(The Kent State University Massacre, May 4, 1970. During a peaceful anti-War demonstration on the Kent State campus, 20-year old Kent State student Jeffrey Miller, of Plainview, Long Island, NY., was shot through the mouth and throat, and killed by the Ohio National Guard. Mary Anne Vecchio, a 14-year old visitor to campus, knelt by Miller’s lifeless body, screaming for help.)

There is no single image, yet, from these current Anti-Gaza War college protests, as transformative as the photo of 14-year old Mary Anne Vecchio, a run-away from Opa-Locka, Florida, kneeling over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller of Plainview, Long Island, a 20-year old Kent State student, shot through the mouth and killed instantly by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970. 

It serves as a sobering reminder, on the 54^th anniversary of the Kent State killings, of  the way this nation’s powerful political, military and corporate interests tried, unsuccessfully, to silence us in those days:  they shot us through the mouth, or beat us to a pulp, as they did in the streets of Chicago, in 1968. Still, we persisted, and were prescient about the outcome of a War, like the one in Gaza, which was a wanton waste of human life.

It is that image of a screaming Vecchio—the age of my oldest granddaughter—kneeling over Miller’s motionless body, which never leaves millions of us who protested against the U.S. War in Vietnam for years, on our college campuses, and in the streets of Washington, DC, and Albany, New York, and towns and villages across the country.    That life-stopping image, coupled with the grisly photo of an American-backed South Vietnamese military officer executing a Viet Cong soldier in the head at point blank range, and the photo of a naked, shrieking Vietnamese child running in horror from an American Napalm attack, are our recurring night terrors..

And, when we awaken, the reality of thousands upon thousands of coffins of young soldiers coming home, wrapped in American flags, sacrificing their lives, their youth, their limbs, or minds, in a war which US military, intelligence and political leaders knew, for years, could never be won, but lied that it could, and kept blindly wading ahead and spreading it into Laos and Cambodia, because they would sooner kill and maim millions of Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian women and children, than admit their catastrophic policy mistakes and humanitarian atrocities.

In fact, it was mere days after President Richard Nixon announced, first the end to undergraduate student deferments, which kept many of us out of the War, and then the expansion of the War from Vietnam into Cambodia, that demonstrations across US colleges and universities exploded almost as exponentially as the 2.75 million tons of American bombs dropped indiscriminately across Cambodia, according to recent Yale University findings.

In all, up to as many as one million Cambodian civilians were killed during the four years of Henry Kissinger’s carpet-bombing campaign, which led to the rise of the deadly Khmer Rouge and the genocide of nearly three million innocent Cambodian citizens.   Only a few years after the Kissinger–conceived blitzkrieg of Cambodia, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating an end to the American War in Vietnam.

On May 1, 1970, the day after Nixon & Kissinger announced the expansion of the American War into Cambodia, many of us than-college students across the United States staged a series of sit-ins, teach-ins and marches to protest the expanding, and increasingly brutal War throughout Southeast Asia.   Kent State University in Northeastern, Ohio, was no exception.

Student-led demonstrations erupted on the Kent State campus on May 1, and physical attacks ratcheted up on the ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) building on the Ohio Campus and on several others.  Nationwide, ROTC was functioning as a funnel to facilitate the delivery of fresh faced, young American fighting forces in Southeast Asia.  It became the very symbol of the voracious appetite of a US war machine devouring everything, and everyone, it could get its hand on. 

With the actions against Kent State’s ROTC building becoming more violent, Ohio’s Republican Governor Jim Rhodes, ordered 1,000 Ohio National Guard troops to roll onto the University’s campus with tanks, and military equipment meant for a battlefield.  Armed soldiers were stationed in front of every dormitory.  Thousands of college students, ages 17-21—regardless of whether or not they were protesting–were held hostage on their own campus by the heavily armed, and poorly trained, members of the Ohio National Guard. 

Historian Howard Zinn wrote that on May 3, Governor Rhodes gave a virulent speech at the Kent Firehouse, where he called the student protesters “un-American, Revolutionaries, out to destroy higher education in Ohio.”

“We are going to eradicate the problem,” Rhodes said.  “They are the worse type of people that we harbor in America.”

Rhodes irresponsible, dangerous and false accusations foreshadowed by some 54 years those made by GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, who first accused the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas for being behind the US college protests against the War in Gaza, and than, less than one week later, accused the progressive Jewish philanthropist George Soros of orchestrating the demonstrations.   Ironically, Soros has been a long-time target of anti-Semites, by the extreme Right Wing groups, and global conspiracy theorists.  When pressed, Johnson could produce no evidence for his wildly contradictory claims.

