Oct. 7 2024 - Three Years Later

1900

Palestine was a province of the Ottoman Empire. The Arab armies liberated the Middle East with the British Army. The provinces were divided by two English Arab experts. Straight lines drawn in the deserts. Peace had ruled the lands under the sultans. The West had plans for the Levant. Peace was not part of the equation. Not for any of the new nations. Especially Palestine.

According to a 1914-1915 census the population of Palestine was 602,377 Muslims, 38,754 Jews and 81,012 Christians.

1937 Nakba, when the British defeated the Palestinians and then armed the Zionist gangs to create a homeland for the Jewish people. The Holocaust was on its way. The Nazis spared no jews, but even the Germans couldn’t exterminate an entire poeple. Neither the Jews, the Roma, or the Gays.

Death camp survivors and Jews of the Diaspora emigrated to Palestine with the hopes of a place of refuge. The partition wasn't in Germany. No Jews dreamed of exercising ‘the right of return’ to the lands of the Holocaust. No one had the strength to evict the French, the Poles, the Austrians, the Germans et al from their old houses in Europe. They needed someplace far away. Someplace given to them by Yahweh. Palestine, but the biblical kingdom of Judah which hadn't existed for almost two thousand years. The Jews had a new home. The home of someone else.

Palestine shrank with the loss of wars. 1948. 1956. 1967. 1972 and then the occupation. Israel, a theoocracy, ruling over a ‘demoracy’ and an apartheid ghetto. People said those people were always fighting each other just like the Irish fought the rule of the British. We Irish always stand for a Free Palestine.

Ugly.

Throughout the occupation of Palestine, the PLO, Hamas, and Hezbollah has countered US financing Israel’s precision bombing and invasions with armed attacks on Israeli targets, airline hijacking suicide bombings, and intifdas to no avail. Then on October 7, 2023. Hamas surged through the border walls to attack the desert communities in the Negev. On that morning, the IDF was asleep. Shin Bet supposedly knew nothing about the preparations for the break-out. Hamas fighters swarmed from Gaza. Nearly 1109 Isrealis died in the assault. Hostages taken by Hamas. Israeli accusations of rape and babies burned to death. The only POV was that of Israel and world opinion sanctioned the complete destruction of Gaza, especially the US government.

From Al Jazeera Senator Tom Cotton: “Israel doesn’t need patronising lectures about civilian casualties. As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bomb the rubble in Gaza.”

Tens of thousands killed by ensuing revenge bombing and artillery barrages. Hundreds of thousands wounded by the IDF. Millions homeless. Nowhere to run or hide in a repeat of the Warsaw Ghetto extermination by the Nazis. A revenge never served to German people.

As for the deaths of non-combatants, according to Al-Jazeera, Former President Bill Clinton said: “Hamas makes sure that they’re shielded. They’ll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself.” and

For months, now years, Netanyahu and the hardliners backed by the DNC and GOP refused to negotiate with Hamas or anyone.

Once more, Al-Jazeera cited Former President Joe Biden: “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.”

Israel sought blood and death backed by billions from the West. War consolidates the Nazionist rule over Palestine and Judah. $95 billion to kill 100,000 or more with the wounded numbering 244,000. Over 10% of Gaza's pre-October 7 population. And there's more to come with no escape from the onslaught for civilians. Not to Azrael. Not to Egypt. Not even to the sea. The people are trapped in a shattered land along with Hamas and the remaining hostages. No nation wants the Palestinians. None of the Arab countries. They like the Jews throughout the Diaspora and the Irish under the Crown are pariahs. The Nazionists want to marched them en masse into the Negrev Desert this winter. But that will not defeat Hamas. Only take away the ocean in which they swim.

But there is one solution other than the Final Solution.

Peace.

Shalom

Salaam.

But not with Netanyahu in power, although 47, an Israeli puppet, has proposed various peace truces. Hostage exchanges. Release of prisoners. Armistice. Hamas amnesty with a vow to relinquish control over Gaza. The withdrawal of IDF forces. The return of UN humanitarian services, reconstruction et al. Hamas and no one asks why 10/7.

The date has no significance.

Why?

