PA FREEDOM CAUCUS FILES RESOLUTION SUPPORTING ISRAEL AND CONDEMNING HAMAS
Harrisburg, PA- Today, PA Freedom Caucus member Rep. Stephanie Borowicz (Clinton, Union) circulated a co-sponsorship memorandum for a House Resolution expressing condolence and support for the State of Israel and its People considering the recent barbaric terrorist attacks by Hamas.
The memorandum states, “In the history of civilization and freedom, those who burst into people’s homes and slaughter sleeping or resting families and civilians are soon themselves destroyed and brought to justice in the name of everything good and true. Today, we ask God for the protection of all Israelis and innocent lives, and the restoration of peace in Israel.”
Rep. Borowicz’s memo, which complements a Senate Resolution put forth by Senator Doug Mastriano, continues: “The images we have seen on the news and social media indicate atrocities being committed against Israeli civilians in Southern Israel in horrific fashion and are condemned in the strongest manner. We stand firmly with the people of Israel and their right to defend themselves.”
The Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus proudly supports the resolution, which urges the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to express its support for Israel. The Commonwealth has shared a special relationship since Israel’s establishment in 1948. Pennsylvania’s National Guard troops have deployed to the Sinai Peninsula since 2007 as part of an ongoing international peacekeeping mission to ensure that the 1978 Camp David Accords peace agreement between Egypt and Israel is upheld.
I think it would have been more prudent to express condolences and denounce all attacks on civilians from either side. In addition we should pledge neutrality in the conflict, urge the Governor not to put Pennsylvanian troops in harms way and resolve that the Federal Government refrain from all military support from any warring nations. Support for any side in the Middle East at this time will only serve to escalate a WWIII scenario and invite attacks upon our people with weapons unimaginable. Plus a 33 Trillion dollar acknowledged debt hardly puts us in a position to aid anyone.
1) If there's anyone who's got:
a) "standing", in the opinion of any Israeli policy-maker, and, also
b) a background in U.S. history,...
...that person might want to point out the impact of "Nat Turner's Rebellion", on the collective psyche, in the antebellum [19th-Century, slave-owning, US] South, and on the "socio-political environment" that grew increasingly oppressive and, possibly, increasingly brutal, also, in the wake of that uprising.
(In other words, "The USA has experienced periods in which the response that the USA made, to specific events that occurred, within the USA, did not bring an immediate end to 'the issue that lay at the heart of the disturbance', but, rather, intensified that 'issue', with tumult, turmoil, devastation, and wreckage, even in victory, being the near- and medium-term results.")
2) That person might, also, want to point out, to Israel, the extent to which the USA, as an entity, has been forgiven and re-embraced, by US Citizens who consider themselves aggrieved as the "legacy" of events that "ended" 170+ years ago, when death, destruction, and dispossession were visited upon the vanquished, who were, then, vilified and permitted little access to empathy or understanding.
The aftermath of that "ending" seems to have been such that "the aftermath" was no "ending", at all, but only a kind of "simmering, over low[er] heat".
For, there seems to have been too little of the kind of silence that might have fostered healing, and too much of the insistence, by some, on the requirement that others be humiliated, rather than, merely, humbled.
Does Israel wish to emulate the USA? Or, does Israel wish to tread some other, possibly better path?
3) As Israel responds toward Gaza, in the aftermath of this past Saturday, it might be worth-while, were Israel to recall the US experience in Afghanistan, after 9/11, when US policy came to be dominated by "interests" whose objective was not, merely, to "inflict retribution upon the perpetrators and upon those who had provided aid and comfort to those perpetrators,...
but whose objective was, rather, expanded to the point at which it was articulated as being "to ensure that the perpetrators would never be able to launch such an attack, ever again."
How well was that objective met?
3) The Botha and de Klerk Governments, in South Africa, during the 1980s, had a lot of "Black Maria" armored vehicles and other, advanced equipment available to them, during the 1980s.
Where are they, now? Why? Was it because Ronald Reagan sent Edward Perkins to Pretoria, as the US Ambassador? Or, was there another, more basic reason?
4) Using pejorative words such as "barbaric", "heinous", "cowardly", when attempting to shape other people's perceptions, might not be as effective a "spin/issue-framing" practice as it might have been, in the days before former-Secretary-of-State (and former-Senator) Hilary Clinton was divested of the right to be addressed or referred-to by means of such honorifics as "Mrs.", "Ms.", "Senator", and "Madam Secretary",...
...and was required to be exclusively referred-to, instead, by means of the now-apparently-"official" prefix "Rotten".
People may have grown numb.
Nowadays, we might be better-served (and better-nourished), were our plates to be presented with fewer adjectives adorning them, to be the accompaniments, garnishes, and "flavor-enhancements" for the nouns that are the actual, advertised fare, and which might be deemed to be sufficiently robust, alone.