On the evening of May 3 1970, a few Kent State students reacted to the Ohio Governor’s incendiary language by chanting at the Guardsmen standing in front of their dormitories.  In reaction, National Guardsmen bayoneted several students, and forced others back into their dorms: they bayoneted, or stabbed, the students in front of their own dorms.

University officials tried to ban an anti-war/anti-campus occupation rally scheduled for noon the following day, May 4, at the center of the Kent State University campus, by distributing some 12,000 leaflets claiming, falsely, that the rally was cancelled.  Despite the mimeographed lie by University officials, which tragically backfired, some 2,000 to 3,000 Kent State students—some 25% of the entire campus student body at that time—showed up under intensely threatening conditions to peacefully call for an end to the War, and the military occupation of their campus.    Astonishingly, the inflammatory act of inciting students with a mass distributed, printed threat of academic retribution was repeated last week by Columbia University officials threatening academic retribution against Columbia’s own students in the Anti-Gaza War encampment on the New York City campus.

 As the Kent State rally began on May 4, 1970, a small group of a few dozen students became more strident, and National Guardsmen, armed to the teeth, opened fire toward the center of the group of unarmed students. One unit of 12 Ohio National Guardsmen fired 67 shots at the crowd of unarmed college students in a matter of 13 seconds.

Four officially enrolled Kent State University students were killed:  Allison Krause, age 19; Jeffrey Miller, age 20;  Sandra Scheuer, age 20; and William Knox Schroeder, age 19.  Nine additional Kent State students were wounded, with one, Dean Kahler, a 19-year old college freshman, shot in his spine and paralyzed for life.

 All of the students who were shot were students in good standing at the University; none were “outside agitators.”   Two of the students murdered by the Ohio National Guardsmen, Sandra Scheuer and William Knox Schroeder, were simply by-standers, observing the demonstration.

Spontaneous expressions of rage and protest broke out at hundreds of American colleges and universities throughout May, 1970, involving more than a million students, not “outside agitators.”  More than half of all US college campuses experienced the nationwide strike, with many schools cancelling classes, replacing them with anti-war teach-ins, and going to pass/fail grades, which is what happened at SUNY Albany.  For us, it became known as “The Strike Semester.”

It was, according to Zinn, the first general student strike in United States history, embracing an expanding quilt of related issues:  the American War in Vietnam; the carpet bombing of Cambodia; the presence of military and police forces on campuses; the growing corporate and military involvement of universities,  growing income inequality, institutional racism,  and, the Jackson State, Mississippi police murder of two Black Students for protesting the War. 

At one demonstration, my life was threatened by a National Guardsmen at bayonet-point for being too politically radical (for merely demonstrating) and, at another, by the leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) for being too politically moderate (for merely demonstrating). My mother’s much physically bigger brother Eddie called me a communist for opposing the War and putting up a peace sign on the front of our home.  My mother, a diminutive Italian woman with one arm paralyzed by Polio, threw my uncle out of her house for making the ignorant accusation against me.  It’s not just the War in Gaza that has torn families apart.

The “Kent State Massacre”, as it became known, electrified the country, sharpening opposition to the war in Southeast Asia, and galvanizing many otherwise uninvolved Americans.  My own mother, an FDR/JFK/LBJ Democrat, became furiously anti-war, since all she could see was her own son in Jeffrey Miller’s life-less 20-year old body, bullet through his mouth and throat, silencing him for eternity.

(Original photograph by Steve Villano, April, 2024, taken at the Anne Frank Huis, Amsterdam)

It was a small window,

At the very top of the house;

And through it she could see the sky,

And see that life went on; just, to know.

No, it was not Shel Silverstein’s light,

Which burned from inside,

Telling the world someone was there,

Thinking, writing, upstairs at night.

She could not risk a light in her attic,

Exposing her Secret Annexe,

Risking the lives of eight humans

Hiding from demons, who demonized them.

And so, sunlight streamed in by day,

Starlight by night,

Atop the narrow Dutch house,

Where she tiptoed, like a mouse.

Not to be heard, not a word;

But, seeing the light coming into the attic,

Gave her hope, and dreams,

Helping young Anne swallow her screams.

