I have been sick all week long. And not from the dizzying post surgical, post anethesia effects of my inguinal repair. Nor the stifling limitations it places on my rigorous exercise regimen, one which has become addictive in a therapeutic positive way.
What makes me sick is nothing internal. It's external. So external it would take me 16 hours of traveling -- probably in a middle seat -- to reach the epicenter, which I have no interest in doing.
Of course I'm talking about what has transpired and continues to unravel in the Middle East. Thankfully, we're in football season and I can distract myself from the non-stop horror show that is taking place in Southern Israel and the Gaza Strip -- a spit of land so small it doesn't even merit a proper name.
If it were not for football I'd be gobbling up the news, from the NY Times and WaPo, Twitter (I don't give a shit what Elon Musk wants to call it) and CNN and MSNBC. I suppose I could watch Fox News for a POV that is aligned closer to mine on this particular topic, but I refuse to contribute to that old Aussie money-grubbing lizard in any manner.
Here's a point worth considering. I take no joy, none whatsoever, in watching buildings in Gaza get pummeled by Israeli jets. Nor do I take any satisfaction, in seeing people being extracted from the rubble. Or children, even babies, whose lifeless bodies have gone limp.
In fact, my body reacts instinctively. My jaw drops. And my hand reflexively reaches to cover up my mouth.
Interesting how this is such a universal human reaction to deep sorrow and mind twisting pain.
Or so one would think.
Because days earlier, when footage showed Israeli teenagers being mowed down at a music festival. Or a young woman, who literally shat her pants in fear, being stuffed into an SUV. Or a schoolyard littered with the remains of a Babi Yar type massacre, these same people (the ones in Gaza) were dancing in the streets and throwing celebratory candy to their children.
If that weren't sickening enough, last Friday was declared a Global Day of Jihad.
What does that mean for you? Probably nothing. But for people with Hebraic Seasonings it's different. A dark skinned man in his early twenties came to my house and rang the bell. As he was standing there waiting for me to come to the door he no doubt saw the mezuzah affixed to my doorway.
Before opening the door I placed my sawed off, 2 inch diameter closet pole nearby. It has the weight and feel of a baseball bat. Turns out he wasn't there to attack me or exact any type of Abrahamic revenge.
It was worse.
He was trying to sell me solar panels.
Perhaps I shouldn't end this post on a point of levity. Not when one considers the world's appalling embrace of moral equivalence, which is, I'm afraid to say, another demonstration of thinly-veiled anti-semitism.
And that makes me very sick.
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I invite you to listen to the sanity and wisdom of Sam Harris on this very subject. Take 14 mninutes of your day for the preview: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/338-the-sin-of-moral-equivalence?utm_source=braze&utm_campaign=2023_w42_newContent_338
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