Here we all sit in the comfort of our homes, typing away passionately...feverishly debating the tension in the Middle East.
I sit here and watch the screen and scream at the journalists. Children outside of my apartment window playing on the playground stare inside at the angry man screaming at Chris Matthews.
The death and destruction and the suffering and the bullshit spin of it all make me so fucking infuriated I just want to put my foot through the damn screen.
I'm pissed...and we all should be.
Most of us contributing to this site and this debate have never set foot in the Middle East. And most of us...judging from the diaries and comments I've read, do not have a firm grasp on the realities of what is going on there, and the history of the region.
I am not qualified or educated enough to give history lessons on the Middle East. When it comes to understanding a subject, I try and seek unbiased, expert opinion. And when it comes to the middle east, I always come back to one person:
Robert Fisk.
I am constantly trying to get people to read him. For those of you unfamiliar, Robert Fisk is one of Britain's most acclaimed journalists. He has spent the last 25 years in the region...much of that time spent in Lebanon.
His journalism is raw and uncut, no filter or filler.
Some excerpts from his recent article, A Gripping Diary of One Week in the Life and Death of Beirut:
Wednesday 19 July
Now that the Israelis are destroying whole apartment blocks in the Shia southern suburbs - there is a permanent umbrella of smoke over the seafront, stretching far out into the Mediterranean - tens of thousands of Shia Muslims have come to seek sanctuary in the undamaged part of Beirut, in the parks and schools and beside the sea. They walk back and forth outside my home, the women in chadors, their bearded husbands and brothers silently looking at the sea, their children playing happily around the palm trees. They speak to me with anger about Israel but choose not to discuss the depth of cynicism of the Shia Hizbollah who provoked Israel's brutality by capturing two of its soldiers. As well as the Hizbollah, the Israelis are now targeting food factories and trucks and buses - not to mention 46 bridges - and the bin men are now reluctant to pick up the rubbish skips each night for fear their innocent rubbish truck is mistaken for a missile launcher. So no rubbish collection this morning.
The local Beirut papers are filled with photographs that would never be seen in the pages of a British paper: of decapitated babies and women with no legs or arms or of old men in bits. Israel's air raids are promiscuous and - when you see the results as we now do with our own eyes - obscene. No doubt Hizbollah's equally innocent civilian victims in Israel look like this but the slaughter in Lebanon is on an infinitely more terrible scale. The Lebanese look at these pictures and see them on television - as does the rest of the Arab world - and I wonder how many of them are provoked to think of another 9/11 or 7/7 or whatever the next date will be.
I see lots of Democrats supporting Israel, and it troubles me. Supporting Israel at this stage tells me one of four things.
1. The person is ignorant of Israel's history...past actions and current war crimes included.
2. The person is in denial of the facts.
3. The person has a genuine disregard for human life, especially brown human life.
4. The person knows the facts, but turns a blind eye because they know that the U.S. has to support Israel.
I'm an anti-semite, right? Give me a break.
Fisk is called an anti-semite by many. From the article:
Thursday 20 July
A bad day for messages. Phone calls from the States to tell me I am an anti-Semite for criticising Israel. Here we go again. To call decent folk anti-Semites is soon going to make anti-Semitism respectable, I tell the callers before asking them to tell the Israeli air force to stop killing civilians. Then a fax from a Jewish friend in California to tell me that a man called Lee Kaplan - "a columnist for the Israel National News", whatever that is - has condemned me in print for developing a "high-paid speaking career among anti-Semites". Unlike Benjamin Netanyahu and many others I can think of, I never take money for lecturing - ever - but to smear the thousands of ordinary Americans who listen to me as anti-Semites is outrageous.
I am not anti-semite. I am pro-fact.
And the facts are that Israel is a terrorist state.
They have spent a majority of their occupied existence killing thousands and displacing millions.
They are slaughtering innocent civilians as we speak, and destroying and displacing an entire nation.
They are committing war crimes right now, and we are supporting them.
And that is why we are between a rock and a hard place.
Israel is so intertwined within our own country, that America has no choice but to support them at this stage.
But supporting Israel is supporting terrorism...and will also ensure that we will see many, many more 9/11's to come. For every innocent person that is slaughtered in Lebanon...there are the people left behind, with nothing to lose and nothing left but anger at Israel and the U.S.
What's the Democratic position? Democrats can't be elected by denouncing Israel. But we can't turn a blind eye to this, can we? What are we going to do?
I don't think I can be a Democrat anymore if we can simply deny the atrocities Israel is committing.
We should be a party of peace and of life. Morals and ideals, regardless of how it will look in November.
I feel a genuine disconnect from the party right now...from the country. I always have felt one but never this strong.
If things don't change, if Dems don't stand the fuck up and start screaming and denouncing this shit...I don't know what I'm going to do.
With everything going on in the world right now, and our hopeless position our policies have left us in, I'm beginning to think it is futile to even try anymore.
But at least I'm alive...angry and screaming...but alive... and safe and sound.
And so are you, so be grateful...especially since by being an American, you are the main financier of this Israeli conquest.