After leaving them,  I researched Babylon and evangelical beliefs and read the familiar story of captives taken from Jerusalem and forced to reside in Babylon in 567 BC. A generation later Cyrus conquered the city and allowed the captives to return. The passage referenced by the Evangelicals was: “Tell this news to the nations!/Wave a flag to make sure that people listen!/Do not try to hide anything/ …the people of Israel and Judah will return to their land/They will weep because of their sins… / Babylon has been like a gold cup of wine in the Lord’s hand/The nations of the world had to drink that wine/It made everyone become drunk/and so they all became crazy/But now Babylon will quickly fall/An enemy will destroy it/so weep for it!/Find some medicine that will make its wounds better/Perhaps it will become well again/Wave a flag and prepare to attack Babylon’s city walls!/ Bring plenty of guards to watch all around the city/Put soldiers to catch anyone who tries to escape/Yes, the Lord will now do everything that he has decided/He will punish Babylon’s people, as he said he would do/you people of Babylon, who live beside many rivers/it is now time for you to die…..”.(Jeremiah 50:1-51)

From their point of view, evangelists view all forms of “wickedness and evil” in the world as symbolized by “Babylon”. To some, America is a modern version of Babylon. But how is it that Babylon became associated with confusion, yet was known in classical times as being accepting of many languages and customs? 

Babylonian references are widespread among the 24% of American adults who consider themselves evangelical.  The negative references are not related to Hammurabi of Babylon who provided a “code of laws”, nor to Cyrus, who conquered Babylon and allowed the Jewish captives to return to Jerusalem; His story was chronicled by Xenophon in the Cyropaedia. “Cyrus was a Persian, a leader in the Achaemenid Empire who defeated the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BC. Aramaic became the official language of the Persian empire, and its official religion was Zoroastrianism. Cyrus’s enlightened policy put an end to the Assyro-Babylonian practice of deporting conquered peoples and trying to destroy all local nationalisms.”

According to the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, much of the Bible was composed in Jerusalem in the 5th century BC, following  the return from the “Babylonian captivity”. Those who composed the Books of the Bible amplified ancient battles in order to magnify the power of their monotheistic God. Relatively small battles became exaggerated into massacres for the purpose of impressing the listener or reader to the power wielded by Yahweh. 

“ The  book of Revelation describes Babylon the Great as the dominant superpower in the world of the end times—so dominant, that it actually shapes the culture and economy of the world as it exists at the start of the tribulation period. The nature and scope of Babylon the Great’s dominance is such that only one such entity could ever exist in the history of the world, and there is no doubt that the United States of America is this entity.  (Rev 17:6; 18:20, 24; 19:2). by Steven Anderson in Bible prophecy

“Babylon,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland 3

After having a discussion with my class concerning Babylon, I introduced them to Plato’s Cave, a story associated with classical Greece in the 5^th century BCE. Plato’s description of the cave was an analogy depicting two versions of reality. In the shadowy recesses of the cave people were shackled to benches while images floated by, projected by a priesthood displaying images of deities while pacing behind a fire that cast images on a wall in front of the shackled spectators. The viewers were mesmerized by the images, but periodically one viewer made the decision to unshackle themselves and exit the cave to encounter the sun of truth. 

I posed a question to the class: “Are there opportunities for all the cave dwellers to unshackle themselves?” The philosopher, Heidegger, whose book “The Essence of Truth”, considered the unshackling the most important part of the myth, which the class agreed with. They became absorbed by the implications of this story and how it could apply to those who supported the conventional “history” espoused by evangelicals, and the cynically disposed Israelis and Americans who were complicit in the genocide taking place in daily images;  the virtual reality of destruction transmitted throughout the world by the technical wizardry of modern media.

Plato’s (and Heidegger’s) explanation of those shackled in the cave was that they ceased to see what is taking place and are bound by their biases and beliefs to the “unhidden” nature of reality. Dissociation and a dulling of moral sensibilities are the lot of those shackled to benches in the cave which can be compared to the  Israeli activists and intellectuals who exit the shadow world of the cave and become Illuminated by the sun of truth. 

Are those dwelling in the cave bound by biblical beliefs or deliberately ignoring the massacres taking place in Gaza? The Amalekites in Exodus were massacred as a reprisal for an attack against Israelites after crossing the Red Sea?  Yahweh “vowed to blot them out from under heaven”, thus becoming a primal source for the justification of genocide by the more militant members of Israeli society, who compared Amalekites to modern Palestinians. A question addressed was: do “mythic histories”, which are, to some extent, historical fabrications, provide reasons for tribal vengeance and on-going genocide? 

Our class discussed these questions and the disjunction between two truths, one dealing with light emanating from the sun of truth and the other portraying the darkest aspects of biblical passages relating to mythic history. The result portrays a nation incarcerated in a cave of mistruths and misinformation, still shackled to hallucinatory images and unwilling to accept the consequences of the massacres that have been taking place in their name; Nor have they been able to empathize with the calamitous nature of the suffering caused by the deliberate bombing of women and children; Nor are they ready to atone for the moral shame causing generational traumas to the 16,000 children slaughtered by bombs provided by America, the “Great Babylon”. Such moral catastrophes will have to be confronted in the times to come, since they have not yet become crystallized, except to those who have exited the cave of shadowy images and confronted “the essence of truth.”

Kelly Borhaug, author of “Moral Injury and War Culture” quotes Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase on “the banality of evil” in reference to the Holocaust. The “evil” referred to was a “failure to think” [through the consequences of their actions], Evil has many guises, as Borhaug notes, and is “most pernicious and dangerous when it is routinized and normalized”. 

Bombing civilians makes the victims “hopeless and willing to leave” which facilitates dispossession and depopulation. According to the Israeli historian, Illan Pappe, an Israeli historian recently wrote in his book: “Ethnic Cleansing” the aggressor nation masks their intent by dehumanizing the displaced in order to excuse themselves from the consequences of their actions. He also noted that the term “Zionism” is often confused with Judaism, but they are not the same. Zionism, including Christian Zionism, is an ideology, whereas Judaism is a religion. 

