I genuinely can’t think of anyone living who has done more, through action and inaction, to endanger the lives of Israelis, Palestinians and the Jewish diaspora than Netanyahu. Israel has tried to rid themselves of him so many times, and every time he cobbles together a coalition to keep him in power that all agree on one thing: Palestinians need to suffer more.
Whether this horrific oppression of the Palestinian people led to the horrific murders of so many Israelis may be debatable, but it is not debatable that policies based in cruelty and suffering did not keep Israelis safe. The biggest lie that authoritarians sell people on, the one far too many believe, is that their cruelty is an unfortunate consequence in their pursuit of security. It never is. It’s always a method they use to secure their own power. No one deserves the death and suffering that the IDF is inflicting on Palestinians, ordered by people too afraid to admit to the murder and suffering of Israelis that they bear responsibility for.
“I turned 23 the week before 9/11. I was 24 when I quit my job after the US invaded Iraq. In those two years, my feelings veered from fear and fury to confusion and suspicion, but what never left me was grief. Grief for the thousands of slain Americans. Grief for the America that once was, and grief for the bloodthirsty America being born.
And later, when I was older and wiser, grief at the realization that it was the same country all along.”
Sarah, I have followed your work long enough to know that you were two going on three in 1982. I was 22, a young Airman—trained by the USAF first as a weather specialist (observer) and later as a weather technician (forecaster), I’ve known since the spring of 79 that humans affect the weather directly and that global warming (climate change) was real and worsening a decade before Mr. Hansen briefed Congress—stationed in Nuremberg Germany when I had a similar revelation. Reagan was President, the Contra’s were somewhat known but the Iran-Contra-Reagan connection was not. Well, not known to the general population. I was discharged a few years later, before the scandal broke.
I spent the remainder of the 80’s trying to figure out how I had been so blind. I protested. I once solicited signatures at an annual street fair while wearing a sandwich board with a picture of victims of Guatemalan death squads. A few signed their names. Most avoided me like the proverbial plague. It was a sad day. Another day of revelation.
A few years later, I protested the first Gulf war. Another day of revelation.
I moved to NYC, Manhattan specifically, in the fall of 92. On February 26th of 93, shortly after 9am, I was roughly a block away from the WTC heading south towards an an appointment when the first attempt to bring the WTC down occurred. I remember the BOOM, the shaking earth, and the startled look on my fellow pedestrians faces that quickly vanished when the light at intersection changed and all was forgotten.
I slowly drifted through the remaining 90’s into a state of despair.
On September 11, 2001, I was back across the country living in Seattle. A few days later, I lost my job and my girlfriend of four years. I was 41. It would be a couple of years before I recovered some stability.
You’ve written about what followed with precision. My life experiences verify every word.
I could go on in detail, and will soon enough, but for now I will end the world’s longest comment with a heartfelt thank you.
Your knowledge,THE TRUTH, told with heart is a welcome read in this mire of spin and corrupt media and officials. I feel the depth of the depraved and horrific loss of lives, the children, the innocents, my god. Thank you Sarah.
I appreciate you and your work so much. I am older at 61 but still fill haunted by this pic and our torturing and haunting truths most won’t say out loud. There are so many. Maybe why I get your work so much. I just know I don’t feel as alone in this chaos when I read your words and works! I see we have an amazing community who gets it and like myself many of us have worked in many different ways to slow this madness down and yet here we are! Thanks for being our voice! Thanks for sharing the empathy and emotions I feel and yet am not the one to put it to print. Peace and love to all are in our community and feel to the depths many of us do!
Thank you for consistently linking the events, across time, that make a story make sense. And for linking the events to your own life experiences. Reading this brought me back to where I was (camping with my 9-yr-old in Florida's Torreya State Park, where I listened to the unfolding events on a stranger's radio) when W's Iraq invasion began.
