Letters to the Editor
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"I don't care about the Palestinians."
You hit upon another very important point. Peoples, nations, countries, religions are not like a person, they are not 1 being with 1 mind. I think one the big problems with states is that the leaders of states who make the decisions rarely pay the price for their decisions. In fact, they are usually protected by immunity. Just look at Donald Rumsfeld.
So, for example, Khameni decides to start a war, and who will pay the price with their lives? Iranian soldiers and civilians, not Khameni. It's the alienation of responsibility from the decisonmaker.
So, it seems just as unfair to make individual Palestinians pay the price for the decisions of their leaders. You could say that the leaders are democratically elected, but then what about those people who didn't vote for Arafat or Hamas? Should they pay too?
It is even more unfair to make individual Palestinians pay the price for the decisions of their ancestors and their leaders, as David Sugarman seems to want to do .
Lastly, even apart from the inherent unfairness, what then, david sugarman? You don't care about Palestinians, so _________ ?
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Ramble (donning the flame suit)
I had compassion for the father, for the kids playing soccer. And then I read the letters in response, and my compassion has drained away.
The letters following this article are the best argument I've ever seen for the rapid development of alternative energy sources so the U.S. can get its unwelcome nose out of the Middle East, and let them do to each other what they will. Israeli, Palestinian, Shia, Sunni--let them blow each other to smithereens. I'm all out of patience with every single one of them. I'm out of patience for the suffering of others being used as a reason to kill more people, to create more suffering. At least a child exploited for a fundraiser for a children's hospital is exploited with the goal of reducing suffering; both sides, both Israeli and Palestinians exploit the suffering of their people to kill.
If it were possible, I'd separate the people on both sides into two categories: those who want to live in peace, and those who want to fight for Their Cause. Those who wanted to fight would be sent to some isolated, walled off place where they could kill each other for all eternity, leaving the rest to get on with life.
And please, don't start whining like six-year-olds over who started what, who hit whom harder, who disobeyed which rules. If only there were a way to turn the car around and go back home.
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OK, Fine
You and RealName may have been lightly persecuted in your lifetimes, and your people have certainly been harshly persecuted over the last 2000 years-- what the hell does that have to do with me? How is it righteous or justifiable that you can dump all of your baggage about persecution and anti-semitism onto anyone who says anything negative or even neutral about Israel, AIPAC, or anything to do with Jews or Jewishness? That is where your credibility in debate crumbles, when in fact you (if not RN) have some really insightful things to say. You would do well to leave your baggage where it belongs. And again, I have NEVER said, explicitly or implicitly, that I would like the Jews to 'roll over and die'.
As for your 'revelation'- what can I say, that it does not already broadcast to those reading it?
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Intelligent Explanation
Press reports gave his age as 16, and conflated his death with the earlier casualties on the same field, but though he was tall, lean and athletic, Nahid was actually only 12 when he died.
RealName, easily missed in the article, the child lived to be twelve, though reports placed his age at sixteen, as the quote from the article shows. Either way, too young to die in a soccer game.
I understand that Salon intentionally politicizes this and barely 2 or 3 days goes by any more without a pity the poor poor Palestinians article as if we had to all take our own pulses to measure our liberal street cred.
RealName, I do not see the death of this child as a greater tragedy than the death of any other child, Isreali, African, Palestinian or American. Also, I need no liberal street cred as I am not a liberal, unless you mean it in the true sense of the word as opposed to the Limbaugh-Fox spun version of the word.
Of course, it is easy to throw labels around. I have been guilty of that, too.
Also, I did not feel that the article politicized the situation. It was we LW's that did (and do) that.
The reason that children are killing and being killed is because our generation has failed to teach them anything useful or to provide any worthwhile lives for them. As long as we keep saying "There's nothing we can do" or "It's not my fault", or even "They deserve it", then this stupidity keeps going on.
But unlike pilar608 , I do care, even from the safety of North Carolina, I just can't help it. And caring about the death of a twelve year old Palestinian does not equate to wanting Jews to lie as david sugarman suggests. And how would Mr. Sugarman feel if the U.S. decided to relocate about 8 million Mexicans into his home, neighborhood, town city? Not good I suppose.
My neighbor moved here after his home was destroyed by Rita. I have not heard him whine about it; on the contrary, he seems to busy rebuilding to have time for self pity. NONETHELESS, I cannot allow my sympathy to die just because there is so much demand for it. I work here at home to make lives better where I can. If Hamas and Fatah did the same thing, if they spent money on infrastructure instead of rockets and bombs, if they tried the techniques of Mandela, Ghandi and MLK, they would already have succeeded in being the benevolent organization they claim to be.
There are a lot of people interested in maintaining the current situation and even escalating it. Very few of those people are ordinary citizens. As the article illustrates, a few nutters with rockets create hell wherever they go; the ordinary people want jobs, shelter, dinner and education. The Israelis would rather spend money on these same things than to spend it on tanks, planes and fencing. So why does each side keep it at? Who benefits from it? I do not understand.
So my oldest son, 21, is in Iraq fighting with the 82nd, but only Halliburton benefits. Everyone else suffers. Halliburton, Fatah, Hamas, the IRA, the FARC...what are we doing that brings such groups into being?
I wanted to write something intelligent to explain it all, but nothing intelligent could explain any of it.