She always wanted to write,

And she did,  by day,  by night;

Locked away as a young teen,

Recording thoughts,  & what she’d heard and seen.

She wrote about things 13, and of feeling

“Wicked sleeping in a warm bed,

“While my dearest friends have been knocked down,”

In the gutter reeling, pummeled upon the head.

They leaned toward the cracked and crackling radio,

Listening to the news;

To learn that the crime for which they were all wanted

Was “all because they are Jews.”

For two years they hid, away from cold, evil eyes,

Fed and protected by a woman, Miep Gies.

On the day the Franks were arrested, 8/4/44,

Miep sheltered Anne’s writings, til the end of the War.

The sisters sent to Bergen-Belsen,

Papa and Mama dragged further east,

Toward the darkness and the fire breath

Of the annihilative Auschwitz beast.

If only, if only she could live to 16,

Anne might have a chance to be rescued, or seen.

Starvation, disease, no light, and no breath,

Silenced her voice, and hastened her death.

Only Otto survived from the Amsterdam “annexe”,

Returning back to the last home he knew;

Daylight still shining into the attic,

Illuminating where Anne’s words and dreams grew.

The Pulitzer Prize winner author Viet Thanh Nguyen in his masterpiece The Sympathizer, has a remarkable passage toward the end of his book which takes away my breath by it’s sheer force and power.

The long paragraph runs across pages 353 and 354 of the paperback version of the book, over 40 lines, is punctuated by semi-colons, and populated heavily by a set of “ifs.” The super sentence suggests how different the world, and his character’s life, would have been, “If” only certain events had or had not happened:

“…if history’s ship had taken a different tack, if I had become an accountant…if we forgot our resentment, if we forget revenge; if we acknowledged that we are all puppets in someone else’s play, if we had not fought a war against each other; if some of us had not called ourselves nationalists or communists or capitalists or realists…”

Now, The Sympathizer, an extraordinary story and a literary tour-de-force, will be shared with tens of millions of viewers in an HBO seven episode mini-series beginning on Sunday night, April 14. The “big names” starring in the HBO series are Robert Downey Jr., and Sandra Oh, and, it will introduce us to an entire ensemble of Vietnamese actors, including Hoa Xuande in the lead role of The Captain. Today, Xuande has only a smattering of followers on Instagram. When the series concludes in late May, he’ll have hundreds of thousands. That’s how powerful the role of The Captain is in The Sympathizer.

The Sympathizer itself never leaves you; it disturbs you in your sleep, and when you are awake. You can smell the Napalm as you frenetically turn the pages, and hear the sound of helicopters whirling, when, in fact, it was just your car’s engine sputtering. It is transformative.

I first read Nguyen’s haunting language during the early summer of the American Presidential campaign of 2016, and repeated the “if” sequence dozens of times during the campaign’s closing days.

I traveled around North Carolina observing Barack & Michelle Obama, and Elizabeth Warren try mightily to win that important swing state for Hillary Clinton. I interviewed dozens of voters for Clinton, Trump or “unaffiliated,” entered historic African-American churches constructed since before slavery was dismantled, and listened to the rhythm of the voices of the citizens with whom I spoke. The cadence of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s words echoed in my ears each day, as the “Ifs” of that historic campaign began to be tallied well before the first votes were cast.

I contemplated how things might be dramatically different “if only” a few things were changed:

If history had taken a quicker turn toward the arc of justice, if everyone’s skin color were the same; if furniture were still being made in North Carolina’s factories, and clothing in it’s mills; if I had become an attorney or a diplomat and moved away; if my Jesus could sit down and have a beer with yours, and pick ribs clean together; if I was not frightened by the darkness of your skin and the bright, bold hope in your eyes, and if you did not resent my very existence on the same street where you lived as a sign of your own failure; if I was a teacher or a clergyman or a doctor and could heal your wounds, then maybe my touch would not be so repulsive to you; if I was raised to read about Rosie riveting airplane bolts as well as adoring the Blessed Mother; if Hilter had perhaps, found love, and the murders of millions never happened; if weapons were not invented that could vaporize thousands of children while they rode their bicycles; if we acknowledged that we were all pawns in a game played by the rich and powerful; if we understood that killing because of someone’s choice for loving was an act of violence against ourselves.

