Troubles

I read yesterday at reference 1 of the US House of Representatives censoring one Rashida Tlaib for her comments about the disaster in Gaza. Detroit born and raised, but the one and only representative born of Palestinian parents.

One of the comments appears at reference 3 and is snapped above. The offence there appears to consist in pointing up what seems to many, what seems to me, to be a straightforward link between the continuing oppression of the Palestinian population of Israel and the continuing unrest and worse. For just one small piece of that oppression see reference 4.

While the first substantive clause of the censure itself, to be found at reference 2, contains language which, to my mind, is far more offensive: 'whereas Israel has existed on its lands for millennia and the United States played a critical role in returning Israel to those lands in 1948 immediately following the Holocaust in recognition of its right to exist...'. The world cannot conduct its business by turning the clock back thousands of years - or even back to the more recent time when the US annexed large chunks of what was then Mexico. And most of the world will not be impressed by the partisan tone of the rest of the censure. Atrocity yes, but let's have some context too.

Representative McCormick, the Republican sponsor of the censure, is something of a newbie, having spent 20 years in the Marine Corps and getting qualified as both a helicopter pilot and a doctor along the way. One supposes that the censure is more a way to make life difficult for the Democrats than expressing any particular interest in the affairs of Israel and Palestine - although, that said, he did get 22 votes from the Democrats, more than enough to outweigh the handful of defectors from his own party.

He  may have been raised a Catholic, and he does have a lot of children, but he appears to attend the church at reference 6. The website does not offer a brand name, but one supposes some kind of evangelical. I wonder how many true believers of this ilk we can muster in our own lower house?

PS: President Putin is another one who is all for turning the clock back. Not only to the empire of the Tsars and to that of the Soviets who came after, but also to the far-off glory days when Slavs ruled the world and Ukrainians were not invented. Not that he is the only one: lots of national movements like to hark back to the often shadowy time when their nation was top of the heap.

References

Reference 1: House Censures Rashida Tlaib, Citing ‘River to the Sea’ Slogan: Twenty-two Democrats joined most Republicans in the rebuke of Ms. Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, accusing her of calling for the destruction of Israel - Kayla Guo, New York Times - 2023.

Reference 2: https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20231106/Tlaib%20Censure%20McCormick.pdf.

Reference 3: https://tlaib.house.gov/posts/tlaib-statement-on-ongoing-violence-in-israel-and-palestine.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/freedom-and-despair.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_McCormick.

Reference 6: https://gwinnettchurch.org/about. 'We believe the entire Bible is the inspired Word of God and that men were moved by the Spirit of God to write the very words of Scripture. Therefore, we believe the Bible is without error'.