Brutalizing

THE MOST OBVIOUS, shocking characteristic of the Hamas attack on Iarael was the brutality of it, the sheer savage barbarity. Randomly slaughtering human beings, innocent civilians, women, children, families, butchering them like cattle. Reduced to desperate brutality by their lack of modern military technology or weaponry, Hamas undoubtedly considered its methods as well as its actions justifiable. Violent people almost always find ways to justify their violence. The same characteristic generally applies,in all honesty, with the inception, establishment, and existence of the nation of Israel. throughout its entire history, from the very beginning, to the present moment, the consistent thread is an unbroken litany of brutality, and barbaric, easily justified violence. On one of the many hundreds of television network channels available to the average cable or satellite customer who pays more than one hundred dollars per month for the privilege, there is a program called "The Young Turks". It should be recommmended for everyone, especially discerning, thoughtful, educated people, of both extant political persuasions; extreme progressive, and extreme conservative. On this "Young Turks" program, several young journalistic intellectuals, all very liberal seemingly, take turns holding forth for several minutes apiece on various topics, topics usually having to do with current world events. Most recently they were discussing, as one might have guessed, the war between Hamas and Israel. The essential point they all were making, supporting each other's claims with logic and evidence, was that the attack on Israel by Hamas was entirely unjustified, and unacceptable, but that this does not alter the basic fact that from the very moment of its inception and subsequent establishment, the Israeli nation was founded upon the misery and suffering of many other people, Palestinians namely, inevitably, all brought about by the implemetation of the Israli national existence. This suffering, from the very beginning, was the basis of Palestinian resentment of Israel as a country, and their hatred of its behavior, over time, behavior which remains in effect today. The resentment and hatred also, understandably, remain in effect. The Young Turks, evidently to substantiate and fortify their point, allowed a young very Jewish American citizen to likewise hold forth, in a rather old video recording, giving a clear historical explanation and perspective, unbiased. He mentioned the tremendous enthusiaism with which he and all oterh Jews regarded the possible establishment of a national Jewish homeland in the late nineteen forties, and how the actual event was met with pure joy, him included. It was only sometime afterward, when Israel has existed for a number of years, that he began to realize that Israel only came into existence through the misery and suffering of a good many people, and that without this suffering and unfair treatment, Israel would not have been conceivable, much less possible. His rendering of the actual historic facts, bolstered by this central theme, soon becomes irrefutable to most listeners. It is difficult to even imagine how anyone, American, Israeli, Jew, gentile, liberal, or conservative, could possibly listen to all this young man had to say, and not be convinced of the fundamental accuracy and truth of his message. His point is that the Palestinians began suffering at the hands of Israel in 1948, at the very beginning os Israel's existence, because of Israel's existence, and that the suffering has never been interrupted nor abated, and remains today as great, or even greater, than ever. Two point three million people, half of whom are children, crammed into an impoverished tiny piece of land, what is in essence an open aired prison, enforced apartheid, the prisoners leading desperate lives of poverty, deprivation, but with perfectly reasonable, but unfulfilled hopes and dreams for merely a reasonably decent standard of life. If only everybody in the world could listen to what this young man has to say.