An Israeli journalist asks--What if someone did to us what we are doing in Gaza?
Tim Howard
Rattling the Cage: A taboo question for Israelis
By LARRY DERFNER
The question we have to ask ourselves is this: If anybody treated us
like we're treating the people in Gaza, what would we do?
We don't want to go there, do we? And because we don't, we make it our
business not to see, hear or think about how, indeed, we are treating
the people inGaza.
All these shocked dignitaries, all these reports, these details, these
numbers - thousands of destroyed this and tens of thousands of destroyed
that. Rubble, sewage, malnutrition, crying babies, humanitarian crises -
who can keep up? Who cares? They did it to themselves. Where to for lunch?
IT'S NOT that we can't imagine life in Gaza. It's that we are determined
not to try to imagine. If we did, we might not stop there. Next we might
try to imagine what it would be like if our country were in the
condition in which we left Gaza. And sooner or later we might try to
imagine what we would do if we were living over here like they're living
over there.
Or not even what we would do, just what we would think - about the
people, about the country, that did that to us and that wouldn't even
allow us to begin to recover after the war was over. That blockaded our
borders and allowed in only enough supplies to keep us at subsistence
level, to prevent starvation and mass epidemics.
What would we think, what would we do, if somebody, some country, did
that to us?
A lot of people here, I'm sure, would reply angrily: So why won't the
Gazans try making peace?
But is that how we would react? Is that what Israelis would do if a
foreign army did to this country what the IDF did to that one a year
ago? If another country sent F-16s, Apache helicopters, white
phosphorous, drones, tanks and battalions into Israel, if any nation
bombed and killed over here like we bombed and killed in Gaza, then
rubbed our noses in it afterward, would we want to make peace with them?
Forget we; does anyone know a single Israeli who would?
I'M SURE a lot of people would argue: What about Sderot? Didn't the
terrorists in Gaza bomb and kill in Sderot? Let's the turn the question
around: What would the Gazans have done if another country did to them
what they did to the people in Sderot?
Fair enough. Yes, they would have hit back, too. They're not pacifists,
either, to say the least. In fact, their elected leaders are fanatical,
murderous Jew-haters sworn toIsrael 's destruction. That's extremely
important to remember, and we do. But what we don't want to remember,
what we make 100 percent sure to forget, is that we do all sorts of
hateful things toGaza that they don't do to us, and that this is the way
it's been since 1967.
Aside from choking the flow of goods to Gaza by land, we blockade their
entire coast. We don't allow ships to sail into Gaza or out. Does anyone
stop ships from coming and going at the ports of Eilat, Ashdod or Haifa?
What would Israel do if anyone tried? (Think of what Israel did two
weeks after Egypt blockaded the port of Eilat in May 1967.)
We also blockade Gaza's airspace, preventing planes from flying in or
out. Does anybody stop planes from flying in and out of Israel? Would we
stand for it if someone did?
For 37 years, between 1967 and 2005, our soldiers and settlers were the
overlords of the Gaza Strip. If foreign soldiers and settlers tried to
come in and take over Israel, what would we do?
And regarding the years of rocket attacks on the people in Sderot, I've
never been through such an ordeal, but I imagine it's hell. However,
I've also never been through the ordeal that people in Gaza have gone
through, and are still going through, yet I know - as everyone in the
world knows, except Israelis - that life in Gaza is incomparably worse
than life in Sderot ever was.
DURING THE 2008 US presidential campaign, Barack Obama visited Sderot,
saying, "If missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would
do everything in order to stop that."
Absolutely right. I wonder, though, what sort of empathetic reaction he
might have had if he'd also visited the Jabalya refugee camp that
summer. I wonder how he'd react if he visited Jabalya now.
And how would we react? If we Israelis could go to Gaza and see in
person what we've done to that place and its people, would we be capable
of empathy? If we thought of our children living in a country that was
just like postwarGaza, would we allow ourselves to think what we might do?
We can't go to Gaza, but we have to start using our imagination. We have
to dare to put ourselves in those people's place. And we have to stop
doing to them what we would never allow anyone to do to us. Otherwise,
we Israelis have no conscience, and little by little we become capable
of anything.
Not Sure
> From the Jerusalem Post,
More hysterical defending of the Muslime terrorist killers by the
idiots and dipshits on the left. Try not to get so upset that Israel
won't allow itself to be exterminated by those subhuman fucks.
Stan de SD
>
> Rattling the Cage: A taboo question for Israelis
> By LARRY DERFNER
>
> The question we have to ask ourselves is this: If anybody treated us
> like we're treating the people in Gaza, what would we do?
>
> We don't want to go there, do we? And because we don't, we make it our
> business not to see, hear or think about how, indeed, we are treating
> the people inGaza.
>
> All these shocked dignitaries, all these reports, these details, these
> numbers - thousands of destroyed this and tens of thousands of destroyed
> that. Rubble, sewage, malnutrition, crying babies, humanitarian crises -
> who can keep up? Who cares? They did it to themselves. Where to for lunch?
And that's probably the best response...
The Palestinians were given their chance for statehood when Israel
pulled out in 2005, and made many of the concessions that the Pallies
insisted were necessary for "peace". As soon as the Israelis pulled
out, the Palestinians started vandalizing and looting all the shops,
greenhouses and businesses that were formerly in Gaza, destroying any
prospect of those same people having work. The Pallies then proceeded
to elect Hamas, a known terrorist organization, to respresent them.
Hamas made a point of rounding up and executing political rivals,
started harassment and persecution of Christian Arabs, and started
using the foreign aid received from the US and the EU, NOT for
infrastructure improvements or humanitarian aid, but to start
acquiring even more weaponry. More than once, ships have been
intercepted trying to offload weapons in Gaza. Hamas then set up
mortar and rocket launchers in school buildings and hospitals, and
started shooting Qassam rockets at Israeli towns. Hamas clearly isn't
interested in "peace", only in using Gazans as cannon fodder in an
insane suicidal war designed to score points with militant Arab
nations.
Gaza's other neighbor, the Egyptians, clearly don't trust them either.
They are busy digging 15 meters down and sinking thick steel barriers,
to keep the kooks from smuggling weapons under their own border. They
have learned, along with the Jordanians, that the Palestinian
leadership would not hesitate to stir up problems in their own country
if they could gain access...
> (rest of patent nonsense from ignorant left-wing apologist for terrorism, snipped for brevity...)