Another day, another response to an idiot…

I don’t doubt your sincerity or your compassion for the huddled masses you saw when you were there, but these are absolutely the “central issues”. Of course Israel doesn’t deserve a blank check any more than any other ally. What I don’t think you have a full appreciation of is the incredibly anti-semitic world we live in where the Arabs are allowed to be citizens anywhere in the world (including Israel) but the Jews have huge patches of this world where they cannot even show their faces. Where Israel has won defensive wars but then was cajoled into giving those security patches of land back while getting nothing back in return. Where a false (and non-Christian) moral equivalence is drawn between killing armed men and blowing up a bus.

You mention the regular people a lot, but they are powerless there (unlike Israel). Did you meet any leaders when you were there? Did you hear any translations from the sermons in the mosques? Of course the U.S. should work for peace, not Israel but peace (shalom) is not just the state of no one shooting, but a state of security, lawfulness and justice. Whenever I mention the crimes of the Palestinians, you mention how mad Israel has made them but is it good for a society to marinate their young in hatred like they have done? What if, after the Holocaust, Israel had poisoned their kids against Germany? Written textbooks with hatred on every page? Made tv shows with ridiculous claims about Germans even 50 years later and had Rabbi’s rail on them weekly and incite violence? Would they be the successful nation they are now, giving medicine, arts and technology to the world? I think these are the central issues. Can an independent Palestine live next to Israel in peace?