Impeachment Charges, Biden Lets Loose and Historic Facts

Here’s an example of what one of my graduate school journalism professors called a “nothing new” headline:

“House Impeaches Trump.”

Here’s another example:

“Senate Acquits Trump.”

It doesn’t take a genius to know as sure as the first headline will be realized before Christmas, the second will follow in short order, possibly before the end of January.

Unless Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has an epiphany and switches his allegiance from the autocratic orangeman in the White House to the U.S. Constitution there is scant expectation Trump will face any penalty greater than history’s assessment of his guilt. 

However, in the debate over what charges the House of Representatives should level against the nasty-man-in-chief, there is an important bit of politics that must be played out. Should Trump be charged merely with abusing the power of his office for personal and political gain through an attempted bribery of the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden in return for arranging a White House meeting and unfreezing Congressionally approved military aid, or should the House lay out a laundry list of offenses including obstruction of justice? 

Those in favor of the former argue it would be a more focused indictment, easier for the public to wrap its mind around. That argument, however, presumes the possibility of a conviction. 

Ha! It will never happen (not “would never happen” which implies “maybe;” under McConnell it is a certainty the Senate will not convict).

The Democratically controlled House, therefore, should engage Republican hands by throwing the kitchen sink at Trump, forcing GOP senators to go on the record to condone each and every behavior that is injurious to American interests and constitutional norms. Make each senator run on his or her compliance with actions they would never tolerate if a Democratic president undertook them. 

A Biden Bite: A show of raw emotion was just what Joe Biden needed to spark his candidacy. But I would suggest the former vice president should not have called an Iowa farmer a “damn liar” during a campaign stop Thursday for regurgitating Trump and Fox News charges that he sold access to the Obama presidency and helped his son Hunter obtain a lucrative job with an energy company in Ukraine, a position for which he had no experience.

Instead of directly insulting the 83-year-old retired farmer, Biden should have countered thusly: “You’re repeating falsehoods, lies, that were created by Russia and Vladimir Putin and promulgated by his corrupt ‘useful idiot’ in the White House and his unscrupulous supporters in the House and Senate. You’re repeating a false narrative which is undermining our democracy.”

Biden took a more in-your-face response. It displayed fire in the belly that has been lacking and, if he is fortunate enough to secure the Democratic Party nomination, will be required if he is to successfully confront Trump.

Historic Facts: Just when you thought the public could not get any crazier, here are two stories that boggle the mind:

A majority of Republicans believe Trump is a greater president than Abraham Lincoln (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7742883/Majority-Republicans-think-Donald-Trump-better-president-Abraham-Lincoln.html). I’ll let you parse that one without further reflection on my part.

Here’s the Mideast Problem in Brief: In a speech in November, Riyad Al-Aileh, a Palestinian political science lecturer at Al-Azhar University, said Jews only came to the region “as invaders 70 years ago.” Another Palestinian “intellectual,” Abir Zayyad, an archaeologist and member of Fatah’s Jerusalem branch, asserted “We have no archaeological evidence of the presence of the children of Israel in Palestine in this historical period 3,000 years ago, neither in Jerusalem, nor in all of Palestine.” 

So there you have it—A rejection not only of Jewish heritage in the land of Israel but also, by inference, of the existence of Jesus, his visit to the temple in Jerusalem and his later return to the city, his trial and crucifixion. A rejection of Roman historical records. It makes one wonder how any peace can be achieved when one side is so delusional. 

Building Community in Eshkol

So I asked the woman, what was the news back home? What were the people feeling about the latest incidents?

Silly me. I thought Batia would tell me about reaction to the air strikes by Israel in Syria and the rise in tensions along Israel's borders. Instead, the news of the day, she told me, on the lips of all, was the report that one of the unmarried news anchors of Channel 1 was pregnant. As if that wasn't enough of a blockbuster, an anchor of Channel 2 was involved in a traffic accident. No word on her condition.

Life goes on. Amid the bombs and rockets, life goes on.

Batia was one of eight women brought to the United States by Shalom Yisrael to enjoy two weeks of rest and relaxation  from the daily stress of living and working in the Eshkol Regional Council in Israel, the most frequently attacked district of their country. Situated along the southern portion of the Gaza Strip, hugging the border with Egypt, the Eshkol area is home to some 13,000 residents. It was a mostly peaceful 1,000 square miles when the women chose to live there, not out of any Zionistic fervor but because Eshkol was beautiful and away from the hustle and bustle of city life in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. 

All that changed in 2005 after Israel withdrew from Gaza. After Hamas brutally ousted Fatah, mortar after mortar attack ensued. It was from the Eshkol region that the soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped and held for five years in the Gaza Strip until released in 2011. The incursion into Israel last year by terrorists who stole two armored Egyptian vehicles occurred in the Eshkol region. Last November, when 1,200 rockets landed in all of Israel, 463 fell in Eshkol.

Some of the communities in Eshkol are so close to the border there isn’t time for an alarm to sound. Only the percussion of an exploding rocket or mortar startles residents into defensive activity. It is then that Batia and her colleagues spring into action as first responder trauma care providers. That’s not their primary jobs. Normally, they are social workers and psychologists in schools and welfare agencies, administering to the needs of the area’s population. When explosions break the tranquility of the day—a rocket landed Wednesday—they are transformed into first responder trauma care providers. 

