some guy in lebanon

My father Michael very nicely linked my article “A Short Discussion on Israel and Palestine” on his blog. Thanks dad!

There were two comments to my article on his blog, and I felt, being the objectionist pain in the you-know-what that I am, that I should respond in turn, and that I should parade them here for all to see.

The two initial comments were as follows:

It is interesting to read his perspective. Thank you for sharing it.

Bill

Thanks Bill – I appreciate it. The second:

It was an interesting article. I disagree with almost of all of it. Obviously if I had a solution to the problem I would not be posting on a site anonymously because I would be too busy picking up my Nobel Peace Prize. I tend to think that most middle east powers do not want peace because the ability to point out the plight of the palestinians helps keep them in power. Hamas really doesn’t want peace if they did they would atleast try to go a short time and not fire rockets at civilians and see what happens. (I said rockets not “firecrackers” as is stated in the article). The palestinians are used and abused but not by Israel rather by the mid east countries who claim to care about them.

Well alright, “anonymous” whoever you are, I wish you would clarify what “almost” means, because you ended up saying something relatively similar to what I did. Couldn’t quite figure out where the bulk of your disagreement was… although your outrageous and disgusting claim that the Palestinians are “The palestinians (sic) are used and abused but not by Israel rather by the mid east(sic) countries who claim to care about them” is just that: Disgusting.

I also loved how the only proper noun in that sentence that was capitalized was the word “Israel.”

Although Arab regimes might use the Palestinian Problem to their advantage (as I acknowledged in my own article to a significant degree), never, not even during Black September, has an Arab country so fundamentally abused the Palestinians the way the Israelis have.  Black September was a war between Jordan and the PLO, and it resulted in many civilian deaths, so parallels can be drawn to the current conflict, but Black September and the events preceding it and following it pale in scale and/or scope  to the Israeli occupation, and systematic destruction, of the Palestinian people since 1948. By the way, for those of you who only know of Black September as the terror group that murdered Isareli athletes at the Olympics in 1972:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September_in_Jordan

In other words, it’s been a long time since the Arab regimes did anything other than use the Palestinians as a political bargaining chip. But Israel did this to the Palestinians last week:

So who’s doing the abusing?

So I responded with the following two comments – I’m not sure if I totally agree with my own highly simplistic and contrived analogy(ies), and anyone who knows me is likely to say, “Well Will we all know you believe in the children’s right to punch the father in the face if he hits them and you didn’t really make a big deal about that” but come on – I’m dealing with a certain audience here. Anyways, here’s how I replied:

it’s funny, anonymous, because i basically said the same thing you did. at the end of the day, you have to look at the palestinians as the following: you have a mother and a father. the father’s a drunk and the mother gambles. the father sits at home all day beating his children, the mother goes to the slots all day gambling away the government check. when the mother comes home and the father accuses his wife of wasting their government check at the slots, she gets around the issue by accusing her husband of beating the children.

in this part of the world, the father is israel, the mother is the arab governments and the palestinian leadership, the government check is american tax dollars, and the children are normal palestinians. there are no winners in this solution – at the end of the day, the parents are to blame for their abuse of their children and the american government is to blame for funding the whole enterprise (israel=2.5+ bil a year, add up american support for arab regimes and you’ll get something similar, plus much much more if you add iraq)

it is only a matter of moral judgment whether you want to blame the father or the mother for hurting the children more. obviously americans tend to side with dad. isarel is in the right, and screw the terrorists. the kids had it coming anyways.

at the end of the day, the mother’s family (the arabs) blame the father for smacking the kids around. what’s sad is that in the middle east scenario, the father’s family (the israeli’s and the americans) don’t blame the father, but blame the children. it is this misplaced blame that i specifically called out in my article – the refusal to empathize with the palestinian people is a fundamental incapability for most, but not all, americans and israelis – the children are ‘asking for it’ for some reason. if a father had 13 kids (1300 in gaza dead) and he killed all of them, and only 3 were thugs, we would hold the father responsible before we pointed the finger at anyone else. why can’t we apply the same basic standard to palestine? why is it always the palestinians fault? israel occupies the palestinian people – why should we celebrate their ‘right to defend themselves’ when they go out of their way to do so in a manner that fundamentally is aimed at hurting innocents? have you seen what israel’s phosphorous bombs have done to the children of gaza? and are you aware who manufactures these weapons? when the day comes when palestinian/israeli negotiations are even handed, our tax dollars and foreign policy will be far less blood-stained.

in a sense, in gaza and the west bank, israel and the palestinian authority work in congress to make palestinian lives miserable. you are correct – the arab regimes are completely in on the game – but when will we hold both mom AND dad responsible and stop blaming the children – it is the dead-beat abusive father and the absentee monetarily-incapable mother who are at fault.

wd

The thing was, it bugged the heck out of me that he/she specifically called out my use of “firecrackers” to describe Qassam rockets… when in fact that’s really all they are. So I decided I would do “anyonymous” one better and agree with him/her:

one more thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket

versus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireworks

i guarantee you that firecrackers have killed more people in the past 5 years than qassam rockets, so maybe you’re right – best i call them rockets not firecrackers. if hamas had firecrackers and not qassams, they might actually be accomplishing something.

further, if you study the technical specifications of a qassam, you’ll also find that the sophistication of the device itself, both in guidance capacity and in payload, is marginal in comparison to a modern firecracker. the same is true for the likelihood that the thing is going to kill somebody. again, this supports your argument that we should call them ‘rockets’ and not firecrackers – although, anonymous, obviously for a reason for which you had not anticipated.
at the end of the day, neither hamas nor any representative body of the palestinians are military capable of meeting the israeli military in any form of combat, “unconventional” or not. as such, the israeli response to hamas “rockets” (as you describe them) into southern israel these past few weeks is equivalent to you throwing rocks at my house and me coming out the front door and shooting your family with an anti-tank missile.

Anyways that’s what got said – thought I’d share. Thanks to my father for giving me a sounding board for my rabid pro-Palestinian beliefs – I know he opperates in a far more conservative and pro-Israeli environment than I do, and I hope I don’t get him into any sort of trouble…