Special to Lehigh Valley Source
Eilon, 2009
Hello friends
After noting that a pool full of water that should have emptied its contents as quickly as it received them overflowed, one might conclude that this was nothing short of a miracle at work. We are still trying to decipher its meaning. It seems, along with the absence of clouds, or the abstinence of a fervent Moslem during the month of Ramadan, to be a cantankerous month. If anything unplanned and unforgiving should happen at work, then it will. Pipes burst with increasing frequency, and we are just concluding that this year's innovative fertilizer-ammonium nitrate sulphate, while very helpful to our crop, and according to Sharif, especially with the Ettinger avocados, is also especially corrosive.
This of course is just an observation, one amongst many unproven theories that was validated just yesterday and compromised today.
Suddenly the irrigation flow rate in Ya'ara decreases, or the injector pump failed to move the intended quantity of fertilizer as its piston is in the greatest need of greasing.
I arrive home, always hopeful that the latter part of the day will remain just as uncomplicated as the earlier segment had been fraught in perplexities. By shedding my work clothes I am disentangling myself from its unwonted embrace.
I am enclosing last weekend's column The Guns of August by Frank Rich in the NY Times. [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23rich.html]
Aside from the malicious appellations directed at the president, the administration and the Democratic Party what is the point of demonstrators appearing at public gatherings armed? What purpose is there behind this manifestation of "constitutional expression" other than to intimidate those people with whom one is disputing? How can a so-called respectable politician even begin citing the Constitution defending these citizens as though the intent behind the brandishing of firearms is clearly an act of pre-emptive defense? Defense against whom?
People who favor health care reform? Senators and congressmen who are hectored into voting against their conscience?
In a nation where there are so many incidents of individuals having gone berserk and massacring their fellow citizens, what more encouragement does someone or some militant organization require when politicians or news talk hosts blandly recite constitutional rights to brandish arms in the midst of their fellow citizens? As a spectator I was especially "regaled" to see one fellow with a handgun and what appeared to be an M
16 assault rifle [or its M 4 carbine variant] dangling from his shoulder. I understand that its display was perfectly legal provided that those gladiatorial weapons were unconcealed and publicly exposed for the public to marvel over.
Residing in a nation where there is nothing unusual about seeing such weapons I still tend to relate to this visage within an American context with mounting alarm. What is to prevent one of these armed militias opposed to the administration's agenda from showing up at the steps of a town hall meeting to greet the public as it proceeds into the auditorium? Who will, as some overzealous debaters have alleged, the Nazis be then?
My first reaction, despite my experience, both as an army veteran and a civilian who has wielded military weapons would be to flee the site as expeditiously as possible. I don't want to learn how responsible the said bearer of arms is with any undue passivity. My opinion is that someone who appears at such assemblies armed to shoot [and kill] has already progressed to a level beyond civility with me.
I recall that curiosity attracted me to an assembly that gathered to hear what the African-American militant H Rap Brown had to say after the days when the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee ceased professing its pacifism. It was in 1968 and the venue was the Village Theater in Lower Manhattan. Brown was nothing but antagonistic and did not engender much sympathy with me because of his aggressive presentation. He was almost as hostile to the young assembly of people who had come to empathize with his cause as he would have been with those who would have vociferated against his beliefs. You would want people to rally to a reasonable cause, but Brown was exclusionary defining what role whites [and honkies] might perform while brashly asking for donations. He stood between some mean looking toughs decked out in belligerent leather, dark berets aslant, their cryptic sunglasses not necessarily enhancing a future vision of things. It was a free country, so they say, and I gave nothing. I didn't like being intimidated.
In contrast to all this I attended a speaking tour of Yitzchak Rabin in
1976 while he was serving as prime minister in his first government. A large crowd from the region had assembled to hear the prime minister speak in Eilon's communal dining hall. At the time a considerably large segment of the the rural populace in our region was armed. There had been a number of infiltrations by Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] operatives from Lebanon into our region and most nights were fraught with alerts and surplus community guard duty. During the day we would commute to our fields armed with automatic weapons: usually Uzi submachine guns, M 14 and M 16 assault rifles. We even carried our weapons into Nahariya, prepared as it were for any unexpected contingency. Attending the prime minister's speech, the audience consisted of a huge throng of civilians armed to the teeth with automatic weapons. In those days there was virtually no security. It was still considered unthinkable that a Jew would contemplate assassinating his own prime minister. Perhaps we had to flash our ID booklets to someone at the door. After the speech, we were all invited to chow. Long tables had been set up and I sat about a table ahead of the Prime Minister and his entourage. The submachine gun was set by my feet under the bench, its fully loaded clips jutting out from my pants pockets!-Barry
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