In Aristotle’s Politics, “wealth is the guiding principle of oligarchy” and “freedom the guiding principle of democracy”. But when “freedom” is only freedom for those who are within the tribe it becomes “ethnocracy”,  which  concerns a nation favoring only one group, which is particularly true in Israel.

When one ethnic group is favored then empathy for others is in short supply. According to the 17^th century Scottish philosopher, John Hume, the highest sensibility that humans should strive for Is empathy, Genuine empathy is not just a convenient word, it represents an identification with the suffering of others. When civilian populations are slaughtered in Gaza by incessant bombing, the devastating results are experienced by thousands of women and children, some now buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings. Such circumstances are so painful to contemplate that euphemisms are adopted to find blame with the victims. A former Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, once said “…we can never forgive the Arabs for forcing us to kill their children”; This tribal attitude asserts that only those who are within the group deserve to be protected, whereas those who are outside the group must be treated harshly.

Such tribal attitudes toward the Palestinians in Gaza has resulted in mass death in gruesome circumstances with the end result being starvation and disease. The enormity of the suffering numbs the mind, and the complicity of U.S. politicians betrays the reality that our leaders have become emotionally disconnected and unable to fully comprehend the devastating effects of what is taking place on a daily basis? 

“War, Trauma and Memory,” Digital, Dream, Abstract v. 2, 2024

In her book on trauma, Borhaug quoted the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who spoke to veterans: “we know that war is not only in us, it is in everyone, veterans and non-veterans alike. We must share our insights [from the tragedies of war], not out of anger but out of love”. Buddhists understand that suffering has causal factors which inevitably result in consequences to the victims, but also to those who cause suffering, since they too will inevitably suffer from the results of their actions.

We try to obliterate the memory of war victims but “we do so by dehumanizing the victims, which, in turn, dehumanizes the military forces which are the causes of pain and suffering” (Borhaug). Yet it is the policy makers, enabled by political leaders, who contribute to wrongful conflict and war, although everyone, to some degree, may be complicit. In order to atone for war’s atrocities we need to face into the causes and deal with the results which cannot be effaced or blotted out. 

There are those who adopt a form of amnesia as a way of disconnecting from a sense of responsibility, and who insist that they are merely carrying out orders. But what if the persons in command are unable to fully comprehend the harm caused by their decisions, and are themselves suffering from cognitive or emotional dissociation.

A journalist at VOX Media recently wrote an article titled: “How Israel’s War against Hamas has gone horribly wrong” stating that:“the truth is that this nightmare was depressingly predictable. When a dozen experts were surveyed about the war they warned that Israel had a dangerously loose understanding of what the war was about. [and its] conduct in the war so far has vindicated these fears. [having] dragged Israel down to a moral nadir… to an “an era-defining catastrophe.”

Israel, at one time, represented qualities admired by small nations, but it has  descended into a moral quagmire which is taking place at a time in history when the world has become a “Global Village” and where communication takes place almost instantaneously around the world. The present war in Gaza is a slow-motion tragedy being viewed throughout the world community via video imagery.

What is taking place is a calamity with enormous ramifications, Israel’s pretense to being an exceptional nation is shown to be questionable, while Europe and America’s pretense to upholding humanistic and humane values, is shown as having very little value In these circumstances. 

The only saving grace to the catastrophe taking place in Gaza are the dozens of peace groups within Israel and Palestine who continue to work toward a ceasefire and a permanent peace. Other groups, such as: “Jewish Voices for Peace”(JVP), with its ten of thousands of members are demonstrating daily in peace marches and rallies in cities of America and Canada, hoping that the moral sensibilities in the heart and soul of Israel can be re-awakened before it is too late.

Ilan Pappe, the Israeli historian, wrote in “The Forgotten Palestinians” that “Zionism was born out of two impulses; the first was to find a safe haven for Jews; the second was to re-invent Judaism as a national movement, inspired by the 1848 national movements in Europe; But the national and humanist impulse became subsumed by a colonialist one with a need for a pure Jewish space;  and in 1948 the only way of achieving this was by the ethnic cleansing of one million Palestinians. As a result, 500 Palestine villages were forcibly depopulated and a “permanent dispossession of the indigenous population of Palestine” took place. 

The Peel Commission of 1937 admitted that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 had given the British a Mandate that could not be implemented. The Mandate created an antagonism between Arabs and Jews. The Peel Commission recommended a Partition, but it was opposed by both groups. The World Zionist Congress of 1937, for instance, demanded a larger share of the land in a Partition. By 1947 the British realized that after the losses suffered during  World War II, and the costs of keeping a substantial military force in Palestine, they could no longer sustain their U.N. Mandate.

The costs of dispossession are diverse, with the indigenous being traumatized when they lose ancestral land, while at other times there is a moral cost that leaves levels of anger, rage and anguish experienced by those who are intimidated and displaced; But it also leaves a residue of guilt by the occupier in order to justify  the appropriation of indigenous land.  

Although they are several centuries apart, what is taking place in Palestine resembles that which took place in Ireland in the 17^th century. Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan leader invaded Ireland, ostensibly as a reprisal against the Catholic Coalition of Ireland in 1649. As a punitive measure he conducted massacres of the inhabitants of Wexford and Drogheda. His scorched earth policy included burning crops and torching farms.

