A different view of the war in Gaza

Gaza

    Okay young’ns...

    According to what my mother and other family members told me, my great grandfather Leopold Bashinsky was a Polish Jew who came to America in the latter 1800s. Later, one of his brothers came over. They settled in Troy, Alabama.

    Leopold married a Southern Baptist woman, and they raised their children in the Baptist church in Troy, which Leopold attended, but he did not convert. During World War II, Leopold's family in Poland were killed by the Nazis.

    Among other things my mother and other family members told me about Leopold, the townspeople of Troy brought their disputes to him, for him to resolve, instead of to the town lawyers, because they trusted Leopold to decide what was fair. His wife had engraved on this gravestone, “God’s noblest creation is an honest man."

    I reported what I was told by my mother and other family members about Leopold in the “He Was a Nobel Creation” chapter of A FEW REMARKABLE ALABAMA PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN, which now is a free read at the internet library, archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/a-few-remarkable-alabama-people-i-have-known_202210

    My mother’s parents were Southern Baptists, and that’s how I became a Southern Baptist until my mother became an Episcopalian and took her children with her to that church. Eventually, I stopped attending church. Her Episcopal minister is described in the “He was a parish priest” chapter of that book. My mother told me that when Lee's vestrymen decided to hire off duty Mountain Brook police officers to block blacks from worshipping at St. Luke’s, he told them, if blacks could not worship in the church, he would close it.

    My college sweetheart, your grandmother, and I did not raise your mothers in churches, but let them decide how to find their own way in life. One of your mothers married a Jewish man she had known since childhood, and she converted to Judaism and I was fine with it. I dreamed last night about her and me doing something, which was not going to be pretty, then later in the night I dreamed of her wearing a beautiful white pearl necklace.

    When I lived in Key West, my lawyer, who was a good friend, was a younger Jewish man, who now is a city commissioner. He told me one day in his office that it didn’t bother him that I talk about my dreams, because Jewish people believe dreams come from God.

    Although I had Jewish friends in childhood and later, I am not very familiar with the Jewish religion as it is practiced today. Nor am I particularly familiar with Israel, other than some things I see on television and read online. 

    I have long felt it was a shame that Western Europe and America did not give sanctuary to the European Jews after World War II, and I have long felt there will be strife in Palestine for so long as the State of Israel exists.

    After Hamas launched a raid into Israel on October 7, 2023, my 81st birthday, the mystic in me figured the odds were 100 percent that I would get involved.

    I saw an article by retired American international war correspondent Chris Hedges and paid to subscribe to his Substack newsletter with a very large following, and I began commenting under his posts. 

    I then received a subscription to my Substack newsletter from the Australian political commentator Caitlin Johnstone, who invited me to subscribe to her Substack newsletter, which was free or pay, and I subscribed for free, and began commenting under her posts.

    At both places, I received a lot of criticism for saying Hamas realized it could not beat Israel and its benefactor America in a land war, and the October 7 raid was clever bait, which Hamas hoped would cause Israel to respond as it did, so that the entire world would turn against Israel and America. I blamed Hamas, as well as Israel and America, for the obliteration of Gaza.

    I finally decided to quit participating at the Hedges and Johnstone forums, and to ensure that I would stick to my decision, I blocked both of them from my email account. But today something from Johnstone got through.

Caitlin Johnstone’s Newsletter

Aaron Bushnell wasn't addressing the Israeli government with his soul-jarring message. He wasn't even addressing his own government. He was addressing you. Each of us. His goal was to get us all to open our eyes to the horror of what's happening, and spur us to action to end it. 

    Here is what that is about:

Published: 02.27.2024

Extremism, Terrorism & Bigotry

From: Center on Extremism

On February 25, 2024, Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, approached the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., and set himself on fire to protest the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, saying he would “no longer be complicit in genocide.” His act of protest has garnered praise from anti-Israel groups and foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). 

Bushnell is the second person to self-immolate in front of a U.S.-based Israeli government building in protest of the war: in December 2023, an unidentified woman was critically injured after setting herself on fire in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. 

Bushnell livestreamed his protest on Twitch; his account has since been removed. As he walked towards the embassy, Bushnell said to the camera, "I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force. And I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers—it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”  

Once outside the embassy, Bushnell placed his camera on the ground and poured gasoline over himself. As he burned, Bushnell repeatedly shouted “Free Palestine!” until he collapsed to the ground. Bushnell was transported to a local hospital and later died from his injuries. 

    Below are some reader comments under Johnstone’s post, followed by my comment, which is typical of how I engaged in online political discussions since just after 9/11.

