Well, apparently this happened while I was cheerfully canoeing on the southern portion of the Vltava, near the fairy tale scenic town of Český Krumlov. It seems strange to me that on this little ball where we all live, there are places of peace and happiness and not even any thoughts of violence, and there are others where violence is a fact of daily life.
I was pretty shocked to see it, and thought it might have been a hoax, but the article I’ve linked to was in the Jerusalem Post, and they are as pro-Israeli as anybody. So, it seems to be true. On top of the story itself, I’m a little bit shocked at the reporting. Pretty much every newspaper that covered it, covered it as the story of ‘a tweet that went viral.’ That’s bullshit journalism. The tweet is not the story. The story is the story.
The Worst of Humanity
At this point, I need to tell you a bit about my experience with Israel. My first trip was in ’73, when I was 19. I was a volunteer on a kibbutz when the Yom Kippur war began. On my next trip there, I actually took up citizenship (I am half Jewish. No waiting.), learned a bit of Hebrew, and served in the IDF from ’77 to ’79. I now regard this as not one of my most brilliant life decisions.
The Israelis who were up there on the hillside, sitting in their lawnchairs and eating popcorn while they watched the bombs drop on Gaza, did not look terrified. That’s because when Hamas fires rockets into southern Israel, there is about a 90% chance that it will land in the sand, somewhere not at all close to anybody’s house. Out of all the rockets Hamas has launched into Israel over the past few weeks, precisely 0 have killed anybody. When the Israelis fire a rocket into Gaza, it can’t help but hit something. People are packed in there like tram passengers at rush hour. Israeli rockets have killed over 100 Palestinians in the same period of time, about 30 of them children. Children. People are eating popcorn and laughing about children dying.
Jewish people. The race that produced Albert Einstein, Barbara Streisand, the Marx Brothers, Marc Chagall, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and oh, so many more who have made wonderful contributions to humanity, has also produced horrible cretins who laugh while children die. Jews may not be any worse than other people but this incident proves, quite dramatically, that we aren’t any better.
Not all Israelis are war mongers. Actually, nearly 50% are fairly progressive types with good human values. They haven’t held political power for decades, and people outside of Israel have more or less forgotten that they exist, but they are there.
The people who attended the ‘Sderot Cinema’ do not represent all Israelis. They most certainly do not represent all Jewish people.
www.gurukalehuru.com 