According to the 19^th century historian William Lecky the letters of Cromwell included comments of the Drogheda massacre where he personally ordered all the inhabitants to be killed. For instance, during Sunday services at the Church of St Peter, 1000 of the worshippers were “put to the sword” Cromwell himself wrote: “all of their friars were knocked on the head except two who were taken prisoner and killed”. He continued “…a great thing [has been] done, not by power or might but by the Spirit of God…it is good that God alone have all the glory” (Lecky, “ A History of Ireland”). At another town (Tredagh), an Oxford historian, Anthony Wood, who accompanied Cromwell, related that 3000 were slain, including women and children hiding in “vaults underneath the church; [all] were “put to the sword”. Lecky pointed out that such cruel acts, of which there were many, “left behind memories that are the most fatal obstacles to the reconciliation of nations”. In Ireland Lecky noted that Cromwell’s deeds still “act as a spell upon the Irish mind…sustaining hatred of England…”

Although the effects of Cromwell’s War continued on after 1652, Sir William Petty calculated that during those subsequent 11 years “out of an Irish population of 1,460,000, those who died as “a result of war, plague and famine”, were estimated at 616,000 (504,000 being Irish)

Cromwell and his “New Model Army” left a traumatized country, forcing tens of thousands to move to economically deprived areas in the West of Ireland or being transported to the West Indies. The phrase: “Go to hell or to Connaught” was attributed to him, illustrating his total lack of empathy for the defeated. The stark contrast with English news outlets at the time was far different: In October 1652 a London newsbook,  The Faithful Scout, reported that ‘the long-expected news of the Irish calm, is at last blown over to us with a happy gale’. In “Enforcing Transplantation-1654-1659) the author notes that: “By the spring of 1655 the Irish government was at last ready to attempt the full implementation of its transplantation policy ”. 

The Act of Settlement of 1652  formalised the change in land ownership as Catholics were barred from the Irish Parliament altogether, forbidden to live in towns and from marrying Protestants. In addition, “some fifty thousand Irish people, including prisoners of war, were sold as indentured servants under the English Commonwealth regime”. The practice of Catholicism was banned and bounties were offered for the capture of priests, who were executed when found.

William Petty, an economist and philosopher who served with Cromwell, estimated that 54,000 Irishmen left the country to serve in foreign armies. 

Cromwell returned to England after his conquest of Ireland,  which was hailed as a great victory. Soon after, he invaded Scotland and succeeded in compelling that nation into a Parliamentary Union with England. Although Cromwell lived an additional eight years he died of Malaria and kidney stones. Despite being buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, he was subsequently dis-interred following the Restoration of Charles II and hung in chains in Tyburn. Despite continuing to be held in high esteem by most Puritans, the Royalists reviled him for his execution of the king.  

Cromwell: Siege of Drogheda. Based on Engraving by Barlow, 1649, published, 1750.

By an interesting coincidence, in the time of Cromwell’s depredations, the influential preacher, Increase Mather, came from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to pursue a higher degree in theology at Trinity College, Dublin. He received support from Cromwell by way of a beneficence at Magherafelt. Fearful of repercussions after the return of Charles II to the throne, he returned to the Bay Colony and in 1681 became President of Harvard College.

A decade prior to Mather’s Irish journey, an infamous event took place in which up to 700  Pequots were massacred and hundreds more sold into slavery in the West Indies. This is considered the first genocide to take place in New England. The Puritan justification for killing men, women and children was ironically expressed by the Puritan leader, John Underhill who declared that “sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents…We had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings.” 

Even with all the intervening years since his death Cromwell’s destructiveness still evokes anger. His legacy, due to his year-long killing spree and his expropriation of hundreds of thousands of acres of Indigenous Irish land was the fact that he set in motion a series of precedents that compelled the majority of Irish into servitude and placed the ownership of the land in English hands.

The Puritans of New England followed similar precedents of expropriating Indigenous land. They were aided by disease and famine among the estimated five hundred Native tribes who, like the Pequots,  were marginalized if they did not agree to treaties that, unfortunately, were seldom honored. The attitude at the time, was one of dehumanizing in order to justify dispossession.

In Israel, there exists an equivalent to Cromwell, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose genocidal methods would fit well with Cromwell in Ireland or the Puritan treatment of the Pequots. Netanyahu and the extremist members of the Knesset have actively encouraged the destruction of Gaza, the homeland of 2 million Palestinians. He is encouraged by U.S. policies which continue to replenish his military with a multitude of 2000 pound bombs. Netanyahu has a grim need to project demonic attributes on Hamas, the Gazan defense force who he compares to Amalekites, an enemy in ancient Israel. In this case the Israelites are “commanded to destroy the Amalekites by killing man, woman, infant and suckling”, this was in reference to the Palestinians in Gaza.

 Perhaps we will see Netanyahu face similar circumstances as Cromwell, by being tolerated during a national emergency but  rejected after order is restored. Will he leave a legacy of anger and animosity when the enormity of his crimes are revealed in the clear light of day. It may be, as with Cromwell, that the public will cast his memory into “oblivion”, with his “followers of convenience” resigning themselves to the back benches of the Knesset.

President Biden has had an extensive relationship with Ireland by way of his parents, especially his mother. But it appears he does not comprehend Irish history very well, nor is he able to see that its most traumatic experiences are being replicated by a Cromwellian style of brutality in Gaza. If he had done minimal reading of the invasion of Ireland in the mid-17^t century he might have glimpsed that its horrifying history is being repeated on a global viewership scale with the complicity of  America.. Perhaps he will discover, most likely too late, that he has participated in a great tragedy against a population lacking any sustained means of defense from the bombs raining down on Gaza’s cities and towns.

Featured image generated by Dream / Dreamland v. 3. .

For Americans a question that should be asked is why Israel is receiving $3.8 billion annually from the U.S. in military aid with another $14 million being promised by the Biden administration. This is taking place while one million Americans are homeless and many more are living near the poverty line?  Under such circumstances why is America enabling the destruction of Gaza, the forced homelessness of tens of thousands, and on the West Bank the continued expropriation of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers. America is making itself a moral spectacle to the world as it becomes an accomplice to the deliberate destruction of an indigenous people.

In her book “ And Then your Soul is Gone” Kelly Denton -Borhaug describes “moral injury and war culture”. She writes: “U.S. citizens don’t really want to know what has gone on in our name, with our money and with the tacit permission…of U.S. violence around the world”….we distance ourselves from the suffering caused by war yet “moral injury results from participation in the moral distortion of the world that is created by war”. The writer quotes Hannah Arendt concerning the “banality of evil” when Arendt notes how [moral injury] becomes most pernicious when it is “routinized and normalized”.

What is taking place in Gaza is the most transparent of age-old motives: to dispossess the indigenous people of their land by any means possible. The truth is that dispossession of indigenous land worldwide has a long sordid history, often dressed up in religious language such that, as Borhaug notes: “to present a divinized portrayal of war and militarism as a sacred enterprise”.