Ask who had to gain from 10/7?

Not Hamas. Not Israel. Not Iran. Not the USA. No one had an answer. Only one person stood to benefit.

Boris Putin.

Why?

On 24 February 2022 Russia's President Putin greenlighted Soviet forces to invade Ukraine to protect Rodina from a NATO-backed Nazi regime. Four separate armies crossed the border at dawn. Defeat of Kiev appeared to be inevitable, except that Ukraine fought back and stopped the Russians dead in their tracks. Putin refused to end the war, but things went from bad to worse. This was the modern world. Drones ruled the skies for both sides. Static strategies led to horrific losses on both sides. Victory was not in sight. Public opinion weighed heavily against the invaders. Russia was losing both on the ground and with his people, but the crafty KGB operative had a card to play.

"Intelligence.

About the security on the Gaza Border. Netanyahu had pulled off soldiers to deal with the protests against his government's attempt to abolish the Supreme Court. Putin couldn't attack on this info, but let his closest arms supplier, Iran, know that the border was soft. The Islamic council had little use for this. Putin convinced them to let Hamas know about the slackened defense. Iran informed their Hamas allies’ top brass and they decided to take action, even knowing that the IDF was bound to exact more than a pound of flesh. Shin Bet saw nothing come, because Netanyahu knew of the planned attack and he realized that he could rally the public behind a war of revenge. The rest is history.

Before 10/7 the War in Ukraine was the # 1 lead for the media. Now Israel Total War ruled the headlines. October 11. Chaos. The Ukraine War invisible to the world.

Putin now attacks Ukraine with impunity, reaping the value of Eternal War.

But one day Peace in the world. Gaza, the Ukraine, and everywhere and I hope it's soon.

Call a truce now.

Bring home the hostages.

Stop the war.

Shalom salaam.

SPICE MAD DAY by Peter Nolan Smith

Last year I celebrated Columbus Day with my doctor on Staten Island. Nick was Italian and cooked great meatballs. The doctor and I had met during our freshman class of European History 101. We had received Bs from the professor.

His kids had the day off. So did both of us. I crossed the inner harbor and took the SIRR to New Dorp. Nick picked me up in his vintage MG. we enjoyed his wife’s cooking. Meatballs, ziti, et al. No one at the table spoke. Certainly not about Christopher Columbus.

"Hey, Nico, I have a question for you."

"Yeah, what?" His oldest son studied film at a state university. I liked his short films.

"What year did Columbus sail to America??

"Why you asking?"

"Because today's Columbus Day."

"And?"

"I was wondering if you knew the year of his discovery. Do any of you?"

"Sure."

"What is it? Any one you."

"It's not a school day," Nico's best friend replied through a mouthful of meatballs.

"So you don't know."

"Nope," they answered in a collective chorus of ignorance.

"Did we know that little, when we were that age?" I asked Nick.

"We went to nun school. The sisters forced us to remember the names of Columbus' three ships; the Santa Maria, the Nina, and the Pinta."

"C'mon, you gotta know." I looked to the young people around the table.

"1882?" His youngest son was the only one brave enough to offer an answer.

"You got two numbers right." The doctor shook his head in disbelief. "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. You never heard that?"

"Never." The kids' ages ranged from 8 to 21. Columbus was a blank to them and I explained that Columbus had been seeking the back door to Asia.

"For Chinese take-out?" His older son’s friend Squeak asked with interest. He liked pu-pu platters.

"No, for spices."

"That's why no one knows about him. No one knows about spices." His oldest son's only connection to spice was the Spice Girls and they hadn't scored a hit since the turn of the century.

"Spices were the most important commodity in the world 500 years ago." I had been a history substitute teacher at South Boston High during the bussing riots of 1975. "Spices are pepper, cinnamon, cloves, garlic, chili, nutmeg and many more."

"Chili came from Mexico," Nick's youngest son announced from the table.

"Correct."

"The gardener told me that. He's from Mexico."

"Yes, but many other spices came from Asia." I had spent the 90s and 00s in the Far East. Nick had graduated from a medical school in Manila. We both liked Oriental cuisine. Almost as much as his mother’s and wife’s cooking.

