Have I mentioned that it’s Bridge Day? The New River Gorge Bridge was the world’s longest single-span steel-arch bridge in the world for 26 years after it opened in 1977, and now it is the longest single-span steel-arch bridge close to me at the moment.
Anyway. If you invest a bit of time and effort over the next 12 months, you, too, can leap from the bridge with a bungee or ‘chute next year. Who would want to miss that opportunity?
Here’s a new one: we just got charged for a substack subscription, and we have no idea how it happened. I discovered that they have our credit card, and I’m wondering if that’s something the writers are able to access. And there’s NO ONE to talk to!!! I finally figured out how to contact the writer, and I hope there’s not going to be a problem getting a refund. Once that’s done, I’m removing our credit card info.
So, a few thoughts have been percolating for several days and maybe it's time they came out. What is terrorism? It is simply an act designed to create fear in others, generally some specific group(s). The Hamas attack was never about conquest, to actually take back that which they think was wrongfully taken from them. No, it was an attempt to create fear -- but in whom?
I submit Israel was only one member of the target group. Others were the US, obviously, but also other Arab nations. From the outset I thought a significant reason behind this was to disrupt any normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and push a wedge between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. In demonizing Israel, they seek to unify the entire Muslim/Arab world against a common enemy, even if some of those countries no longer consider themselves at war with Israel. Peace in the Middle East is the enemy of the extremists, who deny Israel's right to exist. A slow normalization of relations among any of those countries and Israel undermines the terrorists who seek no less than the annihilation of the Jewish state and the Jews.
Iran knows the terrorists need their support and I would not be surprised if they gave in on condition that the terrorists do their work to destabilize the region even as it was slowly moving to slightly more stability, as in a better relation between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Of course, they wouldn't want to strike at Saudi Arabia so they conjured up a way to pull the other Arab states into line against the common enemy by striking at Israel in the most horrific fashion. Is this evil genius? Time will tell, but it is easy to imagine that rulers in other Arab states are worrying about their status, fearing an uprising within fueled by the same extremists in the name of purifying and uniting the Muslim/Arab world. Any part of the Arab world that embraces more of western life is a threat to the Muslim orthodoxy and the fight against Israel. That is the frightening struggle ahead and Israel cannot do much, that I can see, to influence it. Israel will do what it must to survive, but I don't see how it can do much in the inter-Arab family struggle.