I went back, again and again, to that serpentine, ever-ending sentence in The Sympathizer, and my mind was exploding into thousands of new directions:

If some of us had not called ourselves Democrats or Republicans or White Nationalists or Socialists or Pragmatists or Progressives; if there were no poor people or poor healthcare, or run down housing where roaches dart from room to room carrying our resentments; if Muskie hadn’t cried, nor Nixon lied, or Joe Biden’s son died, or, if Mario Cuomo tried, at least once, to be President; if we were all connected by more than a flickering screen, or image on an I-phone, like family, not alone, not so mean; if Trump’s father loved him more than money, or Bill Clinton fell down the steps leading to Loretta Lynch’s plane and expired before being exposed; if Hillary put her dog before the data and walked free among the trees in Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania a few more times; if more people thought, or read, or voted, or listened before talking, or choked on their own bile while spewing their vileness of hate; if there was a God or force or some High court that kept the good alive, and punished the evil for diminishing the dignity of others, then maybe…maybe I could sleep, just sleep through the night.

And now The Sympathizer, the HBO mini-series, hits this nation’s consciousness while some 1200 Israelis, and tens of thousands of Palestinian children and women have been slaughtered because they got in the way of a vendetta of hate between Hamas, and the ultra-orthodox political extremists in Israel, led by Bibi Netanyahu. My head, again, was overwhelmed with “Ifs”, so again, I sought guidance or solace or something from the pages of The Sympathizer that so mesmerized me:

“…if you would please just turn off the lights; if you would please just turn off the telephone; if you would just stop calling me; if you would remember that the two of us were once and perhaps still are the best of friends; if you could see that I have nothing left to confess; is the invisible hand of the market did not hold us by the scruffs of our necks; if the British had defeated the rebels of the new world; if the natives had simply said , ‘Hell, No,’ on first seeing the white man; if the Bible had never been written, and Jesus Christ had never sacrificed; if Adam and Eve still frolicked in the Garden of Eden…”

And, then, as a convert to Judaism by my own choice, and a believer in humanitarianism, I added some conditions of my own:

If Empire after Empire hadn’t ravaged the land of Palestine; if the Ottomans of Turkey had picked the winning side in the Great War; if the British had recognized all brown-skinned people as equal to the White Men of Europe; if the Jewish Holocaust had never happened and there wasn’t a need for a special homeland to protect the Jews; if generations of Palestinian families hadn’t been forced from their homes; if the Arab nations had waged peace instead of war at the outset; if Israel had lived up to its charter and its promise of treating all people equally; if every instinct to hate, was replaced with one to love; if each child born in any country was considered to be our child, regardless of faith or nation or economic condition or race; and, if only, all adults were held accountable for all our children who die on our watch.

Then maybe, just maybe, I might be able to sleep. If only…

(This New York Times Op-Ed by Jose Andres, the founder of World Central Kitchen, published on April 3, 2024, may well be the most important and powerful collection of words published thus far this year. It is urgent that Andres’ message be distributed—and immediate global humanitarian action taken—worldwide. It is a matter of life, or mass death by starvation in Gaza.)

By Jose Andres, Founder of World Central Kitchen:

Published in the New York Times, April 3, 2024,

“LET PEOPLE EAT.”

In the worst conditions you can imagine — after hurricanes, earthquakes, bombs and gunfire — the best of humanity shows up. Not once or twice but always.

The seven people killed on a World Central Kitchen mission in Gaza on Monday were the best of humanity. They are not faceless or nameless. They are not generic aid workers or collateral damage in war.

Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, John Chapman, Jacob Flickinger, Zomi Frankcom, James Henderson, James Kirby and Damian Sobol risked everything for the most fundamentally human activity: to share our food with others.

These are people I served alongside in Ukraine, Turkey, Morocco, the Bahamas, Indonesia, Mexico, Gaza and Israel. They were far more than heroes.

Their work was based on the simple belief that food is a universal human right. It is not conditional on being good or bad, rich or poor, left or right. We do not ask what religion you belong to. We just ask how many meals you need.

From Day 1, we have fed Israelis as well as Palestinians. Across Israel, we have served more than 1.75 million hot meals. We have fed families displaced by Hezbollah rockets in the north. We have fed grieving families from the south. We delivered meals to the hospitals where hostages were reunited with their families. We have called consistently, repeatedly and passionately for the release of all the hostages.

All the while, we have communicated extensively with Israeli military and civilian officials. At the same time, we have worked closely with community leaders in Gaza, as well as Arab nations in the region. There is no way to bring a ship full of food to Gaza without doing so.