As you do, I believe every human being to has the right of existence and the human dignity and peace that should go along with it. But I cannot in this moment ignore the anguish and fear of my Jewish friends - real people I know in real life. They deserve the right to exist, too. They are afraid. And the rise in antisemitism and racism they feel in this moment -because of this event- is also real. It comes out of a long history of displacement from their homeland thousands of years ago, whether by conquering nations like the Romans or the diaspora of an ethnic group that led to worldwide diaspora to the horrors of the Holocaust and the decimation of
30 % of the then existing world-wide Jewish population, as well as the nihilistic threats against them for the partial recreation of their original homeland that was made in 1948 and they have had to fight to maintain ever since. Meanwhile other Arabic nations do not wish to rule in Palestine (though Jordan tried, failed, and said enough). They do not come to their humanitarian aid, and when they allow them refuge, they put them in permanent camps as stateless people. EVERYONE has failed the Palestinian people and the models of a two-state solution that have been made and repeatedly ignored - including by both the Palestinians and the Israelis themselves, as well as countries like Iran, that incite and pay for #terrorism to keep a volatile and destabilized Middle East from achieving lasting peace. And now the ties between Iran, Russia and China have strengthened thanks in recent years to the fascist Trumpism run amok domestically and abroad. Meanwhile we have had a compact to support the rightful existence of a nation called Israel for over 70 years. I see a current President doing that while at the same time trying to use that commitment to slow the pace of retaliation while delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians and finally succeeding - despite the many promises made by Egypt, Israel and Hamas in his attempts. We don’t know what is said by these leaders together behind closed doors. We only see images of their meetings interpreted in the best and different ways by the each of the governments themselves. And other Arab nations that allow inflamed Muslim passions to blaze rather than help do the real, hard work of finding a sustainable solution that will let the children of Israel live peacefully together beside the children of a nation of Palestine, in acceptance that each has a Divine and sovereign right to exist as people who worship the same God, though in differing ways. Not to mention the Christians living within their societies as well. It is the Holy Land, yet it has a very unholy history of man-made conflict, all done in the name of Yahweh, Allah or God, however we address and worship him in our spiritual lives. (P.S. Hope you remember me from our occasional exchanges when I used to be on Twitter. I followed you there because I saw in you a seeker of truth and the moral good. So glad to find you here! I am new to the platform, but love it already for the seriousness and depth of thought found here. Especially when perspectives vary; it makes you think about your own convictions and examine them for bias that clouds clarity. Thanks for being one of those voices for me.)
I’m so scared that Biden is traveling to Israel, just when Jim Jordan might become speaker. I don’t trust Netanyahu where Biden is concerned at all. You need more time on TV, Sarah!
Given how easy the invasion was and the resulting destruction of Gaza, on top of the growth of Israel since it was created by the Allies after WW II, settlements going up everywhere, the cynic in me wondered aloud to a person if Netanyahu ignored any warnings. Kind of like Bush did before 9/11. A great excuse to sacrifice some people here and there so Israel can then annihilate Gaza and take it over once and for all for Israel. Some of the 60 Minutes interview how no police or soldiers came for hours to rescue those in a kibbutz, a grandparent had to come from Tel Aviv, really made me wonder. Israel seems to want all of what was Palestine. And then there is Putin and Trump...did Trump give Israeli secrets to Putin back in 2017? The whole thing smells?
Going back to 9/11. I have at least one of my offspring who has relayed to me there is a zeitgeist at school among kids of his age to want to 'live through 9/11' for the experience. On the surface it simply seems perverse. For me, I can't see why anyone would want to experience those horrors, and I know I couldn't do anything differently with hindsight. Or, put another way, like most of us, we were simply helpless as it happened, and the same for the awful time afterwards, as the country careened into violent xenophobia. So I tell these 'experience voyagers' - 'You don't need to go back to 2001-2003, stick around, it's happening again'.
I genuinely can’t think of anyone living who has done more, through action and inaction, to endanger the lives of Israelis, Palestinians and the Jewish diaspora than Netanyahu. Israel has tried to rid themselves of him so many times, and every time he cobbles together a coalition to keep him in power that all agree on one thing: Palestinians need to suffer more.
