Al-Muhajabah has responded to my despondent post of last Thursday, in which, for the umpteenth time, I expressed doubt about the possibility of meaningful dialogue about the Arab/Israeli conflict. As usual, she has approached this subject with thoughtfulness and apparent sincerity. And as I've said before, this woman and I will never see eye-to-eye on this issue because when we look there we don't see the same picture.
She sees an impoverished palestinian population, oppressed and despised by Israel, attacked without cause by soldiers who intend to inflict mortal harm on innocent civilians. She sees suicide bombings, which she abhors, as the last resort of people who have been offered no other choice.
I, on the other hand, see an impoverished palestinian population, oppressed, misled and brutalized by their own "leaders," inculcating their children with raw, red hatred for everything Zionist, Israeli or Jewish, bent on the obliteration of the Jewish State, its population and even its memory. I see Israeli soldiers trying, against all odds, to defend their families, their friends, their homes and their country while avoiding, often at great cost to themselves, the injury of civilians. I see the dancing in the streets of Ramallah and Gaza following each palestinian terrorist attack and I see and hear the concern and regret in the eyes of my Israeli friends, family and fellow bloggers when Arab civilians are killed or injured in the course of battle.
I can't base my perceptions and opinions upon what Al-Muhajabah sees and I honestly, truly, with all of my heart and my mind and my soul, believe that she's simply wrong. I know for an absolute fact that she's wrong. Nevertheless, she's entitled to her opinon. What causes me to despair is that, as I've pointed out so many times, the many and (in my opinion) overly generous attempts by Israel and the world community to solve the palestinian "plight" at anything short of the destruction of Israel have been consistently and continuously met with derision, refusal, violence and even war. Enough, already.
Do I believe that "Israel's killing of Palestinian civilians, including children and the elderly, is justified by Palestinian terrorism?" I absolutely do not. Neither does the IDF or the Israeli people. That's why so relatively few palestinian civilians, especially women, children and elderly, have been killed. Look at the numbers. Do I condemn the killing of the innocent by both sides? Yes, I do. But I did not condemn the killing of Baruch Goldstein by those Arabs who managed to survived his murderous rampage and I do not condemn the killing of terrorists with grenades, knives, bombs and rifles before they manage to murder Israelis in cold blood.
It's not a question of who started it. It's a question of who's going to end it. And of whether it will end with two civilizations, Jewish and Arab, living side by side in the Middle East in mutual respect and dignity or with the destruction of one or both of those civilizations in a bloodbath the world will not soon forget. I don't know a single Jew or Israeli who wouldn't gladly opt for the former.
