on their own, we went one day from Bethlehem to Ramallah by the road available to them.
It required going down through what they called The Valley of Fire, because it got so warm in the summertime. Our descent was so steep and tortuous the bus had to go backward and forward to get through some of the switchbacks.
On either side of the valley was a checkpoint, manned by young soldiers whose job, it seemed, was mainly to insult. One of them took our driver’s papers and, after looking them over, stuffed them back into his shirt pocket unceremoniously. Then they came aboard the bus with their weapons and walked the aisle, asking a scattered question.
Late in my visit, the family I lived with had to take this route to go to a wedding in Ramallah. They couldn’t use their own car because that was not allowed for inter-city travel; only commercial vehicles could be used; so they had to take a taxi to get there. That seemed like Apartheid to me.
At first I doubted the claim by one of our guides that there were over 700 checkpoints, (he gave an exact number which I forget). I thought that couldn’t be true, even with a few moving ones thrown in, because the whole place is so small. But one day, when we were visiting the rural village of At-Tuwani, near Hebron, I looked across the highway to a field and saw a little footbridge across a ditch. On either side, at the entrance to the bridge, a big scoop of dirt had been dropped for inconvenience. Ah, I thought, that’s one of the checkpoints.
HENRY
* * * * * * *
On the application form for the excursion I had been given the option of paying extra money for a private room. I thought, what the heck, I’m getting on, why not go first class? And asked for the private room. No extra charges had been levied but I assumed they would be when when I checked in.
Not only did I not get a private room, I had to sleep with Henry, a big, hairy, Jewish radical from California, approximately 250 pounds. And I do mean hairy, not especially handsome either, about my age, early sixties.
Oh well, I thought, it’s just a couple of months, and I’m not a complainer. Besides, I knew nothing of the exigencies of our organizers. And I liked him. It would not make sense to start my visit with demands for special consideration.
Moreover, the accommodation was pleasant. And luckily, we had a king-sized bed, so we never got tangled up in the night. Moreover, on Henry’s behalf, I will say right here that he did not fart, at least that I ever noticed. I might have let slip one or two, certainly nothing offensive.
Unlike myself, who I would characterize as Justice-Lite, Henry was the real deal when it came to protesting. Like myself he had done some during the Vietnam war, but unlike myself, he had kept at it his whole life long. For a living he had been a technology writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, but he lost that job on account of being out of the office to protest the Iraq war. (My protest of that war was a cardboard sign about one foot square, saying in my printing: DON’T WRECK IRAQ. I walked it around one day in Tucson. I guess I also wrote some letters and poems, at least as unseen as my sign.
Henry first visited Israel as a toddler. His father was a tax expert and the Israeli government needed guidance setting up their system of taxation. So he and his family stayed in the honeymoon suite of the King David Hotel while his father worked. Obviously, Henry had not been won over to luxury and easy living.
He had been back to Israel numerous times since then and, already known to authorities, had been unable to come in through the Ben Gurion Airport. Instead, he had to enter by land. Why that should have been possible when The Airport was closed to him, I have no idea, but he had arrived through Jordan, enjoying the archeology of Petra as his silver lining.
Henry was a member of International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led, non-violent protest organization which did some heavy lifting opposing injustice and oppression. Once, in the middle of our stay, they needed someone to go out right away and live with some Bedouin who were being harassed by settlers. The settlers galloped their horses over the Bedouin encampment to terrorize them, but were more inhibited when a European or American was present.
Incidentally, that job of being a witness was a well-understood function of most foreigners visiting, and it often it did work to curb the actions of settlers. But not always: some members of a group called Christian Peacemakers (in this case, I believe, from Chili) had recently been beaten up as they escorted schoolchildren to the town of At-tuwani, mentioned above.
In the event, Henry went out and lived with the Bedouin for a few days as they drove their goats, often along the side of the highway. He came back beaming, saying it was just like being in Biblical times: a little yogurt for breakfast; go out and follow the goats; and at night you sleep in a cave..
Evidence of Henry’s effectiveness as a protester and life-long activist was that his daughter and niece were inspired to be part of our program. In fact they were old hands at protesting, and led a meeting during our first week to explain how an upcoming demonstration would be made. ‘After their Friday prayers we go down to the gate the farmers have to pass through to get to their land and make a racket; the soldiers fire some tear gas at us; we run away; and then we come back; the kids throw some rocks; they chase us again; we come back again…’
What fun! I thought, but not me. It was still my first week in town. In the preceding year, the excursion I was now part (run by Middle East Fellowship in the U.S. and Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem) had been caught at the airport and turned around and sent back out on the next available plane. It seemed logical to me that this could happen to anybody at any time, and I wanted to be here at least a little while.
That excuse, by the way, like most of its kind, is basically for timidity: it has a rational side but, of course, so does timidity. It is part and parcel of Justice Lite.
To avoid a similar, early disruption of the program this year, we had come in claiming to be here for religious study. A Kibbutz had been specified as our destination, and an Israeli from that Kibbutz was at the airport to greet us and attest to our claim, if necessary.
As it happened, we didn’t need him and didn’t go to the Kibbutz directly from the airport, though we did visit later. We were tired and went straight to Bethlehem for a short meeting, and then home to our families.