By necessity, their discipline has been mostly self taught. As I wrote last year, when eight other first responders visited as part of the Shalom Yisrael program, the 32 communities of Eshkol (14 kibbutzim, 13 moshavim and five residential communities) are vulnerable in space and time. If their homes are within four and a half kilometers (2.7 miles) of the border they have been outfitted by the government with “safe rooms” built to withstand a direct hit. In communities more than four and a half kilometers from Gaza, no safe rooms are retrofitted to existing homes. The only government funded security is a shelter for kindergarten children. If they are lucky, they have, perhaps, 15 seconds to seek cover. 

Still, life goes on, as close to normal as the Israelis will permit. Tamar, a mother of three boys, 10, 5 and 3, and a 13 year old daughter, demonstrates her resiliency and determination by refusing to give in to fear. She purposely drives the road near the Gaza Strip rather than a route further away from danger. She will not allow the terrorists to alter her lifestyle. 

During their two week stay in New York and Washington, DC, which ended on Mother’s Day, the women visited many cultural and historic sites. And, of course, they shopped. But perhaps their most unique experience involved an aspect of Judaism they had never encountered. They are secular, for the most part, even to the edges of agnosticism because of the smothering influence the religious right has on the Israeli way of life. Their host families brought them to their respective synagogues on Saturdays, where they experienced prayer services far more inclusive and welcoming than any they knew of in Israel. Several received a joint aliyah, an honor of being called up to the Torah. And the Friday before they left they joined a demonstration in Madison Square in Manhattan in support of Women of the Wall, the Israeli group trying to gain equality for women at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Again, they received recognition from the New York community.

Community. Even though Eshkol is bombarded more than any other region, it doesn’t get the foreign press Sderot generates from attacks at the northern edge of Gaza. At times, the residents of Eshkol can feel isolated, alone. But two weeks of sharing and nurturing from heretofore strangers, two weeks of freedom from terror, recharged their internal batteries and revealed to them that their values were shared by a community across the ocean. Life can go on, knowing they are not alone. 

Gazing Over Gaza

One week ago today, from a hill in the Israeli moshav of Netiv Hasara, the northern Gaza Strip unfolded before my eyes. It was a sunny, quiet day.

Six times over the last two days rockets fired from that same region fell inside Israel. No one was injured. Israel retaliated with an air strike. No one was reported injured.

The Gaza Strip I looked out upon, along with Gilda, our friends Dave, Gemma, Phil and Margie, is a rolling stretch of houses and fields, with no outward indication of unyielding conflict. Except, to gaze at Gaza your eyes have to first pass over a security wall, perhaps 25 feet high, topped by machine gun turrets.

There’s a constant breeze in your face as you stand on the hill, a nagging thought in your mind that a sniper could easily pick you off if so inclined. You joke you’re thankful you’re not the tallest one in your group.

We were in Israel the first 11 days of July primarily to attend a wedding and tour the country with Dave and Gemma, best friends from Britain who’d never been to Israel. We traveled to the Sha’ar Hanegev (Gates of the Negev) region to visit with first responder trauma care providers who visited New York in May of the last two years as part of a rest and relaxation program sponsored by Shalom Yisrael, a volunteer group I joined last year (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2011/05/well-deserved-rest-relaxation.html).

After a day of touring several kibbutzim, we dined in Kfar Aza, at a home several paces from the spot a mortar shell landed three years ago, killing a neighbor, a father of three and Israel’s national engine-powered paragliding champion. Jimmy Kedoshim, 48, died while tending the garden in front of his home.

I have no doubt there are people on the other side of that fence who want friendship and amity, if not actual peace. Before Gaza became a synonym for incessant, random rocket and mortar fire, there were many friendly exchanges between the two Semitic peoples. As related by my hosts, workers from Gaza routinely came across the border to work in Israel’s fields and factories. Israelis brought their cars to Gaza for repairs. They visited the beaches of Gaza. When a Palestinian fell in love with an Israeli, he sought refuge with his Israeli employer to avoid the death threat his family imposed on him, a sentence eventually rescinded when the affair ended.

It is one of the ironies of this seemingly intractable conflict that people who live in the shadow of terror are among the most pacific of their fellow citizens. Time and again they expressed an affinity for the residents of Gaza, people they mingled and traded with before Hamas took control and turned the narrow strip of land into a missile launching pad.

On the other hand, one of my retired military friends from Tel Aviv has hardened his dovish position of years back. He now fears a Hamas-led Palestinian state on the West Bank—he has no doubt Hamas would take over there from Fatah, as it did in Gaza. Such an eventuality would make Israel’s population centers vulnerable to missile, rocket and mortar fire, would make air travel into and out of Ben Gurion airport hazardous because of ground to air missiles.

In Sha-ar Hanegev, settlements are picturesque villages of single family homes inhabited by hundreds to several thousand residents. On the other side of the fence, multi-story apartment houses dominate the landscape. Its among the most densely populated areas on earth. Yet, Gaza is not a blighted ghetto. Consumer goods abound. Ample food and medicines arrive daily in trucks from Israel.

One wonders what Gaza could become if peace, true peace, settled over the area. Gaza has beautiful beaches, an industrious, educated population.

Fanatics have co-opted the dialogue, on both sides of the fence. Ordinary people just want to live in peace, without fear. Perhaps, in our lifetime, it will happen. As the Arabs say, “inshallah,” God willing.