Today, I heard a lovely sermon in church. I go to this particular church because the rector gives such wonderful sermons.
The church dates from three years after the end of the Civil War and is steeped in history. It sits on one of Savannah’s gorgeous squares made all the more lovely by the azaleas that are just coming out.
It is a time to think big thoughts. Continue reading
Since the founding of Israel in 1948, Israel and the Arabs have been at war starting with the 1948 Arab-Israel War. There have been a series of shooting wars including the 1967 War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
In both of these wars, the Israelis emerged victorious by the skin of their teeth and acquired territory that was used to launch the underlying attacks that started these wars. [Remember the fact that Israel ended up with MORE territory when folks begin to whisper that Israel needs to return to the pre-1967 borders, meaning Israel needs to return its conquered lands.]
It is important to know that Israel was the product of the United Nations 1947 Partition Plan for Palestine. This plan recommended three things:
1. The creation of an independent Arab State;
2. The creation of an independent Jewish State; and,
3. The creation of an internationalized Jerusalem.
You may recognize that plan as the Two State Solution which continues to this day.
English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain came home from a meeting with Hitler in Munich in September 1938 with the triumphant notion that he brought with him “peace for our times” in the form of some nonsensical agreement with a treacherous tyrant, Adolf Hitler.
Very few men were able to realize that you cannot make peace with a wolf by feeding it. When it is hungry, it will come again to the world’s door and that is exactly what happened.
Lord Hugh Cecil, an English contemporary politician would describe it like “scratching a crocodile’s head in the hope of making it purr.”
Chamberlain had a piece of paper, a set of words — nothing of substance.
Comes now the recent rapprochement between the United Arab Emirates and the State of Israel. But, first, some background, shall we?
Our country has been indelibly marked by the status of peace in the Middle East in four important ways:
1. We have supported Israel through a series of wars with the 1973 Yom Kippur War almost ending with a tragic outcome that was prevented by direct American military material support.
Had the US not sent replacement tanks to make up battlefield losses against the Syrians in the Golan Heights, the Syrians might have taken Tel Aviv. It was a very close thing.
Prime Minister Golda Meir made a phone call to President Nixon and in that same hour American tanks were loaded onto American aircraft, off loaded in Tel Aviv, and sent into battle with no time to even over paint the American stars. It was that close.
Israel continues to be the most powerful democracy in a region dominated by despots.
Big Red Car here.
Getting close to Christmas and thinking of something that The Boss said once upon a time.
When he was a soldier he was overseas on Christmas Day and it had an impact on him. A poignant impact.
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