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I -- I --
I don't know, sometimes, whether to scream or weep. I've been raised and educated to value a certain amount of relativism, a considerable respect for the priorities and experiences of others, with which I am almost certainly (the law of averages being what it is) not familiar.
But there sure does come a point at which that sort of thinking gets absurd. (Click here for a U.S. News & World Report piece on the issue from the summer of 1997. The word "holocaust" is bolded because it was my search term.) And I'm at that point now, I think.
Mr. Damian Penny instituted a feature on his blog that he calls "The 'But'-Head Watch." The most recent to be noted was Our Fearless Leader: "Bush repeated Israel's right to defend itself but added, 'Yet, to lay the foundations of future peace, I ask Israel to halt incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas, and begin the withdrawal from those cities it has recently occupied.'"
I'm going to go ahead and "but" in, and I'm going to do it in the opposite direction: No, it's true, I don't know what it is to be a people cast out of their brothers' homes and then governed, where they settle, by a neighbor whose beliefs and practices they abhor. But the bombing of religious festivals, peaceful groups of civilians, fucking day care centers; the use of other people's holy sites as shields and bunkers; the demand that your enemy cease to exist -- it's NOT FUCKING ACCEPTABLE to me.
I don't want to hear it. I don't. I am not unsympathetic -- you find me a Palestinian who wants the suicide bombing to stop instanter and who isn't insisting on the complete annihilation of the state of Israel, and I'll have sympathy for and with that person. But sympathy for the suicide bombers themselves? Forget it. Forget it. It's not going to happen.
And sobbing and railing and casting the eyes heavenward crying "WHY? WHY?!" doesn't work, because the answer is so simple:
They hate us, and to them, that fact is more important than anything else in the world.
Why the fuck does this kind of behavior get apologists? Among my friends, for christ's sake? The occupation is illegal, I'm told, and I have to just understand where they're coming from. Well, you know what? I understand. I do. I get it. But this isn't Method acting, so understanding where they're coming from doesn't get me real far. The fact that I understand does not mean I will ever, ever, ever agree.
I'll just note, by the way, that when it was the Jews who were cast out of every country where they had come to settle, and then governed in their new homes by neighbors whose beliefs and practices were anathema to their own (and the differences between strict Judaism and strict Christianity are, as far as my admittedly limited scholarship takes me, much greater and more fundamental than the differences between strict Judaism and strict Islam), you didn't catch Jewish "activists" strapping bombs to their chests and exploding themselves in shopping centers. Or in front of churches. During the kids' First Communion.
[beats fists against cold earth, tears hair, rends garments]
But there sure does come a point at which that sort of thinking gets absurd. (Click here for a U.S. News & World Report piece on the issue from the summer of 1997. The word "holocaust" is bolded because it was my search term.) And I'm at that point now, I think.
Mr. Damian Penny instituted a feature on his blog that he calls "The 'But'-Head Watch." The most recent to be noted was Our Fearless Leader: "Bush repeated Israel's right to defend itself but added, 'Yet, to lay the foundations of future peace, I ask Israel to halt incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas, and begin the withdrawal from those cities it has recently occupied.'"
I'm going to go ahead and "but" in, and I'm going to do it in the opposite direction: No, it's true, I don't know what it is to be a people cast out of their brothers' homes and then governed, where they settle, by a neighbor whose beliefs and practices they abhor. But the bombing of religious festivals, peaceful groups of civilians, fucking day care centers; the use of other people's holy sites as shields and bunkers; the demand that your enemy cease to exist -- it's NOT FUCKING ACCEPTABLE to me.
I don't want to hear it. I don't. I am not unsympathetic -- you find me a Palestinian who wants the suicide bombing to stop instanter and who isn't insisting on the complete annihilation of the state of Israel, and I'll have sympathy for and with that person. But sympathy for the suicide bombers themselves? Forget it. Forget it. It's not going to happen.
And sobbing and railing and casting the eyes heavenward crying "WHY? WHY?!" doesn't work, because the answer is so simple:
They hate us, and to them, that fact is more important than anything else in the world.
Why the fuck does this kind of behavior get apologists? Among my friends, for christ's sake? The occupation is illegal, I'm told, and I have to just understand where they're coming from. Well, you know what? I understand. I do. I get it. But this isn't Method acting, so understanding where they're coming from doesn't get me real far. The fact that I understand does not mean I will ever, ever, ever agree.
I'll just note, by the way, that when it was the Jews who were cast out of every country where they had come to settle, and then governed in their new homes by neighbors whose beliefs and practices were anathema to their own (and the differences between strict Judaism and strict Christianity are, as far as my admittedly limited scholarship takes me, much greater and more fundamental than the differences between strict Judaism and strict Islam), you didn't catch Jewish "activists" strapping bombs to their chests and exploding themselves in shopping centers. Or in front of churches. During the kids' First Communion.
[beats fists against cold earth, tears hair, rends garments]
no subject
How can one negotiate with people whose stated aim is to push one into the sea?
Look, I voted for the guy...
But, of course, it's not really terrorism if the target happens to be Jewish. (I believe that was the prevailing sentiment that came out of the recent Islamic conference.)
Whatever.