That’s how we served more than 43 million meals in Gaza, preparing hot food in 68 community kitchens where Palestinians are feeding Palestinians.

We know Israelis. Israelis, in their heart of hearts, know that food is not a weapon of war.

Israel is better than the way this war is being waged. It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians. It is better than killing aid workers who had coordinated their movements with the Israel Defense Forces.

The Israeli government needs to open more land routes for food and medicine today. It needs to stop killing civilians and aid workers today. It needs to start the long journey to peace today.

In the worst conditions, after the worst terrorist attack in its history, it’s time for the best of Israel to show up. You cannot save the hostages by bombing every building in Gaza. You cannot win this war by starving an entire population.

We welcome the government’s promise of an investigation into how and why members of our World Central Kitchen family were killed. That investigation needs to start at the top, not just the bottom.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said of the Israeli killings of our team, “It happens in war.” It was a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by the Israel Defense Forces.

It was also the direct result of a policy that squeezed humanitarian aid to desperate levels. Our team was en route from a delivery of almost 400 tons of aid by sea — our second shipment, funded by the United Arab Emirates, supported by Cyprus and with clearance from the Israel Defense Forces.

The team members put their lives at risk precisely because this food aid is so rare and desperately needed. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification global initiative, half the population of Gaza — 1.1. million people — faces the imminent risk of famine. The team would not have made the journey if there were enough food, traveling by truck across land, to feed the people of Gaza.

The peoples of the Mediterranean and Middle East, regardless of ethnicity and religion, share a culture that values food as a powerful statement of humanity and hospitality — of our shared hope for a better tomorrow.

There’s a reason, at this special time of year, Christians make Easter eggs, Muslims eat an egg at iftar dinners and an egg sits on the Seder plate. This symbol of life and hope reborn in spring extends across religions and cultures.

I have been a stranger at Seder dinners. I have heard the ancient Passover stories about being a stranger in the land of Egypt, the commandment to remember — with a feast before you — that the children of Israel were once slaves.

It is not a sign of weakness to feed strangers; it is a sign of strength. The people of Israel need to remember, at this darkest hour, what strength truly looks like.

(Moaning Myrtle image from wizardingworld.com)

Moaning Ronna McDaniel, flushed down the toilet pipes at 30 Rock, lasted half as long as a “paid” NBC political commentator than Anthony Scaramucci did as White House Communications Director under Donald Trump. 

When it comes to hiring decisions, and trying to use them to buy unbridled access, bigger audiences and more moolah, neither NBC, nor DJT ever learn. They consistently make terrible decisions because they have terrible reasons for their colossal screw-ups.   

What got lost in the uproar over Moaning Ronna at NBC, was that we’ve seen this same old re-run before and before and before, at the corporate media House that “Truth” never even attempted to build.  It’s all part of the same, endless, cynical sideshow of selling the news as entertainment, and entertainment as, well, excrement.

Precisely twenty years after a couple of egomanical media moguls named Jeff Zucker and Mark Burnett transformed the serial failure, fraud, philanderer, and mobster-wannabe–Donald J. Trump—into their imaginary model of a  “successful businessman,” launching Trump’s deranged political career, their old network was nostalgic for that familiar feeling of conspicuous corporate failure.

At that time, NBC’s management transformed Trump into a global celebrity, forking over some $216 million to him for 14 seasons of “The Apprentice.” And, it was NBC Entertainment “reporter,” Billy Bush to whom Trumped bragged about, on tape, of “grabbing them by the pussy.”  So easy. So entertaining. Such garbage.

This time, it was NBC Universal’s News Group Chairman Cesar Conde’s turn, a former White House Fellow in the Republican Administration of George W. Bush, who was was forced to fire Ronna right away, when a bi-partisan line-up of some of the Network’s biggest on-air talents went public with their Ronna-rage. 

In an email to all NBC staff reported on by Reuters and in The  Signorile Report,  Conde  announced the he was getting rid of Ronna, but that he was “committed to the principle that we must have diverse viewpoints on our programs… we will redouble our efforts to seek voices that represent different parts of the political spectrum.” 

Not even Duolingo could speak out of as many sides of its mouth as Conde, who, as the first Latino to lead a major American news organization, launched the “50 Percent Challenge,” to promote newsroom diversity.   During Ronna’s run at the RNC, the Republican Party, led by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, made ending all DEI programs—Diversity, Equity & Inclusion—in both the public and private sectors, their culture-war target.  Had Conde suddenly forgotten his life-long commitment to promoting diversity, in order to give airtime to a political operative who devoted her last four years to ending it?