"Why they need spices on their food when they had ketchup?" Squeak was spinning linguine on his fork.

"Ketchup is not a spice, and it is not a vegetable."

Even if the majority of American teenagers choose Heinz ketchup as their favorite veggie. "I'll tell you a story. Back in 1991 I arrived by boat to Ternate in northern Indonesia. The volcanic island was a backwater then, but in the 15th Century European nations fought to control its treasures of cloves and spices. Hoping to discover a shortcut to the fabled island, Christopher Columbus set sail west across the Atlantic Ocean. His fleet of three ships made landfall on an unknown continent. It was not China, Japan, or Ternate. Undeterred by this disappointment, the Genoan adventurer claimed the new world for the King Of Spain and his patroness, Queen Isabella. He was as good a salesman as he was a sailor and called it the West Indies to promote future expeditions."

The teenagersa the table gazed off into space. Nick’s youngest son and daughter listened to what I had to say. Their attention span respected an adult, so I continued my tale, "Columbus' first voyage was remarkable, for the fact that he was traveling through unknown waters and only lost one ship, the SANTA MARIA on his first voyage. It sank on Christmas Day, but not one sailor drowned in the shipwreck. There was not enough room for everyone to return to Spain, and 39 men elected to stay on 'Hispaniola' to further explore the virgin territory for gold and spices."

"What happened to those guys he left behind?" Nick's younger son was showing promise as a scholar. Julien was a straight B student.

"They were'massacred by Carib warriors, who detested the newcomers' enslavement of the Arawak women, children, and friends, thus initiating the long conflict between Europe and the New World."

"Massacred as in eaten." Squeak was an ace at shoot-em-up VDO games.

"Yes, eaten."

"Did they use any spices when they ate them or just ketchup?" Squeak's comment earned a round laughter.

"I quit." I got up from the table and went out on the terrace with a glass of wine in my hand.

Outer New York Harbor spread beneath the highest point in Staten Island. Henry Hudson had sailed this bay. His namesake river ran straight north into the Adirondacks. He had been stranded in the Arctic by his men.

Exploration was tough on failures.

In truth, Christopher Columbus carried little gold back to his Spanish sovereigns, but he introduced corn, manioc or cassava, potato, the peanut, tomato, papaya, pineapple, avocado, chili pepper, cotton and cocoa to the Old World. It took about thirty years for the chili to reach Thailand, which adopted the fiery spice as its own.

My wife Mam loved chili on her sum-tam or green papaya salad. All Thai women loved the fiery dish and they have Columbus to thank for their pleasure.

Columbus might be forgotten by the young and no longer considered to be a hero by those who blame the destruction of the Indians on his discovery, but I celebrated his discovery of the Bahamas with rum and coke. Nick joined me and raised his glass.

"To Columbus."

He was Admiral of the Oceans.

A Gift From the New World

Young men in the 1960s were constantly warned about the dangers of drugs, rock n roll, and sex.

Sex not only led you to hell, but to Syphilis.

We had no idea what Syphilis was, how you got it, and what you did once you had it other than horrific tales of doctors shoving an umbrella needle up your penis. Fear was a credible prevention tool during those decades of ignorance, although not enough to keep us pure forever.

Before 1493 no one in Europe, Africa, or Asia had the Clap.

No one, until Columbus returned from his discovery of Haiti.

Of course the Native Americans claim that it was the Europeans who infected America not the other way around.

It’s a little like my first time getting a dose.

It was in Paris.

1984

I was faithful to my teenage girlfriend, Candia.

The jeune fille had an Italian lover. Their affair was supposedly over and I believed the 17 year-old. Men in their 30s can possess a soft heart for a young woman. She traveled to Italy for a photo shoot. We made love upon her return. A week later I went to the bathroom and experienced a burning sensation while passing water.

My trust had been rewarded with the clap.

“How could have I gotten this?”

"I don't know." Candia acted blameless. "Maybe it's something else."

We visited the the Palais Royal Red Cross clinic. They tested us for free. The results were positive for both of us. as we walked through the regal garden, I said, “You should tell your boyfriend.”

