I admit that I probably understand very little of what is really happening in the Israel/Palestine conflict. Lately I do not want to watch the news and hear the anchors speak of how justified the Israelis are in their actions, and how they are defending their country. Even the Daily Show, so faithfully correct and appropriately funny has been offensive lately. There is nothing funny in what is happening.

I admit that is natural to want to defend your nation and people, and to act with rage and violence after an attack. My journal entry on 9/11 2001 speaks of wanting to go to war in Afghanistan and condemns my brother for not feeling the same. But that feeling passed, and became instead a rational desire for the Taliban and Osama Bin Ladin to be punished for their crimes. They day we first bombed Afghanistan, a November Sunday, I cried for the innocents being killed in our lust to hunt down a small group of very dangerous people.

Israel seems not to have gotten past their initial anger. I know that there was a change of leadership and the new Palestinian faction is much more extreme and dangerous than the last. But the way Israel is bombing the Middle East is as if we bombed all of Texas, every city and suburb and airport, to kill off the KKK. It would be effective, but morally wrong.

I am sickened by the fact that no one, not even the US, will even ask Israel to stop the bombings. We have become a world were preemptive action is military gold. We have allowed our fear to take the forms of mast unjustified attacks that kill mostly innocent terrified people. Not enemy armies.

The rallies of support in New York and the comments of Senator Hilary Clinton troubled me greatly. I understand that as a vastly persecuted people Jews are given some free passes in the world-and I’m Jewish, so I do know this for a fact-but it does not justify this massacre in the name of security. Where is Israel’s CIA or FBI to hunt own these people? It would be slower, it would take more careful attention but for the sake of any god you believe in it would save lives.

I know the terror Israelis have to go through every day is something I cannot comprehend. Suicide bombers, car bombs and crazy fundamentalist plague their existence. They were given land after WW2 that was not available to be given and now some compromise must be reached with the Palestinians or no peace will ever exist for them. But the way to go about is not this forced terror upon every around them. An eye for an eye is legal logic abandoned with the new age of compassion, understanding and treaties. Not this. Never this.

This is wrong.