"Blood"

(This thing started out as a comment on the "Jew Arab" post below. However like certain Stephen King novels it got out of hand.)

Well how to explain my affection for Israel.

As Bodmin sez were were sold a bill of goods at a tender age. However some of those "goods" were in fact Good.

At least to me.

All life is subjective.

My relationship with the Jewish folks around me, and my vision of what I thought Israel was came from the story of my family.

That, and the stories of my parent's Jewish friends.

I can only give you video clips from my life.

Some of you may know that Jew hate is common in the American Black community,..so is Queer hate btw.

Even Obama referred to these things when he was running for Office.

Incidentally my not going along with the party line cost me advancement when my radio station started having Black managers who put Israel haters on our air.

I publicly protested,...but that's another chapter.

See it's already complicated.

When I was little my Mom told me about the Black Jews of Harlem. In particular she told me about the day she saw a Black Rabbi walking down Lenox Avenue.

He was openly weeping, and praying for the Jews of Europe.

This was 1937 long before anyone believed anything was happening.

The image is in my soul, and will be there forever. Are you getting this,...Jews, and Israel are not "Other" to me.

It is me.

The only white children I played with were Jews. They were the kids of my Moms friends from her time in the Young Communists Movement.

These friends all supported Israel as a matter of course.

No I didn't know as a child about the lands being taken or the killings. My Moms friends if they'd heard probably didn't believe it was happening. Israel as villain back then was unthinkable.

A kind of circle was closed there with them perhaps not believing, and that Black Rabbi weeping in the street about things nobody 'yet' believed.

So from childhood on my view was those against Israel also hated Jews. It doesn't help that I'd seen first hand evidence of that from some.

Like they say on them insurance commercials,...conditions may vary in your area.

Today's progressives make a serious point that being against Israel is not Jew hate. I know everybody goes overboard to say that's the case. They even haul out Jewish Israel haters to prove it.

My radio station does this a few times a month.

Did I mention my relationship with the many Holocaust survivors I grew up with.

I didn't really want to use this card, but I got to.

Knowing these folks made it all 'seriously' real for me as a child. The world I mean. Knowing them, listening to them. Oh they didn't go on, and on, but they was an aura. A sense of things they imparted without words.

(Then folks had alot to do with what kind of person I grew up to be. ...more another time.)

Jewishness, and Israel were one, and the same thing in that world. Israel was the hope, the salvation for these people.

Remember the Holocaust was as close to us in time back then as the Clinton sex scandal is to you now.

There wasn't even enough time yet for conspiracy nuts, and Holocaust deniers to muddy the waters.

That fact that all that is so long ago now is why so many are so quick to think, and behave as they do about Israel.

For older people it's harder. It was very hard to accept that Israel was committing crimes.

For younger folks the conspiracy fans, and deniers all that Nazi stuff was almost 100 years ago culturally.

They only know that Jews are shooting Arabs for no reason. The complicated history is lost in the noise.

Subjective experience.

This is what I'm seeing, and hearing around me.

Once again conditions may vary.

Time simplifies so much. Everything becomes a cartoon. The complicated chain of events blurs, fades into static. We end up with what we have. Just another game show with live ammo. Just like all the other tribal wars out there.

This whole thread, and what happened on that ship proves it.

Good guys vs bad guys.

Choose sides, and smugly root for your team.

You want me to go into some facts about Hitler's Arab Legion?

That, and what they planned to do about them troublesome Zionist Folks in Palestine. If Rommel made it across the Suez.

The Palestinians not being completely innocent would ruin alot of peoples fun. The whole point is the innocent against the guilty. Screws stuff up when Inconvenient facts are remembered.

Not unlike the fire storm lately about the historical fact that Black African Kings, and local War Lords sold their captives to European slavers.

Poof goes complete innocence.

Innocence that generations have used as political coinage.

Frankly I'm enjoying this one. There's a creepy totalitarian streak in U.S. Black politics.

I'm always happy to see them kicked in the butt by something that won't go away.

Be great if the whole world could step back, and see the whole weave, the whole tapestry of bloodletting we call history.

I would say,.."find the innocent, find the ones with no sin, no blood on their hands,..I dare you."

This Arab Jew thing will never end.

Well it might if somebody finally makes a play to take out Israel.

If they do,...

A hundred new suns will rise in the eastern Mediterranean.

One thing I do know. Blood is addictive.

My Irish friends have shown me that. A pal once said to me.

"How can there be peace when you got guys on both sides that have wiped their best friend's brains off the wall."

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said he wanted an end to the blood. So an Israeli fanatic addicted to the endless bloodletting killed him.

Here's what stays with me from that. The killer, the guy that shot Rabin was smiling.

As he was taken to court he had a demented smile on his face. I guess you could call that the insane face of Zionism.

Just like the smile on the faces of the suicide bombers.

This has been reported by witnesses. Most recently by survivors of the Moscow suicide bombing.

Them Chechen gals was smiling.

The reasons for the murder no longer matter. The killing is an end in itself.

Blood,..hell of an addiction.