“He would not give me this. You must have gotten it off a toilet seat.”

“Toilet seat?” I didn’t get the clap from a toilet seat and broke up with Candida. We said nothing about her gift until she gave me the gift that keeps giving once again. I went to the Palais Royal and got another dose of medicine. Candia wanted to get back with me. I called her to say I was leaving for the States. I haven't had the clap since, but I can state without any doubt that Columbus did not get Syphilis off a toilet seat.

I doubted either the Caribs used sitting shitters and the Spanish of that era of exploration were even less elegant with their sanitary habits.

The returning members of his first expedition got the clap from sex.

Thank you, Columbus.

Without you we would have never had condoms.

Goodbye Columbus Day

Before the arrival of Christo Columbo in 1492, the New World was filled with empires, confederations, republics, city-states, and tribal lands. These diverse peoples represented a broad scattering of cultures. Cities peopled in greater numbers than Paris, Rome, or Madrid. Kanokia had over 50,000 inhabitants. The population of the two connected continents has been estimated by modern historians to be approximately twenty-five million people from the Bering Straits to the tip of South America.

Fifty years after the Spanish 'discovered' America, 75% of the natives had been eliminated by disease, war, or slavery.

The Spanish, English, French, and Dutch had almost succeeded in exterminating the original inhabitants of America. The 'Indians' survived the slaughter, which is why many Indians seek to celebrate Oct. 12 as Native American Day rather than Columbus Day. Both Seattle and Minneapolis altered the holiday to honor the survivors of the Great Extermination.

Italian-Americans were insulted by the slight, as they were when the City of Boston planted Leif Erickson's statue at the end of Commonwealth Avenue's promenade rather than the Admiral of the Oceans.

Personally, I honor the greatest of his voyages, while recognizing the savage havoc wrought by his arrival in ‘the New World’.

I am a Son of the Colonial Wars.

My people conquered New England.

It was a bloody time, and sometimes as a young man I hiked through the hills south of the Boston. I felt the bones of warriors buried in the woods. The Blue Hills, so named for the Riebeckite stone found on their slopes. THe hills had once belonged to the Massachusett tribe thanks to the abundant springs. Massawchusetts were the people of the Big Hill. I had nothing to do with their deaths, but that is a sin white people all live with, although most never think about it ever. Shame.

To read more about Boston's decision on Leif Erickson, please go to this URL

http://needhamhistory.org/features/articles/vikings/

October 13, 1492

Four years ago I read THE FOUR VOYAGES by Cristoforo Colombo translated by JM Cohen.

A great read of exploration, but disquieting as the early entries predicted the extermination of the Arawaks or Tainos who inhabited the Caribbean and Central America. For centuries western historians guiltcaped the extinction by blaming the disappearance of the egalitarian agro-culture on Smallpox, when in fact the reason for this genocide was the spread of disease through rape and Spanish not bathing, plus the old scourges of slavery, and brutality. The invaders worked the First People so hard, that by 1514 the population of Hispaniola, which had been originally estimated by the Church at between several hundred thousand to over a million people in 1492, had been reduced to a mere 35,000 thirty years later. 99% of the people according to Wikipedia. At present time approximately 15,000 Arawaks or Taino lived in Guyana, with smaller numbers present in Venezuela, Suriname, and French Guiana, although today many islanders identify as Taíno and many more have Taíno descent, most notably in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Dominica Their numbers are increasing, despite the countless attempts by the West to kill them off 100%.

The language lives on too.

Ayo.

FROM THE DIARY OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

SATURDAY OCTOBER 13, 1492

As soon as it dawned, many of these people came to the beach—all young, as I have said, and all of good stature—very handsome people, with their hair not curly but straight and coarse, like horsehair; and all of them very wide in-the forehead and head, more so than any other race that I have seen so far. And their eyes are very handsome and not small; and none of them are black, but of the color of the Canary Islanders. Nor should anything else be expected since this island is on an east-west line with the island of Hierro in the Canaries. All alike have very straight legs and no belly but are very well formed.