The recent display of overwhelming military power by Israel is also intended to cast fear into “enemies” nearby, but in this war against the Palestinians it is achieving the opposite. Arab countries are not in awe nor are they made more fearful, even as American navy sits at anchor ready to intervene. Large segments of the population of Arab countries are disgusted and are taking action by boycotting businesses and products coming from America and Israel. We may see that small actions, carried out by large numbers of people, can result in powerful consequences.

The Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, in a talk on the Israel Lobby some years ago in Washington, D.C., spoke of three principles believed in by Israelis that make them inflexible regarding their conflict with the Palestinians: 1^st is the belief that Israelis are the chosen people”; 2^nd is the belief that Israelis are always the victim; 3^rd is the belief that Palestinians are less than human, compared to Israelis.

Al Jazeera English: “Gaza woman left homeless and alone since the war began”

At another talk Gideon Levy noted that “Israeli rage and desire for revenge are not justified…you have to completely ignore the last 100 years in order to believe that Israel is entitled to revenge. They have far more to answer for than the Palestinians. The only way all this can possibly end well is if the U.S. intervenes. I don’t see Israel coming to its senses and developing a conscience without pressure from the outside”.

He also noted,that “ethnic cleansing” by the settlers in the West Bank is supposedly “illegal” but the Israel military protects the settlers. These are Jewish terrorists…burning down houses and fields of Palestinians…under the smokescreen of the Gazan war, There is encouragement of the government…the suffering of Arabs in East Jerusalem…still to some extent, Jerusalem has been annexed by Israel, so these neighborhoods have been invaded by settlers with the help of the police…”

This dehumanization of Palestinians is not a new phenomenon, but is typical of colonial governments. When the British General Dyer massacred 500 nonviolent protestors in Amritsar, India in 1919 he was not reprimanded by the British hierarchy. This flagrant injustice ignited all of India against British rule while Gandhi, who at one time admired the British, became extremely critical of the “evil” that British leaders had succumbed to. Despite being jailed by the British he spent two decades dedicated to expelling Britain from India.

Coincidentally, Britain, during the same period placed tens of thousands of troops in Palestine and assigned a High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel who was supportive of Jewish immigration. Following him were eleven other High Commissioners who held authority over Palestine until 1948. The British withdrew from India and Palestine in 1947 and 1948, within a year of each other. Violence was rife in both withdrawals. Some parties were aggrieved for differing reasons. In India it was a partition between a Muslim and Hindu territory and British withdrawal in August, 1947. In Palestine the Zionist leadership attacked both the British and the Palestinians but withdrawal did not take place until May,1948. Gandhi did not live to see the formal withdrawal due to his assassination by a Hindu nationalist in January, 1948 who was convinced that Gandhi was too supportive of Muslims.

Useful Idiots: “Gideon Levy on Israel’s ‘Nazi Proposals’”

The Gandhian phrase: “an eye for an eye makes everyone blind” was quoted by Ofer Cassif, a now-suspended member of the Israeli Knesset, in an interview.   We are, he said “in a vicious cycle”. Most of the people of Israel have to rid themselves of their rage” He said: “the government includes psychopaths and bigots who are happiest when they are destroying the opposition. Such people “don’t even care for Israeli people, they believe in the greater Israel, “Eretz Israel” [the largest expanse of biblical Israel] “Obviously the intention is to drive the Palestinians out of Gaza…to expel the Gazans…it is not a secret….they believe it..there are thousands who oppose this but the majority  will only be able to change their minds when it is too late. The fascists in the Knesset do not want to see any opposition. [They now demand] that the police totally forbid any demonstrations against the present war against Gaza. One Knesset member wants to give M16 rifles to the west bank settlers. “Americans must understand that these fascists in the Knesset may use their power eventually against us…the regular people of Israel.”

Ofer has been struggling for peace and reconciliation with the Palestinians and their right of return to their homeland. He predicts that “Israel is dooming itself not only by committing genocide against the Palestinians and shocking the entire world, but by arming its own citizens to the teeth. Civil war is around the corner as society grows ever more extremist while its democratic institutions are being dismantled. Unless there is rapid change, Israel will self-destruct from the inside.” (See Ofer’s interviews here and here.)

In the case of the bombing of Gaza, a recent poll notes that a majority of Israelis support it despite its lethal consequences, As a result, they become complicit in the sin of a conflagration visited on another people, and in a vast moral universe of pain and suffering; all this from anger and vengeance and dispossession. When is enough not enough? How long will people suffer the traumas of injury after the death of friends and relatives? There are always consequences to violence, especially on a scale of what is now taking place, whether it is due to Hamas or Israel or America. The bigger the sin perpetrated against others (in this case the Palestinians) the more consequential the long- term psychological suffering, not only to the victims, but inevitably, to the aggressors as well. Moral injury is deep-seated and involves a long difficult process of healing and atonement. Such a process demands acknowledgement of the pain and suffering inflicted, and a willingness to face one’s complicity in the consequences of collective decision making.   

Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – There were elements in Ireland whose anger against Britain overwhelmed any other sentiment. Three hundred years of settler colonialism, dispossession and denigration of language, culture, and religion, left a legacy of deep-seated resentment.  I was born in Donegal, part of the province of Ulster, and often heard my father’s smoldering resentment at the historical traumas still raw in Ulster up to the 1998 Peace Accord when the Easter Friday agreement allowed Indigenous Irish Nationalists to experience the same civil rights as British Loyalists.

I had rebelled at my father’s one-sided view of history, which considered one nation as the source of all evil as it pertained to Ireland. But after reading and reflecting on 17^th century Irish history that involved three invasions from England resulting in a 40% reduction of the native population and then a million Irish starving to death in the Great Hunger of the mid-19th century in a famine that could have been averted if not for the English policy of “laissez-faire”. I then read insightful books by Caroline Elkin on Britain’s colonialism in Kenya and Thomas Dalrymple on Britain in India and gradually came to a better understanding of my father’s perspective.

