Despite getting a jewish grade school education (followed by a catholic high school education, long story) I’d say it’s been the commentary here that’s really fundamentally changed the way that I view the Isreali-Palestinian conflict.

Here’s an email I just wrote to Andy Sullivan about his conflating the IRA resistance with the plight of a Jewish state in the hope that he might have a change of heart as well:

Your analogy between the IRA and Hamas trivializes the threat posed by the forces manipulating the Palestinians to such an extent that it renders the analogy meaningless, and detrimental to a full understanding of the situation.

The IRA was not recently at the nexus of a ferocious and massive war, which, though brief, attempted to exterminate their enemy. The IRA did not have the aid of several powerful nearby governments who were actively attempting to acquire nuclear capabilities. The IRA wasn’t even willing to use it’s own members as living bombs.

In short, the IRA was no existential threat to the state of England, and was treated as the tragic, though non-existential, threat that it was. The IRA was no one’s proxy, the same cannot be said of the Palestinians.

Hamas, the Palestinians, and their many allies represent an existential threat to the state of Isreal and have made modern credible attempts to carry out that genocidal vision. They continue on that mission presently and show no signs of being even momentarily deterred.

The situations couldn’t be any more different, and that is exactly why a different response is necessary.