Friday, September 28, 2018

1982: For Kavanaugh and for Israel: Their Shared Woes; The Year That Was

                                                

1982 for Brett Michael  Kavanaugh, a Judge of the USA's 2nd highest court system in Washington DC, ( United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit). born in this special city, a shining 10 carat diamond among others, outstanding since grade school, attending his Catholic Jesuit high school with A's, entering Yale Law School, outstanding all the way.  He's already written so much for our law system and is known to the present judges sitting on the Supreme Court.  In other words, his fate, laid out, is to join this special group and is made to be their 9th and last member.
                                                                         
A woman in distress, Dr. Christine Blase Ford,  has stepped up at the very last minute of his confirmation with accusations of his attempted rape act on him when she was 15 and he 17.  She wanted her story to be confidential and asked Senator Feinstein to keep it that way.  As I understand her testimony, she herself notified a newspaper, trying to share but being anonymous, but it didn't work.  The next thing she knew, reporters were at her door.  Half of this United States, most all Democrats, seem to agree with her accusation the moment she opened her mouth.  This was a savior act of keeping this Republican from the bench.  How wonderful that such an accusation came about to save them all from a judge that followed such rulings.  Their biggest fear was upsetting the Roe and Wade decision made in a period where Democratic leftists were in a better position.  They all clamored that he would find a way to throw it out and show it wasn't Democratic after all.
                                                                           
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, scolding the Democrats and Republicans who might
turn against Kavanaugh with a profound speech.  
The problem is that this country is based on the fact that we are all innocent of any crime until we are proven by facts of being guilty.  Accusers cannot just accuse.  Facts are paramount in a court case, and in life in general.  Otherwise, we are running into gossip; talking about people and saying things without having proof.  Believing an accuser without evidence is old school, going back to the dark ages.  Choosing a qualified judge has now shown itself to be Partisan, not done by their capabilities.

Jews have suffered from this terribly.  We have been said to have horns on our heads, and people in the Dark Ages would become peeping Toms, looking into our windows trying to see them.  People accused us of using Christian blood in the making of matzos during Passover.  If a Christian child was missing from a neighborhood, the Jews took him for just such blood drawing.  Crazy ways of proving innocence in past days were things like throwing the accused in a river or lake.  If they drowned, they were guilty.  They may have even been tied up.
                                                                             
It hurt me terribly to hear the Hawaiian lady Senator calling out that she believed Kavanaugh's accuser before she heard his side.  She was joined by too many other women with this same old thinking; believe the female accuser; all men are guilty!!!  Women can lie just like men, you know.  The only type of person that cannot physically tell lies that I know of are Down Syndrome children.  The only difference is that we've just realized how many women have been attacked sexually and have been raped.  It's a fact that has been kept in Pandora's box, and now that the lid has been opened, a madly wild geni has been let out, out to get even.  It makes me realize that my own Jewish historical practices of women dressing modestly has value as well as the Muslim's extreme measures taken to dress modestly in this world we share with men.
                                                                             
Whatever mechanics in the brain controls this nasty ability to lie is missing in the Down Syndrome.  That's not to say that Blase Ford wasn't telling her truth, either.  Her experience came to her through some memory of being raped with his name emblazoned in her mind.  It's a mystery, but looking through Kavanaugh's year book shows his picture and his activities, and of course, the names of his best friends.  She was not a part of this special Catholic social click and had attended another private school that wasn't a religious school.  Yet, some of his friends had heard of her name, possibly known through her diving abilities in swimming.  Athletes do become known in young people's clicks.  She swam at her country club.  She may have been known of through this social group, or even known of through surnames.
                                                                         
1982 and Kavenaugh was a star student in the small classes of a very elite school system and a star athlete as well.  He led a well rounded life including lots of friends, and he enjoyed when 18, drinking beer.  Born on February 12, 1965 and sharing Abraham Lincoln's birthday, he would not have been 18, the legal age of beer drinking, until February 12, 1983.  With a mother who became a lawyer, and being as judgmental with himself as he is, I'm sure he didn't break this law.  Raised in a Catholic school and being very religious, he had remained friends with other Catholic students in this system of boys' schools and girls' schools.  He was also one who remained virginal.

