Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?

Hanging out, watching Israel pound Gaza on a Saturday afternoon.

I find that my “give a damn’s” broken on behalf of the “Palestinians.” Oh, I used to care. I was once a liberal, head full of mush. I received the same media and college indoctrination every American did. I felt sad for the poor, poor Palestinians. There they sat, “refugees” after 45 years. All they wanted was freedom, darn it! Of course, even then I was repulsed by their terrorist activity, but hadn’t I learned the lefty mantra “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”? They were using the only means open to them, right?

Then they danced. They danced, and handed out candy, and gibbered like idiots when Muslim terrorists murdered 3000 of my fellow citizens. They danced, and laughed, and celebrated an attack on a country that had helped them, given them more aid and support, than any nation on Earth. I stopped caring that day, and I never started again.

Since that day, I read, and learned, and thought. I wondered what it would be like to be an Israeli, never knowing when an untargeted terror rocket would kill me or destroy my property. I wondered what degraded mindset would allow a healthy, able-bodied person to live as a “refugee” 61 years. When Israel was established, Arab countries expelled their Jews. Israel willingly accepted them, and they made a desert with no natural resources bloom. The Arabs chose to leave Israel under the promise of other Arab nations that Israel would soon be destroyed, and when that didn’t happen, the Arab nations–rich with the wealth of the second most valuable commodity on earth– would not take in these willingly displaced Arabs, but left them to live in squalor. 

When Israel left Gaza, they left state-of-the-art greenhouses for the terrorists who’d been trying to kill them for decades. The Gazans looted and destroyed the greenhouses in days, then bitched that they were hungry. They are a looter society, unable and apparently unwilling to do anything but plan to kill people and enslave their minds with Islamic extremism. Hmm, who to support–them or the enterprising, democratic, Western society of Israel, who never initiated force against Gaza or the West Bank, but absorbed far more terror and bombing than any other Western state would be expected to? Not really a choice, and it says a lot about how degraded our own society is that so many side with the “Palestinians.”

For what it’s worth, I would give Gaza to Egypt, the West Bank to Jordan, finish the wall, and let it be known that any attack on Israel coming from Egyptian or Jordanian territory would be considered an attack from those countries, with appropriate response. This would force Egypt and Jordan to police the “Palestinians” themselves or face the consequences of the bad behavior they’ve encouraged for 61 years.

I have no hope that Israel will fight until the last Hamas is dead. We in the West don’t fight like that anymore, for victory. We fight to a point, then give our enemies a truce so they can rebuild. All I can hope is that Israel’s actions are widespread enough for them to have a little bit of a rest before the next Hamas onslaught.

Godspeed, IDF.