the election

Opening the overnight-charged computer and going online mornings, my first thing tapping may be browser to Google then "n" that brings up a list



so I can tap news to see what's happening.

Because US news sites, especially two "main" news sites, are so obsessively biased I scroll down to the bottom and tap "world news" that then adds BBC to the list. I don't give a rat's ax if you see BBC as also biased, it gives me news instead of disgust and a bellyache, and I'm interested in Israel's election, which both of the "main" American news networks ignore online this morning in order to continue their usual hate, so not go there, go to BBC.

I'm not a Jew and Israel is not my second (or first) home, but having lived through WW2 here in America, and from here closely watching newsreels about Germany during the war and Allied liberation of German concentration camps, and reading much about that my childhood era then and since, and acquiring deep lifelong prejudices that I cannot shake, I care about Israel. 

As well, in this day and age, what happens in Israel involves much of the rest of the world, so as a world citizen I watch what goes on there. And I try to have a balanced view of the endless Israeli-Palestinian troubles for which no solution will ever be satisfactory to the interests, so news arrives online from several sites there daily. Haaretz in particular, with their own bias, can drive one crazy with constant news flashes throughout every single day. 

American and not Jewish, it may seem none of my affair who the Israeli electorate vote into office. But it is indeed of concern, because world peace is at stake based on what happens there, at least peace in the northern hemisphere. And part there seems particularly to be absolutely itching for war, to wipe out the Palestinians and to engage Iran. Even to take human rights and citizenship from non-Jewish Israelis, such that they seem not to have learned even from Germany how not to treat people. 

Seeing their experience throughout history, one can hardly fault Jews and the Jewish state for being defensive, hostile, ever militant; but the Palestinians also have their abuse, and the Allies let evil off the hook after WW2 by doing what was done to the Palestinians in the Holy Land instead of depopulating part of Germany and carving it off permanently as a Jewish homeland, New Israel, which though not satisfactory to Zionists, would have been the greater right and just instead of the Gaza nonsolution that is unsolvable forever.

Having lived in that history, I still read books and watch films about WW2, both stories and documentaries. This past summer's 75th anniversary observances of the June 1944 Normandy Invasion, and cemeteries of dead on both sides. Among others, "A Bridge Too Far", an outstanding film about Operation Market Garden, which returns to mind because of a book I just finished and conversation with a friend who visited the scene this past summer. 

This morning because of a BBC piece about a woman in Holland who exemplifies the unending gratitude of those who have their lives and their civilization because of young foreigners, in this case a Scottish soldier whose grave she has tended for 75 years, in gratitude for a generation of youngsters who died freeing her land of German evil. The link is here. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-scotland-49729571/i-watched-over-a-scottish-soldier-s-grave-for-75-years
The piece is quite touching.

But the election in Israel. Perhaps not my business, but it seems time to try something besides militant hatred. 

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