They came to the ship with dugouts [canoes] that are made from the trunk of one tree, like a long boat, and all of one piece, and worked marvelously in the fashion of the land, and so big that in some of them 40 and 45 men came. And others smaller, down to some in which one man came alone. They row with a paddle like that of a baker and go marvelously. And if it capsizes on them then they throw themselves in the water, and they right and empty it with calabashes [hollowed out gourds] that they carry.

They brought balls of spun cotton and parrots and javelins and other little things that it would be tiresome to write down, and they gave everything for anything that was given to them. I was attentive and labored to find out if there was any gold; and I saw that some of them wore a little piece hung in a hole that they have in their noses. And by signs I was able to understand that, going to the south or rounding the island to the south, there was there a king who had large vessels of it and had very much gold. I strove to get them to go there and later saw that they had no intention of going. I decided to wait until the afternoon of the morrow and then depart for the southwest, for, as many of them showed me, they said there was land to the south and to the southwest and to the northwest and that these people from the northwest came to fight them many times.

And so I will go to the southwest to seek gold and precious stones. This island is quite big and very flat and with very green trees and much water and a very large lake in the middle and without any mountains; and all of it so green that it is a pleasure to look at. And these people are very gentle, and because of their desire to have some of our things, and believing that nothing will be given to them without their giving something, and not having anything, they take what they can and then throw themselves into the water to swim.

But everything they have they give for anything given to them, for they traded even pieces for pieces of bowls and broken glass cups, and I even saw 16 balls of cotton given for three Portuguese ceotis [copper coins], which is a Castilian blanca [a copper coin worth half of a maravedi]. And in them there was probably more than an arroba [around 24 pounds] of spun cotton.

This I had forbidden and I did not let anyone take any of it, except that I had ordered it all taken for Your Highnesses if it were in quantity. It grows here on this island, but because of the short rime I could not declare this for sure. And also the gold that they wear hung in their noses originates here; but in order not to lose time I want to go see if I can find the island of Cipango.

Now, since night had come, all the Indians went ashore in their dugouts.

Much later he ran into the Caribs. Who were cannibals.

Cheap-Charlie Columbus Day

Five hundred and twenty-eight years ago, Rodrigo de Triana spotted land at 2 am from the Pinta's lookout.

"Tierra, tierra."

This shout woke his shipmates. The captain of this small caravel fired a cannon to announced the epic discovery of land. Later that day, the three ships of Christopher Columbus or Cristoforo Colombo arrived at an island in what is now known as the Bahamas.

Rodrigo expected the offered reward for first seeing land. The Italian explorer refused to honor the claim, stating that 'he saw "light" at 10 p.m. the previous day, "but it was so indistinct that he did not dare to affirm it was land."

The New World was not empty of people and the Admiral of the Sea wrote his benefactors, the King and Queen of Spain, about the native Arawaks, "Many of the men I have seen have scars on their bodies, and when I made signs to them to find out how this happened, they indicated that people from other nearby islands come to San Salvador to capture them; they defended themselves the best they can. I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as slaves. They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can very easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion."

Thus began the long tragedy of extermination of the natives in the New World by explorers from the Old World. This evil future does not detract from the greatness of Columbus' journey into the unknown. I salute his seamanship, but not his stealing the prize money for first sighting land from Rodrigo de Triana nor his consequential slaving of the Arawaks.

The more things change, the more they change to become the same, because history is always written by those who know to write what people want to believe - James Steele.

The more things change, the more they change to become the same, because history is always written by those who know to write what people want to believe - James Steele

SPICE MAD DAY by Peter Nolan Smith

Last year I celebrated Columbus Day with my doctor on Staten Island. Nick was Italian and cooked great meatballs. The doctor and I had met during our freshman class of European History 101. We had received Bs from the professor.

His kids had the day off and we enjoying the meal.

"Hey, Nico, I have a question for you."

"Yeah, what?" He was studying film at a state university.

“What year did Columbus sail to America?”

“Why you asking?"

"Because it's Columbus Day."

"And?"

"I was wondering if you knew the date. Do any of you?"

"Sure."

"What is it? Any one you."

"It's not a school day." Nico's best friend replied through a mouthful of meatballs.

"So you don't know."

"Nope." They answered in a collective chorus of ignorance.

