Our library book club is reading these two books this month. The Murray book starts with the October 7 attacks which immediately gives away his bias. He sees Israel as a democracy surrounded by radical fanatics. You have to ignore a lot of real history to take that stance. Beinart's book has Gaza in the title and starts with a respectful call to fellow Jews to look at the stories they connect to holidays, and the parts of the stories they leave out. The stories perpetuate a narrative of victimhood and survival and ignore stories where the biblical Isralies committed massacres. He sees the safety of Jews and Palestinians as intertwined and points to examples like South Africa and Northern Ireland where people rejected supremacy and learned to live together. Over lunch at the MMA food court in Castine the other day, Marge R said much the same thing about how as children they were essentially lied to about the history of Israel. It's just like we were taught so much false history about the "settling" of this country. The truth is that both stories are about colonizers killing off the native population. The truth is that people and countries are capable of both good and evil, of being both perpetrator and victim.

I'm wondering if there is a deliberate political strategy to announcing a new horrific policy/deed/falsehood each day, so that public executions, buying diesel from Russia, ICE killings, election interference, etc wears down our sense of what is normal, desensitizes us to fascism. If the mid-terms don't give us both houses of congress with a change in leadership, democracy will be lost. As it is, it will take a generation to undo the damage. I voted early.

Markers: Empty Bowls year 2; a big idea long discussed becomes a possibility; dock-in ends summer.