It’s interesting to me that the people with the least in-depth knowledge and weakest powers of discernment are always the ones with the most fervent stance. It’s always that way:
Seven times in eight years, Israel has assaulted the Gaza Strip. For many in southern Israel, the massive airstrikes shattering the cities of their Palestinian neighbors in the latest attack make for a gratifying show and a nice day out for a picnic, writes Nissim Behar in France’s Liberation.
“Wait, who threw their egg sandwich in the fruit salad?” someone asks.
Less than a kilometer from the border with the Gaza strip, the Hazan family is watching the spectacle of war while enjoying a nice picnic lunch in the shade of a hundred-year-old-tree. Ezra, the father, Shoshana, the mother, and their three children, have set up here on the outskirts of Sderot, on a landscaped bluff with perfect views of the Palestinian enclave. In the distance: muffled explosions followed by giant columns of black smoke rising into the sky. In between helicopter raids, Israeli F-16 jets regularly rip apart the sky, flying toward southern Gaza to release their loads of bombs.
“I have been waiting for this operation for a long time,” says Ezra, “because those people have been making our lives miserable with their rockets. My kids are all between 7 and 12 years old, and they have never known a single week without an alert or a rush to the family shelter. For them, sirens are almost part of the landscape. That’s no way to live. Sometimes the alerts are so frequent that the youngest one pees the bed and gets eczema. Do you think the people in Gaza are the only ones suffering here? You’d be wrong; you have no idea how many people in the towns and villages surrounding Gaza are on anxiety medications or in therapy. If you were a pharmacist or psychologist around here, you’d be rich!”
During the conversation, Ezra’s children fight over the family’s pair of binoculars to view the explosions. At each strike by the Israeli warplanes, the oldest cuts loose a “Wow!” or a “Boul!” (‘Right on target!’ in Hebrew).
“Of course, what is going on over there is sad for the Palestinians, since there are undoubtedly plenty of fine people there,” says Shoshana. “But oh well, they voted for Hamas, right? So they have to pay the price!” Adding that she “doesn’t get involved in politics,” she goes back to making sandwiches.
Maybe if you didn’t build on someone else’s land, destroy their livelihood and push them into a ghetto, you wouldn’t have those stressful problems? But to figure that out would require “getting involved in politics” and you can’t be bothered.
Gaza is the largest open air prison or ghetto in the world. The Zionist racists like Ezra control all the border crossings, the entire ocean shoreline and the air space above Gaza. The Zionist warmongers like Ezra’s wife Shoshana see to it that the number of daily calories allowed the Palestinians each day is strictly limited. The Nazis called it a”subsistence level diet.” But these right wing Israeli death merchants are supported by our Congress, AIPAC and a large group of American citizens. So whose fault is all of this terrorism anyway? “Might makes right,” the neo-cons like Clinton and Obama tell us.