Whether this horrific oppression of the Palestinian people led to the horrific murders of so many Israelis may be debatable, but it is not debatable that policies based in cruelty and suffering did not keep Israelis safe. The biggest lie that authoritarians sell people on, the one far too many believe, is that their cruelty is an unfortunate consequence in their pursuit of security. It never is. It’s always a method they use to secure their own power. No one deserves the death and suffering that the IDF is inflicting on Palestinians, ordered by people too afraid to admit to the murder and suffering of Israelis that they bear responsibility for.
“I turned 23 the week before 9/11. I was 24 when I quit my job after the US invaded Iraq. In those two years, my feelings veered from fear and fury to confusion and suspicion, but what never left me was grief. Grief for the thousands of slain Americans. Grief for the America that once was, and grief for the bloodthirsty America being born.
And later, when I was older and wiser, grief at the realization that it was the same country all along.”
Sarah, I have followed your work long enough to know that you were two going on three in 1982. I was 22, a young Airman—trained by the USAF first as a weather specialist (observer) and later as a weather technician (forecaster), I’ve known since the spring of 79 that humans affect the weather directly and that global warming (climate change) was real and worsening a decade before Mr. Hansen briefed Congress—stationed in Nuremberg Germany when I had a similar revelation. Reagan was President, the Contra’s were somewhat known but the Iran-Contra-Reagan connection was not. Well, not known to the general population. I was discharged a few years later, before the scandal broke.
I spent the remainder of the 80’s trying to figure out how I had been so blind. I protested. I once solicited signatures at an annual street fair while wearing a sandwich board with a picture of victims of Guatemalan death squads. A few signed their names. Most avoided me like the proverbial plague. It was a sad day. Another day of revelation.
A few years later, I protested the first Gulf war. Another day of revelation.
I moved to NYC, Manhattan specifically, in the fall of 92. On February 26th of 93, shortly after 9am, I was roughly a block away from the WTC heading south towards an an appointment when the first attempt to bring the WTC down occurred. I remember the BOOM, the shaking earth, and the startled look on my fellow pedestrians faces that quickly vanished when the light at intersection changed and all was forgotten.
I slowly drifted through the remaining 90’s into a state of despair.
On September 11, 2001, I was back across the country living in Seattle. A few days later, I lost my job and my girlfriend of four years. I was 41. It would be a couple of years before I recovered some stability.
You’ve written about what followed with precision. My life experiences verify every word.
I could go on in detail, and will soon enough, but for now I will end the world’s longest comment with a heartfelt thank you.
So glad you are here with us.
Your knowledge,THE TRUTH, told with heart is a welcome read in this mire of spin and corrupt media and officials. I feel the depth of the depraved and horrific loss of lives, the children, the innocents, my god. Thank you Sarah.
I appreciate you and your work so much. I am older at 61 but still fill haunted by this pic and our torturing and haunting truths most won’t say out loud. There are so many. Maybe why I get your work so much. I just know I don’t feel as alone in this chaos when I read your words and works! I see we have an amazing community who gets it and like myself many of us have worked in many different ways to slow this madness down and yet here we are! Thanks for being our voice! Thanks for sharing the empathy and emotions I feel and yet am not the one to put it to print. Peace and love to all are in our community and feel to the depths many of us do!
I feel sometimes as if you are a long lost sister. Thank you, Sarah.
Thank you Sarah. All of it is heartbreak in the worst degree. Bibi needs to go bye bye.
Thank you for consistently linking the events, across time, that make a story make sense. And for linking the events to your own life experiences. Reading this brought me back to where I was (camping with my 9-yr-old in Florida's Torreya State Park, where I listened to the unfolding events on a stranger's radio) when W's Iraq invasion began.
