The Israel Rules

The second synagogue has been bombed in Paris this week. Jewish merchants shot in Denmark. Of course, nary a peep out of the "mainstream media or cognoscenti" in europe. Or the usual suspects in the Human Rights community.  No broadminded jewish students at Berkeley castigating the offending criminals for their use of "collective punishment." A curious lack of opprobrium and outcry.  Just imagine the vitriol if similarly innocent muslims were at the receiving end, the hue and cry would be deafening.  Even a cartoon of the Almighty one having the apparent power and effect of setting these people off in a murderous rage.

Of course, there's always a double standard when jews or Israeli's are involved. Sit back and take the missiles like good lads, there. Feel free to attack jews anywhere in the world.  Why do the global intellectuals out there give muslim youth such a free pass? Fear perhaps...

I was thinking about a conversation I had in Israel many years ago.  I had promised my brother that I would go back to Kibbutz Gesher Haziv, where we both had once lived, in the event of another war.  Western Gallilee, where the Katyushas shine brightly at night.  Ended up costing me a marriage, but that's another story and good riddance. I arrived three days after the war started and spent many nights thereafter in the sealed rooms and the bomb shelter.  During the days when it was possible, I worked in the banana fields, the hardest work I have ever done. Anyway, I was your typical wide eyed liberal, thinking that I could change the world with my unique vision and all and this broad young fellow I worked with said " Don't you see, it's the sun and the earth here that make us all this way.  We are more like them now than you." As if the latitude and dirt underground had an alchemical reaction that caused one to turn into a base animal.  I think they call it the concept of terroir in winemaking.

I think that the Israelis are functioning at the same atavistic primal level as their foes. They had their nose snubbed by Hezbollah those terrible days in Lebanon and now after two years of planning, an opportunity arises to get their warrior mojo back.  Taking a page from George Bush and Don Rumsfield, they have packaged the war to their own citizens with selective media coverage into a very tidy little conquest.  But we know that with the horrendous civilian casualties that have occured, the retribution will be  swift and equally terrible.  As Thomas Friedman once said, "don't play crazy with the Arabs - they are far better at it than you are."  But Israel gets a shot of testosterone at a time of midlife crisis.  I saw it with my own eyes in the fifteen years between residing there, they had lost that macho swagger.  Israel and Palestine also get to engage in a detestable international p.r. war about who wears the title of grand victim in the obscene drama.

I agree with those that recognize that a good neighbor doesn't terrorize their neighbors with missiles on a nightly basis without a possibility of getting their nose pushed in but also lend my voice to those concerned about the disproportionality of the Israeli response.  Will it serve to fix anything in the long run?  I hope that this crisis can give way to real negotiation and an understanding on the part of the Islamic Palestinians that to continue on the path of attempting to annihilate Israel will only lead to catastrophe for all parties involved. All we savage humans.