In the late morning of June 28, 2024, I told James Holloway the following: “James, my heart is broken.”  This was the first time I addressed Dr. Holloway in this fashion. Dr. Holloway is my cardiologist, a kind, cultured, and genteel physician who saved my life and saw me through two previous stent procedures and a subsequent quintuple bypass surgery some ten years ago. After administering my stress test and giving me a thumbs up report, I handed him a jar of Halabees Heavenly Honey and a bag-full of tomatoes and cucumbers harvested from my Little Palestine back yard garden, a safe space I have carved out for myself.

Always attentive and thorough, Dr. Holloway has always taken a special interest in my health, my family, my teaching, and my traversing the world with students to visit some of the world’s finest museums.

And then he popped the question: “How have you been? You’ve not written anything in a while.” With the Gaza genocide in high gear, and responding to a healer who sensed some of my anxiety and to whom I owed my life, and,  dispensing formality, I almost whispered, “James, my heart is broken.”

You just don’t tell your cardiologist that your heart is broken. And the antidotes to healing my broken heart have been my loving family, dear friends, my keyboard, members of my Sunday School class, and my garden, a serene place in which I find solace and comfort, and a place in which I spend up to two hours per day, planting, weeding, harvesting,  and sharing the earth’s bounty with some 15 neighbors and friends across town.

Almost to the day and a year later, I had my annual cardiology checkup with Dr. Holloway and received another thumbs up report. Having recently lost my last beehive (and some 4 ½ gallons of honey) to the varroa mites and possibly pesticides sprayed no neighboring lawns,  this year I had no honey to share. However, vegetables harvested from my Little Palestine garden patch were gladly shared with Dr. Holloway.

And then we talked. “My heart is still broken,” I iterated. “And I am saddened that the entire world is plagued with chaos and wars. When I taught literature and Art History, I always emphasized the many values that civilizations share, values that make us  us human and bind us.”  And we talked some more. And over the years Dr. James Holloway has not only been my physician, but he has also been a friend and a confidant.

And a year ago this last Thursday Presidential aspirants Joe Biden and Donald Trump had their first and only debate. As a result of his abysmally pathetic performance, I am a Zionist to the Core Biden  dug a hole for himself, for the Democratic party, for the nation, and for the world. And the world, turned upside down, has never been the same – nor will it ever be. Think Iran, Gaza, Occupied West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, and other hot spots, including immigration, tariffs, and culture wars.

A mercurial megalomaniac, keen on enriching himself with myriad world-wide schemes, Trump is sowing hate and chaos in every clime.  With his staunch MAGA and Evangelical support, it was only a matter of time before Trump marched us “Onward, [like] Christian soldiers, marching [us]as to war/ with the cross of Jesus going on before.”

Invoking God’s name, as Trump did in announcing the “spectacular military success” while waging war, is counter to Christ’s teachings. See the 6/22/2025 USA Today report under the heading Trump talks to God  in which Trump stated “… and in particular, God, I  want to just say, we love you God, and we love our great military.” This from a man who refused to put his hand on the Bible while being sworn in and taking the oath of office to protect the constitution of the United States.

On Thursday, June 15, 2025, Star Parker, an African American syndicated columnist, penned an Op. Ed. under the title “Stand with Israel.” The bulk of her column parroted all the MAGA/FOX/Evangelical rhetoric justifying Israel’s attack on Iran, and the U.S.’s support for this unprovoked assault. In her concluding paragraphs Star wrote the following: “Our country is a free nation under God. The first order of business is to live up to our responsibilities at home [Amen to that]. … Anyone with any connection to Scripture knows that Israel is a special and unique country. It is vital to understand we have a special relationship and must work together to make a better world. … For now, the U.S. must work with Israel to assure that Iran achieves no nuclear capability.”  And I say Amen to that as well, but not by deception and unprovoked warfare.

 I would add that the entire Near East should be a nuclear-free zone.  And that means that Israel must provide access to the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), the same atomic agency that’s been needling Iran. For a small country such as Israel, its massive nuclear arsenal is a club it wields across Asia Minor and North Africa.

