Mass Shootings, an Intractable Dispute and McConnell's Imprint on Our Future

From a Los Angeles Times article on the killings in Northern California Tuesday: “I thought this only happens to places like L.A. or New York,” Jose Garcia, owner of La Fortune Convenience, told the Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-norcal-elementary-school-shooting-20171114-story.html).

Now, why would he say that? In the 16 deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 1949, not one, not one!, occurred in either Los Angeles or New York City (http://cnn.it/1F5wWwy).

Sadly, mass shootings are part of Americana. They happen in schools, in churches, in McDonalds, in nightclubs, on military bases. But not in New York or Los Angeles. 

Numb. Week after week crazed men and the occasional woman perpetrate numbing acts of violence against innocents, many of whom are children. As a nation we are repulsed. But let’s put our reaction in historical perspective.

From our earliest days as colonists to European monarchs, to our formation as the United States of America, we have rarely done anything but accept, and even condone, mass killings, either on our soil or in foreign lands, by our citizens or other peoples. Consider our treatment of Native Americans. Or the death trips chained Africans endured crossing the Atlantic below decks aboard slave trading ships. Or the way we turned our backs on thousands of desperate souls fleeing Nazi Germany. Or how we mostly ignored the ethnic warfare in Rwanda and the Balkans? 

It is hard to find solace in our historical record. 

From a Sunday New York Times article on Trump administration efforts to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, here’s a quote: “After 10 months of educating themselves on the complexities of the world’s most intractable dispute, White House officials said, Mr. Trump’s team of relative newcomers to Middle East peacemaking has moved into a new phase of its venture  …” (https://nyti.ms/2ji06GG).

Now, Jews for decades have been pleased to be recognized for outstanding feats. Entertainers, scientists, Nobel Prize winners, athletes and so on, including a remarkable victory in the Six Day War, they all evoke cultural pride among the “chosen.” But there is no joy in associating Israel with “the world’s most intractable dispute.” Israel, for one, would argue it has sought peaceful co-existence from day one of its statehood in 1948 and even before. But let’s not argue that point.

I’d rather focus on the highlighted phrase. Should we not consider the friction over Kashmir between Pakistan and India, two nuclear powers, an equally, if not more, intractable, and potentially more dangerous, dispute? What about Korea? What about the Kurds wanting their own country and stifled by Iraq, Turkey and Syria? 

I’m sure there are other hotspots around the globe that could share equal billing with the Israeli-Palestinian discord, so let’s not be so quick to label any dispute the most intractable.

As long as we’re talking Israeli-Palestinian issues, earlier this month, November 2, marked the 100th anniversary of the issuance of the Balfour Declaration that stated the British government’s support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”  

Rather than go into a dissertation on the history and pros and cons of the document, let me be personal about the Balfour Declaration. Several years ago, as part of my part-time work as a real estate agent, I had the extreme good fortune of seeing a draft of the Balfour Declaration, with handwritten notations and edits, hanging in the home of a client. That was a priceless moment.

He’s the One: Stephen Bannon wants him thrown out of office, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is arguably the politico most responsible for the rightward shift America will undergo for the next several decades.

McConnell’s unprecedented obstruction of judicial nominations during the last year or more of Barack Obama’s presidency has resulted in the appointment of conservative Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and a slew of like-minded jurists to lower federal benches. These lifetime positions will set a reactionary tone for decades putting at risk hope for progressive, humane decisions that favor civil rights and individuals versus corporations and government (https://nyti.ms/2hqRzk3).

The Bannon trope against McConnell is a public relations fight that obscures what is really happening in Washington. Congress may be crawling along but the real deconstruction of government is happening at the cabinet department level where regulation after regulation is being rescinded or amended to eliminate or reduce safeguards intended to protect workers, the environment and consumers.

The avuncular McConnell is a tempting target, in appearance and legislative accomplishment, but keep in mind it was his strategy that made a vote for Trump synonymous with a choice for the next Supreme Court justice. 

Bombs Away: Actions Have Consequences

I cannot denounce Donald Trump’s decision to punish Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for his alleged chemical weapons attack on rebels and civilians earlier this week.

