"I think many Americans now wonder how bad it must have been over the years to be reduced to doing the things the Palestinians do to get back at Israel. I don't believe some races are just naturally more evil than others, so it makes me wonder what it takes to get to the point where you'd have so many of your young people willing to blow themselves to smithereens just to get back at the wrongs they feel have been done to them. Looks more like despair than evil from here. I'm sure it doesn't from where you sit, but then again I don't know how you feel. Maybe you can see where I am coming from.

There's a story in today's NY Times about the 24 Palestinians killed over the last 2 days, many innocent civilians, in response to one Israeli killed. It's been that way a long time now. That doesn't sound like a level field at all from here. Regardles of how much Israel claims it's not actually trying to target civilians, somehow their weapons are kiiling quite a few, including not a small number of children."

I, and many other Israelis (Peace Now, BTselem, the generic 'Left') understand the despair, but we just can't see how lobbing rockets at schools or blowing up cafes and buses addresses that despair, especially when we see the millions and millions in aid that flows to the people in despair, and disappears. From our perspective, it looks like a battle for the sake of a battle, just pure hatred. There is no territorial dispute anymore, so what precisely is the goal of the rockets? Why would the Gazans think this would predispose Israelis to negotiate or capitulate or even help them? All it's going to do is push what remains of the left, further to the right. As someone's grandmother would probably say, 'it's not generally a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you.' Eventually we will snap, and the result will be a lot worse than what you see now.

The civilians? The baby? We keep coming back to: if you (generic you, not you personally) set up your launchers in a courtyard full of women and children, it's *your* responsibility to move them out of harms way when you know the strike is coming. We didn't put them there, you did, deliberately. You have to do the moral calculus and deal with the consequences. You have decided they are expendable.

At the time I wrote that I was thinking specifically about stories we used to hear as kids about life in the ghetto for Jews in Europe. As I'd said, most of the things that really horrified me as a kid were ones my friend told me about his grandmother. I won't go into details but they were shocking.

Then I was remebering a story that came out in a local paper where I was living a couple years ago about life in the occupied territories, and the things I heard people around town saying about the story. It was written by a woman who'd just come back after 2 years, talking about Palestinians being kept on the bottom floors of these decrepit apt buildings with no plumbing, having shit dumped on them from above by the Jews who lived on the top floor. People I talked to were shocked. And that was when I started hearing people compare life in the territories to life in the ghetto. That was specifaclly what I was referring to.

I'm sorry I was so careless. Truly.

Thanks again for responding, and another I'm sorry if that careless slip I made offended you as well.

I like to hear from people actually living in Israel and Palestine. I have several good Palestinian friends who own a restaraunt here, and I hear from them heart-rending stories of loss and despair. It leaves me shaken every time they talk about things that really matter to them. They have family still back home and living in circumstances that are just deplorable, but they somehow manage to remain hopeful that things might change some day.

Then this...

The civilians? The baby? We keep coming back to: if you (generic you, not you personally) set up your launchers in a courtyard full of women and children, it's *your* responsibility to move them out of harms way when you know the strike is coming. We didn't put them there, you did, deliberately. You have to do the moral calculus and deal with the consequences. You have decided they are expendable.

I think this is really it. It is the wonderment from here that anybody could ever get to a point where you'd be so, I don't know, (desperate?), (evil?), that you'd be willing to let your own people get blown up just to facilitate your revenge. I'm sure for anybody on the receiving end of that kind of madness, who then has to take responsibility for being the ones to go after the attackers, knowing full well that innocent people can and will die, to assume it's evil that let's someone do that. From here it looks like a kind of desperation that I can't even begin to grasp. That's why it's becoming harder and harder for Americans to sit back and watch this happen without feeling like doing whatever it takes to get this thing moving again toward some kind of sanity.

I genuinely appreciate your response, and hope all is well for you now and in the future. Let's hope it can be that way for everybody involved.

A Majority of Israelis want to negotiate with Hamas, and a majority of Americans want an end to the Iraq war.

I hope my carelessness didn't drive you off completely. I was thinking only about some very specific comparisons. Not the Big Picture. And I find this subject more interesting than today's about the freakshow Xian wingnuts in America. I have another hour or so before I have to be outta here so I'll check back. Hopefully you will to. Sorry again.