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BARROW NEWS-JOURNAL
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2023
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”-
Hen ry Wa rd Beeche r
No peace to be had in the Promised Land
The immense degree of suffering happening in Israel and
Gaza has polarized world opinion. It also has significant
political implications here in the U.S.
The Israel-Hamas War is being
framed by both sides in black-and-
white terms with little room for nu
ance. Both Israelis and Palestinians
say, “You’re either for us or against
us.”
We see that on college campuses
where liberal pro-Palestinian voices
ignore the brutality of Hamas’ attack
on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 and
blame Israel for the violence.
On the other side, defenders of
Israel’s massive counterattack on
Gaza where a lot of civilians are dy
ing see any criticism of Israeli policy as being rooted in an
tisemitism, even if the questions being raised are legitimate
policy issues.
The result on U.S. politics has been to divide the Demo
cratic Party, which has long been supported by U.S. Jewish
voters. But pro-Palestinian left-leaning Democrats are also
the leading voices blaming Israel for the current chaos.
That has some U.S. Jews turning away from the Dem
ocratic Party and embracing the Republican Party which,
to this point, has shown strong support for Israel and its
counterattack on Gaza.
All of that comes 12 months from the 2024 presidential
race and could play a major role in the outcome.
• ••
This divided opinion in the U.S. reflects centuries of
divided opinions on Israel and Palestine. What we’re wit
nessing there today is the result of historical events that
have echoed for over 2,000 years.
Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all, at one time or
another, laid claim to the land of ancient Palestine, today’s
Israel.
Jews believe the land was a gift from God, who gave the
“Promised Land” to Abraham and his descendants.
But Jewish control over the region was historically short
lived. The land has been conquered and controlled by other
powers, many of whom took Jews away to other lands as
slaves .
While Jews have always lived in what is today Israel,
many were dispersed to other nations either by force or by
choice. That was especially true following the Roman de
struction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
By the 5th Century, Christians were the dominate demo
graphic in the region, but Arab Muslims came into dom
ination by the 12th Century and remained the dominate
population until 1947.
None of that is surprising since the epicenter of the re
gion is Jerusalem, the nexus of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam.
• ••
Despite Jewish dispersal around the world, the “Prom
ised Land” remained the focus of Jewish cultural and re
ligious heritage. The Jewish Passover Seder ends with the
phrase, “Next year in Jerusalem,” an homage to the idea
that Jews are linked to a homeland and wish to return there
either physically or spiritually.
In 1948, that idea became reality with the creation of the
Jewish state of Israel.
The area had been controlled by the British since the end
of WWI, but a rising Zionist movement bom in the mid-
1800s had rallied support for a Jewish homeland through
out the early 1900s.
Over the centuries, Jews had been the target of violent
antisemitism in countries all over the world. Especially in
Russia and Eastern Europe, pogroms massacred thousands
of Jews in the 1800s and early 1900s. In 1918-1919, over
100,000 Jews were killed or injured in Ukraine during an
outbreak of antisemitic violence.
Many Jews believed that they would only be safe from
this violence when they had their own Jewish homeland.
The Holocaust of the 1930s-1940s and the murder of
over 6 million Jews generated a huge amount of worldwide
sympathy for the creation of a Jewish homeland.
In 1947, the United Nations endorsed the idea of a two-
state partition of the region into a Jewish state and an Arab
(Palestinian) state.
But what transpired was a violent reaction from Arabs of
the region. A bloody conflict ensued.
When the dust settled, many native Arabs (Palestinians)
had been forced from their homes to make way for the new
Jewish state of Israel. No Palestinian state was created as
the UN wanted and the region was left in turmoil.
• ••
The reason so many Arabs were forced from what is to
day Israel is clear: You can’t have a Jewish state if Jews
aren’t the dominate demographic. Forcing a large number
of the Palestinian population out was part and parcel to the
creation of Israel as a Jewish homeland. (Not all Palestin
ians were forced out; around 21% of Israeli citizens are to
day Palestinian.)
That situation became even more complex in 1967 when
Israel defeated an invasion by surrounding Arab nations
and took control of Gaza and the West Bank. Neither area
is officially part of Israel and the Arab people living there
are not Israeli citizens.