In truth, ever since Assad ruthlessly bombarded rebels and residents of Homs and Aleppo several years ago I was in favor of targeted military strikes to educate Assad that actions, particularly inhumane actions, have consequences. I wanted President Obama to issue a warning, and follow through on it, that he would systematically destroy Assad’s palaces, government buildings, and state infrastructure after any attack on civilians. But Obama didn’t, and one consequence of his inaction was the mass flight of millions of Syrians who felt insecure in their homeland, an exodus that has had significant international repercussions.

I am not ordinarily a war monger but I do believe a civilized country like ours has a responsibility to defend and protect the innocent against heartless slaughter or natural disaster, wherever they live. We did so in Bosnia. We did not during the Rwandan civil war. We are failing to do so in the humanitarian crisis of famine in East Africa.

We are not the policeman of the world. But we are the richest and mightiest nation. And the freest. We have some obligations to the rest of humanity.

Donald Trump will discover his actions, his words and those of his administration, have consequences, as well. Assad, it is reasoned, felt empowered to drop chemicals on Khan Shaykhun after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson indicated his removal from office no longer was U.S. policy. Now it may be.

Beyond Syria the military response has implications for our relations with Iran and North Korea. Trump has more than hinted he would unleash American forces to deny both countries the ability to develop nuclear weapons. Will their leaders be more circumspect now that they’ve seen Trump’s trigger finger is primed for action?

Presidents who successfully flex their muscles are apt to do so with impunity until catastrophe reins them in. Trump has all the leadership characteristics of a strong man who demands to get his way. He thinks in the moment. He is impulsive. Long term analysis is not one of his strong points. Nor is adherence to prior statements. Back in 2013 Trump tweeted against military action in Syria, especially without prior congressional approval.

Obama was more strategic in thinking so he deferred military intervention in Syria, North Korea and Iran.

By striking Syria, Trump may have set the United States on a new course of action with as yet unknown consequences.

A Day of Liberation Not Yet Fulfilled

Tuesday’s weather forecast included snow with temperatures hovering a few degrees below the freezing mark, colder if you calculated the wind chill. It’s the forecast for Auschwitz, Poland, fitting weather for the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp where more than one million, mostly Jews, were slaughtered during World War II. 

By contrast, the atmosphere seemed a little out of whack when our family visited Auschwitz during the summer of 2008. The sun shone brightly. The grass was lush and verdant. Birds chirped. Everything was neat, in its place. Serene even. Color was everywhere. It made it difficult to comprehend that this was the epicenter of man’s bestiality toward his fellow man. 

A former Polish military installation of mostly brick buildings, Auschwitz proved to be too small for the mass murder the Germans had in mind. So they built Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau, just down the road. That’s where the often-pictured railroad gateway with the Arbeit Macht Frei (work brings freedom) slogan greeted the wretched crammed into boxcars, most of them transported from Hungary and surrounding countries during the latter stages of the war. Those “fortunate” enough not to be immediately consigned to the “showers” and crematoria at the rear of the camp found shelter in row after row of wooden barracks (I’ve previously written how the Nazis carried fire insurance provided by Allianz for the structures: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/01/chain-of-one-person-events.html). 

We’ve all seen concentration camp scenes from movies. They’re often rendered in black and white or gauzy color meant to take the life out of the reality. Now a museum dedicated to preserving the memory of those killed and meant to be a cautionary monument to the extremes every generation must guard against, Auschwitz, to me at least, did not evoke the same sense of loss and despair I experienced when visiting Holocaust memorials in Washington, DC, New York City or Jerusalem. It lacked context. Personalization. Scope. 

Sure, the seemingly endless number of victims was remembered through mounds of luggage. Eyeglasses. Shoes. Hair. But what escaped my consciousness was an overwhelming feeling of individual suffering, of agony, of crushing horror and hopelessness. The museum was…too clinical. Too…German. Apparently, mine was not the only such reaction. Plans are underway to humanize the tragedy (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/world/europe/for-auschwitz-museum-and-survivors-a-moment-of-passage.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=0). 

Will it matter? Will mankind stop mass murder and genocide? The record over the last 70 years is not reassuring. Think China’s Cultural Revolution. Cambodia’s Killing Fields. Rwanda’s Hutus and Tutsis. The massacre of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Boko Haram in Nigeria. Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The Assads in Syria. Sunnis and Shia in Iraq and Syria. 