What precisely was Conde aiming for with “diverse viewpoints” or “different parts of the political spectrum?”   Didn’t this sound a lot like Trump’s “fine people on both sides,” after Charlottesville, especially since Ronna had merely winked at Trump’s most racist comments, like his use of the term “vermin” and “animals” to describe new immigrants?  Since Ronna regularly regurgitated Trump’s oft-repeated lies of “caravans” of immigrants storming our Southern border?  Was Conde looking to add a prominent enabler of a racist, recidivist liar, of a convicted fraud and sex abuser, to the NBC/MSNBC “political spectrum?”  

Or, possibly far worse, as Michelangelo Signorile wrote in The Signorile Report:

“What Conde’s really talking about is seeking Trump-supporting pundits—MAGA. But that’s simply not compatible with the mission of journalism, which is to represent the truth. And it’s certainly not compatible with defending democracy. You can’t have election deniers and people who supported—much less engaged in—a coup against this country as paid contributors”

Those were the very same arguments eloquently made by an array of NBC on-air talent from Chuck Todd to Rachel Maddow, and from two of MSNBC’s more well-known Republican “news” people, former GOP Congressman Chuck Scarborough, and Conde’s own colleague from the Bush Administration, Nicole Wallace.  Wallace, it should be noted, as Director of Communications, was neck deep in the Bush re-election campaign of 2004, when Karl Rove was the “architect” of a vile nationwide campaign of hate against the LGBTQ community. 

And, ironically, MSNBC—whose President Rashida Jones was silent when Conde, her boss, was rushing Ronna to the Green Room–had just recently given another former National Republican Party Chair, Michael Steele, a show of his own on weekend mornings, pairing him up with former Democratic political operative Symone Sanders-Townshend.  Outside of Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd, where were the journalists here?  Is Journalism even a profession anymore, or just a procession of recycled politicians and political hacks?

In the aftermath of several years of network sanitized hate speech; a violent attempt to overthrow the U.S. government; concrete evidence that the new political party of  Trump, Manafort, Stone, and Ronna McDaniel collaborated with the Russians against American national security interests; specific steps taken in several States to violate State Election laws, and undermine people’s faith in American democracy, where was any sense of news judgment or respect for the First Amendment coming from anyone in a decision making capacity at NBC?   Did the last 8 years not happen, as the Trump gang wants us to believe? Was Rudy right?  Is “truth” really not truth?

This was not the same old GOP (it was never benign) that Conde had cut his teeth on, nor the Republican Party of Nicole Wallace, Michael Steele, or any other person on NBC’s payroll.  This entity, had descended into a criminal cult, built on fear-mongering, kleptocracy, personal threats, and sometimes physical violence, against local election and law enforcement officials, with no respect for the Rule of Law or any other American institutions of government.   This was Donald Trump’s party, and Ronna McDaniel was simply permitted to cheerlead, and put up the decorations for it.  How could anyone in the news businesses, especially the head of NBC’s News Division, not see this? And if he couldn’t, how could the public possibly be expected to?

Sure, after Rachel Maddow excoriated NBC Management, and built a meticulous case of how Ronna’s GOP handed Trump the high-powered vehicle of a major political institution to deliver Fascism to America, she patted the NBC decision-makers on their backs, when they had the “courage” to reverse themselves.

Et tu, Rachel? Did you really come to praise this Cesar and not bury him? Why are you letting these decision-making douche-bags off the hook so easily? 

They failed, big time, yet again, without seeking out any input from the working journalists who have covered Donald Trump and the GOP for the past 8 years.  Many of those legitimate journalists, like Katy Tur, even wrote books about how Trump and his many enablers and blind followers have put our democracy at grave risk. 

 Now, all of a sudden, NBC’s executives have “courage”, because they made a decision which was catastrophic for the network, the news organization, and honest journalism—if it even still exists— and then, when things got too hot, and the cost to the company becomes far too great, you’re giving them “courage” badges for cleaning up the mess they created?   Really?  Am I hearing you right, Rachel?

What ever happened to accountability?  To consequences?  To process?  Aren’t leaders of such pillars of democracy supposed to take these things into consideration before they make such disasterous decisions?  Isn’t that what responsible leadership does?

