Once again, today's news from Israel reminded me of two children in the back seat
of a car:
"Mom!! He hit me!"
"Well, he
started!"
"No, you started!" Slug. Punch.
I think it
may have been the Israelis responding to suicide bombers with tanks (though they
had been "instructed to avoid citizen casualties" Yeah, I'm sure that worked as
well as it usually does.) Or maybe it was the Palestinian at the world meeting on
terrorism who claimed that the suicide bombers weren't terrorists "because they
were driven to it by Israeli oppression". Yes, oppression always forces the
downtrodden to go about killing the civilians in the country whose government is
oppressing them. Just as Malcolm. Or Mahatma.
There are children
dying on both sides. As the immortal Stan Rogers wrote, "All causes are ashes
where children lie slain." I believe that, almost more than I believe in anything
else except freedom and knowledge. To my discredit, I can forget about war news
from Serbia, or Somalia, or Afghanistan. I'm not callous about it -- I get upset -
- but I don't always think about it for long after the news report. Israel is
different for me, though, because after six years of Hebrew school indoctrination,
Israel is "us" to me. But after 35 years of life in the US, I am (I hope)
incapable of regarding Palestinians as a whole as nonpeople. When Israel's actions
don't meet the standards of humanitarians, I feel to a lesser extent as I would if
a member of my family committed a crime -- or, maybe more accurately, as I do
every time my own country fails to live up to the principles enshrined in our own
central writings.