Israel Drools
Question: So... like... when did Israel go from being the little country that could - to the little country that COULDN'T STOP BOMBING THE CRAP OUT OF THE REST OF THE MIDDLE EAST?
Answer: Pretty much right after its creation.
I mean, I've been propagandized pretty much since birth to believe in Israel and disbelieve in the Arab countries that surround it. I also remember back in elementary school the education system taking a sharp turn back to The Holocaust - as if somebody suddenly came to and realized it wasn't covered anywhere in the curriculum so our grade had to make up for all the ignorant masses of Northern Ontarians who had gone on to graduate having read only The Diary of Anne Frank. (Meanwhile, how times have changed - plucky little Anne Frank is part of a joke in Clerks 2, Kevin Smith's follow-up to Clerks, when she is confused by one clerk with Helen Keller. It's funny, too. Pretty much the only joke in Clerks 2 that IS funny - but it's worth going to see the movie just for the Anne Frank/Helen Keller joke.)
So, we got the Full Monty Holocaust. Everything from beginnning to end, including QBVII - the movie.
At about the same time as we were getting the Full Monty Holocaust, I was immersed in study of Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Abba Eban - all the characters from the '67 War. Oh how I rooted for the Israelis. I even wanted to start wearing a yamulke to show my solidarity but my Mom said they were only for boys.
Oh. Only for boys. Gee. Hm. Later, I would learn that lots of things Israeli were only for boys. Except the army, of course. Girls were more than welcome in the army. Sure, women get a fairer shake in Israel than they do in any of the surrounding Arab countries. Although, Iraq, before the Americans decided to destroy it so they could rebuild it, seemed to have lots of women out and about. ...Hm... Lebanon, too, before right now, come to think of it.
Anyway, fast forward to present day and George W. Bush and his War on Terror and Israel's subsidiary war on terror and the claims by both of being under siege, which is why the strong defence that looks suspiciously like a strong offence isn't really a strong offence - it's a strong defence. And so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc until you start to wonder if you are seeing things that aren't there. Like endless retribution and collective punishment and the complete ruination of entire societies...
Well... I never bought it coming from the good old U.S. of A. so I don't know why I ever bought it from Israel BUT Israel today looks to me a lot like the good old U.S. of A.
In any case, sad to say my little love affair with Israel is over. The last straw came the other day when I realized that while Israel was accusing Hezbollah of using citizens as human shields, it still didn't stop it from bombing them anyway. The second last straw being Israel refusing to hand over dead bodies - a standard courtesy in any civilized war. What can one figure but that it is the worst kind of mindfuck deliberately delivered to a people particularly obsessed with burial traditions - something of which the Israelis are too well aware?
And now, what is there for it but to up the ante. That's what I can't abide anymore. The brutishness of a country that was supposed to be a beacon of democracy in the middle east (and nevermind that there it is currently destroying an Arab democracy) in not acknowledging that it is upping the ante in a cycle of violence to a whole new level of sick.
Great. That's just what the world needs. A whole new level of sick.