 Is it enough for Jeff Zucker and Mark Burnett to apologize to everyone in the U.S. and the free world now, 20 years too late, for fueling Trump’s rise to power for their own fun, profit and self-aggrandizement?  Is it enough to say, “sorry, we screwed democracy and human rights for entertainment and profit, but we just couldn’t resist?” 

If you believe Cesar Conde’s carefully crafted mea culpa is enough to earn him a “profile in courage” award, then we are in far, far deeper danger than any boiler-plate political opinion or MAGA cheer from Moaning Ronna would have wrought.

The night before Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer—the highest ranking Jewish elected leader in American history—took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to give an historic speech on US/Israeli relations, a Rabbi in Santa Rosa, California, delivered a similar, searing, and deeply personal message.

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Like Schumer, the Rabbi, George Gittleman of Congregation Shomrei Torah, spent many months since October 7, agonizing over, writing, rewriting and crafting his message.  The subject was too important—and a lifetime of feelings far too powerful– not to get it exactly correct.

Like Schumer, Gittleman is a life-long supporter of Israel, spending years studying there, and many more years guest lecturing and visiting.

And, like Schumer, our Rabbi walked us through the historical context behind the creation of Israel, the millennia long presence of both Palestinians and Jews in the region, and the facts of the present Israel/Hamas war. 

While Schumer, and his love for Judaism were growing in Brooklyn, N.Y, where he was born, Bar Mitzvahed, studied Torah and became a public official, Rabbi Gittleman was studying for the Rabbinate in Jerusalem during the First Intifada, and recoiling in horror as terrorists blew themselves up—and many innocent Israelis–on crowded buses.

Schumer and Gittleman have solid bonafides for their passion for a humane, loving Judaism, and a fundamental commitment to Israel’s existence.

Gittleman, the son of a prominent Rabbi from Louisville, Kentucky, came later in life to his rabbinical studies, and has, since his ordination by the Reform Seminary of Hebrew Union College in 1996, pursued a progressive, humanitarian approach to his faith. He has headed the egalitarian, Reform Congregation Shomrei Torah, Santa Rosa, for the past 28 years.

Schumer, whose ancestors came from Western Ukraine, is also a member of a Reform Synagogue, Congregation Beth Elohim, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, despite his long time support of the increasingly nationalistic AIPAC:  the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which, in recent years, has spent millions of dollars opposing many of Schumer’s fellow Democrats in Congress, who have been critical of the extreme right-wing Netanyahu government.

 In fact, Schumer—who opposed the Obama/Biden Administration’s US/Iran Nuclear Agreement– was one of the leading members of the US Senate who invited Netanyahu to speak before Congress in 2015, and express his opposition to that agreement, making him the first Prime Minister of Israel to thrust himself directly into American politics. Schumer was up for re-election the following year, and New York’s large Jewish constituency was important in any statewide election.

While Senator Schumer’s strong record of support for Israel was both personal and pragmatic, Rabbi Gittleman’s was profoundly personal, without any consideration of politics.  

In his decades as a spiritual & community leader in Northern California, one of the most naturally beautiful regions of the US, Gittleman carved out a compassionate career as a leading advocate for the environment, for human and civil rights, and “Tikkun Olam” (repairing the world.)  In 2010, he wrote an important article for the Reform Jewish Quarterly about using Maimonides’ teachings as “an environmental ethic for our time,” elevating the protection of our natural world to a moral issue.

It then came as no surprise to many of Gittleman’s congregants, that “Rabbi George,” as he prefers to be called, would feel compelled to speak about the war raging in Gaza, between Israel and Hamas, the slaughter of some 1,200 Israelis at the hands of Hamas and the taking of hostages; the deaths of more than 30,000 non-Hamas Palestinians (mostly women and children), and the catastrophic humanitarian crisis and mass starvation in Gaza.  Those of us who admire the man, appreciate his ability to sense what’s causing his “Temple family” great emotional stress, and express it sensitively and without bias.

Speaking less than 24 hours before Schumer on opposite coasts, Gittleman gently discussed  “asymmetrical war” (no uniforms, no clear battlefields) and the greater moral burden it placed on individual front-line soldiers to make the “right” decisions.   He cited the Code of Ethics for the IDF, formulated by, among others. Dr. Moshe Halbertal, a professor of Law and Ethics, at NYU, and of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. 

