Gaza
I’m 1/8th Jewish through my Polish great grandfather, who came to America in the latter 1800s and ended up in Troy, Alabama, where he met, courted and married a Southern Baptist school teacher, whose father had been an officer in the Confederate Army. They raised their children in the Southern Baptist Church in Troy, whose Sunday services Leopold attended, but he did not convert. That’s how the Leopold Bashinsky bloodline became Christian.
Leopold is memorialized in the “He Was a Nobel Creation" chapter ofA Few Remarkable Alabama People I Have Known, which I wrote with oceans of tears and rivers of snot in 2004, in Helen, Georgia. Now it is a free read at the internet library, archive.com. Here’s a link directly to that little book: https://archive.org/details/a-few-remarkable-alabama-people-i-have-known_202210
Because I am an old fart with lots of spare time on my hands thanks to time, gravity and life killing off what I once did to pass the time and get in and out trouble, I will tell you that 3 nights before 9/11, in my tent on a friend’s land outside of Helen, Georgia, where earlier that summer the novel Heavy Wait: A Strange Tale gushed out of me on a public library computer, now a free read at archive.org, https://archive.org/details/heavy-wait-a-strange-tale_202212/page/n1/mode/2up, the angel known in the Jewish and Christian scriptures as Michael asked me in my sleep, “Will you make a prayer for a divine intervention of all of humanity?", and I woke up wondering what that was about and made the prayer and went back to sleep.
On 9/11, my concern was America would get itself into another foreign war it could not win, like what happened in Vietnam, which divided American society down the middle and shredded the nation’s soul. I could not imagine America would get into two such wars: Afghanistan and Iraq.
A few days later, I was back in Key West, via Greyhound, and as I walked out of the U.S. Post Office in Old Town, Michael told me, “America should get out of the Middle East altogether and let Israel and Islam work it out or fight it out, and in that way learn which, if either, is God’s chosen people.” I sensed the end of Michael’s comment was irony, or sarcasm.
In the summer of 2003, during a Sunday school class in a church near Helen, where I was hanging out again to get away from the Key West summer heat, mosquitoes and hurricanes, not much fun for a homeless person, the Sunday School teacher said he hoped God kills all Muslims!
I said quietly, “What about turn the other cheek, pray for your enemies?"
The Sunday school teacher looked at me, said again what he hoped God would do.
I said pretty loud this time, "What’s wrong with Christians? Don’t they read their own Bible? In Genesis, God told Abraham that Ishamel’s seed would become a great nation and would cause Isaac’s seed trouble."
A great hush fell over the room.
Back then, I was put into situations where I said stuff that rattled Christian cages a bit.
I was not yet active on the internet.
Back to the present.
Despite what I hear from Christians, read online
and see on TV, I don’t think God by any name called likes war.
I cannot wrap my mind around God sanctioning any war reported in the Christian Bible's Old Testament. I wonder if the Jewish prophets of old who waged war, starting with Abraham, were listening to voices in their own heads, or to the Devil?
I don’t see how the war in Gaza pleases God, and to the contrary, it looks to me that the war in Gaza pleases the Devil, and both sides are in deep doo doo with God.
In that regard, two Substack newsletters to which I subscribe.
Mark Flore
April4, 2024
Sloan BashinskySloan’s NewsletterGaza mayhem is horrible. I think if HAMAs cared about its subjects in Gaza, months ago it would have offered to release all of its Oct 7 hostages, if Israel agreed to leave Gaza alone for so long as HAMAs left Israel alone.Ezekiel Detroit SubstackSloan B., That is a sane solution. It does not meet Hamas definition. Their solution is to kill all Jews in Israel. Terrorists do not think like typical westerners. If they die, they just go to paradise where women will serve them. No big deal to die. Hostages are now their property to be their slaves. It is written. Catch my drift?Sloan BashinskyI understand your drift completely.Hamas views all of its subjects killed by Israel as martyrs sent straight to Allah, so no big deal. Hamas’s original charter called for the destruction of Israel. Hamas' “amended” charter praises Islam as a peace-loving religion and does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. Sinwar spent a long time in prison in Israel, and he figured out there was no way Hamas could defeat Israel militarily, and after he got out of that prison he switched to defeating Israel, and its benefactor America, in the court of public opinion, and he designed an attack that he hoped would cause Israel to do precisely what it did in Gaza, to paint Israel as a modern Nazi Germany, and smear America, and Israel took the bait and America sided with Israel and here we are.I know Israel did plenty to provoke Islam in the past, taking land, and taking land, and wars in Gaza and the West Bank, and Israel does not have clean hands, and it, too, is run by religious fanatics, who claim God is on their side. President Biden should have cut off money and munitions to Israel months ago. But I live in Alabama, which is very red, and I know the America religious right back Israel all the way, (a) because their Bible says God promised Israel that land, even though they ignore the Israelites turned their back on God many times, and (b) they hope Israel will kill every Muslim in the Middle East, and they wouldn’t mind Israel using its nukes to to it.It’s a really screwed up mess, thanks to religion, and God has nothing to do with it. If Trump is elected this year, his base won’t let him abandon Israel. It’s a shame all the nice Christians in America did not allow the WWII Jewish refugees to resettle in America. If that had happened, maybe there would be no Israel today.
As long as Israel exists, there will be strife in Palestine. All predicted in Genesis when God told Abraham that Ishmael’s seed would become a great nation and would cause Issac’s seed (Israelites) trouble. Islam views Ishmael as the promised child, and radical Islam views that part of Genesis, which is in the Koran, as a mandate from God to cause Isaac’s seed trouble. All of that is in the Bibles Donald Trump is selling :-)Money CircusCrisis Update: Troubling Lessons Of Israel’s AI Kill TargetsEfficiency or unearthing darker impulses?APR 05, 2024Sloan BashinskySloan’s Newsletter, liked by Money CircusHard for me to imagine Sinwar and other Hamas officials did not know of Israel’s AI military capability when Hamas launched the October 7 attack, which looks to me was designed and hoped to provoke Israel to do precisely what is has been doing in Gaza, to turn the entire world against Israel and its benefactor, America, which leads me to think Hamas doesn’t care how many people Israel kills, maims, displaces, etc. in Gaza, they are martyrs, and the worse the mayhem in Gaza, the better for Hamas’s publicity. Looks to me that Hamas and Israel both are run by religious freak monsters, and God has nothing to do with any of it. If only Hal could return from Jupiter to jettison both sides’s leaders into space to see if that gets the left behinds' undivided attention :-)
I wonder, younguns, if Donald Trump will be back in the White House this time next year, because Joe Biden kept living Israel money and munitions to hunt down and kill Hamas in Gaza? Yeah, I know that ain’t ever gonna be a popular perspective of how God and karma work in mysterious ways, and I hope it doesn’t play out that way, but maybe Trump being president again is how it needs to play out, because that’s what America deserves, thanks to President Biden and America supporting Israel in Gaza, and Trump said he is Israel’s best friend and that war would not have happened if he was president :-)
Maybe if we are real lucky, Hamas, Israel and President Biden have not started World War III.
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
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