Some days you're the windshield, some days you're the fly. Sometimes the good old USA looks like the wellspring and fountain, or at least the respository of everything good -- generosity, justice, democracy, meritocracy, liberty, equality, the rule of law, boundless opportunity, the goldineh medina, where anyone can become a millionaire and any kid could be the president. Other times it looks like the late Roman empire--lazy, corrupt, greedy, arrogant, stubborn, selfish, sinking in a kind of moral quicksand.We have hitched our wagon and pledged our loyalty to Israel, for many reasons. Here are a few: (1) we recognize that our deepest cultural roots are in the Old Testament, and the stories about Moses and exodus and the land of Canaan and the covenants are a very profound piece of how we have defined ourselves, historically. (2) Israel was founded in 1948 following the Holocaust; how could we say no? (Just to inject a little perspective: six million Jews died in the Holocaust. At THIS time, over fifty years later, there are only approximately 14 million Jews in the world, according to the NYTimes.) (3) Israel is a democracy; it struggles to uphold and stand for all the western political and social values that we cherish, unlike any other middle eastern country. No one in Israel has ever been stoned for adultery, or lost a hand for theft, nor even had a harem; no one has handed absolute political power on to a son, at least not in modern history. (4) Millions of politically active and engaged and visibly participating, patriotic Americans have relatives in Israel--myself included.
The situation that the Palestinians are in is painful and terrible, and it is not all their fault. Neither they nor the Israelis seems to be able or willing to stop hating and fighting each other.
Until or unless there is some resolution of the problems in Israel, it is very hard for me to see how we will ever see peace. I am sorry I can't spend as much time as I'd like participating in this gabfest, but I thought i'd toss in my 2 denarii's worth. Well, this may not be worth a full 2 denarii, which I think was roughly a day's wages for an ancient Roman.