re: #194 Killgore Trout

You have to be careful here.

While what you say is correct, the context is even more important.

The Palestinians (and most of the Arab world, for that matter) are the biggest victims of their leadership’s dysfunction.

Imagine a school that gave each student a glass of alcohol every day. Each day, beginning at tender nursery school age, the child was encouraged to drink the beverage that would come to poison his spirit, soul and mind.

Suppose that beverage was from the well aged bottle of anti Semitism.

Suppose also that once that child downed that alcoholic beverage, the teacher refilled that glass with more alcohol. This time, the flavor is religious bigotry directed at non Jews.

Imagine once that glass of alcohol was consumed by young dutiful children, the glass was immediately refilled with the beverage from the bottle of anti western and anti democratic values.

After decades those children, now adults, go home every day, turn on the television and read the newspapers and they are fed more alcohol. They get yet more when their kids come home from school, and share the same familiar poisoned ‘fire water.’ They poison they are fed gets the God’s seal of approval when fed to them from the pulpit- or so they desperately need to believe.

Of course, to keep a drunk or a junkie hooked, it takes an ever increasing amount of poison to induce the same stupor that blinds the drunk or the junkie to his own surroundings and dysfunction. The supply of poison never ends.

After years of such ‘education,’ it would be reasonable to expect that there would be a lot of alcoholics in the Arab world deliberately poisoned by the hate and ideologies of dysfunctional and corrupt leaders. Like alcoholics and substance abusers, they will tell you they ‘have it under control‘ and that they ‘can quit anytime they want.‘ In the Arab world, that translates into, “We really are civilized, it’s only the injustices of others that causes us to behave the way we do. We seek justice.” They are blind to their own dysfunction, they are blind to their own deceit and remain so by embracing hate. The message of far too many is clear:

‘Rid us of Israel,‘ they say and there will be no more need to drink.

‘It is the Jews- rid us of them and we will show you we are just like you,‘ they assure us.

‘Democracy conflicts with out values and culture,‘ they lecture us, as we try to empower them.

‘We are a proud people, too proud to take your help. We would rather wallow in the filth.’

‘If you accord our faith special status, we will have no reason to hate you or hurt you.’

These are the illogical and alcoholic-like induced arguments that emanate from much of the Arab world, every day. Like addicts everywhere, much of that Arab world are unaware of their own stumbling and off balance dysfunction. Like addicts everywhere, the whole world is to blame for their failures, never themselves. It is families suffering and imploding under the weight of the dysfunction and that ‘do not understand‘ them. It is their employer that is being unfair in demanding sobriety at work. ‘I have it under control,‘ is the mantra. Generations have been lost and families and even communities lie in ruin because of ‘I have it under control.‘

Israel is not going away and the chasm between them and the Palestinians grows daily.

As noted, it is they and not the Israelis who are the biggest victims of a dysfunctional leadership.