I don’t find it depressing (ok, too depressing) that atrocities of unspeakable scale still occur. What I find truly depressing and maddening is that the civilized world does not or cannot, or does not want to, stop them from happening. With all the knowledge and technology available to us, with our commitment to “Never Again,” again keeps happening again and again. 

The commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz should be a moment of reassurance. Sadly, it has not yet attained that status.

Stories of Resilience

Coincidence? Serendipity?

While lying in bed this a.m., as I was doing 11 years ago in a Phoenix hotel room on the morning of September 11, oblivious early on to the horror unfolding back east, I checked my iPhone and noticed an email from my cousin Herb, the chronicler of Forseter/Kletter family history and general information on Eastern European Jewry. His email came under the following subject title: A STORY WORTH WATCHING - WHEN YOU HAVE TIME - THIS IS A MUST SEE

Naturally I was curious, though cautioned by Herb that the accompanying video link was rather long but well worth the effort. “It shows,” said Herb, “the indomitable courage and greatness of our people in spite of adversity.”  

On a day when we remember the tragic loss of life at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, and the ensuing two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is inspiring to view the accomplishments of Felix Zandman, a survivor of the Holocaust whose contributions to the way we live our lives today are mostly unknown. Almost every time you use a cell phone, travel in an airplane or ride a car, you are benefiting from the genius of Felix Zandman, one of only about 100 survivors of the 30,000 Jews who lived in Grodno, Poland, before the Nazis conquered his homeland. Zandman died a little over a year ago, but this one-hour film, produced in 2004, provides some background on his extraordinary 83 years of life and ultimate success: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLEyAqhEzqI 

Perhaps because I was in Arizona, I find it hard, sometimes, to relate to the catastrophe of September 11. It was an attack on innocents and I don’t begrudge the families of the dead their continued anguish, their sense of loss, their bereavement. Yet, when I place in context the inhumanity that has befallen thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of others, in Cambodia, in Rwanda, throughout Europe during the Second World War, I find myself enthralled by the resilience of the human spirit, by stories such as Felix Zandman’s. I hope some of the orphaned or widowed of 9/11 are able to rise to the heights attained by Zandman.

Camp of Our Dreams: September 11 commemorates the 88th birthday of Yaakov Halpern, a native of Krakow, Poland, also a Holocaust survivor and another giant who overcame personal and collective evil. Among his numerous contributions to Jewish education and culture in the United States and Israel was his founding and leadership of Camp Columbia in Elizaville, NY, where I spent six summers during the 1960s, first as a camper, then a counselor. The camp closed in 1968 when Yaakov emigrated to Israel with his family. 

If you’ve never spent summers at a Jewish sleepaway camp, eight weeks back then, perhaps you’d have a hard time identifying with the immersive experience it could be. Jewish summer camps of that era impressed upon their campers and counselors a richness of heritage and culture that could not be replicated or duplicated, not in Hebrew schools or synagogue services. One need only look at Yaakov’s forearm to see tattooed numbers in blue ink to be reminded we as a people were barely two decades removed from bestiality beyond belief or reason. 

Yaakov and his wife Gilda created an environment where youth could frolic freely and dream about creating a better world. A bond was forged among those who spent summers there, probably no more unique than any fashioned by similar summer camps. It’s a bond enshrined in memory, so perhaps a bit of it is hyperbole. But it is very real to those who summered in the Catskills. 

About 12 years ago I accompanied my wife to a nurse practitioners’ meeting in Kingston, NY, in late spring. While she sat through her conference I ventured out to find the long-shuttered Camp Columbia, some 20 miles away. It took about 30 minutes to find Elizaville and then the real fun began, looking for the road leading to camp. 

I came across an old country store I recognized as the one on the road near the camp. I knew from instinct where the camp road should be. It no longer was rutted dirt. It was paved, with houses dotting its sides. 

About half a mile up it dead-ended. I got out of my car and started walking on a trail. This clearly was the way, but the trail was closed. I was close, not close enough to see the camp’s lower lake, but close. My choices were to proceed and find a camp that I had not seen in 30 years, a camp that probably had fallen into disrepair, a camp that I knew had been taken over by new owners who had filled in the pool, or to stop and reflect on what Camp Columbia looked like in my youth. 

Camp Columbia was not a beautiful camp. But it was the camp of my formative adult years, the camp I will always remember in the words of the alma mater Marty Kellman wrote to the music of Brahms, as “the camp of our dreams.” I turned around.