It was not until the late 19^th century that Prime Minister Gladstone helped to enact legislation to free the indigenous Irish from the onerous and exacting rents that had supported a landlord system which had seen the majority of the wealth of the country siphoned into British and Anglo-Irish hands.

It was during the WWI postwar period that Britain enacted the Balfour Declaration which gave tacit approval to Zionism, thus allowing an influx of Jewish immigrants into Israel. In the Declaration only a couple of phrases were given over to acknowledging that the Indigenous Palestinians needed to be treated fairly. 

By 1930 the Jewish population was one third of the population of Israel but only owned 7% of the land. By 1935 Haifa had a majority Jewish population. In the early 1930s PM Ramsey McDonald admitted that Jewish settlements in Palestine was the purpose of the League of Nations Mandate. 

David Ben-Gurion in 1934 stated: “The Palestinian Arabs will not be sacrificed so that Zionism might be realized. According to our conception of Zionism, we are neither desirous nor capable of building our future in Palestine at the expense of Arabs…”

With the onslaught of WWII and the tragedy of the holocaust, funds from Europe and an annual subsidy of $3 billion worth of weapons from the U.S. Israel population substantially increased. But this was not the case with the Palestinians. Their land continued to contract as dispossession became normalized.  The result was a further marginalization of the Indigenous Palestinians and their desperation as the Jewish leadership, in league with the Israeli settlers in the West Bank, found even more ways to expropriate Palestinian land.

As was the case in Ireland and the Americas in the 17^th and 18^thcenturies, the victims of land expropriation were blamed for resisting or fighting back. In Israel’s case any criticism concerning the dispossession of Palestinian land was seen as anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.  Peace groups, such as Gush Shalom, founded in 1993 by Uri Avnery, have decried the illegal taking of land by settlers in the West Bank. Gush Shalom does not believe in the “so called national consensus” which it considers to be based on misinformation. It wishes “to establish an independent and sovereign State of Palestine”. 

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister suggested in a 1918 book that the “fellahin [indigenous rural villagers] are descended from ancient Jewish and Samaritan farmers”, In more recent years, genetic studies have demonstrated that, at least paternally, “Jewish ethnic divisions” and the Palestinians are related to each other. Genetic studies on Jews have shown that Jews and Palestinians are closer to each other than the Jews are to their host countries. Given this genetic proximity to each other, one would think that fair dealing and genuine rapprochement would be honored and encouraged. 

The Israeli historian, Ihan Pappe, who explored Palestinian issues, wrote in “The Forgotten Palestinians”:  that “the policy towards the Palestinian minority was determined by a security minded group of decision makers and executed by Ben Gurion’s unfailingly ruthless advisors on Arab affairs, who were in favor of expelling as many Palestinians as possible and confining the rest within well-guarded enclaves”.

In the present time we are faced with the brutal attack by the extremist militant group, Hamas, who emerged from Gaza with incredible fury and slaughtered hundreds of Israeli people. These horrific acts have brought upon themselves, and hundreds of thousands of civilians, terrible consequences, as Israeli military forces, supported by American weapons, have caused death and injury to many innocent victims; 40% are estimated to be children. Did Hamas really consider the terrible retribution that would be exacted when they undertook their fool-hardy act? 

The historical causes of conflict in Gaza still have to be faced despite this atrocity. But this disproportionate bombing of civilians in response to Hamas horrific acts, do not take into account the children of Gaza, who have already been traumatized by ten Israeli military assaults between 2006 and 2023. In just one of these assaults in 2008 1,417 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths took place.  

Thousands are now suffering injury and death in Gaza. It was estimated that at least 500 children have died from Israeli air strikes on Gaza. This disproportionate response to Hamas may also have the purpose of compelling Palestinians to leave their ancestral land. Dispossession by whatever means is an ancient tactic, whether taking place in Ireland or in the expropriating of Indigenous land from Native Americans. 

In the 21^st century reconciliation groups have sprung up all over the U.S. and Canada to help redress and atone for the deep traumas caused by dispossession, as well as by the Residential school system. Israel still has time to change its policies and follow the recommendations of Gush Shalom: to “safeguard the security of both Israel and Palestine by mutual agreement and guarantees”

In ancient times, in days leading up to August 1, the “Aenach Tailltean” (Taillten Fair) was held at a location near Tara. Competitions were held, music was played, poets read their poems accompanied by a harp; peace was observed, clan battles were prohibited; the 1st fruits of the harvest were eaten; a dance ritual against blight and famine was enacted; a sacred bull was sacrificed. In Scotland, a special cake called “Lunastain” was baked, the piece handed to a man was “luinean” and to a woman “luineag”; In addition, trial marriages were permitted for a year and a day (also known as “handfasting”).

Climbing Croagh Patrick (a mountain in Mayo), on the weekend leading up to August 1, was a traditional annual ritual that has taken place for many hundreds of years. Tens of thousands participate in this arduous pilgrimage to the top of the mountain. More recently “neo-pagans” observe Lughnasadh (Lammas) by celebrating the “first fruits” of harvest, while Wiccans considered this day one of the eight Sabbats.

Lyons in France was named after Lugh. When the Romans invaded Gaul (France) they equated the god Mercury with Lugh, who was considered the “inventor of all the arts” and was one of the most revered deities in Gaul.

Lugh was known as the Samildanach (skilled in all arts) and Lamfada (wide armed). He had a Welsh counterpart in Llew Llaw Gyffes (swift, strong arm). According to Celtic mythology, Lugh’s mother was also known as Eithniu (Enya), daughter of Balor, the one-eyed demonic giant, who lived on an island off the Donegal coast. Lugh had to do battle with Balor, whose one eye, when uncovered, could incinerate a thousand opponents. Lugh defeated him and his demon warriors using a magnificent slingshot.

Lugh, as a great mythic hero, was originally the young god who supplanted the king of the Tuatha De Danann (people of the goddess D’ana), the magical people of Ireland and Scotland. They were eventually defeated by the Milesians who were led by the poet, Amergin. The Tuatha De Danann were given a choice to live in towns, fortresses, farms and settled areas, or they could choose the hills, mountains and glens. Their response was: “What you consider the least, we consider the best”, and, as a result, they chose to make their homes in caves, glens, mountains and islands, and became the deities of nature in the Celtic pantheon.