"Did we know that little when we were that age?" I asked Nick.

"We went to nun school. The sisters forced us to remember Columbus' three ships by name; the Santa Maria, the Nina, and the Pinta."

“C’mon, you gotta know.” I looked to the young people around the table.

“1882?” His youngest son was the only one brave enough to offer an answer.

“You got two numbers right.” The doctor shook his head in disbelief. “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. You never head that?”

“Never.” The kids ranged from 8 to 21. Columbus was a blank to them and I explained that Columbus had been seeking the back door to Asia.

“For Chinese take-out?” His older son’s friend Squeak asked with interest. He liked pu-pu platters.

“No, for spices.”

"That's why no one knows about him. No one knows about spices." His oldest son's only connection to spice was the Spice Girls and they hadn't scored a hit since the turn of the century.

"Spices were the most important commodity in the world 500 years ago." I had been a history substitute teacher at South Boston High during the bussing riots of 1975. "Spices are pepper, cinnamon, cloves, garlic, chili, nutmeg and many more."

"Chili came from Mexico," Nick's youngest son announced from the table.

""Correct."

"The gardener told me that. He's from Mexico."

"Yes, but many other spices came from Asia." I had spent the 90s and 00s in the Far East. Nick had graduated from a medical school in Manila. We liked the cuisine of the Orient.

"Why they need spices on their good, when they had ketchup?" Squeak was spinning linguine on his fork.

"Ketchup is not a spice and it is not a vegetable." Even if the majority of American teenagers choose Heinz ketchup as their favorite veggie. "I'll tell you a story. Back in 1991 I arrived by boat to Ternate in northern Indonesia. The volcanic island was a backwater then, but in the 15th Century European nations fought to control its treasures of cloves and spices. Hoping to discover a short-cut to the fabled island, Christopher Columbus set sail west across the Atlantic Ocean. His fleet of three ships made landfall on an unknown continent. It was not China, Japan, or Ternate. Undeterred by this disappointment, the Genoan adventurer claimed the new world for the King Of Span and his patroness the Queen Isabella. He was as good a salesman as he was a sailor and called it the West Indies to promote future expeditions."

My friend's teenagers were gazing off with disinterest, although Nick's youngest son and daughter were listening to what I had to say. Their attention span respected an adult, so I continued my tale, "Columbus' first voyage was remarkable, for the fact that he was traveling through unknown waters and only lost one ship, the SANTA MARIA on his first voyage. It sank on Christmas Day, but not one sailor drowned in the shipwreck. There was not enough room for everyone to return to Spain and 39 men elected to stay on 'Hispaniola' to further explore the virgin territory for gold and spices."

"What happened to those guys he left behind?" Nick's younger son was showing promise as a scholar. Julien was a straight B student.

"They were massacred by Carib warriors who detested the newcomers' enslavement of their women, children, and friends, thus initiating the long conflict between Europe and the New World. "

"Massacred as in eaten." Squeak was an ace at shoot-em-up VDO games.

"Yes, eaten."

"Did they use any spices when they ate them or just ketchup?" Squeak's comment earned all-around laughter.

"I quit." I got up from the table and went out on the terrace with a glass of wine in my hand.

Outer New York Harbor spread beneath the highest point in Staten Island. Henry Hudson had sailed this bay. His namesake river ran straight north into the Adirondacks. He had been stranded in the Arctic by his men.

Exploration was tough on failures.

In truth Christopher Columbus carried little gold back to his Spanish sovereigns, but he introduced corn, manioc or cassava, potato, the peanut, tomato, papaya, pineapple, avocado, chili pepper, cotton and cocoa to the Old World. It took about 30 years for the chili to reach Thailand, which adopted the fiery spice as its own.

My wife Mam loved chili on her sum-tam salad. All Thai women loved the fiery mango dish and they have Columbus to thank for their pleasure.

Columbus might be forgotten by the young and no longer considered to be a hero by those who blame the destruction of the Indians on his discovery, but I celebrated his discovery of the Bahamas with rum and coke. Nick joined me and raised his glass.

"To Columbus."

He was Admiral of the Oceans.