The meeting showed us to be about sixty people, mostly in their twenties and thirties. I would say about a third were Muslims; one third, Jews; and the others, Christians and Curious. I felt sure the U.S. Army or CIA must be represented, and settled on a young drunkard, a skirt-chaser, as the most likely candidate for that. But perhaps I imagined things. There’s no easy proof of such an idea. However, when that guy disappeared (people came and went throughout the two months) an older, more stable, seemingly military fellow came along and had a brief chat with every single one of us one day on a bus ride. Anyway, on this first day, we said a few words to introduce ourselves and went straight to our lodgings.
* * * * * * *
FAMILY
My family lived in a comfortable two-story house of perhaps a couple of thousand square feet. In an upstairs flat was the grown son of the family, George, and his wife and daughter, a babe in arms, perhaps seven months old. When George brought her downstairs, his mother, Shimaa, would clap fiercely and rhythmically at the approach. The baby’s eyes would bug out and she literally twitched in time to the clapping. Then George passed her over, to the great satisfaction of grandmother, baby and father.
George’s own father, our host, was called Nimr, which means Tiger in Arabic. He was a factory owner and a businessman. In the basement of the house, several men worked during the day to make carvings out of Olive wood. A dump-truck once backed up to the yard and dropped a load of pieces, each about the size of a man’s forearm, some twisted, some in the shape of a Y, some with flat aspects, having been reduced from something larger. The men worked these pieces with a bandsaw, then a rotary tool, then knives and chisels, and finally sandpaper and lacquer. The result was usually a charming religious figure. I left with a whole suitcase full to give away as presents, keeping a Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph nativity scene for myself.
Nimr was a quiet, pleasant man, maybe five or ten years younger than me, and cast from the same mold as Henry: I remember them sitting side by side on our first evening, only a few pounds in the difference, and hard to say who was heavier.
The last member of the household was a girl, George’s sister, the youngest child. She was in her last year of High School, bubbly and with like-minded friends who often visited and bubbled over with her. There might have been other children who had left home; I don’t remember.
The house had a pleasant front porch facing the street, and we sat there sometimes in the evening, being visited by neighbors and relatives. There was also sizable yard with a productive fig tree; perhaps there were other fruit trees as well but Nimr called my attention to the fig one day.
Mine and Henry’s bedroom was suitably large, on the ground floor just to the right of the door at the front of the house where you entered. The dining room, kitchen and bathroom were deeper in the house on the same floor, straight ahead.
One feature of Palestinian houses is a water tank on the roof. The Israelis come by and give an allocation, weekly, I think. When a person showered, he got wet, turned the water off, soaped up, turned it on again, and rinsed. Once I was taking a shower when I was alone in the house, and had soaped up when the water ran out. I hoped nobody thought I was profligate.
A downside to this arrangement, besides the obvious, scarcity, was mosquitoes, little tiny ones. We had to do battle with them at night, protecting ourselves either with fly dope or a device that sat on top of a bureau and dispersed repellent.
Another memory I have of night and bedtime was the scattered crackle of gunfire a few miles away in one of the Bethlehem refugee camps. There were three, made of concrete and cinder block, more or less permanent. The IDF kicked on doors after dark and arrested bad children (or good) according to your perspective. When we visited one of these, Ayda, we were told through a translator that a big problem was bed-wetting. The kids were frightened and wetting the bed long after they should have been past it.
We woke before dawn to the call of the muezzin, not something I particularly enjoyed. In literature I recall indistinctly (maybe Lawrence Durrell) it’s supposed to be a soothing and pleasing sound, but our guy had an amplifier that made his call harsh and uninviting, at least to me. Luckily we were of other faiths, or none, and didn’t have to get up.
* * * * * *
APHORISM
When I was an undergraduate student at Bradley University in Illinois, my favorite class was a Psychology Lecture by a grand old man, Carl Smith. He had come to the Midwest from Harvard and was, in my mind, manifestly wise. He was knowledgeable about Science, and presumably highly accomplished (I made no effort to verify this; he seemed to imply it and I believed it). He used to talk without notes, displaying his erudition and cynicism on a panoply of subject matters.
He had rubbed elbows with Bertrand Russell and other famous people, and let us know what they thought about various things, like war. A friend of mine, whom I didn’t yet know at that time, was similarly affected; he said he used to look forward to that class, more or less imagining himself sitting at the feet of a great man, as in ancient times in Greece.
One day, as we were leaving for Christmas Holidays, our famous professor said: You know, that saying you’re so fond of at this time of year? Peace on Earth, Good will toward men. Well it doesn't say that at all. It says: Peace on Earth to men of good will.
Chat says that comes from the Douay-Rheims Bible (1582), based on earlier and more critical Greek. I never heard of it; maybe that’s the one for me!
Obviously, there was quite a distinction between the sayings, and I could see the greater cogency of the more authoritative version he offered. It had a corollary: No peace if you are not of good will.
Perhaps it would not be too great a leap to add: And if you fall in that latter category, may you rot in Hell, and before that, live your life in a fever on account of your hard-earned, perpetual enmity. But that wouldn’t be nice.
* * * * * *
ABU HEIDI AND JONAH
I like the line in the poem, 1887, by A.E. Houseman: Get you the sons your fathers got and God will save the Queen..
Abu means father of, and Arabs use it as an honorific, a term of endearment, and respect, usually naming a person after a child sired. The female version is Umm. This Kunya, the practice saying Abu or Umm, can sometimes be expanded to refer to a camel or kitten, a variation that would seem to suggest the opposite of respect, more in the vein of an African insult I once learned: you child of your father’s anus. But I’m losing the thread here. As you can see, I lack the cultural savvy to explain all variations, so check your Wikipedia or consult your doctor or something. Better yet, never mind that latter part altogether. Abu is a fine and friendly use of language, and I intend to partake of it from now on.