Lugh’s spear, one of the four treasures of the Tuatha De Danann, was adopted into the Legends of the Grail, as was Lugh himself, who became the inspiration for Sir Lancelot. Lugh’s spear had to be leashed and was like a lightning bolt, while his sling became the Rainbow and the Milky Way became known as “Lugh’s Chain”.

In Scotland, the Gaelic festival of Lammas (Lughnasadh) marks the beginning of harvest times. Celebrated since ancient days as the ‘Gule of August’ it was customary to bring a loaf made from the new crop to a community gathering or church, Being one of the four fire festivals of the year participants gave vociferous thanks for the fruits of the first harvest. In the Scottish outer Isles Lammas festivals took place after fishing boats returned. Lammas Day is also a legal term to end a pre-arranged contract period where workers could be hired or depart of their own free will.

In Shakespeare’s play: “Romeo & Juliet”, Lammas Eve, 31 July, was the day of Juliet’s birth. In the play: “The Tempest” reapers gathered in the harvest: “You sunburn sickle men of August weary/Come hither from the furrow and be merry, Make Holiday! “

In Shakespeare’s play: “Romeo & Juliet”, Lammas Eve, 31 July, was the day of Juliet’s birth. In the play: “The Tempest” reapers gathered in the harvest: “You sunburn sickle men of August weary/Come hither from the furrow and be merry, Make Holiday! “

Although sometimes the British appropriated the Lammas fair in a way that severed it from its roots, at the end of the 20th century, only two true Lammas Fairs in the sense of the Lughnasadh remain–-at St Andrews and Inverkeithing, both including market stalls, food and drinks. One of the biggest Lammas fairs was held at Kirkwall in Orkney, also known for “handfasting”, which, (as noted earlier) was a trial marriage for a year and a day.

Perhaps an historical view can give us some perspective concerning this epidemic of gun violence! In the mid-19^th century theologians addressed a prevailing view called “the gospel of wealth”, in which religious leaders such as the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, preached that individual prosperity was “a sign of God’s Presence”. But as wealth disparities became more acute towards the end of the 19th century, others, such as the popular speaker, the Rev. Washington Gladden, promoted a “social gospel” in which all Americans could share in God’s benevolence, and that the role of government was to facilitate changes for the betterment of society. He repeatedly stated in his sermons, not only the need for “salvation of the individual, but also the character of society within which men live”. Gladden wrote in 1893 “whether any higher power can be invoked to save the good [from] the greed of gain brought forth upon the earth.

Those who espoused the “Social Gospel” were mostly religious ministers who were convinced that the government’s role was to “redress the moral wrongs inherent in prevailing situations”. They felt that “material prosperity” for all Americans was essential for moral advancement” and that “social outcomes were inevitable and caused by human action [or inaction]”.

Government has to play a role in reducing gun violence and to salvage the “good from the greed of gain” that motivates those legislators unwilling to take action for common- sense changes in gun laws. These modest changes include: “background checks”; raising the age of the purchase of guns to a minimum of 21; banning large capacity guns such as the AR15; regulating “ghost guns”; reinforcing “red flag” laws to intervene when clear warnings are evident.

Ryan Busse, after 30 years in the Arms Industry, stated in an interview about his recently published book “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America” that he “…condemned the authoritarianism that has spread in the “guise of freedom” in a “gun culture that demands complete loyalty”. He added: “years ago, the NRA “stumbled upon this idea that fear and conspiracy…could be used to win political races [and it happens that] the same thing drives firearm sales”. He added: “I still believe in Americans’ right to own guns…but “it has to be balanced with the appropriate amount of responsibility”.

Busse noted that the easy availability of guns is partly a result of legal barriers concerning liability being removed by the “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act”, (PLCAA) so that manufacturers are not legally culpable for the proliferation of guns, even if they are morally complicit. Another factor making assault weapons readily available was the “Assault Weapons Ban” which was NOT renewed by the George Bush Administration in 2004. These high capacity magazines (ie holding over 10 rounds) are “now built by more than 500 companies”.

According to recent surveys, over 70% of the public favor common-sense gun regulations. In the Global Burden of Disease Study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association: “among 64 high-income countries and territories, the United States stands out for its high levels of gun violence. It ranks eighth out of 64 for homicides by firearm… [with] firearm injuries tending to be more frequent in places where people have easy access to firearms” (updated May 31, 2022). In rates of firearm homicides per 100,000 population the U.S. rate is 4.12 vs Canada’s rate of 0.5.

To: “save the good from the greed of gain” may seem an impossible task in a culture with so many corporations addicted to the “Gospel of Wealth” rather than a “Social Gospel” concerned with the well-being of all members of society. Unfortunately, we are in an age when a small coterie of self-serving individuals in the NRA and the Armaments Industries are willing to promote fears solely for profit and to lobby congress to prevent even the most moderate changes. They focus instead on secondary issues such as more security in schools; the arming of teachers, as well as mental health issues, instead of looking at the root cause of mass shootings and the 45,000 per year who are dying from gun violence. The proposals put forward by legislators, such as Mitch McConnell, are band aids that do not address the real problems which are clearly related to the proliferation of guns and their easy availability. This can be remedied, to a considerable degree, by legislative action.

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Featured Image: Pixabay .

As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, the major European powers decided that the “primary objective of their diplomacy must be the preservation of international peace and stability” Their collaboration became known as the “Concert of Europe” which supported peace efforts for the following four decades. But from October, 1853 to February, 1856 a war was fought by the British, French and Ottoman Turks against Russia. It was a blood drenched war that brought such luminaries as Florence Nightingale and Leo Tolstoy to the world’s attentions and made famous Tennyson’s poem: “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, adapted from Dublin born, William Howard Russell’s article about this disastrous charge that resulted in the death of 300 out of 600 men. Besides W.H. Russell another Irish war correspondent: J.C. Mc Coan, wrote articles about the “great confusion of purpose” and the “incompetent international butchery” that took place in the Crimea.