By the time he could drink beer, something quite possibly done happily by his father, he was in college.  Star students, and I have a son and a brother who was one of them,  seem to have high standards for themselves, especially in keeping their grades up.
                                                                               

Brett followed in his father's footsteps of keeping a very involved calendar and presented the Senate committee with it showing what he had done and with who through the summer of 1982.  His education without a break was at Georgetown Preparatory School, Ezra Stiles College, Yale University, Yale Law School, and Mater Dei School.  He kept himself as a virgin until sometime later, perhaps by Law School age.  A man like this is not likely to drink until having blackouts.  By then they couldn't handle much in any school as well as he did.  All his friends protest, saying he cared for them, being a leader in their group.  He did not have the reputation of a blackout drinker or a rapist or even as a sexy guy!  
                                                                       

Here, one drink equals 1.5 ounces of 80 proof liquor (40% alcohol), 12 ounces of beer (4.5% alcohol), or 5 ounces of wine (12% alcohol). Under current law, everything in red (.08 BAC and higher) is legally intoxicated.

In fact, he had many many female friends that are friends with him today--plain honest friendship.  It answers the question, "Can man be friends with women and just remain friends without sex being involved?"  The answer is, yes, it's possible. 
                                                             
Ronald Reagan was President in 1982.  I remember how disappointed
I was, glad to be in Israel , being a stanch Democrat then.  I changed with
Obama running, NOT because he was half black but because of his
history towards Jews as shown in his church and by his minister that he
had attended for 22 years.  That was enough to scare me!  It was something
I pored over very carefully, as leaving the Democratic Party was not an easy change. 
My mother was happy, though.  She had voted for Reagan and had previously
voted for Eisenhower.  Her father was a Republican.   You can tell, she voted
for a strong man to be president.    
Democrats are demanding that the FBI do the investigating to find information about the accusations.  The FBI has come out saying this is not their their job.  The situation is different from years ago with another similar case.  An FBI investigation would delay the position till after USA voting that takes place in November and will color people's minds in their voting.  The timing would benefit the Democrats.  Finding this accuser at the last hour was seen as saving them. The 21 Senators on this special committee have already done investigating with answers from the known witnesses saying they were not witnesses to her accusation.  Their statements, if false, could send them to prison.  4 Democrats walked out in an act of protest of their meeting today.
                                                                             
In my bottom floor apartment in Safed on David Eleazar Street
across the street from my jr high school where I would teach 7th, 8th and 9th graders
with bars on the living room window to keep out impending terrorists;
the apartment comes with such bars.  We had just moved in,
just received out lift and had a few things out.  We had spent the previous
ten months studying Hebrew and history to get our teaching credentials. I was
a teacher from Oregon of 22 years experience. 
1982 for Israel was a time when I lived in Safed, northern Israel in the Galilee.  I had moved there in September of 1980, first living for 10 months in Haifa.  I also kept a calendar of sorts; letters to my mother every week telling of my activities and thoughts.  I'm much older than Brett, born in 1934.  On June 7, 1982, a Sunday,  I had traveled to the Army Hospital in Haifa from Safed, alone on a bus, to check on my arm that I had broken in a fall.  I had a lot of metal screws in there holding my elbow together and was told they could come out next summer.  The doctors couldn't help me that day as they were a little busy.  The Lebanon War had started.  I found out that's why I saw so many army vehicles going up the street we had come down from.  Being an army hospital-the only one open when I had fallen, they knew they'd be very busy shortly.  That day was memorable for me.
                                                                         
Ma'alot, nearby town where our students were slaughtered, buried at home in Safed, my city.  As a teacher, I quickly saw the danger I could be facing.  This happened only 7 years before I taught in Safed. 

The Ma'alot massacre was a Palestinian terrorist attack that occurred in May 1974 and involved a two-day hostage-taking of 115 Israeli people which ended in the murders of over 25 hostages. It began when three armed members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) entered Israel from Lebanon. Soon afterwards they attacked a van, killing two Israeli Arab women while injuring a third and entered an apartment building in the town of Ma'alot, where they killed a couple and their four-year-old son. From there, they headed for the Netiv Meir Elementary School, where they took more than 115 people (including 105 children) hostage on 15 May 1974, in Ma'alot. Most of the hostages were teenagers from a high school in Safad on a Gadna field trip spending the night in Ma'alot. 
   
June 15, 1982  Ned, my 29 year old American friend and co-teacher in the school I taught in, was called into the army last week at 1:00 am in the morning.  We both taught English in the junior high in Safed.  Andy, another English teacher was also home and had been called into his IDF uniform to do his milueem service.  Even our veterinarian for our German shepherd that we brought with us from Oregon was called into service to do his milueem.  He's serving as a medic in the army.
                                                                         
My husband and I drove to Hatzor for another American teacher's birthday, Avraham.  We saw soldiers hitchhiking, the way they got to their posts when called.  This was a special time and all able men were called into the army and some women.  When soldiers were given a 24 hour pass, the only way they could get from the battlefield to home was by hitchhiking.  We picked up a nice kid who had a brother in the 10th grade at my husband's high school.  My husband, Danny taught English there.  This young soldier was so glad and appreciative to be picked up so he could get home to Safed and peace and quiet.
                                                                     
