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Time is running out for Kamala Harris to distance herself from U.S. policies that enable Israel to continue with mass murder and genocide in Gaza. Polling shows that a pivot toward moral decency would improve her chances of defeating Donald Trump. But during her CNN interview Thursday night, Harris remained in lockstep with President Biden’s unconditional arming of Israel.
Friends,
If you are in need of a good laugh and a reminder that there is someone on Comedy Central once a week (usually Monday night at 11pmET) who feels our pain and has been a force for good for nearly 30 years — I hope you’ve been watching the return of Jon Stewart to The Daily Show since February. He is pulling no punches. He is saying what many are afraid to say, and his cast and writers are on fire, just when we need them the most.
What I admire greatly is that he has been almost a lone voice on television in standing up, fearlessly, with his brutal humor and satire, and placing himself squarely on the side of the tens of thousands of civilians who have been slaughtered in Gaza — and the hundreds of thousands more who are facing imminent death by being purposely denied food, water, shelter, and medical care.
Who he is
(https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/11/opinion/editorials/donald-trump-2024-unfit.html).
“He lies blatantly and maliciously, embraces racists, abuses women and has a
schoolyard bully’s instinct to target society’s most vulnerable. He has delighted in
coarsening and polarizing the town square with ever more divisive and incendiary
language. Mr. Trump is a man who craves validation and vindication, so much that
he would prefer a hostile leader’s lies to his own intelligence agencies’ truths and
would shake down a vulnerable ally for short-term political advantage. His
handling of everything from routine affairs to major crises was undermined by his
blundering combination of impulsiveness, insecurity and unstudied certainty.
This record shows what can happen to a country led by such a person: America’s
image, credibility and cohesion were relentlessly undermined by Mr. Trump during
his term.
Can politics be equal to the deepest of who we are? Can humanity evolve beyond war?
Such questions — I know, I know — are never officially asked during a presidential campaign. That’s not the point of the election: to plunge philosophically and spiritually into who we are. And thus, as the Trump-Harris race proceeds, not too many people (besides me) will be bringing up Pierre Teilhard de Chardin — Jesuit priest, theologian, scientist, best known as the author of The Phenomenon of Man — who died seventy years ago.
But I can’t tolerate the clichés of state! So let me sneak a dozen or so of Teilhard’s words into the present moment: “Love is the only force that can make things one without destroying them.”
Departing Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan clearly had an unpleasant experience at the world’s largest international institution.
In an interview published in the Israeli newspaper Maariv on August 20, the disgruntled envoy said that “the UN building should be closed and wiped off from the face of the earth.”
Whether Erdan has made this realization or not, his aggressive statement indicates that his four-year career as Israel’s top UN diplomat was a failure.