So ask yourself; exactly how many rockets, fired from Mexico, would the government of the United States tolerate before arranging a military exercise south of the Rio Grande? How many missiles, falling on the civilian population of France, would the French consider a sufficient provocation for retaliation? How about the Germans or, the Brits? It would seem that any country receiving nearly continuous incoming ordnance from a neighboring state would respond almost immediately, and forcefully. The firing of rockets across a border into civilians is a reasonably unambiguous act not to mention extremely rude. This is not mere saber-rattling. This is aggression. So can someone please explain why, after years of provocation by the Hamas government of Gaza, Israel's military response paints them as the bad guys?
Any attempt to definitively assign white and black hats to the players in this morass is futile. Both sides have back-stories and both have some reason for indignation. Trying to decide who holds the moral high ground is difficult. Using the history of the region to chose a champion will only make your hair hurt. Every entity from the Romans to the Ottomans to the Brits to the UN have had a hand in stirring this soup and everyone has only made things worse. There doesn't even seem to be a clear consensus as to what makes a person a Palestinian. Whoever they are, there appears to be about 5.5 million of them in Israel and the territories and they aren't going anywhere.
Despite the fact that the Palestinians have shown no willingness to accept the reality of the State of Israel, their cause has gained some support worldwide. (Using terror as a weapon never worked as well for the IRA. Apparently blowing up Jews is still more acceptable than blowing up Englishmen.) Playing the poor, stateless, oppressed victims, Palestinians have convinced the Western World that they have grievances. The logic is perverse but compelling. Having spent the last 50 odd years doing nothing more productive than throwing rocks and bombs at Israelis, the Palestinians demand a sovereign state from which they can, without consequence, throw rocks and bombs at Israelis. Israel, as you might imagine, sees things a little differently.
Israel already feels victimized by the court of world opinion. Against their better judgement, the Israelis established a kind-of, sort-of, semi autonomous state for the Palestinians in Gaza in 2005. (Giving up some really sweet seaside property.) Given the right to elect a government, these brite lights rejected the PLO ( who in this perverse universe were the moderates) in favor of Hamas, sworn enemies of Israel. Predictably, this worked out about as well as having the NY Yankees play all their home games in Fenway Park.
Oddly enough, Israel objects to being the target of Iranian missiles lobbed over the border from Gaza. (They also object to Iranian missiles being lobbed over the border from Lebanon by Hezbollah but that's another story.) They have asked nicely for the Palestinians to knock it off. The Palestinians have demurred. Israel, predictably cranky from 50 years of this stuff, has sent its army into Gaza to stop the madness. While no one applauds the killing of civilians, the civilians are the problem. They are the ones voting for a government that's getting them killed. They are the ones providing milk and cookies for the guys firing the missiles. How hard is this? Stop shooting at Israel and they'll go home. It's difficult to have much sympathy for people who are causing their own destruction.
As of today, Israel has agreed to a cease fire. The Palestinians have agreed. Sadly, the Palestinian idea of a cease fire is "let's stop so we can reload". This crap will never end as long as the Palestinians insist on being the surrogate aggressors for Iran. It hardly matters whether your cause is just if you have no chance of succeeding. Israel is a fact. Deal with it. Become something besides a victim. Part of the reason that the United Nations put Israel in the middle of the Eastern Mediterranean is that the property appeared vacant. You can fix this. You can decide whether yours is the culture of Omar Khayyam or Mullah Omar. Change! You can do it!
As for Western Europe, change out of your pink panties and stopped being shocked that a country, attacked without cause, would respond with force. Just ask yourself, what would you do in Israel's place...after you asked America for help?
No comments:
Post a Comment