Guernica

 

     In September, the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid  announced that it is lifting its 30-year ban on visitors photographing Pablo Picasso's masterpiece "Guernica." Which sparked a brief flicker of envy in me — I was there a year ago, and of course itched to capture Picasso's stark images of the horror of the first aerial terror bombing of a civilian population.  I figured the scenes could be useful someday. Never realizing just how soon or just how awfully apt.
     Before the artwork, I was tempted to flout the rules, and take a picture anyway. But it was their painting, their museum, their country, their history, their grief. I was a guest, and so tried to be respectful and behave. No pictures.
     And you know what? Freed of the distraction of trying to capture a photo of the painting, which is 25 feet across, I was able to just look at it. 
     Able to look at it and shed tears. It was an overwhelming moment. Thinking of the people and the horses and the bull, all broken and shrieking, the mother wailing with the dead baby in her arms and the alarms at night.

     Picasso had a commission to paint something to display to bring attention the cause of the Republicans — a motley of socialists and communists and anarchists, fighting Franco and his Nationalists, who had the Nazis and their Luftwaffe on their side. But Picasso was stymied until the bombing on April 27, 1937. Horror has a way of squeezing out those creative juices. He created an enormous canvas, 11 feet tall, using black and white matte house paint. This, I thought, this is what cubism was made for. I was never a particular fan of either Picasso or his style. But this redeems both, conveying such as stark and fractured chaos, the suffering and death.

     The painting was shown in Paris — which surrendered too quickly to be bombed — then spirited to the United States, and placed at the Museum of Modern Art. Picasso, and later his estate, would not allow "Guernica" to return to Spain until the fascists were gone, and it did not get there until 1981.     
     I thought of "Guernica" of course as Israel started to pound Gaza, the shocking human toll of destruction from above. A horror that they obviously find necessary to inflict, but that no feeling human being can welcome. Something no feeling human can do anything but mourn. Most of the 1,600 dead at Guernica were women and children — the men were off fighting — and there is little question that the attack on Gaza will mostly slaughter innocents as well. 
     Whose fault is it? All the furious finger pointing misses, to me, the essential, obvious truth: it's everybody's fault. The two parties involved. How could it be anything else? The Palestinians for holding out for the impossible — to return to Israel and find the Jews vanished and their great-grandparents magically alive again, tending to their olive groves. Not to forget for supporting Hamas, a terrorist group dedicated to Israel’s destruction, which started the present cycle of mayhem and death. And the Israelis for their out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach,  for decades, packing Palestinians into their ghetto, nibbling away parcels of land for another settlement. A role so inverted, such a parody of the treatment of Jews over a thousand years, it almost makes me believe in a God, a devious, malicious deity, crafting the ultimate contrapasso punishment for Jewish pride, pressing us into the role of the oppressor. Left unsolved, the problem festers and grows, as both sides saw away at the same old failed tactics. 

      "For they sow the wind," the Bible says, in Hosea. “And they shall reap the whirlwind."
     After I posted a photo of the painting — not taken by me — on the cover of my Facebook page, as a sort of indication of general feeling, one reader shared this story, probably too neat to be true: A German officer sees a photo of "Guernica" in Picasso's studio. "Did you do this?" he asks. "No," Picasso replies. "You did."

Mailbag

     A stressful, arduous, time-sucking week, for reasons beyond Israel — which is really saying something — and too complicated to explain. I'll write about it, eventually. Until then,  time to open up the mailbag with a few of the many emails inspired by my column on the enormity in Israel last Saturday. And to give you a heads up — if a post over the next few weeks is along the lines of, "Hi, busy, talk among yourselves," well, if you could, please roll with it. Lot going on.

Mr. Steinberg,

     Thank you for your op ed in yesterday's paper (How does this end?). I, like you, are not real hopeful. My daughter and I were discussing this tragedy the other day. My daughter, who is an atheist, said this, the worst thing to happen to the human race is religion. I think she might be right.

