The trouble between Israel and the Palestinians is complex. It is not easy to come to grips with what is happening there. It is one of those issues that I have very strong feelings about… but those feelings are very mixed.
On the one hand, I hate what the Israelis are doing. It is hard to watch a country with a very powerful military go up against a group of people who have no organized military at all. It seems so unfair… so lopsided. The Palestinians have no air force, no tanks. It feels like watching a really big bully beat up on a small child.
But here is the thing… you knew there was going to be a thing, right? The Palestinians bring this upon themselves. No, it isn’t that simple. Not all the Palestinians start these problems. Just a very small and very militant portion of them. But these militants are some sick people. They are actively trying to destroy Israel. That is their stated goal. They start these troubles on purpose, lobbing rockets into Israel, purposefully aiming at civilian targets. They want to kill women and children. They are very clear about that.
On top of that, they don’t give a crap if Palestinian women and children are killed when Israel responds to these attacks. In fact, they consider it a good thing, because the news footage of wounded and killed women and children helps their cause in the Muslim world. They even go so far as to set up their rocket launchers and mortars near schools and hospitals and then they ask their own people not to leave when Israel drops leaflets telling them that they are going to bomb the site. Martyrs are what the militants are looking for. The more the better. Remember, these are the people who convince other people… including women and children… to strap bombs to themselves to turn themselves into living… and dying… weapons to attack civilian targets in Israel. Sometimes, people teach their own children to be suicide bombers.
Maybe it isn’t fair that Israel has tanks and aircraft and the Palestinians don’t. But ask yourself what you would do if your neighbor started throwing hand grenades over your fence into your yard… aiming at your children. If you had a tank, wouldn’t you use it? I think maybe you would.
The former Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, once said something like this: The fighting here will never end until the Palestinians learn to love their own children more than they hate the Israelis.
So yes, I hate it when Israel drops bombs and people are killed. But if you think they are enjoying it, or doing it for fun, you are wrong. They do everything they can to minimize civilian casualties. The idiots on the other side… not all of them, but enough of them… do everything they can to maximize civilian casualties… on both sides of the fence.
I don’t have answers. I don’t have solutions. I just have an ache deep inside my soul.
Pouring My Art Out 
Very profound, Art. I’m afraid we have become very desensitized to this situation. There are times the news is easily confused with a “Jack Bauer” episode and sometimes it is really hard to tell the difference. Our realities are becoming blurred I honestly think some would prefer to pretend it is fictional. The Golda Meir quote is one I have often thought was brilliant in its simplicity. Why is it so hard to put into practice? Between this and the Ukraine my heart breaks for humankind.
Wait until I do my history of the Mideast post today.
thanks Art, I think I understand it a little bit now. They’re jerks!
We solved the whole issue.
There is so much conflict across the globe right now, it’s incredibly saddening, I’ve not known anything like it in my lifetime.
Well, most of history has been almost as bad, but it is taking on new levels of crazy and the weapons are more efficient… so…
exactly
yup
I know some US citizens who don’t particularly care for Mexicans and vice versa, but we don’t throw bombs at each other. You would think that the Palestinians wouldn’t be picking on people who are bigger than they are. I have never understood their end game. They cannot possibly win and should Israel finally go to all out war with them once and for all, there would not be much left. In truth, I often wondered why they hadn’t done so already.
Like you, I feel bad for the common folk. The ones just trying to make a living. Do they realize that if they could just get out of their own way, they may actually benefit from each other? I don’t get it and probably never will.
I think that in some places, they have been hating for so long that they forget how to do anything else.
A voice of sanity on an insane subject. Sir I applaud you.
Uh… I have never been called a voice of sanity… or sane in any respect… before. I don’t know if pointing out that something is crazy classifies as being sane, but I appreciate the thought.
A serious side? Art? Art? Where are you, Art?
Perhaps when the Europeans who carved up Palestine and gave it to the jews (on whom they’d turned their backs in the 1930s and 40s), somebody should have thunk that there were people already living there… And that those folks might not want to be second-class citizens in their own country.
Like you said, it’s complicated. But shooting each other really is not a great solution, is it.
Everybody on the planet is living somewhere that somebody else used to live… The Jews had no homeland. Maybe the U. S. should have given them Nevada. Nice desert… legal gambling and prostitution… no native people who want to kill your entire race… sort of… mostly…
I agree that everybody used to live somewhere else. And that, historically, has caused a whole lot of disharmony in the world. Which is what is happening.
I am not anti-Israel or anti Jew or pro-palestinian. I am pro- think of the potential consequences before you act and try to mitigate them. I don’t think that was done in that region.
But it also wasn’t the U.S.’s issue. But I’m not from Nevada, so they can have it if they want it ;). Either side.
It isn’t easy to figure out what to think about the whole mess… except that the whole thing is out of hand and a little crazy.
Yes, and likely to remain so. Which is the biggest tragedy of all, because it means that more people will die.
they are stuck in a rut
Ha! until they start making trouble with California and Arizona and Idaho and Wyoming and Colorado and New Mexico.
HA!!!
Those folks in Arizona are for messin around too much….. I don’t imagine Wyoming putting up with much nonsense either. Colorado? you know, they will, huh? what?….
are you gonna eat all that??
of course
exactly… huh?
