The war in the Middle East has never seemed that far way to me because I am tracking it all day long in my work and constantly in communication with people over there, as I have been today with my friend Allison who just did her first podcast with Politics Central, an extremely interesting interview on the state of Israeli politics with Professor Reuven Hazan. It seems their Left has just had a reality check, according to the professor. They backed pulling out of Lebanon and Gaza all their lives – and then when it finally happened, the roof fell in.
So I didn’t quite need the gunplay in Seattle this afternoon to bring things home to me. Of course such activities are normally dismissed as the work of lone crazy people. And to a great extent they are. But this particular crazy person, a Pakistani, was simply mimicking the actions of his co-religionists, which are seen elsewhere as almost routine political acts. Why not in Seattle?
I have to admit I am beginning to view the whole world as a battlefield, a far cry from my outlook during my more traditionally liberal “give peace a chance” days. So I wince when I see various rightthinking folk putting the squeeze on Israel for a cease fire, because I have no reason to believe that spells anything but disaster. Hezbollah, a collection of vastly better armed and better trained religious psychopaths with the exact same values and attitudes as the Seattle Pakistani, will simply take the opportunity to resupply and attack again. Why wouldn’t they? It’s what they are sworn to do and what they believe. God told them it’s so.
And yet Israel is expected to stand down. After all, they are the superior “developed” nation. The grown-ups. Actually the whole thing is inherently racist on two levels at once. Jews are treated anti-Semitically (differently from other nations) and the Arabs are treated as irresponsible “Wogs”, children essentially. These two are incapable of solving their own problems. Only a multi-national force will save the day.
Oh, really? We know the record of such forces. Why would they change now? Money? Whose? Perhaps theirs.
Ah, that will solve thngs.
I think I will sign this “Sleepless in Los Angeles.”
UPDATE: Gerard was closer to the scene of the crime. As Trotsky so famously said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
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