Susan L.
DeKalb IL

 Dear Ms. .L.:

     A lot of good comes from religion — Dante, Bach, cathedrals — but a lot of bad as well. I tend not to blame religion — I say it's like a hammer: you can build a house with it, or you can hit someone in the head. Same hammer. Ask the question this way: without religion, would human beings be kinder than they are? Probably not. Religion is just the vehicle for channeling that very human tendency to be monstrous. Thanks for writing

     NS

Mr. Steinberg,

     I have read your pieces in the Sun-Times for a long time. Noticeably absent in your piece “How does this end?” was the exploration of how apartheids and genocides have ended, not just political conflicts. Where was the comparison to the Khmer Rouge, Pinochet, Stalin, and colonizers of Africa and the Americas? And while it is not popular in America these days to address the irony and brutality of Israeli-led apartheid tactics and the genocide of Palestinians to Nazi Germany and the Gestapo, you are in a position to delve into this paradox. It’s a fine line to walk without being branded an antisemite, which I know you are not, but you are skilled enough to do it. I am a friend of Jews and Muslims who have family and coworkers in Israel and the occupied West Bank, and our text chains grapple with these issues more profoundly than your article. I challenge you to dig deeper and provide a more nuanced exploration and answers for your millions of readers to “how does it end” than “sit and watch in horror.” You were right that I didn't like your answer - not because it was a brutal truth, but because the question deserved more gradation and exploration. I look forward to future opinions.

Thank you.

Liz D.

     Dear Ms. D.:

     Those are some odd examples you bring up — I assume you just looked for history's villains. The Khmer Rouge won. So did Stalin, judging by the Putin era. The Blacks in South Africa were a huge majority, and they didn't go around killing Afrikaners. But I'm not sure what kind of dialogue can be had with someone who goes on about the brutality of the Israelis, without a word about the Palestinians' refusal to live in peace. A selective sensitivity for brutality. Where was your concern for collective punishment last Saturday? Or more to the point, what is your solution? Were you a Jewish Israeli, how eager would you be to live in a Palestinian state?
     That said, I'm sure you are sincere in your concern for this issue, and appreciate you writing.

      NS 

     Can you please explain the facts around what others have said is the continuing Israeli encroachment and construction of homes in Palestinian territory?
     Thank you,
     Margaret B.

Why? What part don’t you understand?

     My understanding is Israel was not given all the territory after WWII that it is building homes on.

     Yes, and the United States was stolen from the Native-Americans. Yet if one were to kill your grandchildren, you would think poorly of him. Perhaps you might want to extend that same courtesy to the Israelis. Thanks for writing.

NS

Mr. Steinberg,

     Violence between a state and terrorists cannot go on forever and ever. It was unacceptable in Ireland with the British, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Kosovo, Algeria, and it is so between Israel and Hamas.
     Here are some ways to end it.
     The superpowers like a couple of the U.N. security council states must confront both Israel and Hamas and defang them both. Then while they bluster over being forced to disarm, the two sides must be put in a room and kept there until they work out a solution. If not two states, then an intermingled state. If not with their current leadership, then an entirely new set of leaders.
     Or, to borrow Thomas Friedman's word, these knuckleheads use nuclear weapons to shock themselves and the rest of the world into recognizing how this recurrent mayhem ends in searing light and heat and radioactivity. A nuclear weapon is a genie that must never be let out of the bottle, but I can in my worst nightmare imagine the cork pops off because of hate, anger and vengeance for continued wrongs. Lacking reasoned restraint, a nuclear explosion is too possible.
     Or, Israel is forced to vacate Palestine and given another land for their home. Yes, it's in their bible, but the bible is not a real estate covenant no matter the claims it makes. The Jewish people are wonderfully industrious, intelligent and purposeful. If they could make their current landscape bloom, they can do it again elsewhere. The Palestinians will receive their desired land, and the Jews keep their holy sites. I know this is pie in the sky, but anything is better than the blood-soaked sands.
     Or, a no man's land created by and operated by international peacekeepers who do not let hostilities disturb either side.
     Palestinians cannot be pushed into the sea. Jews cannot be eradicated. These recurrent outbreaks of murderous, destructive violence must not continue. The families on both sides, especially the children living through this horror have hate in their hearts. Somehow hope has to push out the hate.
     You, sir, cannot leave me, your reader, hanging in despair over the endless spate of violence. This must stop.
     Don

Dear Mr. N.:

     "Israel is forced to vacate Palestine and given another land for their home." Exactly what other land do you suggest? And how will the people who now have claim to that land feel about it being given away? I appreciate you sharing your plan with me, but it is not what I would call . . . practical.

     NS

Hamas-Israel war reveals university antisemitism

     Hi Neil – in the wake of Hamas' despicable attacks on Israel, many have been shocked to see the level of antisemitic vitriol coming out of America’s universities. . .

     "Reveals"?

 

     

Where do Jews belong?

Human-headed, winged bull from the throne room of King Sargon II, at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago. Sargon, king of Assyria, conquered Samaria in 721 B.C. and dispersed the Jews living there.