Sixty thousand British, French and Ottoman Turks died in the ensuing three-year conflict, while up to 500,000 Russians lost their lives, many due to cholera, typhus, dysentery and malaria. It was in this harsh medical climate that Florence Nightingale gained widespread attention for setting up a hospital while bringing a number of trained nurses, including a substantial contingent of “Sisters of Mercy” from Ireland. They were there to heal wounded soldiers by establishing strict rules for cleanliness at a time when germ theory had not been understood. Before the nurses arrived 16,000 British soldiers died and, after the establishment of the hospital, only 2000. Nightingale noted in her journals that there was an 80% reduction of mortality among wounded soldiers under the care of her nurses. Her efforts resulted in widespread recognition of the need for professionally trained nurses in caring for injured soldiers.

A young Russian officer, Leo Tolstoy, served in combat in Crimea and became embittered by the suffering and death of young men. Based on his experiences Tolstoy wrote: “Tales of Sebastopol” and later his famous book: “War and Peace” and still later numerous books and articles on ”Nonviolence” which inspired Mohandas Gandhi to found “Tolstoy Farm”, his first ashram in South Africa.

According to some historians, the cause of the 19^th century Crimean War was that France and Britain had become fearful of Russia’s attempt to expand its influence into the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Russia’s vast territories stretched across the continent to Siberia and Alaska and coastal North America. The Russian Tsar, Nicholas II believed the Ottoman Empire was in imminent danger of collapse and expressed his intention to protect the Orthodox Churches and the Holy Places of Jerusalem which were under the Sultan’s rule. The Tsar’s diplomatic mission to Constantinople in 1852, led by Prince Menshikov, had been told “to demand a formal Turkish Guarantee of existing rights and privileges of the Orthodox Church. The British Ambassador to the Ottoman Court, Stratford Canning, was a “mediator and mentor to the Ottoman Court” and advised against any accommodation with the Tsar. He was convinced that the Russian demands would allow the Russians to gain control of the Ottoman Empire.

Reinforcing this view was Lord John Russell who stated that: “He [the Tsar] must be resisted in any way possible”. Other aristocrats such as the Duke of Argyll wrote that “the seating of the Russian Empire on the throne of Constantinople would give Russia an overbearing weight in Europe”. Lord Palmerston, who became Prime Minister had a desire to enhance British prestige”, and, as a result, became a major factor in the drama that ignited the conflict with Russia.

The Ottoman government agreed with Britain and France that there was a need to mount a campaign against Russia. Attempts at brokering a peace were blocked several times by British leaders, while the Habsburg Empire with its base in Austria, supported peace efforts. Prince Metternich, a proponent of peace, warned against a “European war provoked by Oriental causes” and expressed the “need to maintain treaties” since “we are called to the task of restoring peace”. Yet there was a problem with the vacillating nature of Tsar Nicholas 1 and his “sudden hatreds [and] exaggerated sense of honor and pride”, mixed with “severe bouts of depression”.

In England the issues came to a head in December 1852, after Napoleon III established a new imperial government in a coup d’etat against the Second Republic. He sent an ambassador to the Ottoman Empire with instructions to assert France’s right to protect Christian sites in Jerusalem and the Holy Land. The Ottoman Empire agreed to this condition. A Four Point Peace Agreement was put forward in 1854 to cease hostilities but they were repudiated by the Tsar unless guaranteed protection was given to the Holy Places and the Orthodox churches.

Although the Crimean war ended in the winter of 1856 peace efforts could have prevented this costly war. Instead, what took place resulted in the suffering and death of 560,000 young men on both sides of that war. Irish soldiers made up around 30–35 per cent of the British army in 1854, and it is estimated that over 30,000 Irish soldiers served in the Crimea, a number of them casualties of the war. Since each Irish regiment allowed a small number of wives to accompany their husbands to the Crimea, these women came to wash and cook, and following each battle, helped to care for the wounded.

The crippling of Russia’s power in the Near East was imperative to Britain and France. The British war party undermined peace proposals that could have ended the war much sooner due to their desire for more concessions from Russia, including the obliteration of Sebastopol and the reduction of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Tsar Nicholas I died in March,1855, worn out and remorseful after his failed efforts to avoid war. Nicholas believed he had tried to “honestly” negotiate with Britain on the partition of the Ottoman Empire, and indicated his willingness to make concessions. But all efforts in this regard, failed. Nicholas’ son, Alexander II, was willing to sue for peace, but such “a peace had to be on honorable terms”. The earlier Vienna Peace Conference had failed in June, 1855 with the chief negotiator for Austria being Sir Karl Von Buol, who noted that the “uncompromising attitude of the western powers wanted to force a decision on the battlefield.”

Lord Palmerston’s “grandiose plans” were to dismember the Russian Empire so that it would not “dominate trade from the Baltic to the Mediterranean”. After the capture of Sebastopol in September, 1855 and the withdrawal of all Russian forces from the city, Tsar Alexander II defiantly declared that “Sebastopol is not Moscow and the Crimea is not Russia”. Yet Lord Palmerston stated that the Treaty we propose would be “…to confine the future of Russia within her present circumference” and insisted that “Russia has not been beaten enough to make peace possible at the present moment

A Four Point Proposal by Austria was put forward by their representative, Karl Von Buol, as an “ultimatum to Russia” although he noted that “the terms must be moderate enough to be acceptable”. Austria was convinced that it needed to “end the war regardless of the political cost”. The proposal demanded that the Black Sea be open to all commerce and the River Danube be removed from Russia’s control. The Four Points were agreed to by all sides and the war ended. The great cost of lives lost and deep seated resentments continued to simmer in Russia against the European powers, although there were some positive results. The horrific loss of young men, as well as a loss of prestige, compelled Russia to re-structure and upgrade their judicial system and military and, most importantly, Tsar Alexander gave freedom to the serfs.

