As we approach today, twenty-five years after September 2001 – which I wrote extensively about ten years after it happened, and again marking fifteen years – organizations like the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the National Constitution Center have all written about the affects of what Wikipedia politely calls the Collapse of the World Trade Center.
Today is also the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and it on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that the Unetaneh Tokef is recited. Chabad.org calls it one of the most “stirring and evocative” prayers and sums up in a biblical way the events and aftermaths of 9/11.
On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: how many shall pass on, and how many shall be born; who shall live, and who shall die; who in his time, and who before his time; who by fire and who by water; who by sword and who by beast; who by hunger and who by thirst; who by storm and who by plague; who by choking and who by stoning… Who shall rest, and who shall wander; who shall be tranquil and who shall be harassed; who shall be at peace and who shall suffer; who shall become poor, and who shall become rich; who shall fall and who shall rise… But repentance, prayer and charity revoke the evil decree!“
The legal and civil rights organizations mentioned earlier recognize the last twenty-five years, talking in different voices about the continued and expanding assaults on civil liberties and due process. While they all talk about solidarity, Manya Brachear Pashman, for The Forward, writes about that from a different perspective. Recognizing that today is the beginning of the High Holy Days for Jews, she writes about interfaith connections between Jews and Muslims following September 11, and the difficulties of maintaining those connections immediately after 9/11 when Palestinians struggled against oppression during the Second Intifada, and again when their struggle hit international news again after October 7, 2023.
I was in high school when 9/11 happened, and although I had a decent education in world affairs and the economic system I didn’t know that the Twin Towers existed until they “collapsed” that day. Looking back, September 11, 2001 is about the the capital system, which the Twin Towers represented, that decides in many ways if you shall die this year, in what manner you might die, who has the capacity to wander, and who will be harassed, who will be at peace, and who will suffer.
The location of the collapsed and destroyed World Trade Center now hosts the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. It pays tribute and respect to the thousands of people in New York who died. that day, or those who died or are suffering from the toxic chemicals released that day. What the Memorial and Museum doesn’t mention is the millions of people killed, harassed, or suffering because of the “War on Terror” our government continues to wage on people. The “racist” War on Terror, the Center for Constitutional Rights says, has allowed our government to construct a framework – a structure of institutions, laws, policies, practices, and directives, all bolstered by propaganda – that it is able to use against virtually anyone it decides to call a ‘terrorist’ or supportive of ‘terrorism.’
The government, backed by money that supports this, has a worrisome level of say in who shall live, how they shall live, whether they shall die, how they should die, and when.
The dentist told me I have Tartar.
Vasty Tartar Back
There’s not usually much to say in a dentist’s chair, and it’s a good place to try to remember Shakespeare. I know he wasn’t referring to this Tartar, but it did make me think of the line “he might return to vasty Tartar back” from Henry V, Act II, Scene II.
In this scene, Henry V learned that fellow English lords had been paid by France to kill him in Hampton before Henry and his men made effort to sail to France and fight for Henry’s claim to French throne. Henry condemns three men, one them Henry Scrope, 3rd Baron Scrope of Masham, or Lord Scroop. Lord Scroop, who, Henry said, “knew’st me the very bottom of my soul, that almost mightst have coined me into gold,” seem to have been to have been taken by a devil that “gull’d thee” who should then “with his lion gait walk the whole world, He might return to vasty Tartar back, And tell the legions ‘I can never win A soul so easy as that Englishman’s.’
Returning to vasty Tartar, I ways understood it, meant returning to vast expanse of land stretching to Siberia to China – an area hardly reachable in Shakespeare’s time. It also means, according to SharespeareWords, and a Google search, Tartarus, the underworld place of confinement for those who incurred the wrath of the gods.
I know that’s not what the dentist was referring to, but that whole monologue from Henry V, Act II, Scene II crossed my mind, and has been in my mind for years.
Steak Tartare
I know the dentist wasn’t referring to Steak Tartare. It crossed my mind in the dentist chair. Now I have the liberty of my internet, and I can look up steak tartare. It has an interesting history for something as unexciting as ground beef, some tartare sauce, and other things that add flavor.
This isn’t what the dentist was talking about when he said I had tartar, but it is something with tartar with a different spelling.
Tartar (hardened plaque)
Tartar is apparently hardened dental plaque. I brush my teeth and I’m convinced my dentist has a contract with the electric toothbrushes and dental picks because I have both at his suggestion.
He could have told me that I have hardened plaque and that the only to remove is to see him on a regular basis. I’m also convinced he ha a contract with the x-ray machine company, and I don’t think it’s good that the price of a visit increases every time they want to use the x-ray machine to see if (among other things) the plaque has turned into tartar.