     Driving to the dedication of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie in April 2009, I remember thinking: Do we really need another Holocaust museum? There’s already a big one on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
     And then I saw a knot of Illinois Nazis, in uniform, protesting. Ah, yes, right — that’s why we need another museum. Because people like this are still here.
     American Jews had been souring on Israel, with its Trump wannabe president deforming the judiciary simply to keep his ass out of prison, splitting apart the country, causing massive turmoil. It left many here wondering: What’s the point of having a Jewish state if it’s going to be like this?
     Then, Oct. 7. A thousand civilians slaughtered. And the world is reminded, yet again: that’s why there’s an Israel. Because people exist who will murder a baby because they don’t like her government. Which, if you think about it, and they never do, the baby has not yet had a say in. Hamas thought it was striking a blow against Israel. When really, with grotesque eloquence, Hamas held a master class in the urgent need for Israel. Because there are always people ready to kill Jews — or shrug off the killing of Jews as the only right and moral thing to do.
     Because Jews are guilty, not for killing Christ, of late, but still for the crime of being Jews lingering on a spot of ground where Jews don’t belong which, if we look to history, is almost anywhere Jews happen to be. Juden raus! the Germans said. “Jews out!” The fact that they had been living there for 1,500 years didn’t matter.
     When I passed the Illinois Nazis on that day in 2009, I was tempted to pull over and hear their view of life. But then I was afraid I’d start talking back, and that wouldn’t end well. Though the only thing I really have to say to neo-Nazis is: You do know, this whole Nazi business did not end well for the Germans, right? Proud and powerful in 1933, with a refined culture of Rilke and biergartens. A dozen years of Naziism later, Germany was an expanse of rubble and the scorn of the civilized world. Hatred blows back on you, eventually.

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Seraphim

     My first instinct was something lighthearted. When the news is grim with unspeakable atrocities, one can react to that, shut up or go against the tide.  The first was unbearable. Shutting up makes for light reading. Here, I had some pretty photos from Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, a few things to say about our visit, and started to pull something together.
     No, that doesn't seem right. I'm not a believer in the call-in-the-grief-counselor, it's-been-five-days-time-to-announce-oneself-healed-and-move-on mentality. It's okay to react to horror by being horrified, and to dwell there for a while. Grief is by definition long-term. 
     How long? For how long does the pall last? Shortly after the barbaric Hamas attack, I found myself, for some strange reason, thinking of families going to vacation to Israel right now, tickets bought, hotel reserved, arriving Monday, with a full schedule of visits to the Western Wall and the Dead Sea and a winery or two. And they can't even feel bad for themselves because whole families were slaughtered, or dragged back into Gaza in captivity. Maybe that's my problem — it's horror, but it's not my horror. Only at a ... I almost said "comfortable" ... at an uncomfortable distance. It's complaining about a rainstorm when you're snug indoors on the other side of the world.
    Maybe I thought of that because the blown vacation is such tiny suffering, as opposed to, oh, having your baby beheaded. Truly beyond comprehension. The mind draws away, covering its eyes. 

     Inhuman, and a bad strategy, for Hamas. I would suggest that the future of Palestinians is not made more bright by the course of action their elected government has taken. That's one of the many reasons those celebrations are so ill-considered. They aren't just rejoicing at barbarism, but at one that undercuts the position of what they supposedly care about. Those out celebrating the attacks, when challenged, make ruffled efforts to put some daylight between being pro-Palestinian and pro-murdering-families-in-their-homes. They just happen to be out celebrating today. It seems a distinction without a difference, like those Trumpies who insist they like him for his successful businessman schtick, and not all the treason parts.
     So what I'd like to do is share these two photos I took with my pal Michael at the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires. I reversed the order — I tend to take an establishing shot and then go in for a close-up — because it seems to tell a little story. I called today's post "Seraph," at first, which is singular for a type of winged angel. Then I realized no, that isn't right. Even though there is only one in the photo, there are many in awful, unimaginable reality. So the plural is in order. As for the whole concept of angels, even though one third of Americans believe in their physical reality, me, I never believed in them, or an afterlife, not for a second. So I'm taking comfort for something all too real by offering something that isn't really there. That sounds about right.

How does this end?