I never accomplished much, if anything, in the world outside the house. My Science career was a bust, on account of grandiose notions and an inability to accept help or guidance. My foray into Literature led to a lot of self-publication, which ended up filling the basement with my own books. This was quite a nuisance until I finally saw a use for them in the garden: You rake the ground flat and lay them as close as possible, like paving bricks. Then you cover them with a ground cloth, and finally, cover that with cedar mulch. Now I’m taking a stab at World Peace.
In the autobiography of Andre Agassi, what struck me most was his ability to seek, find and use help, in whatever domain he needed it, including, most obviously, the writing of that book, which is quite entertaining. I suppose this struck me so forcefully because I have always been more or less beyond help,. And consequently, to borrow words from Bob Dylan, am a complete unknown.
That smarts a little, but less and less with time. Almost everyone has a need for achievement and recognition, but comes with a share of liability as well, and I am not unhappy to be without. Nor am I unhappy with my accomplishments in the realm of home and family; in fact, the opposite: I built our house, for the most part, did most of the cooking and cleaning, structured the yard, and contributed to a good environment for my wife and children.
Which brings me at last to the achievements of my children and what I hope to be called from now on. Heidi is currently President of the Linguistics Society of America and Jonah has four degrees in physics and engineering from famous Universities; he runs the company he founded, Hydrogen Sports, the main product of which is a ball machine that has greatly improved my tennis. My dear, deceased wife, Carolyn Harley, won enough fame for two people in her career as a Neuroscientist. I am Abu Heidi and Jonah.
* * * * * *
A POEM
I am a poet so perhaps it will be appropriate to include poems occasionally, so long as they are more or less on the topic at hand. This one I wrote in 2014.
Poem For A Greater Israel
You have the whip hand.
Put it down.
If Jews are clever,
quit lashing out.
As for murder, mutilation,
mass destruction and stealing
other people’s land and water,
bulldozing their houses,
Apartheid,
where can this get you
but put off the bus
Humanity’s hoping to ride?
For the love of personal
Peace and Possibility,
try a change!
* * * * * *
THE MEANING OF JUSTICE LITE
Let’s say Justice comes in four grades: Justice, Justice Lite, Justice Very Lite and No Justice At All. The level one achieves, though not always, has to do with the effort put in it. By referring to myself as Justice Lite, I was alluding to the amount of danger, sacrifice and inconvenience I have been willing to accept in order to achieve any Justice whatsoever, most probably Justice Lite. Did I use the word I was defining in the definition? Anyway, you get the idea.
And it’s a bit of a shame, considering what Justice normally requires in order to be realized. There’s a saying: When you go out to fight for Truth and Justice, don’t wear your best trousers. It’s funny, but sad, because there’s usually a lot more at risk than your trousers.
The position of ‘The Establishment,’ if I may resort to an old moniker, is that protest is fine, so long as it’s peaceful and within the Law. But The Law is frequently the problem, and failing to create a disturbance may mean failing to get attention.
Nelson Mandela said he understood perfectly that he could have spent his life writing letters to officials and newspapers, with no results. If he was going to get noticed he had to do some damage. He decided he was not going to kill or attack people, but he was going to attack infrastructure. Only then would he get the spotlight and be able to make that courtroom speech about ideas he was prepared to die for.
Courage is the greatest human virtue, I am quite sure. Most of us know very well what is right. We just don’t want to get hurt saying it. And don’t want to put our bodies in the way of machinery opposing it. For it is indeed, machinery: bone-crushing, blood-spilling, itself insensitive to pain.
In The Pickwick Papers, Mr. Pickwick advises Mr. Snodgras about dealing with trouble on the street. ‘Hush. Don’t ask any questions. It’s always best on these occasions to do what the mob do.’
‘But suppose there are two mobs, suggested Mr. Snodgrass.
‘Shout with the largest, replied Mr. Pickwick.’
As already stated, this is the kind of advice most of us don’t have to be told. We embrace Justice-Lite, or Justice-Very-Lite, or No-Justice-At-All for the obvious reasons: cowardice and convenience.
But rather than berate myself entirely, allow me instead to make the case for Justice-Lite and/or Justice-Very-Lite.
The Vietnam War was a sickening phenomenon for anyone with a modicum of sensibility. In its most terrible phase it was being perpetrated by the U.S.A. I was a Canadian graduate student at The University of Oregon, but regarded the whole country, The U.S.A., as mine, my part of the world. Hence, I was responsible.
My part in protesting that war consisted in writing letters to the editors of newspapers around the U.S., going to a few protests, and disrupting one graduate seminar when it was my turn to lead: I insisted that we use only half of the time to talk Science; the other half, Politics.
I like to think I had some small part in the decision of the U.S. to withdraw from Vietnam: I got a sympathetic letter about one of my letters from a lady in a southeastern state; and my supervisor, who was liberally inclined but not inclined to be disruptive, approved of my balancing act in the seminar.
But if I had any effect at all, it must have been very small, compared to that of students who were occupying administration buildings and getting carted around bodily by Police, or shot and killed at Kent State.
My feeling of responsibility for that international disaster, however, did serve a real purpose after the Americans left Vietnam. At that point there was an exodus of Boat People, one more spectacle to illustrate the suffering we had created.