Roger

Or, like the Son of Sam, he was addressing voices in his head. Perhaps it is best to wait to learn more about this young man before you rush to martyr him. Either way, may he rest in peace.

miggety

He stated his reasoning very clearly, there is no mistaking why he did what he did. Additionally, as a person with military clearance on the level with which he had, he would have been subject to rigorous mental evaluations, so his mental health was fine. Honor his memory by avoiding making unnecessary and presumptuous comments online and fight for the liberation of our Palestinian brothers and sisters.

dikran’s Newsletter

Yes. I wonder if the effort of the rather Christian project of justifying the extraordinary Western genocides as the will of God, does make psychopaths of all monotheists? They have all done it, though Judaism and Islam are but young in deed, eager to catch up. Netanyahu’s enthusiasm is revolting. And the reliability of the pretext: Oct 7th. See Jefferson on Native Americans west of the Appalachians. It’s in our dna. Using the Terrorism Card, over and over. 

After the messy back and forths with most of my friends about Joe Biden, I conclude every time by saying I am stunned by his behavior. Trump I’d expect it, even Obama, definitely Clinton, both of them, but I thought Joe too primal, too base too unslick. Cunning them christians.

AJMIII21h

U must have just now heard of Joe Biden because he has been this way since he came into Senate

Margaret McGowan

That’s why the media have blanked him out. No front page news or top TV item … either silence or character assassination that he was an anarchist & crazy religious nutter. The usual response when someone discloses the stark truth.

Porfirio

Mishima. Venner. Bushnell. He is in the company of Samurai.

spingerah

There is a lot of criticism of this kid because apparently he was in contact with antifa and had some fairly pedestrian tweets in the past.

While he may have been a leftist his action undeniably has and will cause many people to look closer at what is happening to the people in Gaza. It's too bad we live in a world of spin & the spin I have seen so far is revolting. If you have a friend and that friend is doing something that will cause them great harm & possibly end with their death, in my opinion if you are really a friend you must try to get them to stop. The genocide that is happening may be obfuscated for now but that may change. Lies usually do not work out well in the long run, a simple lesson childern are usually taught. What is happening in this instance will probably not be good for Isreal,

Sloan Bashinsky

Looks to me Bushnell acutely addressed the Israel and American governments in the most graphic way possible, and to say it was for you or me entirely misses his point. As does someone here questioning Bushnell’s sanity.
Bushnell knew exactly what he was doing. He did what you, I and nobody else were prepared to do. He got off his internet connection to do it. But did that impress Netanyahu or Biden? I doubt it. Did it impress God? I don’t know. But it certainly was more impressive than a jihadist suicide bomber killing a lot more civilians than his own selfish self, certain it was God’s will.
On CNN this morning, so it must be Zion- America propaganda?:-), IDF troops opened fire and killed and wounded many people in a food line in Gaza and IDF is investigating. Such horror will continue, unless Israel and Hamas get over themselves and choose peace over war.
Joe Biden has been a hawk for a very long time. He is a devout Catholic, who does not know the Jew Jesus in the Gospels. Biden’s skewed religious programing and his dislike of jihad Islam forces him to side with Israel, and his growing criticism of Israel is ridiculous in the face of his continuing to give Israel dollars and munitions.
Donald Trump told Israel he is their best friend, so where does that leave Gaza, Palestine and The Middle East if Hamas and Israel do not get over themselves and choose peace over war?
It’s on Hamas and Israel to end the obliteration of Gaza, and from all I have seen in the news and at your and Chris Hedges’s Substacks, neither side wants peace in Gaza. The American religious right want Israel to obliterate islam in Palestine and the Middle East.
You live in Australia, Caitlin, and while you have a large following, you have no sway over American politics. Nor does it look to me that you understand American politics. Nor does it look to me that you understand Israel, Hamas and jihad Islam.
The war in Palestine is biblical, rooted in the three Abrahamic religions’ scriptures. For so long as the state of Israel exists in Palestine, there will be strife there. There is nothing you can do about that. There is nothing I can do about it. There is nothing anyone but Israel and Hamas and Islam can do about it.

God has nothing to do with any of it. Anyone who claims otherwise is delusional.

    So far, no one replied to my comment, which never happened before at Johnstone’s forum.

    I cannot imagine any mother in Palestine not wanting the war in Gaza to end. Nor can I imagine any mother in Palestine starting that war. Men, well history has proven they seem to really like war.

    Three nights before 9/11, Archangel Michael asked me in my sleep, “Will you make a prayer for a Divine Intervention for all of humanity?” I woke up and made the prayer. On 9/11, my concern was America would start another foreign war like the war in Vietnam. It not occur to me that America would attack both Afghanistan and Iraq. 

    A few days after 9/11, Michael told me as I was walking out of the U.S. Post Office in Key West, "America needs to get out of the Middle East altogether and let Islam and Israel work it out, or fight it out, and in that way learn, which, if either, are God’s chosen people."

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com