The Destroyed City, by Ossip Zadkine (Rijksmuseum)

     Words are inadequate, almost meaningless, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the preferred mode of communication is to kill people. We saw this Saturday, when Hamas fired 2,000 rockets into Israel as terrorists infiltrated the border with Gaza and murdered hundreds of civilians. A manifesto, written in blood.
     But what are they saying? This carnage was committed to show ... help me here ... their readiness to ... ah ... run an independent country? Located ... umm ... where exactly?
     They insist, as one sign at the pro-Palestinian rally in Chicago, one of several across the country, put it, to rule “From the River to the Sea.” That is, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, or all of Israel and beyond. That’s their game plan. And to think that Israel doesn't jump to comply.
     As for the rallies themselves, has a group ever murdered a thousand people on Saturday and then taken to the streets to declare their own aggrievement and victimhood on Sunday? That has to be a record of some sort.
     If not that, what? To punish Israel? Mission accomplished. The Palestinian argument is they are treated poorly by the Israelis — no doubt about that — and are therefore entitled to kill anyone they can lay their hands on and call it “resistance.” Odd, but when the Israelis do the same thing, it’s called a war crime.
     Not that the two sides are balanced. Hamas is a terrorist group; Israel is a nation, whether Hamas likes it or not. There’s a higher standard. In theory. In practice, Israel will, over the coming hours, days, weeks and maybe months and years, seek to avenge being caught asleep at the gate by leveling parts of Gaza, killing some of those responsible for the attacks, and a lot of others, too, while cutting electricity, gas and food to the area. That’ll teach ’em!

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Birthday party.

Getting ready.

      There's a line in the 1982 comedy "Diner" that is justly famous. Kevin Bacon's Tim sees an elegant woman trot past on a horse. ""Do you ever get the feeling," he asks Mickey Rourke's Boogie, "there's something going on we don't know about?"
     I'm not complaining. I've certainly shimmied my way further up the greased pole of life than I ever expected I would. Still, now and then I catch a glimpse of the many-layered empyrean rising into the mists far, far above me. 
     For instance. We were in Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Taking our dog along would be impractical, so we parked her with a neighbor whose children yearn for the dog experience. 
     So now we're back, and we go next door to deliver their thank-you-for-watching-Kitty presents. And it just so happens to be the afternoon before the girl's 9th birthday party sleepover. And we caught a pair of women set up what can only be called a pastel princess bivouac, with tents and balloons and TV trays.
     I'm not saying we blew off the boys' birthdays. When the younger lad turned 9, I bought him a set of golf clubs and we went out to the field behind our house and used them. Another time, we held a whipped cream pie fight for his friends — when does a person actually get the chance to do that? —with tables set with aluminum pie pans stacked high with Reddi-Wip. Another time we took his pals to Pinstripes for bocce ball and pizza. 

    When the older boy was very young, we had Professor Boonie — some character who played guitar at the Lincoln Park Zoo — to our apartment to entertain. When he was 3, I took him to Chuck E. Cheese, because he wanted to. For the same reason, a few years later, he and his pals were squired downtown, for a spooky Halloween performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (his birthday is the week before Halloween). 

     Yes, our celebrations did skew down market. Pin the tail on the Donkey. Scavenger hunts. 

     Still, it's not as if they spent their birthdays neglected and alone, weeping face down on their beds. 

    But this. This was a whole different gear. Yes, it costs money — about $100 a head, depending on the details. They also do parties for boys. You can find more out by visiting the company at their fun, colorful website.  

     When I try to think back to my own, long-ago childhood birthday parties, the only memory I have is sitting, in a red, white and blue striped shirt, waiting for people to arrive. I'm sure they did, and that cake and fun were had. Maybe there are even photos somewhere. But my only actual memory is that quiet moment of anticipation, waiting to see if people show up. It would be much better to have some over-the-top sleepover stage set in the memory banks instead.

A timely escape into sports history

Rich Cohen

     One problem with not following professional sports is that you are denied the distraction that sports offer from the woes of the world.
     Which is why, over a weekend that saw a massive Hamas terror attack murder at least 700 Israelis, and Israeli counterstrikes kill hundreds of Palestinians, I was grateful to lose myself for a while in a new book by Rich Cohen, “When the Game was War: The NBA’s Greatest Season.”

      Though I’ve read eight Cohen books — he’s written 16 — the idea of revisiting a basketball season from 35 years ago initially left me cold. I wasn’t interested back then, when it was occurring. Why bother with it now?
     Well, for starters, because Cohen has a genius for pulling a seine through the information river that is professional sports and netting fascinating facts. I spent more time reading his “Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football,” than watching football over the past decade, and learned how the Bears took their name as a way to one-up the Cubs.
     Yes, there are three other teams examined along with the Bulls — the Detroit Pistons (boo, hiss), the L.A. Lakers and the Boston Celtics. But Cohen has a way of universalizing an athletic moment. This how he describes Isiah Thomas playing on a freshly-turned ankle:
     “Isiah became a symbol in those twelve minutes, an embodiment of everything that a person who wants to live ecstatically should be. He played with fury and joy. He loved his teammates and his opponents — you could see it in every move. He never gave up, never stopped trying. He did this not in spite of his injury but because of it.”

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