Reflections of a senior citizen

Now that I am well into my 82nd year on this planet, it is becoming more of a challenge to navigate on computers, recall passwords, and keep up with hundreds of unsolicited solicitations that bombard my email box and text message box like incoming drones and missiles in the Middle East and Ukraine.

I want to give a shoutout to my old friend Joe Skolnik for gently reminding me to keep posting to this blog site. It is always an encouragement to know that there are some out there who still read these posts.

I want to start with Iran. I lived in Teheran for three years when I was a young boy. I went to school with Iranian children and developed a lifelong affinity for the Iranian people. They are not Arabs, as many in this country wrongly believe. They are Indo-Europeans with values quite similar to ours. In 1953, while I lived in Iran, my government, in partnership with the British, clandestinely overthrew the duly elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, because we felt he was too cozy with the Soviets and he had the audacity to nationalize Iran's oil industry.

The guy we kicked out was a professor, a supporter of human rights and democracy, advocate for women's rights and the rights of religious minorities and Iran's best hope for a shot at true democracy. But we preferred bringing back the Shah, because dictators best support our political and economic interests. Iranians have never forgotten what we did to them. Most Americans never knew about the episode until the revolution and taking of our diplomatic staff as hostages.

I have many Iranian friends. Some are secular Muslims, some Christians. None of them support the current theocratic regime. They think like us. When I was in the country for a two week visit in the late 1990's, our group was warmly greeted by every Iranian we encountered, without exception. Even the passengers and crew on one of their domestic airliners, notwithstanding the fact that our military had recently shot down one of their commercial aircraft, causing the death of all aboard. During my visit, I was privileged to tour an Iranian synagogue in the City of Hamadan. Yes, a Jewish synagogue that operated openly without harassment by Iranian authorities. Inside were two caskets that the Rabbi said contained the remains of Esther and her uncle Mordechai. And now we can only pray that Israeli bombs do not obliterate that part of their own heritage.

And while we are talking about Israel, let's be sure we distinguish between the Jewish people, on the one hand, and the Zionist State of Israel. The latter was "created" by a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, and has since ignored most other UN resolutions. The current political leadership of Israel is allowing thugs to attack and remove Palestinians, many of whom are Christians whose family religious roots go back to the first century when Jesus Christ walked among the peoples of Palestine, from the West Bank in violation of the Oslo Accords, and to kill any hope for a two state solution. So please do not impute to our Jewish friends and neighbors the actions of their radical right wing government...any more than you impute to me the actions of our own government.

We, the people of the United States, give the state of Israel over four billion dollars of our treasure each year, to not only fund military munitions that destroyed Gaza and Southern Lebanon and pummel Iran but to support Israel's entire economic structure. This includes Universal Health Care, free public education, subsidized university attendance, unemployment and disability compensation, monthly payments to parents for each child under 15, abortion on demand (a three person committee must approve but it is rubber stamped), 15 weeks of paid parental leave. Why, you should ask, should US taxpayers support all this? I get it that Israel is a strong military ally of ours, but come on now, why do we treat them better than we treat our own states?

I am saddened beyond mere words to acknowledge that my country, which I served for three decades in both the military and civil service, has pursued policies that so radically spit in the faces of our most enduring values. May God protect the judges who are bravely standing up for the rule of law in the face of horrific threats.

I applaud the current administration for closing our previously porous Southern border. Biden could have done it himself but was such an institutionalist that he wanted to defer to the Congress. Big mistake! That is why we have the current administration. But the dizzying avalanche of executive orders and threats to our free elections and universities and wonderful institutions like PBS and the Kennedy Center, all that is to me a national shame.

That is all I have for now.