Middle East 3

Gene Weingarten: For some reason, I get (and do not answer) a version of this question every chat. I am obviously not going to make jokes about the Mideast right now; knowing that, why why would anyone care what I think? I never even graduated from college. The only subject on which I am an expert is the uniform numbers of the 1961 New York Yankees.

However, I’ll answer this because I respect the anarchy of this chat business, and because it will allow me to, in the future, guiltlessly decline to answer the same question on the grounds that I already have.

I feel awful for both sides in the Mideast conflict, but my sympathies lean more toward the Israelis, and not for the reasons you may think. I am Jewish, but my sense of self is not wrapped up in that. My wife is not Jewish, and my children were not raised Jewish, and, as far as a religion, I consider myself mostly a practicing smartass.

I am absolutely certain that both sides can make an inarguable historical case for why they are right. On the merits, therefore, I take no position; I am way too ignorant. As a gut feeling, I favor the Israelis because Israel is, mostly, a modern secular democracy. They elect their leaders. They worry incessantly about their schools. Their politics shares the ludicrous insanity of ours. Whatever the excesses of their government, whatever the evils of occupation, I think the Israeli people are pretty much like us.

I am totally creeped out by the theology of death that the Palestinians have opportunistically embraced. I cannot shake from my head the TV images of Palestinian women ululating in glee on September 11th, and the Palestinian man who spoke almost no English, but managed to tell a British cameraman his reaction: “More!’ I do not understand a culture that encourages the mother of an 18 year old suicide bomber to beam with pride at his accomplishment. I am horrified by a political structure, in a sexually repressed society, that feeds to its youth the promise of 70 virgins in heaven so “perfect’ they do not menstruate or urinate. Creeps me out, big time.

Also, I don’t think any political movement worth anything has ever relentlessly targeted innocents; I think Gandhi and King made the same point.

So, yeah, I am biased. However, I think the fact of the suicide bombings reveals utter desperation and hopelessness that cannot be ignored. I am certain living under occupation is dehumanizing. It seems to me the only solution here is for the Israelis to vacate all occupied territories and make whatever other concessions are necessary for the entire world to conclude they lost, big time. It needs to be seen as a total capitulation. The current Israeli government will fall, which is not a bad thing. Then, if the Palestinians continue to kill innocents, they will be telling the world that their real motive all along has been the annihilation of a Jewish state — an important lesson to learn, and one that should indelibly affect world opinions. And if peace DOES occur, and last — then we will look at what these two societies have made of themselves in the next 20 years, and decide who really won.