Nah-he's a Texan, that's all. :lol:
I don't know how "wrong headed" it was-I've my own opinions, but they're mostly based on a bias against "colonialism," for lack of a better word. Growning up, my best friends up the street were a wonderful Dutch family. They had ties to South Africa, and I was, like many Americans, against apartheid. In the end, to remain friends-and I'm speaking of Mr. and Mrs. van den Berg here, and they think the world of me-we simply agreed not to discuss it. I find myself in the same place with Israel. Very often, in many people's minds, to speak against Israel is to be anti-semitic, which I'm not. Or to be pro-Arab, or pro-Palestinian, which I'm not. In fact, I largely confine my distaste to U.S. policy towards Israel, which is another, convoluted and ridiculous matter altogether.
There can be no doubt about the right, after 60 years, for the nation of Israel to exist, though its coexistence with its neighbors is always in doubt. There can be no doubt about the right of the Palestinians-or whatever one wants to call the Arabs who have lived within the borders of Gaza, the West Bank and Israel itself-to exist and have, as the U.S., the U.N., and Israel themselves have asserted, to a state of their own.
It has been over a week now. Over 700 Palestinians and 11 Israelis have been killed (seven of them soldiers), and more than 3,000 Palestinians have been injured. 25 percent of the dead are non-combatants: women, children, and the old. Today, the U.N suspended humanitarian aid to Gaza, in the wake of a U.N. truck being shelled by an Israeli tank, and the death of the truck's driver. In the fog of war, the only certainty is that these numbers will rise.By now every major organization and nation has issued a position statement on the violence, and the pundits have been practicing their craft on the news channels for some time.
At the end of the day there will be an agreement, so why do they have to go through this process of killing and shedding blood first? Why canÂ’t they stop? Why do they need for each other to suffer so terribly?
In Sderot, like in other cities in the Israeli South, the rockets fall as they have for some time now. There, hatred surely grows, and rockets cannot extinguish it.The sirens wail at random, and residents are urged to run to their shelters in hopes they will make it in time. Sderot is a little over a mile from Gaza. A rocket can reach Sderot in nine seconds.Meanwhile, young Israeli men and women are on the way to or already in Gaza. They are actors in a stage not of their making, victims of the past. The basest of them take vengeance in their anger, sharing feelings, no doubt, like those expressed by TF, and the compassionate amongst them are caught between sympathy and duty.
In Gaza, hatred surely grows, and bombs cannot extinguish it. The old bury the young, the young watch the old whither, dignity is a memory, and peace but a forgotten shadow. The scale of the destruction and death is beyond my imagination.
Hamas blames Israel for breaking the cease-fire by sending troops into Gaza on November 4th and for not complying with the conditions of the cease-fire or allowing significant levels of goods and humanitarian aide to flow into Gaza. How long, Hamas asks, can they show restraint while Gazans starve in the dark? Cease-fire or no cease-fire, the conditions are the same; what is the difference between a swift death or a slow one?
Israel cannot be asked to live with an organization whose history includes dispatching suicide bombers to kill its citizens. Israel blames Hamas for the blockade and points out-correctly that Hamas that has been firing rockets at civilians.
Around the world, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups echo these arguments louder and louder every day. No one ever wins the rhetorical battles because no one can. It is wrong for an occupying power to starve a population and force it to live in poverty, and it is wrong to fire rockets at civilians forcing them to live in fear. Deep down each side acknowledges its culpability, but cannot show mercy. Both are blind in one eye while the other eye only looks in the mirror to see its own pain. Each side claims it must act because it, after-all, is the victim.
Fear, hatred, death, uncertainty and fanaticism rule the day. The battle for Gaza will continue, long after the last round is fired, and we, who are "outside" of all this, can only watch on, in horror, or cheering, not knowing what consequences these events may hold for our own homes, and our own people in the weeks and months to come.
