I’ve just been reading several articles about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The Israeli press routinly calls the Palestinians terrorists, and I suppose by a strict definition of the word, they are. They do strike terror into the hearts of their enemies. They do use hit and run tactics and suicide bombers to carry out some of their attacks. But a better term would be gorrilla fighters. Their tacts of hit and run and ambushes are very much like gorrila fighting. I think something that might bring the Palestinian side of the conflict home to more Americans would be if they thought of how British new reports would describe the 13 colonies actions during the American revolution. Certainly the Americans used much less conventional tactics to attack their British enemy who was playing by the traditional “rules” of war. But when you are outnumbered, you fight in what ever way that you can.
I believe that Israel has used up just about all of the grief that people felt toward the Holocaust victims. I think without the Holocaust, Israel would not exist today, and people somehow see the Israelis as always being the oppressed ones. Well, when helicoptors pick random targets out of a town and destroy them as an act of “retaliation” for bombings that may have come from that area of town, you really have to wonder who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor. When innocent Palestinians have to sit in their homes and fear that they will be arrested for suspicion at any moment. When they have to drive, or walk, many miles out of their way to get to work because the Isreali army will not let them use the same roads as everyone else, you begin to see that the Israelis are not the downtrodden people that they appeared to be after World War II.
I am not an Anti-Semit. I am not Pro-Palestinian. I think both sides have been caught in a conflict that should have been settled long ago if it where not for childish leaders on both sides at one time or another. However, I will admit that I do not know enough of the history on either side to say who is right and who is wrong. But when Sharon says that he desperatly wants peace from one side of his mouth, and from the other side gives orders to occupy Palestinian towns and cut them off from the outside world, I have to wonder what he really wants. You also have to wonder when the main, the only, person that can or will represent the Palestinians is held under house arrest, how can there be a free and open discussion? I also want to state that while I find the Israeli leadership dispicible, I can not help but blame at least a majority of the Israeli people themselves when given a choice so obviously oppostite in Perez.
I hope this conflict is ended soon, but I am not going to hold my breath. This conflict will continue until the leaders of both countries are able to behave like civilized human beings, and until the rest of the world stops treating the Israelis as the chosen people.
