I Blame Herzl

Do the right wing bigots really think that leftist assholes, such as myself, cannot distinguish between Hamas and the deserving -- overarching -- Question of Palestine? I wouldn't deign to waste time proposing an inanity such as Israel not having the right to self-determination, or to exist. Israel is the king of de facto everything, particularly of annexation, so what would be the point?

Israel is, de facto.
May Palestine eventually be, de jure.

I blame those peacenik Ottomans, those opium-toking he-went-that-a-way Turks. And the oh-so-benign-not-to-mention-secret Sykes-Picot incestuous annexations. I blame the Lame League.

I would link up with some of these right wing bigotted commentaries, but then I would have to pretend to want to debate (typical leftwing amour propre -- still better than their queer robes of purple armor).

Beware such winning and unconsidered repartee!

But really... did it not at least make you pause when a whole swiftboat class of answers presented itself in the form of one ever-manic Cynthia McKinney, Pippi Longstocking of the Closed Military Zone on the High Seas. We all start whistling and slipsliding backward at her sight, at her sound. I confess to a moment of admiration. She was actually doing something and it was consistent with her long-professed beliefs.

I gotta stop smoking that wacky tobacky. Anyway, the Israelis accidently rammed Cynthia's boat. A de facto ramming, if you will. She was, is, and always will be, an idiot -- but I've a soft spot for her now -- out there on the water, sans doute pissing herself and dissing the Jews, so reliably stupid. She comes by her anti-semitism honestly.

These are tragic times. Those of us not being bombed or doing the bombing, let's not subvert the causes of deserving peoples because we lack the mental agility to dissect the issues, that is, if we even understand them. I sure don't. I am swayed by the passions of individual Israelis and Palestinians and want to planify discrepancy. I belong in a home for the feeble-mindedly optimistic. It should be my job to wash and dress the dead, then bury them -- in accordance to the prevailing customs. Winds. Incoming missiles. Available space, and clergy.

Obviously, competing intransigeance is a waste of the world's time -- backing one or the other purely smacks.

We all know the answer lies in the two-state solution -- in which Hamas can play no role. So am I to support the occupation of Gaza in the hopes that when the bullets cease, Hamas will {*poof*} be gone?

It begs the huge question -- if not Hamas, then who else will see to the trapped 1.5 million Gazans? It has only been a few years since Israeli settlers and soldiers were withdrawn from Gaza -- is it Permanent Occupation Time again?

To claim that there is the least hope for Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza is ridiculous. The desperation of the Gazans does not resonate in his breast; Fatah would never ever be welcome if swept into power there in the wake of the Israeli war machines. One thinks of Pétain and of Gaza as the new Vichy...

More likely? Ghettos. The rising apolitical desperation of the trapped and hungry defeated Palestinians will be legitimized as an easy rallying cry for militant Islamist terrorists. Only a pawn in their game, indeed.

When the League of Nations had the brilliant idea to divide Palestine, and to screw the Palestinians by means of that ever-buggering British Rule -- the Mandatory Power that was to be provisory, transitory, and every other meaningful -ory -- the world chose not to take notice.

When we deigned to glance around, we saw Arafat in fatigues and sporting a weapon before the United Nations. It was all rather confusing.

And so we have see-sawed back and forth through the decades. The one thing that I have learned in my in-depth, spirited studies of world conflicts? There has to be someone to blame.

I blame Theodor Herzl for not having settled on Brazil.

painting by Erez Vaxman