http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050825/ts_nm/mideast_dc
You know, try as hard as I might, I just can't hear anything other than "Blah, blah, blah I'm a religious-extremist country with no apparent agenda or larger designs beyond my pathetic bickering with my neighbor" coming from either the Palestinians or the Israelis. How ignorant as a COUNTRY do you have to be to carry on a 4 decades-old war over some prophesized "holy place"? Alongside the thread about that Robertson loser and his comments about Venezuela, this is yet one more indicator that religious extremism comes in all sorts of forms, far beyond the whole "evil Islamic empire" thing all these idiot talking heads and ignorant talk show hosts are spewing.
I've included a brief scenario here for you, to help distill this into an applicable example:
-Israel: "Based on circumstantial evidence and our own claims, we killed these 5 people because they were blah blah blah"
-Palestine: "Because of your militaristic policies and obviously blinding hate for us, we see no choice but to promote our own ignorant and self-absorbed agenda and direct towards you some rockets, a few suicide bombers, a couple exploding buses, etc."
-Israel: "Since obviously our religion is better than yours, we're going to retaliate in the name of our hording this here claimed holy land, and kill a few more of your people!"
-Palestine: "No, OUR religion is the better one, and obviously thereby justifies our claims to the bogarting of the 'holy land.' Now, eat bomb-laden panel truck!"
-Israel: "No, WE have claim to this land!"
-Palestine: "NO, WE DO!"
-Israel: "NO, WE DO!"
-Etc., etc.
Extrapolate out to a 40+ year time frame, and you've pretty much got the jist of the ignorance that is the Israel-Palestine fiasco. Why the U.S. is even involved with these shmucks is beyond me, but then again there's a lot of dumb stuff we seem to feel it is our place to be involved in. This being said, the following is my suggestion to the Israelis/Palistinians (whom I shall now refer to as Israelistine in the manner of notoriously conflicting celebrity "relationships" in Hollywood -- think Bennifer.)
And...... (drumroll please)
...
...
...
WHY DON'T BOTH OF YOU SHUT THE HELL UP AND TRY SHARING!? You're both obviously doing a thorough disservice to your respected propag... er
belief systems anyways, and your mutual ignorance is obviously far greater than can be overcome by some half-hearted pull-out/reoccupation operation. So, why don't you save your children a LOT of pain and frustration when they grow up, and bury the damn hatchet -- the children sure as hell seem willing to. And while you guys are ironing out your difficulties, we (the U.S.) will just take to the quiet task of sashaying our asses the hell out of there because maybe, just
maybe, it isn't as important as our government thinks to have some sort of democratic military strike-point conveniently available anywhere in the world