For Americans, the closest parallel to all of this would
be how Europeans took land from Native Americans and
forced them onto reservations.
• ••
Not surprisingly, the people who were removed from
their homes in 1948 to make way for the new Jewish state
believe they were abused by a world that prioritized Jewish
concerns over their own. That deep sense of victimhood
among Palestinians has been passed down through the gen
erations, leading to recurring outbursts of violence since
1948.
While some Palestinians have accepted the idea that Isra
el will continue to exist and that a way should be found for
mutual peace, extremists like Hamas vow to destroy Israel
and kill Jews. They do not want peace. Thus, the cycle of
violence continues.
It’s true that some Israeli policies have not helped to low
er the temperature of this simmering cauldron. In particu
lar, the spread of Jewish settlements into the West Bank as
a way to divide, isolate and eventually force out Palestin
ians so that Israel can officially annex the West Bank is a
policy that has come under fire from many other nations,
including the U.S.
Still, there is no justification for Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre
of innocent civilians. It is indefensible.
Those attacks changed the dynamics in the region and
set ablaze a conflict that could easily engulf the entire
world. Russia, China and Iran all back Hamas and other
like-minded terrorist groups. It’s gas poised to be poured
on a fire.
• ••
It must have seemed like a miracle in 1948 when Israel
was created as a homeland and safe haven for the Jewish
people.
And yet, peace has not come to this Promised Land. Peace
may never come. There doesn’t seem to be any prospect of
a good outcome in the current conflict, or any prospect of
long-term peace when this round of violence is over.
It is sadly ironic that in giving the Promised Land to the
descendants of Abraham, God did not also give them, and
their neighbors, a path to living together in peace.
Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet Newspa
pers. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
Turning teachers into guns for hire
an absurd answer to school shootings
By Jay Bookman
Georgia Recorder
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones came up with a helluva idea the
other day. He wants to turn Georgia teachers into guns
for hire.
Mr. Smith, the kindergarten teacher?
Mrs. Sanchez, the media specialist?
Literally, guns for hire.
Under Jones’ proposal, Mr. Smith and Mrs. Sanchez
could be paid an extra $10,000 a year to pack heat on
school grounds. If you believe, as Jones does, that the
only acceptable solution to the carnage of gun violence
is more guns, in more places, in more hands, then his
idea makes a perverted kind of sense.
But me? I think it’s damn crazy.
Politically, you can see what Jones is up to. He wants
to run for governor next year, and as a Republican run
ning in a GOP primary he has to demonstrate to the Gun
Cult that he is a fellow true believer, that he too is cer
tain that any problem involving guns must be solved
with even more guns.
However, with passage of open-carry legislation and
other changes in recent years, including allowing guns
on college campuses, Georgia Republicans have pretty
much exhausted the supply of gun-safety laws that they
can drag out to be publicly executed.
They need to get creative about showing their gun
worship, and if that means reaching deep into the abyss
of the absurd for new ideas, Jones for one is willing to
do that.
A few hours after Jones issued his guns-for-hire pro
posal, news broke of another mass murder, this one in
Maine, with 18 innocent people shot dead by a madman
armed with an AR-15. Maine has some of the weakest
gun laws in the country, with a high rate of gun owner
ship, but oddly, once again no “good guy with a gun”
rode to the victims’ rescue. Instead, in the aftermath
of the shooting, we have been treated to yet another it
eration of calls for action by Democrats and calls for
thoughts and prayers from Republicans.
Here’s something to think about, though. When other
nations pray for less violence and death, God apparently
answers them, judging from low murder rates and rare
cases of mass shooting in Britain, France, Japan and
other developed countries. Why has God has turned a
deaf ear to such prayers from Americans? Are we doing
something wrong? Has God hardened His heart against
us?
Or maybe it’s not God’s heart, but our own that’s at
fault?
I ask that because of something said by Mike John
son, our new speaker of the House up in Washington.
The Maine shooting occurred on his first day in that
high office, and when asked on Fox News about the
tragedy, Johnson offered this line of analysis.
“At the end of the day, the problem is the human
heart. It’s not guns. It’s not the weapons.”
That’s too bad. If the problem was guns, we could
maybe do something about it. But if the problem is the
human heart... well, that gets a little trickier.
