Sick of Israel

Well, so the Rachel Corrie was seized without violence and is being towed to Ashdod. So that's somewhat of a relief, but Israel still refuses to end the blockade, and we don't know that they'll actually let all of the aid through. What's annoying and petty of them is that they kept calling the Rachel Corrie by its former name of Linda. Why be so trivial? Does it harm you to acknowledge that they named the ship after an American protester who died?

Really, it's ironic that this was an Irish ship, given the long history of civil war and "Troubles" that Northern Ireland went through. If they could resolve their differences, in spite of acts of terrorism, why can't Israel?


Here's an editorial from Israel, criticizing the use of force in the earlier raid. Even if they had the right to use force, (which I don't think they did), using that force does not actually solve any of Israel's problems.

But Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by force — not by siege, not by bombardment, not by being flattened with tank treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one.

And here's a Daily Kos post that's relatively calm and sane, though I don't know whether the comments on it won't descend into back and forth bashing. Even fucking Helen Thomas lost her senses with her recent offensive remark. Too many people lose their rational judgment on this issue, I guess. Pro-Israel people always say crap like "What if Mexico tried to attack the U.S. with rockets?" Gaza is not a separate country! It is a territory that is dependent on Israel, and there are many innocent Palestinians (who are not part of Hamas) who are being starved by Israel.

The only true analogy would be to Native American tribes who fought against the United States, once Manifest Destiny took hold. And I'm not just talking about back in the Wild West days. There was also the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee, which started out with the local tribe trying to kick out a corrupt local leader, but became a national incident, hoping that the Federal government would help them address their grievances. (This incident was recently covered in PBS's We Shall Remain series.) Many tribes still live in desperate poverty on reservations today; not everyone's living a casino-funded lifestyle. If any of these tribes, or a militant portion of them, did start launching rockets, then yeah those individuals would be punished. But would I be okay with the US starving the innocent Native Americans too? No way. That's as wrong as when the US interned all the Japanese-Americans just because of the suspicion that they would commit treasonous acts.

Anyway, yeah, I'm getting tired of this issue only causing people to scream the same old vitriol at each other. No progress is being made that I can see. So yeah, I'll probably stop posting about this soon, just as I can't think of anything non-useless to say about the horror that is the BP spill. At least in my fics, I can control what happens.