Giving Thanks

This is the time of year when families and friends gather to share memories, favorite foods and think about the upcoming holidays and the new year. Many also look back and see what they can be thankful for, in keeping with the spirit of the holiday. Of course, I have many reasons personally to be grateful, but I think I also have some thanks to say to others in the public eye.

In writing this, I am so not ignoring the fact that some in the world are starving, homeless, or otherwise destitute. However, this is a column about Thanks, sorta.

This week Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day truce, hostage and prisoner release. It has taken six weeks for diplomats from many nations to make this happen, as there are a lot of moving pieces. However, during these six weeks, far too many additional casualties occurred. I am thankful the bombing is stopped for now.

Tonight, I learned that the terrorist group Hamas released an American hostage they had captured. She was a little girl who just turned four and was just slightly older than my granddaughter. They killed her father, who was shielding her when she was captured. I cannot imagine the grief her family experienced, nor understand the horrors she endured. I do not know how, as a three-year-old, she could possibly process this atrocity.

Yet, I give thanks, she is now safe. Thanks to that, for a few days at least, diplomats did what they do best. Talk, compromise, concede, argue, and eventually broker a truce. A truce, however tenuous, that might save some lives. Yet, there is cruelty here also, as only women and children are being released. Mothers of teenage sons have little joy. There was deliberate cruelty in the raid, as most of those killed and captured were civilians, celebrating a holiday, not military personnel. Again, society long ago set up some allowable criteria, some Rules of War, so to speak, that demand that civilian populations not be targets.

It is just a tiny thanks, that this is now being considered.

I am thankful that the truce has allowed food, fuel, and medicines to again get into Gaza. I fear that in many cases it is too little, too late. Too often civilians are collateral damage in war. Since the population of Gaza skews quite young, the young are especially vulnerable. I note that the world is speaking out against this style of warfare; that non-combatants caught during a war, they neither allowed nor took part in, should not be targets because they just have nowhere to go. Gaza is not like Ukraine, where civilians were also targeted, but there, at least, most had some way to fee the violence.

I worry that disease will follow in the upcoming weeks, as winter approaches without clean water or safe sewage, and the inability to create the necessary public infrastructure that could fix this. I hear some are encouraging the oil rich Gulf states to pledge to address these concerns in the absence of a government in Gaza. This would be good news, if accurate. Repairs could take decades in the absence of an organized ruling authority. For far too long, people said “two-state solution”, but did nothing to make it happen. This long-delayed resolution cannot happen overnight. But if these horrors can make it start to move toward a just resolution, I will be thankful.

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And, in moving on from discussions of War to Politics, I can thank the Economist for an exceptionally clear-eyed view of the GOP front-runner in the 2024 Presidential race in their annual outlook (November 18-24^th issue) for the upcoming year. I paraphrase below.

“But a second term would be different (for DJT), because the world has changed…. No wonder the thought of a second DJT term fills the world's parliaments and boardrooms with despair; but despair is not a plan. It is past time to impose order on anxiety.

The greatest threat Trump poses is to his own country. In pursuing his enemies, Trump will wage war on any institution that stands in his way, including the courts and the Department of Justice.

However, his lust for a deal and his sense of American interests are unconstrained by reality and unanchored by values.

A second Trump term would be a watershed in a way the first was not. Victory would confirm his most destructive instincts about power….his plans would encounter less resistance. Because America elected him, its moral authority would decline.”

I am thankful that this challenge to the voters of America has been issued. The question is still outstanding – will Americans vote either for President Biden or against DJT? Will voters stay away on Election Day or show up to preserve our democracy? Do we really wish to elect an aggrieved and petulant child-man, now inundated with 91 indictments who surrounds himself with sycophants and conspiracy theorists, with power grabbers who embrace authoritarianism? Do we really want to elect a president who borrows from Nazi speakers when choosing his stump speeches – or is it his speech writers who are trying to channel them? Don’t know, don’t care; either way, the ideas are harmful and dangerous, chosen to divide and conquer, and need to be dispensed with ASAP.

What are you thankful for?

“Til next week-Peace!