I agree Art. It is complex and so much innocent blood has been spilled that there does not seem to be any way to end it. The fact that the Palestinians have sworn to destroy Israel sure doesn’t count in their favor. But the Israelis (perhaps as a survival attitude) will destroy anything non-Israeli. I clearly remember an incident some years ago where the Hezbollah were shelling Israeli citizens from Lebanon. The Israelis, of course, chased them back further into Lebanon with artillery until the two sides sat opposite each other at maximum range lobbing shells back and forth. In between the two positions was a road where locals were scrambling to escape the carnage. One small car, which was not threatening in any manner, was trying to move away from the fighting and the Israelis targetted it and blew it completely apart – killing all inside. Which was mostly small children under 10 years old – all Canadian citizens. Mother fucking cocksucking Israelis (I’m Canadian, by the way)., At that point any empathy I may have felt for Israel disappeared. To be honest, I hope that both the Palesinians and the Israelis who have perpetuated this war with their hatred end up in Hell at judgement day for their efforts. I know that it is not all citizens on both sides but there is no way for me to sort it and there is certainly enough blame on both sides. . .
Your inability to sort it out should also apply to the incident you mentioned. And it applies to soldiers in a battle. It is easy to look at mistakes afterwards and ask why it happened. In a battle, you shoot at stuff that might be dangerous. Or be of aide to the enemy. Or just because they got in the way. I don’t think Israeli soldiers are looking for Canadian kids to kill. What would be the point of that?
I suppose you are right – the thing is that this “war” seems deliberately aimed at non-combatants – from both sides.
You can’t believe that Israel purposely targets civilians. The extremists set it up to make it look like they do for the propaganda victory. What possible good could come to Israel from purposefully killing women and children. The people descended from the few survivors of the holocaust.
Their purpose would be to turn common Palestinian opinion against the Palestinians who are actively killing Israelis. The Israelis are very sensitive about world opinion, so I’m sure they don’t plan to kill civilians, but nor do I think they put a lot of weight in planning on how many civilians would be collateral damage.
It is an unfathomable situation from my persepctive – it’s when non-Israeli, non-Palestinian innocent civilians get blown apart, I have to object.
I will even go so far as to say that civilians from other places aren’t any more important than civilians that live there. But they do try to limit civilian casualties. They use smart bombs. The give warnings before the attacks. Just like America tries to do. But shit happens in a war zone. Sometimes you even kill your own troops by mistake.
Does it bother you that Dick Cheney probably holds a similar position on the conflict?
For the record, so do I. At least Israel makes some effort to minimize the Palestinian civilian casualties, but I’m not holding my breath for Hamas making any warning about where they are aiming their next rocket.
If I agree with ‘the Dick’ now and then, I console myself with the knowledge that he, like a broken clock, is still right now and then… but not for good reasons.
Since you can’t visit the region, may I suggest going to a restaurant and investing in some falafel? That’s one thing both sides have in common: they think the food originated with them.
I love the food of that region…
I’d use the tank, too, if my family, my son, was being threatened. I’d feel bad about it, but I’d use it all the same.
I would tell him to get his kids out of the way, but if he kept throwing grenades at my kids, I would get all old testament on his ass.
Fire and brimstone?
Trumpets around Jericho?
A rock and a sling?
among other good quotes, yes.
and on the seventh day you’ll rest?
oh hell yeah I will…
Very well said and I agree with you completely. And I’m impressed that, with all those crack squirrels running loose inside your head, you could put together such a well thought out post. Kudos to you and your squirrels.
I think they might be passed out for a while…
You are going there?? Very brave. Israel and Palinstine have been fighting for the last 5 thousand years or more. I don’t know what the solution is. 😦 I hate seing those pictures on the news.
I am not going there… I mean, I would love to see the mid east… but I am waiting for peace to break out.
😦 I don’t think that will ever happen. And I meant that you are brave to take on such a huge political topic….. You know what they say about politics and religion…. And this one has both of them.
Yeah… I might piss a few people off… but I haven’t done that for a while… I have been slacking off.
Okay. Lets see. I will check this post to see what people are saying.
It hasn’t been up long enough to make people mad yet. Let’s give it a few hours. Then if people are ready to burn me at the stake, I will do an extra cute post to distract them… while I run out the back door.
LOL!
yeah… you say that now. But this post should be okay. Not like the ones I did aimed at racists… or gun nuts… or stupid people… or terrorists… or the spam joke that got me kicked off wordpress for 4 days…
Seriously you did not get kicked off??
I sure did. I wrote a short fake spam paragraph… and copied and pasted it into a whole bunch of comments on a whole bunch of blogs on the reader topic pages.
So they banned you for 4 days as punishment?
They say their ‘spam robots’ did it automatically… but it took four days to convince them that it was just a stupid joke.
Me thinks, you are pulling this bondie’s leg.
I did a few posts about it… you might find them in the search bar thing. I have also done a lot of posts about annoying changes that wordpress did that we didn’t like. I like to stir stuff up.
Have you done a post on how not to get kicked off word press?
I don’t specialize in not getting into trouble.
wow. they should find a new game. you would think that in 5,000 years someone would have won by now. Or wiped out the other.
It will never end. It is really sad.
It really is.
Well, technically, the Israelis were kicked out of the area for most of that whole 5,000 years, and then, at the end of World War Two, because of what the Nazis did to the Jews, some people thought it might be nice if they had part of their homeland back… which ironically wasn’t their homeland to begin with, they conquered it from the native people after leaving Egypt centuries ago… so they randomly changed the map of the Mideast to include Israel… while making homeless the people who already lived there, but who were not called ‘Palestinians’ yet… and then there were a bunch of wars because most of the Arabic nations wanted to wipe Israel out… and the maps kept getting changed around… and which explains why Israel might be a little defensive… so… uh… yeah…
I am impressed. Or are you making this up? I don’t understand what is going on over there, and I stand by my “jerks” statement.
That is the actual history of the place, according to the Bible, ancient writers and chroniclers, all the history books by modern historians, and so on.