Israelis And Palestinians

“If your mother and father are fighting, who do you want to win? No one. You just want the fighting to stop.” Unknown

As with any war, everyone is fighting and no one is listening. The state of Israel  was created by a vote in the United Nations as a safe haven for the Jewish people who suffered from a history of antisemitism followed by the most horrific trauma of the Holocaust. They were given a piece of land the size of New Jersey. From the beginning, the Israelis have been attacked by the Arabs and had to learn to fight and protect themselves. Many of the early settlers were Holocaust survivors and they were not gong to let this happen again. Israelis learned to live in a state of conflict. Every house in Israel has a bomb shelter and a plan of what to do and where to go when attacked. People seem to forget their trauma  when viewing the more recent trauma of the Palestinians. 

How do you negotiate peace with a terrorist organization that wants Israel blown off the face of the earth? How do you negotiate with a terrorist organization that uses their women and children as human shields when Israel counterattacks? The Israelis drop fliers saying they will be bombing a certain terrorist weapon site so the civilians can leave and Hamas tells them to stay. How do you  negotiate with Hamas when it says in their charter “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad”.  Israelis have always been fighting for their lives and they have learned since 1948 to fight well.

Why does Israel constantly have to defend their actions of protecting themselves to the media? Why does every Jew in the world have to defend Israel against the liberal media who loves an underdog? The BF said based on the media he would be on the side of the Palestinians if he hadn’t actually spent time in Israel with me. 

The situation is a mess and the civilian population on both sides want peace. I don’t know what will happen but it doesn’t look good for either side. I do know that if Israel is eradicated, as in World War ll, no country will take the Jews. I believe no country will take the Palestinians either if it goes the other way.

One day i turned on an Israeli TV show in the middle. It was about Palestinian and Israeli college students who lived in the same dorm. Everyone was speaking Hebrew which I don’t speak so I would not know accents. I couldn’t tell who was Israeli and who was Palestinian. They were all going through the same thing at the same time and did not seem different. They had cast people who looked so much alike. You can tell that there is a shared ancient history there.

Pray for Peace and stay safe,

JAZ