The greatest kindness my mother-in-law ever performed was not to die on Mother's Day. MIL was a deeply unhappy person who worked hard to make everyone around her as miserable as she was....yet she was a beloved and adored high school teacher, something none of us ever understood. On Mother's Day 1984, we told her I was expecting #2. I think Ziggy's decision to tell her was a last ditch effort to get her to wake up. All things considered, we figured she would be as thrilled about #2 as she was when we told her about #1....which was to ask us if we were crazy. This news might just get her riled up enough to wake up. She didn't. For the record, when the senior son was born, she couldn't keep her hands off him and he has wonderful, albeit faint, memories of her.
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| FIL and MIL at the wedding |
This year, however, I decided I needed to mark that day as a yahrzeit. I don't know if it's because I'm older than she was when she died, or it's the grandmother thing, or because I don't want her to be forgotten because she was, after all, Ziggy's mother. I think I'm the last one who remembers her, and I do not want her to be forgotten. So last night, as Mother's Day drew to a close, I lit a yahrzeit candle for her, and this morning, I said kaddish for her...I think for the first time. It breaks my heart because I have to work hard to remember good things about her. I should not have to do that.
There are things in this world that are just broken. She was one of them. I wish it had been different.
Wishing to make things different is kinda pointless. Which brings me to the new embassy in West Jerusalem. This is broken.
While the Palestinians are carrying on about the embassy being in Jerusalem, I find it amazing no one talks about the fact it's in West Jerusalem which, in the event of dividing the city, will be the Jewish half, and not in East Jerusalem which the Palestinians want for their capital. A small but niggling detail no one seems to remember to mention. Not that I think Jerusalem will ever be divided again, but at least edit your rhetoric.
Moving the embassy is just broken. No one doubts Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The Knesset is there, the seat of government is there. It's been the capital of Israel for several thousand years. Not even dividing it changed that. Moving the American embassy to Jerusalem does not magically confer some sort of status of the city. It doesn't need it.
Moving the embassy sliced open the heart of Israel and laid it on a table to the target of potshots from the rest of the world. The haters see it as some kind of appropriation. The religious fanatics see it as some kind of fantasy fulfillment. The rest of the world sees it as the complete abandonment of any hope for a two-state solution. Did anyone think there wasn't going to be riots?
The opening ceremonies were bizarre to say the least. The American pastor who gave the prayer at the opening of the embassy itself is a vicious and true anti-semite. Pastor Jeffress hates Jews and Muslims with equal vigor. And Catholics. And Mormons. Apparently he's the only one with a line to G-d and he thinks the rest of us are headed straight for hell. And this is is guy they sent to do the opening prayer.
Do we look that stupid?
Meanwhile, Michele I-never-met-a-sausage-I-couldn't-swallow-whole Bachmann, took it upon herself to apologize to the Jews:
Moving the embassy is just broken. No one doubts Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The Knesset is there, the seat of government is there. It's been the capital of Israel for several thousand years. Not even dividing it changed that. Moving the American embassy to Jerusalem does not magically confer some sort of status of the city. It doesn't need it.
Moving the embassy sliced open the heart of Israel and laid it on a table to the target of potshots from the rest of the world. The haters see it as some kind of appropriation. The religious fanatics see it as some kind of fantasy fulfillment. The rest of the world sees it as the complete abandonment of any hope for a two-state solution. Did anyone think there wasn't going to be riots?
The opening ceremonies were bizarre to say the least. The American pastor who gave the prayer at the opening of the embassy itself is a vicious and true anti-semite. Pastor Jeffress hates Jews and Muslims with equal vigor. And Catholics. And Mormons. Apparently he's the only one with a line to G-d and he thinks the rest of us are headed straight for hell. And this is is guy they sent to do the opening prayer.
Do we look that stupid?
Meanwhile, Michele I-never-met-a-sausage-I-couldn't-swallow-whole Bachmann, took it upon herself to apologize to the Jews:
Bachmann apologized ... Sunday at a joint Jewish-Christian Bible study at the Knesset, held in honor of Jerusalem Day. She asked for “repentance from the Jewish people for the horrible and arrogant way Christians — myself included — treated and regarded the Jewish people.”“I ask for forgiveness from the Jewish people for what it is that we have done,” said Bachmann. “I apologize profoundly and ask forgiveness from the Almighty God that these statements brought pain.”
If you think for one New York nanosecond she's actually changed her mind about Jews, Israel, and the second coming, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd love to sell you.From the JTA -May 14, 2018
Still, in the greater scheme of things, the embassy is minor, nothing more than a catalyst to reignite the violence in Gaza. What is not minor is the loss of life at the Gaza fence. There is something so fundamentally wrong with what's happening that that if one is not completely disgusted by the actions of both sides, one should probably crawl back into the hole from which one emerged.
What is happening in Gaza is not a surprise; it was inevitable. The current Israeli government has done everything possible to foment this revolution and they have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Watching Heckle and Jeckle shred the last vestiges of world cooperation makes one think this is a well-thought-out plan. Between the tweets and the speeches, one can only conclude these are the ravings of two unstable human beings. Dumping the Iran deal, suddenly slow-dancing with Kim Jung Un, offering to help China recover jobs just as China is investing in a chain of Feckless Leader's hotels in in Indonesia...
FOLLOW THE MONEY, FOLKS. FOLLOW THE MONEY
I do not believe this is all coincidental. Too many moving pieces are aligning themselves. No, I'm not playing Cassandra here and I'm not predicting war. I just think some people are gonna walk away a whole lot richer than they are now....and in the end, the ones who will pay the lion's share of the bill will be the Palestinians. They are unwitting accomplices in this grand machination. They are playing right into the hands of the total self-immolation. They blow up their own gas and power lines. They blow up their own roads and water treatment plants. They misdirect humanitarian aid away from their own people. Who are they hurting? Israel? The US? No. They are orchestrating their own destruction.
if we are in a new period of globalization, there will be winners and losers. Yeah, the middle class in the US will ultimately lose, but we're too big to manipulate the same way a ragtag group of self-anointed refugees can be manipulated.
They have become their own worst enemy.
The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week
Like I said at the top, there are some things that are just broken.
That doesn't mean we are absolved from trying to fix them.
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza,
ReplyDeleteThere's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.
Well, fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Well, fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, fix it.
With what shall I fix it, dear Liza, dear Liza?
With what shall I fix it, dear Liza, with what?