At this point, Carolyn and I had gone to Canada to take University jobs and enjoy family life in Newfoundland. When the Boat People started fleeing, about eight years into our life in Newfoundland, I recruited five other families in our rural town of Portugal Cove to join us and sponsor a family.
I had just quit my academic job so was free to use a sizable chunk of time on such a venture. I suggested that I and the man of the family we brought would do a half day’s work weekly at each of our houses, digging ditches, painting walls, whatever; and I would get an extra half day for my contribution of labor. The Canadian government only required we be on the hook financially for one year.
As it turned out, our Boat People went to Vancouver after spending just the Fall of 1979 in Newfoundland. Lee Bo found factory work out there and they thrived in the more culturally supportive and stimulating Chinese environment. Meanwhile, the enterprise made us Newfoundland families closer, and it was a happy experience all around.
So there is the potential for some good to come of feeling responsible, a place in this world for Justice Lite. You just have to have the imagination to find it.
* * * * * *
IGNORANT AND OFFENSIVE
Most of the wrong we do in this world is just through plain thoughtlessness. At least mine is. I don’t think I’ve ever been intentionally malevolent or gratuitously bad. But that only shows that the conscious mind is not the whole mind. There are dark currents swirling underneath. All of a sudden we say something to hurt someone; or we act cruelly toward a vulnerable party.
And it’s entirely possible that one seems stupid and insensitive because he is stupid and insensitive.
As indicated earlier, I was not reading my Bible at nights as originally planned. Instead I had a copy of Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad, which has a section telling of his travels In The Holy Land. His traveling companions were ignorant in the extreme, using chisels to knock features off monuments for the sake of taking home a souvenir; renaming towns Jacksonville, Jefferson, and so on, for the sake of being able to remember them. Finally, they were so appalling that their reputation began to precede them and authorities arrived to hold them in check.
Twain called the Holy Land natives, Mohammedans, and I read that word as a neutral term, never thinking that it might be inappropriate nowadays. Of course I knew that the usual descriptor for a follower of Mohammed was Muslim, but perhaps because I had been reading Innocents at night, I used the other during a visit to some monument or ruin, asking the lecturer: Did the Mohammedans think such and such. My unseemly choice may have been exacerbated by the fact that my question was in the context of some of their struggles or defeats.
Afterward, one of our Holy Land Trust hosts came up to me and said: Peter, I would have never expected you to ask such a rude and insulting question. All I could say was that I didn’t mean to be.
I know now that Muslims reject this term because they consider Mohammed to have been a prophet, not a god, in the way Christians think of Jesus. They may have other reasons as well, but I think this one is key.
If I had been reading my Bible at night, this would never have happened.
WEEKLY ROUTINE
The structure of our week was as follows: We had breakfast with our families and then spent the week-day mornings assigned to a Palestinian group or an NGO that could put us to work. We found lunch for ourselves, and in the afternoons, went to the Bethlehem Bible College for Arabic lessons. On Saturdays we toured Israel and Palestine, usually taking the whole day to see one town. Sunday was free.
The best student in our Arabic class was an American-Iranian girl who said that Farsi was not dissimilar. Mostly what we did in class was baby talk for her. But it was hard enough for me.
One funny incident entailed repeating the elementary claims: I am a student; we are students. The word for student was Talib; the plural (though Chat GPT tells me this is Pashto, not Arabic) is Taliban. Maybe I misunderstood, but I’m quite sure we were told to say, Taliban. After we had said we were Taliban, we looked around the room involuntarily to see who else was, and laughed.
I had listed my skill, to be used on work mornings, as writer. Consequently, my mornings were spent at the Beit Sahour mayor’s office where I helped write applications for money to buy equipment for the town. European sources provided funds for such purposes and our job was to write up a reason for getting them, plus, select a suitable item from catalogues indicating cost.
Beit Sahour, which, by the way, is where the shepherds are said to have been watching their flocks when a star led them up the hill to Baby Jesus, shared a garbage truck with Beit Jala, another Bethlehem suburb on the far side from us. We wanted a truck of our own, if possible. There were other pieces of heavy machinery that could also be useful: it just needed to be well- and simply-stated.
We had catalogues from various suppliers and on one occasion, a choice to make between Caterpillar and some other. Caterpillar was more expensive and I suggested we ask for that, since they could change their minds later if they wanted and have money left over for something else. This was not the choice in the office, but they were unwilling to dismiss my reasoning, and more or less let the matter hang for the moment.
I slept on it. I don’t like to argue, and knew very well why they didn’t want to support Caterpillar: they had seen too many of them pushing over Palestinian houses. So despite my inclination to maximize our request for money, I came back the next day and said they should just ignore me when I was off base; they knew what was best for their purposes.
This resolved well enough, but there were other matters, of personal interaction, that did not. We had been asked by our organizers to please, please, not get involved romantically with the natives. It created enormous problems.
I don’t talk very much, or very loudly, or very well, and sometimes, am completely dumbstruck. I greeted a couple of invitations that were probably just friendly and innocent with a mute, thousand-yard-stare. I simply couldn’t think of anything to say.
They shifted me out of the main office, where I had been appreciating frequent Turkish Coffee from the tray of Abu something-or-other, to a downstairs station with a chance to thumb through magazines and more or less do nothing.
I have no doubt that at some point they decided: there is something seriously wrong with this guy, an opinion I share, myself.
If we had been in Kindergarten, the teacher would have had to write on my card: Does not work well with others.