Again, though, something’s off. People in Great Brit
ain, Japan, Australia and many other countries with low
murder rates - they have the same human hearts that we
do, right? I’m pretty sure the human heart is standard
equipment, regardless of national borders. Yet those
countries have nowhere near the murder rate that we do.
Is Johnson telling us that American hearts are somehow
different, that our hearts are more cruel and bloodthirsty
than hearts in other countries?
Is that why God hath forsaken us?
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offers yet another expla
nation, arguing on the presidential campaign trail that
we have a high murder rate “because of liberal, soft-on-
crime policies.”
Again, though, we have a problem. If putting more
people in prison could solve gun violence, we should
be the safest country on the planet, because the United
States has the highest incarceration rate on the planet.
We put people in prison at 200 times the rate of Japan,
four times the rate of Australia, five times the rate of
France and nine times the rate of Germany. Yet those
countries, with their “liberal, soft-on-crime policies,”
have much lower gun fatality rates than we do.
So here’s where we find ourselves:
We pray, but those prayers aren’t working. We look
for answers in our hearts, and we find none. We impris
on and imprison and imprison, but that too isn’t work
ing. We buy more guns, and allow them in more places,
but if anything our sense of safety in public spaces has
gotten worse not better.
And now we talk about turning teachers into guns
for hire. It’s almost as if we know what the real source
of the problem is, but those in power are willing to do
anything and say anything, even truly silly and absurd
things, to avoid acknowledging it.
• ••
Jay Bookman covered Georgia and national politics
for nearly 30 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitu
tion, earning numerous national, regional and state
journalism awards.
The Barrow News-Journal
Winder, Barrow County, Ga.
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No compromise
with extremists
Dear Editor:
Regarding the October 25th “Compromise is needed to
avoid extremism” opinion piece by Jay Bookman:
We’ve come to expect modem “Journalists”, especial
ly those from left-leaning news outlets like the A.J.C., to
cherry-pick and promote only one side of political argu
ments. Through anti-Republican slander and ridicule Mr.
Bookman demonstrates my point.
Rather than refuting the Democrat Party propaganda
strewn throughout his piece I’ll pick just one: “Donald
Trump.. .passed tax cuts for the rich”. This is a falsehood
now well known as such because the middle class ended
up paying less tax and everyone, rich to poor, benefitted
from the resulting dramatic improvement in the economy
that ended only after the pandemic intervened, the down
turn then exacerbated by the current administration’s pol
icies of doing the opposite of Trump. So the statement is
patently false. By the way, how does one “compromise”
with a party that begins negotiation with factually false
premises?
But that’s not why I’m writing. Only days after Pal
estinian Hamas terrorists perpetrated the most inhumane
and egregious acts of depravity, and on a scale we haven’t
seen since the holocaust, Mr. Bookman has the grotesque
ly bad timing to chastise Israel for “giving lip service to
the creation of a viable Palestine, while diligently work
ing to ensure that such an entity can never exist”.
I’d like to remind him that the Palestinians (actually Ar
abs) have turned down five opportunities for a self-gov
erning homeland, refusing at every juncture unless and
until the Jews are denied their homeland where they ex
isted for millennia before Islam existed.
How do you “compromise” with a people so steeped
and schooled in Jew-hatred, from childhood, that they’d
rather send their young men to die, to not have a home
land, and to be governed by hate-filled Hamas Islamist
terrorists rather than allow a Jewish state to even exist?
“River to Sea”, indeed! Palestinians are pariahs to the rest
of the Arab world that wants nothing to do with them and
denies them asylum.
Muslins represent 24% of the world population while
Jews represent 0.2%. Zero point two! This means there
are 150 Muslims for every Jew. Ask yourself how Jews
represent an existential threat to Muslims? Israel is a
Democracy with equal rights and employment for their
non-Jewish citizens. Can the same be said for the neigh
boring Islamic countries like Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and
Egypt who have tried to wipe out Israel multiple times?
The situation in Gaza and the West Bank are the neces
sary result of these many efforts to obliterate Israel.
Anti-Semitism is creeping into our world again. If you
really believe in diversity, tolerance, and inclusion, you
might want to stop asking Israel to “compromise” with
extremists who want only their death.
Sincerely,
Joe Counter