What Is There To Say?

No full column today, just an explanation as to why I won’t write one. I’m totally dispirited.

One, by the killing of the three teenagers and, two, by the Israeli government’s (and the Jewish organizations here) ugly reaction to it. Ugly and political, designed to justify the war against Hamas that Netanyahu lusts for.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s response was perhaps the most repulsive response to an event like this that I have ever seen by any national leader of a civilized country. He vows “revenge.” Revenge? Not Even George W. Bush used that term after 9/11, pledging instead to bring the people who committed the crime to justice. FDR after Pearl Harbor? The parents after Newtown?

Meanwhile other Israeli politicians and Jewish organizations here are in their “we are one” mode which means standing together as Netanyahu blasts innocent Palestinians, and pretending that the settlement enterprise is not responsible for almost all of this. Disgusting.

There is no Israeli action I would not support against those who perpetrated the crimes, ordered it or harbored the killings–and no act of collective punishment I would support. Collective punishment is a war crime and those whose inflict it should be tried and convicted, nothing less.

Of course, that didn’t stop Begin, Sharon, Olmert and Barak. Or the terror leaders who order bombings in Israel, as in 2000-2003.

And then there are the antisemitic websites (excuse me, “anti-Zionist”) which cannot refer to the dead teenagers without calling them settlers, just as the Israeli right calls all Palestinians “terrorists.” No, they are kids. Their parents took them to the West Bank. It wasn’t their choice. As I keep saying: children have no agency. Parents, including stupid and reckless parents, make their decisions for them. Like moving to a settlement on land snatched from Palestinians. Or hiding Hamas weapons in the basement of a house they live in.

And Hamas, with whom I favor negotiating (yes, even now, especially now) which probably had nothing to do with the crime but celebrates it, which is as immoral as it is stupid.

100 years after French, Germans and Brits happily marched off to a war which ultimately (including in its inevitable sequel), killed 100 million people, the fools are doing it again. Hooray for our team. Let’s kill to stop the killing. And the children die.

I am on nobody’s side–except all people who say NO to this insanity. And those three dead teenagers, and their counterparts on “the other side.” All the same. All kids. All innocent.