Israel is starting a major military assault into Gaza right now. Air strikes. This is in retaliation, at least so far, to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Palestinians a couple of days ago.
Israel has been rattling the sabers for a few days. Their message to the Palestinians was pretty clear: Give us back our guy, or we’ll destroy your cities. Pure Middle-East punk attitude, except Israel can back it up, has backed it up in the past and will back it up in the future.
I’m not going to solve the Israel-Palestine thing, except to say that when Britain handed over the keys to the UN in 1947, the Brits conveniently forgot there were 3 million people already living there. Britain and the UN also forgot that Jerusalem was important to Muslims, Jews and Christians for various religious reasons. All three groups have as much right to be there as the other.
Hindus and Buddhists don’t give a green fig about Jerusalem. Shinto devotees are peeing their robes right now, laughing at us fighting over this petty stuff.
I do know that there is a commonly held rule that if you’re attacked by someone with a stick, you should fight back with a stick: That’s fair, or at least gives the appearance of vaguely fair.
Attacking Palestinians with jet fighters, missiles, helicopter gunships and long range artillery is like bringing an armed-up Abrams tank to a bar fight: Not fair. Playing to Win, sure, but it escalates things beyond all sense or sanity. It just perpetuates bullshit grievances on both sides.
I’ve never expected sense from either the Israelis or the Palestinians. Both sides are monomaniacs who won’t change the subject and can’t talk about anything else.
RoadDave 