Perhaps I just miss the family dentist I had growing up who was a friend of the family and I felt like I was visiting a friend.
With few resources and little funding, makeshift educational facilities established over the past several months are working to provide some schooling to children in Gaza.Read on Substack
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Published in Drop Site News, from a writer in Gaza. A touching story of the children trying to learn among the destruction.
When hundreds of Israeli settlers rampaged through Huwara and surrounding Palestinian towns in the occupied West Bank on February 26, 2023, an article in the CNN says, “what unfolded was violence so brutal that the Israeli military commander for the West Bank called it a ‘pogrom‘.”
A few months earlier, in December, 2022, Netanyahu once again became Prime Minister of Israel. He formed the “most right wing government in Israel’s history,” an accomplishment in itself.
The settler “rampage” in Huwara was in response to the killing of Israeli settlers by a Palestinian. This will sound oddly familiar.
The West Bank started as a modern description of a place following the creation of Israel in 1948. The Oslo Accords in the 1990s divided the West Bank into areas A, B, C – administrative zones with some facade of Palestinian control in some parts of the West Bank. In February an article in the Washinington Institute for Near East Policy thinktank titled “Annexation by Design: How Israel’s New West Bank Policies Are Reshaping the Conflict and Testing U.S. Strategy” said it expects a risk of escalating violence in the West Bank caused by Israeli settlers engaging in arson an property damage.
There is no good starting point to talk about the history of the West Bank, so Huwara seems like a good place to convene a description of current ongoing events in the West Bank.
Huwara is south of the city of Nablus, surrounded on three sides by Israeli settlements. It’s almost directly south of Burin, a village (or small town) of a few thousand residents known for it’s annual Kite Festival.
Northwest of Huwara and Burin, and southwest of Nablus is the Palestinian village of Tell. In what the Times of Israel calls a “deadly gunfight” settlers were killed by a Palestinian a couple weeks ago, on Friday, July 24, after the settlers “illegally entered” Tell. As a result, there was a “coordinated wave of retaliatory violence sweeping across the West Bank within hours” by settlers.
Immediately after the “deadly gunfight” in Tell Israel responded with collective punishment as usual. It immediately arrested dozens of Palestinians across the West Bank. With increasingly clear support since October 7, the Israeli government, arms, funds, and protects the settlers. Within hours and days hundreds of settlers had set homes and vehicles on fire in Sarra – west of Nablus – burned Palestinian farms in Jiljiliya and Urif, damaged homes in Far’ata (near Qalqiliya), poisoned a farmer’s flock, uprooted dozens of olive trees in Masafer Yatta, and bulldozed olive groves in Tell. Near Burin, settlers gathered on stolen land and began breaking ground for a new outpost, using the day’s chaos as cover to expand their ethnic cleansing.
UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese described Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians across the occupied West Bank as “pogroms”, the same term of targeting livelihood of a minority group that an Israeli commander used to describe Huwara, three years earlier.
Today the United States is celebrating the Declaration of Independence signed two hundred and fifty years ago. Since it’s creation the United States has been a increasingly committed to capitalism, which in turn has led to an a human-induced climate crisis.
On the same weekend the United States is celebrating Fourth of July, “extreme temperatures, high humidity and intense sunshine combine under a massive heat dome” that will effect two hundred and fifty million people”. According to Accuweather, this will be the hottest every 4th of July for many people, and every year we set records for temperatures previously never reached on a certain date.
During the unprecedented heat wave at the end of June in Europe thousand of people died.
The climate crisis is not coming for us. It’s already here.
We had the the ability to crate it. Do we have the ability to end it, mitigate it, or change the policies that will continue to crate it?
Some advocacy news sources reported that Friday, July 4, has been 1,000 days since October 7, the day that several groups including Hamas broke through a security barrier fencing them inside the Gaza Strip and took more than 250 Israelis and foreign nationals hostage. Other advocacy groups say that it was yesterday, July 3, that was the 1,000th day. A friend also tells me today is also 2 years, 30 weeks from October 7. So who’s counting?!?
Common summaries say that Hamas killed close to 1,2000 Israelis that day – excluding the mentions of foreign nationals, including U.S. citizens serving in the Israeli army. It’s important to mention that Hamas was not the only group that able to breach the security that always fence Gaza’s into an open air prison. More importantly, it’s long been known that many of the people killed on October 7 were killed by Israeli forces.
Israel’s response, over the last thousand days, has been to “flatten Gaza,” as the Jewish Voice for Peace describes it. That “flattening” has extended to Lebanon, where Hezbollah has made effort to distract Israel from the north.
