I want to write something very different from what I'm about to write, but every time I think of writing, I get a whole new wave of exhaustion. I feel like I knew exactly what this would be like from the moment this happened, and excepting one development, nothing so far surprised me: including today's withdrawal from the South. I'm tired of dealing with this and I'm tired of dealing with beheymehs who think their view and theirs alone is the right one and everyone who disagrees is maliciously ignorant at best and evil at worst. I'm so very tired of people who post slogans on social media: don't ever believe a political meme, they're posted by lonely people who feel the need to belong to a community more than knowing what they're talking about. I'm tired of seeing old friend after friend turn on Jews in their moment of need, I'm tired of seeing Jew after Jew turn on Arab peoples in their perpetual need. I'm tired of people getting statistics from sources that deliberately lie. I'm tired of so-called experts who gather facts to fit their theories rather than form theories to fit the facts. I'm tired of true believers of all stripes that believe so much more than they know and are willing to ditch the principals they claim to cherish just so they can score one against the other side.
To anyone who knows the first thing about this sliver from the river to the sea, they know that moments like this are just another eyeblink in the world's most sought-after real estate. The history of this gorgeous land is an endless procession of killers and killed, a monument to folly that's forever built taller: the folly of power and the folly of belief, the folly of war and the folly of peace, the folly of hope and the folly of fear. The fighting started long before we were there, it will continue long after we're gone, and all through it, God just sits in the sky and laughs. We are just another act in his ongoing play, where society after society blunders their way onto that tiny stage. In every act, the clothing and the languages change, but the script stays the same.
As to that one development which surprised me, it's this: the quickness with which the 'g-word' spread. It shouldn't have, but it did. If Israel killed even 3% of Gazans, it would be justified to call it an ethnic cleansing. You could even make an argument that since Israel destroyed so much of Gaza's north, that constitutes ethnic cleansing - it's not a great argument but it's a legitimate argument. But this is war against an organization that pledges genocide against Jews (not just Israelis) and deliberately uses its citizens as human shields, and to call the death of 1.5% a genocide while Gaza's population doubles in every generation? While no violence was pursued in the occupied West Bank except vigilante violence outside government control? While polls show that a majority of the 2.1 million Palestinian citizens inside the Israeli mainland would not trade their lsraeli citizenship for any Palestinian citizenship? While Article 7 of Hamas's own charter says: "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."? All I will say is how fucking dare you. Our survivors are still walking the streets. In the non-Russian part of Europe, 85% of Jews were killed. They could have fled Germany to Austria, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland, then Holland, then France, then Yugoslavia, then Greece, and still they would have been gassed. You may condemn Israel as much as you like, you may consider Gaza an open air prison - and you might be right, you may be horrified as I am by the likelihood that 1.5% of Gazans are dead and likely 1.5-2% permanently wounded, you may be as aghast as I was that the Israeli army came so close to using famine as a weapon of war - which may well have resulted in ethnic cleansing, you may hate Netanyahu as much as we do and think he means to establish himself as a permanent ruler of a Jewish state that permanently relegates its Arab population to unbreakable apartheid for hundreds of years, and the day may yet come when a far more religious Israel truly pursues a genocide, but to accuse THIS Israel, even Netanyahu's Israel, of genocide, is an antisemitic slur as bad as k*ke or zh*d. I will not be friends with anyone who says it in any kind of public square, and somehow, sixteen people I know have done it just on facebook, some of which, once upon a time, were fairly close friends. You will, no doubt, find Jews who give you their blessing for using the word and even praise you for it, but there is no circumstance under which I would do anything but shun. I don't know why this surprised me, but it really did, and it terrified me.
I'll probably put together some analysis later, but first, let me go to the bathroom...
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