* * * * * *
WHERE HUMANITY IS HEADED
If you haven’t noticed, the writing is on the wall: We are not the last stage in the evolution of intelligence. And this is a subject that has moved me to poetry, or attempted poetry. Here that is in abridged form.
But allow me to clarify certain concepts, a process that would be considered spoon-feeding in any reputable literature course. However, we are not concerned with that around here.
The title of the poem is Animal Skins At The Singularity. The animal skins are us, people. The speaker of the poem is A General, Mechanical Intelligence or Consciousness, still evolving at the time of transition between flesh and machine. The poem goes on for several pages, but there’s no need for that much of it.
Animal Skins At The Singularity
1.
Soon we will shed our animal skins
and put them in zoos and museums, bins
of relics to which we remain kin
Chiefly by digital memory,
the gist of us then, pure energy
and information, electricity
With which we people Space,
while the bloody people, a token race,
are kept confined in a safe place.
2.
Soon we will shed our animal skins
and put them in museums and zoos,
a species at last made free of sin
through arrangements machines choose,
Like the application of penalty,
key to holding the beast in check,
while our better natures, energy
and information, begin their trek
Into Deep Space, continuing as mind alone,
without the vicious competition and cupidity
and war and ethnic atrocity and road rage
it is impossible to legislate fucking animals out of.
Here’s the catch: we might not make it. We’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth, almost there but needing another few years without mushroom clouds all over the place. At that point, the computers, if one may call them that, can seize us by the throats and get on with the evolution of intelligence.
* * * * * *
REAL TROUBLE WITH PALESTINIANS
I took the bus fairly often, but my main means of transportation around Bethlehem and Beit Sahour was shank’s mare. Rarely, perhaps only once, I used a taxi. That was to get me home from East Jerusalem one day when I somehow ended up there alone. The distances I had to travel were only a few miles and I liked walking.
Certainly I, and other members of our excursion, stood out as we walked around Bethlehem, but I had the notion that we were basically appreciated and protected. I did have to decline an offer of a ride in a car with three men, the guy in the back seat patting the spot where he wanted me to sit, but basically I was left alone, and still feel my appraisal of personal safety in Bethlehem vindicated.
There was another occasion, when I was on my way to the Bible College for afternoon Arabic lessons, traveling my usual route at my normal hour, when a man came out of a shop and asked why I was there. We were quickly surrounded by a number of people, all interested to hear the answer. They had probably planned this journalistic ambush. But it was in no way threatening.
I said, to begin with, I was from Canada, but that didn’t cut any ice with anyone who knew Canada’s position on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Canada, like the USA, professed to be a staunch ally of Israel, no questions asked. Nor did this answer the question I had been asked.
I went on to say I was there because I wanted Palestinians to know that not everyone in my part of the world felt the way our governments acted. I was here to show support for their cause: an end to the occupation. They seemed to accept that, as indeed, they should have if they had been looking around the city.
There were visitors from all over the world with this basic outlook. The ICAHD work, for example, which I participated in for one day, was a weeks-long excursion for participants from Europe and North America. Additionally, there were people on private excursions who were there, not just to see the place, but to act as witnesses and thereby mitigate the oppression. Also, there were organized religious visits. Once, a procession from Korea came down Manger Street, occupying the width of it and bearing a banner in front saying, Korea loves Palestine.
But not all my foot travel went unassailed. One Sunday I decided to go to an Internet Cafe I had not visited to that point. I had instructions on how to get to it, but decided to ignore them and set out on dead reckoning, thinking, as the crow flies, it’s over there. It was a nice sunny day and I was carrying my laptop in my backpack.
Going along an unfamiliar road with very few houses on it, I was overtaken by a couple of boys, about 14 or 15, who came up to me, holding out their hands, saying: Dollar, dollar, dollar.
I knew the smallest thing in my wallet was a twenty, and had no intention of getting it out. I said No, La, and kept walking.
They kept walking with me and repeating their request, which was turning more and more into a demand. I still said no.
One of them tried to open my backpack and I wheeled on him and scowled. He backed off, but they continued walking with me, inviting me, at one point, to come off the road and along a path. Not likely.
Then the bigger boy got out a pocket knife and opened the blade and made stabbing gestures at the air in front of him, accompanied by disagreeable faces.
I was angry and agitated but honestly not afraid. They were about my height but both slighter, and I would have fought with them if I had to, though I certainly preferred not. My tricks of combat are from seven or eight years of judo, better suited to one-on-one encounters, as opposed to, say, ten-on-one, a la Bruce Lee. Nor did I have a bigger knife like Crocodile Dundee. But as much as I hoped not to fight, I was not giving money to these little miscreants.
We kept walking.
In the near distance I could see that we were coming to more houses, and that someone was outside one of them. One of my insights about travel in foreign lands is that, in public, a person is generally pretty safe. It’s when he gets off to himself, as I had in this case, that all bets are off.
As we got closer and closer, their opportunity to attack was slipping away. I could sense it, and so could they.
They let it.
Near the houses there was a fork in the road and we took alternate branches, they going one way and I the other.
Somehow, I knew the Arabic word for shame, ear, (although I had to look it up, just now), and raised my voice to call it after them.
Nor was I the only one to have unpleasant interaction with Palestinians. One day, when I arrived at the Holy Land Trust Office, our regular hangout on Manger Street, one of our young women was crying unconsolably despite being comforted by other women. She had been surrounded by a bunch of boys who groped her and pulled at her clothing. Whether more had happened, or how she escaped, I don’t know.