The Office of the Commissioners of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) snapshot of Gaza at the end of June describes some of the devastation of Gaza and it’s people:
- 87% of cropland damaged
- 37,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women are expected to experience acute malnutrition
- 93% of schools will require reconstruction
- …. and a lot more important and troubling facts.
It’s estimated that it will take up to 60 years to rebuild Gaza due to the destruction caused by Israel.
This is what Gaza looks like after a “ceasefire” that has resulted in Israel controlling more than half of Gaza, and the “Board of Peace” that was developed by President Trump pushing the remaining Gazans into “humanitarian zones” to be continuously monitored.
It’s important to remember the facts if you expect to create peace.
Before October 2023, Diana Buttu said in a round-table discussion organized by Al-Shabakah (the Palestinian Policy Network) there was a major push within Israel to advance the normalization project with Arab states.
That project was, she said, mainly “about sidelining Palestinians and sending a message to the Israeli public that the regime never really needed to address the Palestinian issue. Instead, it could have peace and economic ties with the Arab world without ending the occupation, without dismantling the colonial project, and, of course, without addressing Palestinian fundamental rights and, crucially, the right of return.”
Sidelining Palestinians is not a new idea. It’s an ongoing effort, and that exactly what the Abraham Accords are designed to do.
The Abraham Accords were, and and are, agreements between Arab states and Israel to have diplomatic and economic relations that would not depend on any expectation that Israel be required to guarantee Palestinian rights or a Palestinian state. The Accords, in essence, tries to end support for Palestinians from Arab governments.
The “push”to advance normalization continues, but, like many of Trump’s grand projects, is not succeeding as envisioned. That’s good news for everyone that believes peace includes Palestinians having human rights.
An email from Back From the Brink informs me that forty years, ago, on June 12, about a million people gathered at a rally in New York to call for global nuclear disarmament. This is backed up by the Museum of the City of New York.
The email also led me to an article on the increasingly dangerous threat of nuclear war.
The gathering and protest on June 12, 1982, was part of the aptly named Nuclear Freeze movement. Nuclear war – and any use or misuse of nuclear weapons – causes a nuclear winter that destroy global agriculture and other necessary parts of civilization, possibly for decades.
The good news is that it’s possible to abolish nuclear weapons, and that no nuclear weapons have been used in war since their first use in 1945.
The bad news is that nuclear weapons testing has long-lasting multi-generational impacts.
The even worse news is that of the nine countries that have nuclear weapons, countries continue to threaten their use. (The US against Gaza in 2024 and 2025, Israel against Gaza)
Join the movement to abolish nuclear weapons before it’s too late.
On the morning of June 5, 1967, Israel attacked Egypt. This became known as the 1967 War, or the Six day War, or the Arab-Israeli War.
Zena Tehlan, in an Al Jazeera article explains some of the debated history that led up to the war. It’s not debated that Israel preemptively began the War by attacking Egypt.
Tehlans’s artticle “The Naksa: How Israel occupied the whole of Palestine in 1967” gives a provides a summary of some of the immediate and ongoing results of the endless occupation and oppression of Palestinians.
The Palestinian-created and Palestinian-led BDS (Boycott, Sanction, Divest) Movement has suggestions on actions to take to end the Naksa, and it’s precursor, the the Nakba of 1948.
Today Israel continued to act with impunity. Once again Israel violated international law with impunity. Today Israel once again “intercepted” civilian boats and “detained” dozens of people from more than fifty boats. Last month Israel Israel did the same to similar boats, the same to dozens more boats and people last summer, and have done the same many times in the previous decades.
The Freedom Flotilla organizes a coalition of international boats and people that set sail to break the illegal seize of Gaza. Several flotillas have been launched since Israel implemented a full blockade of Gaza in 2007. All the efforts by civilians to break the seize of Gaza have failed since 2008. Countries have never even tried, and seem to accept and approve of the blockade that controls all people and goods allowed into Gaza, and prevents dangerous objects like wheelchairs and pencils from entering Gaza.
It is for that reason that international civilians from around the world have been increasingly gathering to sail together to provide the basic goods to Gaza that countries of the world have chosen to not provide.
Last month dozens of boats were attacked by Israel while in waters off of Greece. Dozens of the civilians on boats from around the world ended up in Greece, beaten badly enough to end up in the hospital. Today the boats were “intercepted” again in international water near Cyprus.
Israel has no right under international law, the law of the seas, or the Geneva conventions to attack civilians boats. It also has no right to attack civilian, and also has no right to maintain the seize of Gaza.
Unfortunately, this will continue until Israel has been held accountable for violation of international law and it becomes clear that piracy at sea, and the “interception” of civilian boats is has consequences for people that do it.
The Dole Blog 