The Code of Ethics, required as part of basic training for IDF soldiers, consists of four essential principles:

·      NECESSITY:  “to apply force only for the sake of the mission,” (which differentiates soldiers from thugs who rape and randomly destroy);

·      DISTINCTION:  “aim your fire at those who pose a threat, NOT at combatants indiscriminately (and NOT at non-combatants at all, even if they are standing on the sidelines cheering on your enemy);

·      RESPONSIBILITY:  “since you know there will be collateral harm of civilians, you have to do whatever you can to MINIMIZE the expected collateral harm.”

·      PROPORTIONALITY:  “Is the expected collateral harm proportionate to the military achievement?”  (To illustrate this principle, Dr. Halbertal uses the example of a lone sniper on the rooftop of a building housing some 30 civilian non-combatants. To destroy the sniper with a missile or bomb that destroys the entire building and the 30 innocent civilians inside, IS NOT PROPORTIONAL, by any measure of ethics or law.)

The “Proportionality” principle of the IDF Code of Ethics was so pertinent to the present situation in Gaza, where tens of thousands of non-combatant women and children have been killed in hospitals, schools and their homes, it took my breath away when the Rabbi spelled it out.   It became clear that while the IDF did attempt to minimize “collateral harm” in its battles with Hamas in 2014, there was little attempt to do that today, with 30,000 Palestinians dead.   

Particularly, as Dr. Halbertal said to the Jewish Theological Seminary in his presentation, “for every combatant (Hamas fighter) there are 60 non-combatants.”  With such a staggering ratio, “proportionality” as a key principle of the IDF Code of Ethics, appears to have been abandoned in this war.

The following morning, on the floor of the United States Senate, Chuck Schumer’s speech headed in the same direction, as Rabbi Gittleman’s:

SCHUMER:

 “ I am anguished that the Israeli war campaign has killed so many innocent Palestinians. I know that my fellow Jewish Americans feel this same anguish when they see the images of dead and starving children and destroyed homes.

Gaza is experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe — entire families wiped out, whole neighborhoods reduced to rubble, mass displacement, children suffering.

We should not let the complexities of this conflict stop us from stating the plain truth: Palestinian civilians do not deserve to suffer for the sins of Hamas, and Israel has a moral obligation to do better. The United States has an obligation to do better.

I believe the United States must provide robust humanitarian aid to Gaza, and pressure the Israelis to let more of it get through to the people who need it”.

Senator Schumer then went on to call Netanyahu an “obstacle to peace,” urging Israelis to demand a new election, and specifically criticized ultra-Far Right Ministers Bezalel Smotrich (Finance) and Ben-Gvir, previously rejected by the Israeli military for his extremist activities, who now, astonishingly, heads Israeli National Security.

Apparently, according to a New York Times story of March 19, 2024, entitled “Part of my Core:  How Schumer Decided to Speak Out Against Netanyahu,” Schumer too, was influenced by what his Rabbi was saying.

Rabbi Rachel Timoner, who has spoken eloquently like Rabbi Gittleman, about the excruciating moral questions raised by this war in Gaza, told Schumer that the Far Right Extremists in Netanyahu’s government were :  “endangering all of us because their agenda is about dehumanizing Palestinians, and it’s undermining Israel’s democracy and dearest values.”

Timoner told the New York Times, that she and Senator Schumer:

 “share the belief that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas but talked about the desperate need to bring the hostages home and end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza through an agreement…  even if we would only care about Israel’s safety and security, this war was actually harming Israel on the world stage and its relationship with the United States.”

Rabbi Timoner went on to tell The Times, what she thought of Schumer’s speech:

 “This was him trying to discern the moral path and trying to step up in a way he knew was risky for him, to do something that he felt deeply was right.”

Rabbis Gittleman and Timoner, from communities as diverse as Brooklyn, N.Y, and Santa Rosa, CA, have given us clear, unencumbered moral and ethical lenses from which to view this War in Gaza.

The next time Netanyahu or a spokesperson for his government, or AIPAC, or a one-sided publication or media outlet, or someone in your own congregation, or family, says that a majority of American Jews support Israel’s War against Hamas, ask them if they know about the IDF’s Code of Ethics, and the principles of Necessity, Distinction, Responsibility and Proportionality.

 Ask if they think Israel’s response to the brutal massacre of 1,200 innocent Israelis, violent rapes, and the taking of hostages has been proportionate to the collateral “human” harm done to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian non-combatants, and a population of 1.5 million people, mostly children, on the brink of mass starvation.

Then, continue to work for peace, our common humanity, and to repair a badly damaged world.  That is our collective responsibility.