As you do, I believe every human being to has the right of existence and the human dignity and peace that should go along with it. But I cannot in this moment ignore the anguish and fear of my Jewish friends - real people I know in real life. They deserve the right to exist, too. They are afraid. And the rise in antisemitism and racism they feel in this moment -because of this event- is also real. It comes out of a long history of displacement from their homeland thousands of years ago, whether by conquering nations like the Romans or the diaspora of an ethnic group that led to worldwide diaspora to the horrors of the Holocaust and the decimation of
30 % of the then existing world-wide Jewish population, as well as the nihilistic threats against them for the partial recreation of their original homeland that was made in 1948 and they have had to fight to maintain ever since. Meanwhile other Arabic nations do not wish to rule in Palestine (though Jordan tried, failed, and said enough). They do not come to their humanitarian aid, and when they allow them refuge, they put them in permanent camps as stateless people. EVERYONE has failed the Palestinian people and the models of a two-state solution that have been made and repeatedly ignored - including by both the Palestinians and the Israelis themselves, as well as countries like Iran, that incite and pay for #terrorism to keep a volatile and destabilized Middle East from achieving lasting peace. And now the ties between Iran, Russia and China have strengthened thanks in recent years to the fascist Trumpism run amok domestically and abroad. Meanwhile we have had a compact to support the rightful existence of a nation called Israel for over 70 years. I see a current President doing that while at the same time trying to use that commitment to slow the pace of retaliation while delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians and finally succeeding - despite the many promises made by Egypt, Israel and Hamas in his attempts. We don’t know what is said by these leaders together behind closed doors. We only see images of their meetings interpreted in the best and different ways by the each of the governments themselves. And other Arab nations that allow inflamed Muslim passions to blaze rather than help do the real, hard work of finding a sustainable solution that will let the children of Israel live peacefully together beside the children of a nation of Palestine, in acceptance that each has a Divine and sovereign right to exist as people who worship the same God, though in differing ways. Not to mention the Christians living within their societies as well. It is the Holy Land, yet it has a very unholy history of man-made conflict, all done in the name of Yahweh, Allah or God, however we address and worship him in our spiritual lives. (P.S. Hope you remember me from our occasional exchanges when I used to be on Twitter. I followed you there because I saw in you a seeker of truth and the moral good. So glad to find you here! I am new to the platform, but love it already for the seriousness and depth of thought found here. Especially when perspectives vary; it makes you think about your own convictions and examine them for bias that clouds clarity. Thanks for being one of those voices for me.)
I’m so scared that Biden is traveling to Israel, just when Jim Jordan might become speaker. I don’t trust Netanyahu where Biden is concerned at all. You need more time on TV, Sarah!
Given how easy the invasion was and the resulting destruction of Gaza, on top of the growth of Israel since it was created by the Allies after WW II, settlements going up everywhere, the cynic in me wondered aloud to a person if Netanyahu ignored any warnings. Kind of like Bush did before 9/11. A great excuse to sacrifice some people here and there so Israel can then annihilate Gaza and take it over once and for all for Israel. Some of the 60 Minutes interview how no police or soldiers came for hours to rescue those in a kibbutz, a grandparent had to come from Tel Aviv, really made me wonder. Israel seems to want all of what was Palestine. And then there is Putin and Trump...did Trump give Israeli secrets to Putin back in 2017? The whole thing smells?
I was also struck by the parallels to 9/11, and for some reason it almost feels worse. I don’t know why. It turns my stomach to ice.
The terrorists and hardliners need one another. Makes my stomach churn
Thanks for another moving piece
The similarities are deeply troubling
Thank you for sharing this valuable perspective
Amen.
Going back to 9/11. I have at least one of my offspring who has relayed to me there is a zeitgeist at school among kids of his age to want to 'live through 9/11' for the experience. On the surface it simply seems perverse. For me, I can't see why anyone would want to experience those horrors, and I know I couldn't do anything differently with hindsight. Or, put another way, like most of us, we were simply helpless as it happened, and the same for the awful time afterwards, as the country careened into violent xenophobia. So I tell these 'experience voyagers' - 'You don't need to go back to 2001-2003, stick around, it's happening again'.