It’s been a very difficult day, we have gone from worry about the state of the world to once again worrying about our problems here. For a few days we could be spectators, seeing the events in Paris as events that we should be concerned with as Westerners but still it was happening there and not here. I found the events scary, only in the sense that it showed how strong the hatred could be- and in Paris it was general not aimed at anything specific in the way many Palestinians hate us. I had written my weekly column for Newsweek on an Israeli perspective to the attacks in Paris, and how at least from my perspective they are worse them the Palestinian attacks on us. I must say I am tired of all the whining about double standards, yes killing us is terrible, but we should not be surprised A) that the world gets more upset when the number 1 tourist destination gets attacked and so many get gunned down. France gets 83 million tourist a year we barely get 3 million, why are we surprised that people identify with Paris. Not to mention the attack on Paris could easily happen in any other place our attacks are centered here, with people rightly or wrongly think they have been wronged.
Today terror returned to Israel- 5 deaths, two right here in Tel Aviv, the ambulances carrying the wounded passed close to my window. Its not a distant matter. Its also terribly depressing since I see no solution. No solution for us and no solution for the world from greater terrorism. A survey was published that 11% of the citizens of Turkey have positive feelings towards ISIS. One could say- you see it’s only 11 percent, but 11 percent is over 8 million people. How does the world end this? It is has been fighting it now for 20 years in one way or another, and the sum total has been we are worse off today then we were 20 years ago. Then there is our problem. Anywhere else in the world our dispute could have been settled with a partition, but the Palestinians could not expect us here on even part of the land. Now we have a people who really really hates us. There is nothing we can really do about that. Yes maybe we could have done something different over the years but here we are, the hate us, and the mother of one of the terrorist said tonight that she is proud of her son who had done Palestine proud- how do we reach peace with people who believe that. So we cannot reach peace, we cannot pull out and we cannot live with them? What do we do? I truly do not know?
Despite all this life in Tel Aviv goes on. The streets tonight are packed like any Thursday night. Tonight near my house there was a demonstration at MacDonalds to allow the workers to organize.
No responses yet