Interlude?

I’ve been mulling over a post for VIEW FROM THE MOON for several days, unsure why I haven’t written anything. For awhile I was asking, “What’s the use?” Maybe I’ll take Cindy Sheehan’s cue. Maybe I’ll just say, “The show is cancelled because of lack of interest.”

I picture those who look at this blog as falling into three groups: 1. A small group who agree with me on Zionism and other things, and who probably know more about them than I do, and who can read the same opinions a thousandfold on other websites. 2. A small group who regularly scan the Internet for anti-Zionist and “anti-Semitic” opinions and leave canned comments lifted from “talking points” distributed by the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center – lifted verbatim, spelling mistakes and all. 3. A very large proportion, a huge proportion, who have no idea what I’m talking about and couldn’t care less. To the latter crowd belong those who think that Iraq attacked the United States in New York, who believe that some nations are “evil” and some “good”, who have absorbed two generations of teachings that Arabs are sinister and cruel while Jews are noble victims, and who have no idea where Palestine and Israel and Iraq and Iran are, much less what Zionism is or how Israel came into being. If I could believe that VIEW FROM THE MOON had influenced even one of this latter group to become informed and to escape the conventional thinking about American foreign policy, I would feel successful and would never consider quitting. . . but I have no reason to be that optimistic.

Viewed from the Moon, the Earth still looks beautiful. . . silent, blue, seductively veiled in swirls of white clouds. But then it always looks that way. From the Moon you can’t see the explosions in Iraq or Palestine. You can’t hear the tortured screams of prisoners of the Americans and Israelis. If you had just arrived on the Moon, in fact, you would have the impression that you were looking across black space at a luminous cosmic paradise.

Paradise lost, perhaps, but not because of a heavenly Old Testament disciplinarian. Paradise lost, rather, because of the nature of humankind and its inability to organize itself so that its most wise, kind, generous and peaceful members are in charge of its nations. When the Earth is viewed from the Earth, where for the most part the greedy and selfish and brutal rule, the peaceful lunar view seems a sad mockery.

And yet lately Americans (those few paying any attention) could get the impression that we are going through a slight lull in the steady rise of violence and insanity. Here are some of the positive events that have created this intermezzo:

1. Neocon Paul Wolfowitz, one of the chief Iraq war criminals, booted out by the World Bank because of brazen misconduct and incompetence as President of the bank.

2. I. Lewis Libby, Wolfowitz’ protégé and co-planner of wars in the Middle East, given a reasonably hefty prison sentence for his crimes, although for some reason still walking around a free man.

3. Representatives of the United States sitting down and talking with Iranian representatives in the first public diplomatic discussions between the two nations in many years. This accompanied by a decrease in American anti-Iranian oratory and in what were almost daily Israeli threats to bomb Iran.

4. Some signs that even Republicans are finally starting to join in pressuring Bush to do something about ending (or at least altering) the American military presence in Iraq.

5. An increase in lip service to curbing global warming.

6. An upset tummy for G.W. Bush which kept him from embarrassing the United States overseas for at least a few hours.

7. That great American national icon (who may replace the Statue of Liberty as the symbol of American ideals and aspirations), Paris Hilton, put into jail for a series of flagrant violations of law, then let out by a strangely compassionate sheriff, and then put back again. Which of that is positive news and which is negative news depends on whether you are Paris Hilton or almost everybody else, but in general it gives the impression that justice is being done, or at least attempted, in a country where there is a blatant double system of incarceration for the rich and famous on the one hand everybody else on the other hand.


Of course I know that there have been negative as well as soothing developments in the past couple of weeks, and that the sewer of horrors gushes unabated in occupied Palestine and Iraq and Afghanistan. I know that those who scheme for war have not stopped their scheming, and that any apparent improvements in U.S. policies will probably prove illusory and shortlived. Nevertheless, being able to write a few positive things has provided a pleasant interlude.