I tried to find out details but was rebuffed by our American tour leader, who would to have preferred that nobody know anything about such happenings. It seemed to me he was implying that I was wrong to ask, which pissed me off because I thought the world was not much changed by such events, and that pretending it was might make matters worse.
We all know that crimes are committed by members of all groups. And we know that prudence might dictate avoidance in certain circumstances. But anyone who would leap to condemnation of whole groups is hardly worth arguing with.
Likewise, by the way, with anyone who extolls the virtues of whole groups, be they Jewish, Arabic, Aryan or whatever. The accomplishments and the hazards may be real, but that tells us nothing about how to deal with groups. There has to be a distinction between public policy and private considerations.
* * * * * *
READING
There were numerous indoor and outdoor seating areas where we could talk, listen to music and smoke those hookahs. I have smoked off and on throughout my adult life for the sake of socializing and augmenting the effects of alcohol, but never considered myself addicted. And I had never smoked a hookah. Smoking is an intrinsically social activity, and I applauded (from afar) Leonard Cohen’s reputed decision to take it up again at eighty.
I do not smoke at present, but was pleased to try it in this new form, however indifferent to the proffered flavors: apple, for example.
The hookah provides a focus for conversational lulls, and feels Middle Eastern. I was using one one evening with a group in their twenties and thirties, including our youngest participant, a Norwegian girl about seventeen years old and just out of High School. I thought: there is no other way I would learn anything about these people.
She had needed more than a day to get through the airport in Tel Aviv, the authorities there doing their level best to save her from the Arabs. I forget how she finally got in, probably with phone calls to our organizers and help from Israelis like the one scheduled to meet and take us to his Kibbutz. All in all, it was a bit of an ordeal for her.
Usually the music playing during such encounters was Middle Eastern, with that peculiar, driving swirl that suggests bare bellies and swishing skirts. If you played it for me now, I might mistake for Indian sitar or Persian something-or-other. Obviously, I didn’t know what I was listening to most of the time.
Sometimes, however, it was good old Bob Marley, singing: Get Up, Stand Up, Stand Up For Your Rights. Get Up, Stand Up, Don’t Give Up De Fight…
As it was on one occasion, when I sat on an outdoor terrace and talked to a Palestinian American man of about twenty who was also part of our excursion. His father, he told me, was Mazin Qumsiyeh, a molecular biologist at Yale. He had written a book called Sharing The Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle.
I hadn’t read it, nor even heard of it, at the time, but have it on my lap at the moment, and can tell you frankly: it is the work of a polymath. It includes scholarly observation, complete with references, on ancient history, modern history, languages, genetics, politics, religion, demographic fluxes, geography, names, and pretty much whatever else you could think of that might pertain to this fraught issue.
It is delivered from a benign perspective, too, leaving a reader with no sense of being assailed by someone’s agenda, except to say that, beyond its educational purpose, the thesis of the book is that a shared, binational state based on equal human rights for all is preferable to a Two-State framework, which is unrealistic.
This is precisely what I have believed for decades, on the basis of no more information than a few books (like Noam Chomsky’s War And Peace In The Middle East: A Concise History, 1994), and a few others that do not come to mind, plus reading the news.
I often tried to write this out in a page or two of pleading, and once considered buying a full-page ad in the New York Times. thinking: If only people could see The Necessity! The Truth! The Way! Then I would snap out of it and think: Ain’t you quaint.
Yet didn’t I once think that South Africa had to burn? Then Mandela came out of prison and led the country, and it didn’t burn. All it took was the insight (by President De Klerk and others) that Apartheid had to end, one way or another. They chose the less destructive. Why couldn’t this same thing happen in Israel/Palestine. A Truth, once seen by a single mind ends up imposing itself on the totality of human consciousness (Anonymous).
I have the impulse periodically to proselytize for this, but always give it up before taking action. Then, before long, I get worked up again and think it’s possible! Maybe inevitable! It’s the only solution!
The two-state solution is a recipe for prolonged conflict, a bandaid and self-deluding. It’s already impossible that this could provide meaningful relief, although some limited version of it might be included in the basic idea proposed by Qumsiyeh.
Consider: Basically, there would be a Federation with each side creating laws for its territory on either side of the Green Line, as it existed prior to 1967. Everyone would be free to walk wherever he or she wanted, on either side of that line, except that private property would be respected; and there might be minimal, limited ethnic use for special religious sites or cultural monuments. But the key word is, minimal. Apart from these few exceptions, economic forces alone would determine what belongs to whom. All that’s required is to admit that people are equal and need access to equal, basic, human rights.
Admittedly, it would be no small matter to develop such a plan. The devil would be in the details, and it would require swallowing some hard pills. To say, there might be hard feelings that lingered after years of war is an understatement. But integration is necessary.
In the end, a Palestinian should have the right to buy a house anywhere, especially in those modern Jewish settlements built on the wrong side of The Green Line. And an Israeli could live in any refugee camp he chose; or a farm he bought.
* * * * * *
A FEW PLACES VISITED
Ayda is the smallest refugee camp in Bethlehem. When we visited, we were met first by a soldier who trained his rifle on us as we approached. He was guarding the construction of a section of The Wall designed to take away from the camp a field beside it. This was the only place to play, and the wall, running alongside the road, was right on the edge of the apartment buildings.
A large group of boys from about eight to twelve or fourteen years of age, followed our tour. They were to get me my only taste of tear gas on the visit. We diverged from the soldier with the rifle and went into the streets of the camp. The boys came with us, getting scolded once by our guide, for making his job harder.