My city of Safed (Tzefad) (Tzfat) took a direct hit
in a residential apartment building in 2006.  
My students were wild during this defensive move.  Northern Israel had been under attack far too long by the Palestinians then.  This was the end of the school term, just like the USA, thank goodness.  Students, during the worst part of the alert, had their radios on all the time.  Some children were extremely worried and exhausted, having family members that were soldiers.  Others just went wild and were out of control from the pressure.  And and Ned were IDF leaving Margolite, a Russian immigrant who taught English in Russia and I were handling everyone's English classes.  I came in on my day off, knowing the school was short handed as ALL the men were gone, leaving us women.  Even the principal was gone, and the vice took over, a woman during this frightening time.  I felt like I had been in a war at the end of each day.
Safed, built on top of a mountain, almost the same
height as Jerusalem

I baked cakes when I wasn't teaching.  These were donated to kiosks where soldiers could get coffee and cake to eat while they were hiking to report to their posts.  Our friend, Elitta, a South African also teaching English, had her husband and son serving in the IDF.  Her son was a young paratrooper.  I wrote, "I don't know how she can continue to teach.  It must be very hard on her."
                                                                   
My apartment in Safed is in one of these buildings.  See the road?  I had this road in
the back of our apartment; the road the moving van crept along to our address.  
Israel has been facing false accusations since she was created on May 14, 1948.  People called us the scapegoats of the world.  Whatever wrong there was, it was the Jews' fault.  From poisoning the wells to blood in matzo to doing the Palestinians wrong by cheating them out of their land; we've heard it all.  I've studied this and have seen how quickly our enemies believe such dreck as I call it in Yiddish, such lies, such twisting of truth.
                                                                         
Syrians injured but rescued by Israel, find Safed a safe haven
Our high schoolers were facing the bagrut; a huge English test that determined if they could go onto a college level being that was taught so much in English.  Even with goals involving the service, students needed a high level of English.  In high school, they could all be receiving training.  I served on a volunteer group who would drive through our neighborhood in Haifa when there and be on patrol.  I had gone through training of shooting an M1 rifle.  The group probably really wanted by German shepherd with them but had to take me, too.  They all spoke Hebrew only, I think.  The person issuing each of us our rifle at the armory was a 16 year old girl in her pajamas and robe.  High schoolers served in various ways, and Danny was told not to be surprised if they sometimes fell asleep in class.  They had been busy the previous night.  They all had my respect; young adults missing a lot of fun and innocence in their life.  My jr high students, too, helped out.  My 9th graders acted as interpreters at the famous hospital across our street.  During the 1982 Lebanon fight, they were there interpreting for Arab enemies picked up and taken to our hospital.  I had Arabs in that class, and they told me about doing it.  The injuries they saw shook them up.
                                                                                                 
Result of Britain giving away
80% of supposed Jewish
Homeland-Palestine
Center of Judea and Samaria
1922
Original Palestine to be
Jewish Homeland
1920

What makes this situation of the Palestinian hating the Israelis for so long and not signing any peace accord with them?  It's because they BELIEVE ALLEGATIONS AND NOT FACTS!  I predict that there will never be a peaceful Palestine laying next to Israel until the day they face up to their history and the stand their ancestors had taken towards Israelis.  Israel has been force in an untenable situation for the past 70 years because   of this.
                                                                           
Judge Kavanaugh's parents, Ed, Martha, wife Ashey and Brett in 2006
in Capital Hill proceedings.  
     
So I feel for Judge Kavenaugh.  It's interesting that such a man, the most revered in the field of judging people, is himself judged so wrongly.  If there is fairness in this crazy world, he will eventually be nominated and will be sitting on the bench.  I know that this man now knows what it's like to be judged unfairly by people who are quick to believe untruths without even questioning their validity.  It should make him a far wiser man, giving him an education not given out at Yale.  However, this was a terrible trauma for Kavenaugh and his wife, Ashley Estes Kavanaugh, 2 young daughters and his parents and even his friends.  It's traumatic even for me to see this country go for the jugular to attain their own wants and desires by believing an unfounded accusation and forgetting that this country was founded on INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY.

Update:  9/28/18 2:32pm

Brett Kavanaugh’s Mother Was a Maryland Judge Who Had Ruled Favorably Toward Christine Blasey Ford’s Parents in a 1996 Foreclosure Case https://heavy.com/news/2018/07/brett-kavanaugh-family-parents/



Resource:  Book:  Letters From Israel by Nadene Goldfoot
https://www.britannica.com/event/Roe-v-Wade
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/28/brett-kavanaugh-judiciary-democrats-walk-out-hearing/1453945002/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27alot_massacre


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