I'm feeling a deep sadness for Israel.
I despise what Israel is doing to Lebanon. I despise how the US media is playing up their actions as necessary. (The US is the only country supporting Israel now that Blair has finally come out against the Israelis' actions.) I despise the activities of Hezbollah. But what I despise most of all is what Israel has become.
When a child is abused sexually, physically, emotionally, we all feel a deep sadness for the child. But when that child grows up and as an adult reenacts the same violence on another child, we usually feel anger and hatred and disgust. For some like me, I feel those emotions but I also feel an unexplainable sadness, a sadness that stems from our inability as humans to find each of these children, to love and support them, to counsel them, to raise them in a loving way so that the chain of violence is forever broken. The sadness churns my stomach because often one adult is capable of molesting and destroying the lives of multiple children. So for each link in the chain we ignore, we end up with perhaps a score of new links, making our jobs as fellow humans that much harder. We then have more children to counsel, house, and love in order to break the cycles of violence. There is nothing sadder to me than a child hardened by violence, incest, rape, or emotional neglect, especially when I can see the beginnings of a monster forming.
And right now I see a monster forming in Israel.
Here we have a country still feeling the abuse from Auschwitz. We have a nation of people suffering from the wrongs that were inflicted upon them. But we are seeing them turn that abuse on a new generation. Lebanon is a new nation, freshly freed from the bonds of Syrian occupation. We have a nation that only recently freed itself from Israeli occupation. We have a country struggling to cope with the few terrorists in their midst.
I'm not apologizing for Hezbollah and the actions of a few of their members. I'm saying that my heart weeps when it sees photos of Israeli girls signing missiles intended to blow up not just property but people. Does that young girl think at all about her Lebanese counterpart who may lose her parents and siblings to this bomb? Does that young girl contemplate her counterpart's death at the shrapnel blown from this bomb? The sadness I feel from that one photograph cannot be aptly described with words.
It seems that Israel is a country of people no better than the Islamic fundamentalist men who publicly rejoice in streets each time something bad happens to Israel, to the US, or to anyone in the western world. Has Israel stepped so low? Yes. They walked into a country whose Army sat by while the bombs fell on them. The press hasn't made the distinction between the Hezbollah militants who have set bombs and the Lebanese Army, which has stood silent, saying they won't act unless Israel sends in ground troops, which they did recently.
I've thought of an analogy that many Americans might understand. It's as if a Mexican gang or drug cartel decided to send a bomb over the border into San Diego and then the US retaliated by bombing Mexico City, Cabo San Lucas, and Puerto Vallarta. Israel bombed Beirut, a city where many vacationers go. They bombed the airport so that no one, not even the innocent, could escape. They bombed roads, milk factories, and apartments where Hezbollah members apparently lived next to innocent civilians. Would you appreciate being bombed because your neighbor belonged to a militia or was manufacturing drugs? Israeli (and US) logic says you should have known and condemned their actions and by living in the same building, you were "supporting" their activities.
Ah, but would we say that of the building where Ann Frank lived? That she deserved to die because she was housed next to supporters of Hitler? It's the same logic, same horrific flaws, but because Israel is (and its US supporters are) "the good guys", we fail to see that flaw. I want you to see it. I want you see at least some shred of the sadness I feel watching not one but two nations falling into the trap.
I hope the people of Israel (and those in the lone nation supporting Israel--the US) stop and think about these actions. Find the morals your religion preaches. Do not continue the hatred.
Stop the violence. Break the chain.