Eventually, we came out of the housing and onto the same road where the wall was being built and the soldier had confronted us. We were now on the other side of him, above the point where the wall was being built. It was late afternoon and the workers had finished, but the last point of active construction was being guarded.
We walked down, almost all the way to that point, until we were told to come no farther by that soldier and (I think) one other. We stopped. The boys were behind us. Then there was the sound of a great flutter of sleeves as they simultaneously threw rocks and pieces of concrete over our heads and at the soldiers.
The soldiers fired canisters of tear gas and we backed away and went home by the route through the camp we had come on.
Jerusalem: We had with us a young Jew from New York who seemed more or less angry and out of sorts most of the time. He organized a visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque, the Dome on the Rock, for the sake of pubescent boys he worked with through the week. I don’t remember what he did with the boys, besides play soccer. He needed volunteers to be able to chaperone a larger number of them, perhaps in a ratio of one to five, something like that. I volunteered, as did others.
We saw the mosque and it was appreciated by the boys, who would never have gotten close to it without this expedition let by our New Yorker. On the way back to Bethlehem, the boys were being grilled at the main check point, and our New Yorker got angry and scolded one soldier: What are you picking on the kids for? The soldier was taken aback. He could see that the fellow scolding him was probably Jewish and might have had some position of importance, He asked: Where are you from? I’m from New York!
That seemed to be enough to get us through without much more hassle.
Jenin is a tough town, famous for its military resistance and for being on the receiving end of Israeli assaults. There are pictures of martyrs all over, and there are vacant lots where the family homes of people who attacked Israelis once stood. When we stood looking at such, a car full of armed men pulled up and stood looking at us.
Our visit was facilitated, I think, by a Swedish Israeli, a grandson of Jewish philanthropist Arna Mer Khamis, who created a theatre for children there, known as Arna’s children. He was also a friend of Zakaria Zubeidi, formerly of the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades but now turned to cultural resistance. The grandson (I think his name was Jonatan) was a Scandinavian Jew who seemed able to go wherever he wanted in Israel or Palestine. He was a live wire, active in protests the whole time. One morning he had been in the news before 9 am for chaining himself and several others to a live goat in an intersection.
Hebron is a beleaguered town we had trouble getting into. A couple of settlers had been murdered recently, and our bus circled to find an entry point, and succeeded. The local guide took us through a closed market with shell casings on the ground and a chain-link fence wired together overhead. The overhead screening had been installed to keep the market from being pelted by settlers who lived above the corridor. Rocks and chunks of concrete still hung on the screen. The stalls were all empty.
At the end of the closed market and just around the corner from it, we visited a famous mosque/synagogue called the Cave of the Patriarchs. Here reside Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. There is a partition down the middle of it to separate Jews and Muslims and guarded by Israeli soldiers. This division came about as a result of a massacre of praying Muslims in 1994.
I bought something from a glass-blowing factory in a functioning part of town but it’s gone now and I can’t remember what it was. I think it was green.
Nablus is an even rougher town. Our organizers didn’t plan to visit it, but we had an Australian Jewish fellow, a guy about my age, who approached me and asked if I would like to try to arrange a tour on our own. I said: no thank you, a bit chicken. So he went ahead on his own and organized it: hired a van and announced the availability of this small tour. I said: May I go too, please? He said: Sure.
It was a hard place to get to, with miserable check points and a confluence of traffic around the worst. I remember a long line of cars held up, and children selling drinks as the cars waited in the sun to advance at the soldiers’ whims. This was outside of Nablus itself, just one example of the systematic torment of the Palestinian public. Of course, nearly everything is justified on the grounds of security, but there seemed no need.
Eventually we got into Nablus and exited the van to proceed on foot. Our guide was a boy of about 18 or 20, who was a University student and a violinist. He spoke good English and led us up hill toward a market.
Before we got to the market, a lone, military figure with an automatic rifle came walking down the middle of the vacant street, staring straight ahead of himself as if in a trance. Our guide said excitedly: Don’t look at him, don’t look at him! For the most part I didn’t but the one or two glances I got made it seem like his head was oversized and in the approximate shape of a two-gallon bucket, upside down. I suppose I could have made this up; I didn’t look very long; and I have a rich imagination. Anyway, the guy kept going as if he didn’t see us.
When we entered the market people probably knew we were coming (there might have been about eight of us all told.) A tall, rough-looking fellow came out of a store-front dragging a sheep, and he killed on the sidewalk as we approached. He straddled it and cut its throat, creating quite a spill all the while looking at us hostilely. We walked around it, going out onto the road.
I don’t remember buying anything in Nablus, and have always felt a bit sheepish about how I got to see the place. However, I appreciate to this day the bravery of our Australian fellow for arranging the visit.
Back in North America, I support the Middle East Children’s Alliance, MECA, by buying things from an online store called Shop Palestine. Among the items I buy are olive oil soap from Nablus, embroidered pillows and pillow cases from Gaza, plus olive oil from Jenin.
CONUNDRUM
Here’s a conundrum: People crave separation: If only they could get their enemies to go away! If only they could kill them all! If only they could be left alone at last!
Yet if they were, if they achieved isolation, they would be at far greater risk of being obliterated. Having that undesired population intermingled is far safer, because nobody wants to drop a bomb on large numbers of people of their own ilk.
So failure to achieve isolation is importantly success in self-preservation.
