My Israeli Pal


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Posted by panch from pool0369.cvx24-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.211.114) on Saturday, June 22, 2002 at 9:36AM :

He's a master woodworker, a generous and helpful fellow....married with three sons. Years ago he was a rocking and rolling student at UC Berkeley...back during the Vietnam War days...lived in a cooperative, smoked enough dope to choke a horse...travelled around Mexico...been to New Guinea and other places.

Now he's settled down, nice family...house...owns his own business and supports Israel...of course. Why wouldn't he? Which of us Assyrians wouldn't excuse our country anything if it was fighting for its life OR for more land.

We eat lunch together often with another Jew pal of mine. They get a little uncomfortable when I lambast Christianity...as if an ancient memory warns them to be guarded, to say nothing...it could be a trap. Recently though we were able to discuss it openly...the hypocrasy and the incredible pain and damage this notion that Jews killed Christ has caused them...which even if they had...hardly deserved the amount of cruelty they have been subjected to for centuries...right up until the Nazi Christian Holocaust...(and they say Arabs have been fighting since I don't know when).

One friend is a little more critical of Israel...at least he says the violence will not end anything. My woodworker pal believes violence is the only way left to Israel...that if they just went all out they could end the violence...violence by the Palestinians...who are also fighting for the same land...who have also lived in camps, who have also been killed routinely with no one intervening.

It's pointless to argue the point...to say it would be the first time in history that violence worked...without destroying the side that "wins" because it is the more vicious. But what's he supposed to feel?

These are his people getting blown to bits...he's been there a few times...he feels a connection to the land...as which of us wouldn't if it were our country? Though of course we have several Christian countries to choose from and they haven't a single one besides that one tiny sliver of land.

It became awkward to discuss it any longer...didn't want to fight about it. He doesn't seem so certain any longer...this killing of children on either side wears everyone down. I guess that's the only hope.

How do you get to these places when it wasn't where you wanted to go?

-- panch
-- signature .



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