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The ongoing war in the Middle East as Israel seeks to eliminate both Hamas and Hezbollah from its borders after the genocide of Oct. 7, 2023, comes home to me personally.
First, my wife’s sister is married to a Jewish man and they raised their sons in that tradition and both are continuing in it.
Secondly, it brings home to me the mission trip my wife and I took in 2018 with Global Celebration. That mixed the expected tourism with service in both the Palestinian and Israeli areas. We stayed a couple of nights in Bethlehem in the West Bank and went behind the wall into the Palestinian side. Georgian Banov, who leads Global Celebration with his wife Winnie, has built amazing favor.
We went into a community center — I was taken aback to see a picture of Hugo Chavez, the dictator Venezuelan dictator prominently displayed on the wall in the entrance. In the community room upstairs, names of martyrs (we’d call terrorists) were displayed on the walls. What took place was a joyful Vacation Bible Study like party for the children-joy abounded. A day later, we went to a gathering of widows (some from husbands who chose to sacrifice themselves for Allah. Each woman was presented with a large bag of food and our ladies ministered to them.
We concluded one day with a joy parade — at the suggestion of our former terrorist recruiter host, through the marketplace of Bethlehem. An amazing two days that were followed by an equally surprising day — hosting a lunch for an Israeli intelligence unit that works behind Palestinian lines. That was arranged by a retired general that Georgian had met.
All of this came to mind because Georgian and Winnie are back in Israel today as part of their around the world prayer tour. They had to fly into Jordan and then drive into Israel because there are no commercial flights into Tel Aviv. They were visiting a military hospital to pray for injured soldiers one day and then planning to go into the West Bank. That speaks to the favor he has built with both sides.
For most newspaper editorial boards, they dislike — putting it mildly — recall elections. It’s notable that both the East Bay Times and the San Francisco Chronicle have backed the recall of Oakland Mayor Sheng Tao and District Attorney Pamela Price. The mayor, described by one local official who has worked with her as a light weight incapable of doing the job. That’s come across in so many ways — mostly notably her plan to balance the structural deficit in the city budget, by spending one-time money from the sale of the city’s share of the Coliseum sale. Horrible idea that a majority of an equally incompetent City Council went along with.
For Price, she was unqualified from the start — running a one-person civil rights office with no experience with a large government organization or prosecuting anyone. It’s gone worse that anyone could imagine. She demoted or chased the veteran prosecutors from the office and appointed deputies around her with no experience. She also did all she could to avoid prosecution crime, eliminating enhancements for guns, and ignoring victims to keep alleged violators out of prison.
From a citizens’ perspective, she is a train wreck and the sooner she goes, the better. She’s done enough damage.
Interestingly, the one publication that opposed the recall is the progressive Livermore Independent. Its leadership has never found a tax increase it didn’t like thus the backing of the half-cent increase in Pleasanton.
Here’s an email I wrote to the San Francisco Press Club after it cited a Los Angeles Times editorial writer for special recognition for resigning after the paper’s owner refused to allow a presidential endorsement.
“As a veteran journalist and editorial writer who has been at it for more than 50 years, you’re missing the point. In the days of family-owned newspapers, the editorial page belonged to the owner… period. As the industry transitioned into corporate ownership, the only thing that mattered to most owners/stock holders was rate of return. Thus the growth of editorial boards. It’s now transitioning back to individual ownership thus the LA Times owner and the Post owner are entirely within their rights to control the editorial page.
It’s a different day and time, return to the past. Without the wealth of either owner, it’s questionable whether either paper would exist.”