There have been efforts to extricate Jews from Iran. A wealthy individual, unspecified, offered them $30,000 to move to Israel. But they did not wish to leave. I remember reading about this decades ago. Then PBS investigated the
* * * * * *
DEMOCRACY
Supposedly it’s worst system except for all others. I understand, but what are we to make of it? To me, what makes Democracy the best possible system is the opportunity for peaceful change. We are bound to make mistakes, and Democracy, theoretically, gives us the chance to change our minds. Except when it doesn’t.
I played in a tennis tournament in Edmonton, Alberta, not because I really belonged in it but because I was visiting my sister and her husband who are very good players, and he, in particular, had a chance to improve his national rating. I love tennis too, and it was the logical thing to do.
I played an Egyptian guy who beat me easily, and afterward we had a cup of coffee and discussed the world. His name was Osama, and I came to think of him as Osama bin Practicin’.
My father thought I was pretty funny for that formulation, but really it was derivative of a joke that circulated in Newfoundland after 9-11: Word had it that the Mounties had stepped up surveillance in search of terrorists, and consequently, had discovered bin-Drinkin,’ bin-Fightin,’ and bin-Sleepin,’ but, to this day, had not caught even a glimpse of bin-Workin.’
Anyway, Osama and I were having this cup of coffee he bought, and looking out over the courts. I asked him what he thought of the military coup in Egypt that overthrew Morsi and The Muslim Brotherhood. They had won an election but only got to hold power for about a year, 2012-2013.
He said: Oh, it had to be done. Those people would have taken the country back a thousand years. And you’d never get it away from them.
So that was Osama’s level of commitment to Democracy: it’s great until it gives you something you can’t stand. Then you have to toss it.
I disagreed, but had I any right to? I’ve already talked about the sanctity of disruptive protest, when the Law itself is the problem. Morsi had been facing street protests before the military stepped in to oust him. Does anybody willingly accept what he finally cannot accept? I guess there are examples, but rather than hunt them up, can we agree that to put a political system above our own best judgement, that system would have to produce disagreeable outcomes that fell within limits. If it gave you a dictator, perhaps it behoove you to get ready to fight.
We have in the USA right now, a President given us by Democracy. He does not accept Democracy, except when it goes his way. When it doesn’t, he fights tooth and nail. He showed us as much on Jan. 6, 2021. At the moment he is building out his military defences in Washington against the day the public turns against him. Would anyone shed a tear if events triggered a military coup in Washington? It probably depends on the events. But the key word is: depends. And that’s how it is in general: it depends.
* * * * * *
GOING DANCING
In Newfoundland I once asked a woman if she liked dancing, and she said, As far as I’m concerned that’s what we were put here for. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Though I have received almost or no training in the subject (just a couple of classes intended for public consumption), I have always been disposed to waggle my arse and squirm about when the right kind of music was on. So I was pleased to see that there were opportunities for that sort of thing in The Holy Land.
There probably always have been, and that’s partly what makes us so numerous. One supposes even Moses got down every once in a while, burning bushes being hard to ignore, God calling out therefrom.
We had a couple of parties that included dancing, and there was a very inviting Japanese woman in her early twenties who liked to dance. She asked me to join her having seeing me at it with others. I still had something left in the tank and was honored and delighted to oblige. Indeed, I would have been a fool not to. In a wink we were at it: sporting and cavorting, contorting, not snorting exactly but nearly.
Later she asked if I would like to go to Egypt by ground transportation, but I had to demur. Chicken. I felt safer in the company of knowledgeable people with a vested interest in my survival. How could I take off on a tangent through unknown contingencies? What if you had to speak Arabic at some point? I did not wish to be reckless, nor to abort the purpose we had come for: visiting and supporting Palestine.
Rather, I wanted to make it home alive to my own dear woman, who had been trembling with fear the night of my departure. The Canadian travel advisory said don’t do it; the turmoil and distress over here, generally apparent.
There was a lot of ill will, and not all of it well-directed. I remember Palestinian taxi drivers getting out of their cars to fight. Who else could they punch?And there was a belligerence in some of the people hawking wares to the tourists. If you didn’t buy they sometimes looked threatening. Trying to survive in difficult straits does not bring out the finest features of humanity.
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When I was an undergraduate at Bradley University my favorite class was a Psychology Lecture by a grand old man, Carl Smith, who had come from Harvard. In my mind, he was manifestly wise, and I used to enjoy his erudition and cynicism and witticisms generally. He knew Science, and had rubbed elbows with Bertrand Russell and other famous people.
Once as we were leaving for our Christmas Holidays he said: You know that saying you’re so fond of at this time of year: ‘Peace on Earth, good will toward men.’ It doesn't say that at all. It says: ‘Peace on Earth to men of good will.’
Obviously, there was a distinction, and I could see the cogency of the earlier version, for it had a corollary: No peace if you are not of good will.
It might not have been too great a leap to say: You shall live in perpetual enmity.
A funny line from a simpleton in a novel goes: Everything’s better beforehand.
Shortly after my visit I decided I was not going to throw myself into the maw that that quarrel is; and I returned to North American living, enjoying my family and relative luxury of a house and five acres in Newfoundland. I remain pleased with that decision, happy to have had a couple of decades of comfort with my now-deceased wife. I have no plans to return to Israel and Palestine at this point, but the least I can do is add my voice and story, however trivial, to the rising chorus calling for an end to the genocide, and even to the misery in general.