Netanyahu Wants His ‘Tools’ Now, Thank You
Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant is in Washington this week to beg for weapons.
If I were concerned about decorum I might phrase that differently, but I'm not. Concerned. About anything, really, but especially not about any sort of decorum.
That's not entirely true. I'm concerned about the systematic slaughter of Gazan civilians and about the read-through of that slaughter for Israel's long-term security. Or as concerned as an over-privileged American living in a 2,400 square foot downtown l
The thing I find truly hypocritical about all this is that Israel gets money and weapons from US and at the same time export weapons for cash and favors. Not right, IMO. If they want to sell, I’m done paying for their greed and criminal behavior.
We have an ocean on each side of us, and Canada and Mexico are our friends. Israel is surrounded by enemies that want to kill every single one of them. It is hard for me to see how someone living here can pretend to know all the answers.
I know what my answer is if I’m a young father in Israel: I’m taking my family and leaving. That land isn’t “holy” (there’s no such thing as “holy” anything, that’s a fairy tale), the governing coalition’s part right-wing authoritarian and part extremist and, as you correctly pointed out, everyone wants to kill me. Why would I stay? To prove a point? About what, exactly? Nothing. Other than, again, something about my commitment to a wholly fictitious creation narrative that tells me my “tribe” is the “chosen” people. The only thing more insane than living under that delusion is dying behind it.
I’d do the same thing if I were a father in Gaza except — oops! I can’t. I can’t leave, because I’m blockaded and trapped in an open-air prison by the people who pushed my grandparents off their land seven decades ago. Those people are now bombing me indiscriminately because the people I “chose” (at gunpoint, figuratively or literally) to govern me decided to go on a cross-border murder spree back in October.
The point is: There are two groups of people in imminent peril over there. One group can freely leave. The other can’t. That seems unjust to me.