Just as the concern for Holy Places in the Ottoman Empire was a motive for the Crimean War, so too are religious motives mixed with political motives in Ukraine and Russia. Patriarch Kirril, head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, has become upset at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s independence and wants to re-assert control of Ukraine’s Orthodox churches. Over half of the churches of the Ukraine are still affiliated with Moscow while less than half joined the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Of the 800 or so churches affiliated with Moscow, 400 Russian Orthodox priests appealed to the “Council of Primates of the Ancient Eastern Churches” claiming that Patriarch Kirril was preaching the “doctrine of the Russian World”. The Orthodox priests were upset at the Patriarch’s staunch support of Vladimir Putin during his harsh prosecution of the war in Ukraine.

In our present year, 2022, Vladimir Putin, has Tsarist aspirations and asserts Russia’s intention to re-create a region of influence so as to prevent the expansion of NATO. The Crimean Peninsula has been under the flag of Ukraine from 1954 to 2014 after it was annexed by Russia. But despite this annexation Ukraine continues to refer to Crimea as the “Temporary occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sebastopol by Russia”.

If the Ukraine War follows the same destructive path as the original Crimean War, the consequences of which resulted in a fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire, and a Europe that became more divided. In the same way, the Ukraine War will most likely result in a society with deep-seated resentments and may take decades to achieve some degree of reconciliation toward those who took part in the violent invasion of their country.

The Historian Tacitus, while discussing Agricola’s conquest of Celtic Britain, related an insightful aphorism: “we hate most those we harm the most” in reference to the Roman policy of compelling servitude upon the conquered. This too could be said of Vladimir Putin’s legacy: that hatred and vindictiveness has been growing in opposition to his plans for conquest, which have been thwarted by Ukrainian resistance and a profound need for independence. Putin’s attempts to reawaken the ghosts of Empire have become more strangely improbable at a time that Russia’s economy continues to shrink as a result of sanctions, an economy that is barely on a par with Canada’s. It is unlikely that in the future Russia will be able to support a military that is comparable to nations with economies ten to twenty times larger.

Since British production had fallen off in the mid 1760s due to an industrial crisis brought on by the collapse of the London stock exchange, John Hughes saw the Russian Empire as an opportunity to develop more steel industries. The Grand duke, Constantine, who was the brother of Tsar Alexander helped acquire the necessary mining properties and Hughes formed the Novorossiysk Society to raise capital in Britain. Russians and British invested heavily in the joint stock company.

By 1871 the site that Hughes began to develop was an old Cossack town known as Oleksandrovka, where he built steel mills and established several colleries. He eventually brought his family and over 100 Welshmen. As the region evolved into a city it was named “Yuzovka” in honor of Hughes, (Yuzov being a Slavic pronounciation).With development of Yuzovka, a large number of rural workers from the Ukraine and Russia came for employment opportunities and within a few years Yuzovka was among the largest metallurgical enterprises in Russia.

Hughes designed and financed a hospital, churches and schools. Although he only lived until 1889, dying in St. Petersburg at the age of 75, his legacy as the founder of Yuzovka (renamed Donetsk) was such that his home was preserved and a substantial statue of Hughes was placed in the center of Donetsk. John Hughes and wife Sarah had seven children, including five sons. The eldest John James Hughes continued to live in Donetsk and became the head of the family and by the time of his death in 1917 the city of Donetsk had 67,000 people.

By 1913 Hughes mills produced 74% of Russia’s ironworks, much of this due to the Welshmen who came with Hughes and later brought their families. But the Bolshevik revolution changed all this and almost all the Welsh returned to Britain. The soccer team his fellow Welshmen formed continues to be a featured sport in a city whose metro area now numbers 2.2 million. In 2013 the Ukrainian ambassador, Khandogiy, celebrated, with Welsh civic leaders, the 200 year anniversary of John Hughes birth.

As Yuzovka (ie Donetsk) grew in importance the Russian language became the majority language as industrialization around the coal and steel mills progressed. It was at this point that the name Donbas came into use, derived from the term “Donets Coal Basin” (River Donets with extensive coal reserves.

According to a Census in 1897, Ukrainians, formerly known as Ruthenians, spoke a Slavic language, and comprised 52% of the population of region, while ethnic Russians made up 28%. In Ukraine itself 41 million people is the total population while 8 million residents identify as ethnic Russians and 33 million identify as Ukrainians. Although 2000 school districts use the Russian language in teaching, surveys indicate that the majority of ethnic Russians still prefer an independent Ukraine.

One of the reasons for insisting on complete independence from Russia was the deep trauma sustained during the Holodomor Famine (ie Great Famine) which took place from 1932 to 1933 resulting in the death of at least 3 million Ukrainians. The term Holodomor refers to a conviction among many Ukrainians that there was an intention among the Russian ruling class to bring about the deaths of so many Ukrainians. The intention seemed evident in the refusal of the Soviet government to permit outside aid and their prevention of migration away from famine regions as well as their confiscation of seed grain for the next year’s planting..

Although the Soviet Union also suffered famine in 1932-33 it resulted in 8 million deaths, of which 3 million were Ukrainian, a mortality skewed against ethnic Ukrainians in this terrible catastrophe which was, in actuality, the result of colossal mismanagement and criminal negligence.

What has taken place more recently after the demise of the Soviet Union was the expansion of NATO in 1991, to include Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. This reduction of Russia’s sphere of influence was related, to some extent, with Russia’s defense budget, which is only 8% of the United States, with NATO spending 20 times as much as Russia on defense.

According to the historian, Professor Ronald Grigor Suny, a full-scale invasion would be a catastrophe for Russia. He notes that, economically, Russia is a declining power with a GDP equaling half of California. Russia depends on fossil fuel exports to fund most of its government services, including the military. With such limited resources Russia should be aware that they could be mired for years in an endless war if they invaded Ukraine. It is still fresh in the memory of Russians that they spent ten long years involved in an unpopular and expensive ground war in Afghanistan. And even though the Russian military are presently near the borders of the eastern Ukraine where the Donbas militias from Donesk and Lukansk would provide support, they must realize that the vast majority of Ukrainians continue to be strongly opposed to any incursions into their country.