This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

With the blessing of age comes a long memory which can or cannot be a blessing of age. I remember the Six Day War, because I had just gotten out of school for Summer. Israel and her neighbors were at loggerheads because the Palestinians had refused to negotiate twenty years before.

And so, not surprisingly, got a shitty deal. And being unhappy, they made only one non-negotiable request. All they were asking for was for Israel to cease to exist. That’s all they wanted, for all those Israelis to just pack up their bags and leave the area quietly. Does that sound a viable point of negotiation to you?

The country of Jordan also known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan was also created by the same British Mandate. And no one complains or questions it’s legitimacy. In 1948, Jordan fought a war with Israel and annexed the West Bank without a plebiscite. Nobody has clear title to nothing around here.

Hardly a single acre of ground on the face of the earth is in the possession of its rightful owner, so those arguments are void. When I lived in Minnesota, I found out the Ojibwa tribe drove the Lakota tribe half out of the state in a war of extermination. This state ain’t big enough for the both of us, so you git!

I’ve watched over 50 years of airplane hijackings and hostage takings. Blowing up aircraft on the ground or in mid-air just to make a point about something. Threatening to kill the hostages to make us all aware of the plight of the poor Palestinians. And I am sympathetic to their plight (At least, I was anyway) but I’m sick and tired of their tactics.

“We are oppressed, we’re wronged! So, we can do any fucking god-awful thing on earth we like to express our outrage. And our god will support us in our endeavors. Our supporters will cheer “Abu Akbar!” at the innocent blood on their hands. Rejoice and sing songs of praise and celebration in the streets for the massacre of the innocents.

I remember the Olympic killings, murdering athletes because they could make world headlines that way and because they’re so wronged by the world. I remember Entebbe and Lockerbie and others too with more innocent hostages and more bloodthirsty murders. Then, I remember the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was again attacked by her neighbors without warning. I remember the murder of Anwar Sadat, whose only crime was in seeking peace.

During Pearl Harbor the Japanese attacked primarily military targets. It was a dastardly and unprovoked sneak attack, but it was at least an attack against those could fight back. During the Tet offensive in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese hid in underground tunnel complexes built secretly with hand tools. They caught the US flat footed, but mainly attacked military facilities. You didn’t have to like them, but you had to respect them for their pluck and guile.

But busting down a fence and shooting down the first old ladies you see at a bus stop. Or shooting down teenagers on a dance floor at point blank range, and you want me to somehow respect you for that? You’re some kind of freedom fighter for doing that?

Let me ask you a question there, Yousef Rambo. What have you accomplished in fifty years of murdering innocent people? Have you liberated one teaspoon of earth yet? Other than a regular shellacking of Gaza and getting your own people killed in senseless, but understandable retribution, what have you accomplished?

Your Mosques proclaim glory to the murderers over their P.A. systems and you want me to respect your religion? Your beliefs and traditions as its followers are cheering for massacres of children and innocents in the streets. You say yours is a religion of Peace and so say they all. But any religion that tells its member’s okay to slaughter innocent women and kids because grandpa got a raw deal. Ain’t much of a religion in my book.

I do not see Israel with clean hands either, but in light of current events what do you expect them to do? How can anyone squeak up a defense for vile hostage takers and the murderers of unarmed women and children. Gang rapists parading with their naked victims or desecrating a women’s corpse. In light of current events, I must assume that the Israelis know better than I what must be done. No more carrot here comes the stick.

For over fifty years the West has pumped billions in aid into the West Bank and Gaza, only to find it has been misappropriated and taken under false pretenses. The West has been trying to broker an honest peace in the region. And the Palestinians have been using them.

Feeding themselves and growing fat on the sucker’s largesse. While quietly preparing for the next attack. That’s called making a chump out of your benefactor. Let their Muslim brothers feed them for a while because they love them so, even until their early death.

Hamas broke through the fence killed nearly a thousand innocents and took a hundred or more hostages. Then they ran away and hid beneath the skirts of Gazan women, hiding from the retribution sure to come, retribution they have brought down on all. Using the Mosques, hospitals, and schools to hide behind. Leaving the poor innocent man or woman on the street to pay the price. Oh, the poor Palestinian civilians. They willingly elected Hamas to rule over them.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sort of sick of it all. Over fifty years of world terrorism because someone doesn’t get their way. After this latest inhuman atrocity, I don’t care if the Palestinian ever get a sand box to call their own.

Gandhi broke the power of the British Empire but didn’t feel the need to go out and kill anyone. Martin Luther King broke the back of segregation without machine guns, terrorist attacks or killing people in a big way. There is a way to get your point across like a sane adult human being. And then, there is a way to become the world’s problem child, a tantrum plagued whiny crying colicky baby. Out to raise hell, pitch a bitch and start a bunch of shit with people uninvolved, if they can’t have their own way.

Out to justify any barbarous crime they like just because they’re dissatisfied with their geopolitical situation. The 15^th century is over and so are the 15^th century ways. After the Nazis had bombed Warsaw, Rotterdam, and London. The rules of war said, the Germans could no longer complain when it was their turn to be bombed. And so whatever retribution is delivered should be accepted without further complaint.

This is a declared war, not “I ought ah!” General Sherman said, “War is hell” and it must be, so that they never become attracted to war again. To burn the hand of international terrorism once and for all, so that they never want to go near the stove again.

As you sow so shall you reap and if you sow the wind, you shall reap the whirlwind. Over fifty years of international Palestinian terrorism and they haven’t fixed shit yet.  Time and the public sympathy for the duplicitous, ungrateful, and two-faced Palestinian cause wears thin and passes away.

“If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.” ― Niccolo Machiavelli