In a cheesy message to Donald Trump, former preacher and Arkansas governor, and today an avowed Evangelical Zionist, U.S. ambassador Mike Huckabee  “…has suggested to President Donald Trump that he should use a nuclear bomb against Iran, urging Trump to listen to the voice he will ‘hear from heaven’ and follow its guidance in making decisions about Israel’s war on Iran.”  Ingratiatingly, Huckabee called Trump “a great person,”  and in “the text, Huckabee says Trump’s current decision on whether or not to involve the U.S. further in attacks on Iran is akin to the decision President Harry Truman faced in 1944.” Huckabee “further [said] that he [sought] not to persuade but to ‘encourage’ Trump.”   And for a finale, Huckabee assured Trump that:  “God spared [him] in Butler, PA to be the most consequential President in a century — maybe ever, …No President in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Truman in 1945.”

Huckabee’s rambling message asserted his long-held xenophobic “belief that Israel must dominate Palestine in order to bring about the end-of-times prophesy and second coming of Jesus. … [a time]  where all people worship Christ or get eliminated and condemned to hell.” Ouch!!!  And finally, the violence-stoking, bible-toting preacher urges Trump to listen to “His Voice,” a voice he imagined Trump “will hear from Heaven.”

Brother Huckabee, please read Jesus’ Beatitudes, one of the most edifyingly poetic, extended homily on what it means to be human and what it means to love our neighbors, even as we love ourselves.

In his 2016 bid for the presidency, Biden promised that, if elected, he would reinstate the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action)  nuclear agreement brokered by Obama and signed while Biden was Vice President. Soon after Trump was elected in 2016, he summarily abrogated the agreement.  Had Biden revived the agreement and had he not sold his soul to AIPAC, Netanyahu, and the war industry, we might not be in the mess in which we find ourselves today, a mess that is unfolding by the hour. While within reach, today’s metaphorical diplomatic fig is nowhere to be found.  And the bigger the ego, the smaller the fig.

Unfortunately, all the post assault on Iran narratives have become a media circus with sycophantic pundits,  retired and current military personnel, and tv show hosts and anchors questioning the extent of the damage, and, by extension, the U.S.’s military might.  That is all the world needs to egg on a commander in chief whose visceral decisions turn on a dine.

In 2003 and at the urging of Israel-firsters, George Bush attacked Iraq using fabricated information, and for months prior Lester Holt’s daily announcement: “The Countdown to the war in Iraq,” as though he was advertising a military shock and awe Super Bowl, hubristically lulled us into complacency. And the U.S. media, serving as George Bush’s White House Press Office,  awed and shocked the Iraqis and the world. In its wake,  a million Iraqi dead, a country pulverized to the stone age, 8 trillion precious US tax dollars wasted, and the emergence of ISIS and its dregs that are haunting us even to this day. And this does include 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers, the tens of thousands traumatized American service women and men, many of whom have tragically taken their own lives or are suffering from the anguish and horrors of a war fought on behalf of oil companies and a military industrial complex draining and depleting this country’s wealth.

In 2016 Israel’s Netanyahu said that “America is a thing you can move very easily.”  He’s moved the two Bushes, Clinton, Obama, Biden, and now Trump. including several Congresses that gave him adulation in the form of standing ovastions.  Remember when Netanyahu lectured Clinton on the Arab-Israeli conflict? In surrender, the President of the mightiest country in the world complained with a question: “Who the —- does he think he is?”

The Iran bombing is a side show. The prize, readers, is, and has always been,  the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in the  biggest land grab of the 20th and  21st centuries.  While America loses morally in its Iran and Gaza quagmires, Israel is peristaltically swallowing what’s left of Palestine – at taxpayer expense.

And in a few short years we’ll see advertisements for a Kushner/Trump/Netanyahu Gaza Riviera, with fabulous golf courses and gambling casinos like you’ve never seen before.

Will that “thing” called America wake up?