The Israelis are now saying that they won’t stop their assault on Gaza until peace and tranquility are achieved.
Please forgive my anti-Semitic, overly simplistic stance on this, but that is like saying you are going to keep smashing up the china shop with a baseball bat until everything is back in one piece. The Palestinians and the Israelis might have intractable differences and tribal grudges and no doubt there is a history of ugliness between them such that almost all of them have some event in their family’s past to prove that the other side is evil and intent upon destroying them. They need to get over it and start trying to figure out how to settle their differences before any more schools or hospitals or lives are destroyed.
I used to think that my country, the U.S.A., had the responsibility and the credibility to enter into the violent affairs of others in the world and help negotiate a truce, one that might lead to a lasting peace. Certainly the parties in the Palestinian mess have demonstrated that they can’t manage it themselves. Sadly, the United States no longer holds the moral high ground in these matters, and any attempt at diplomatic intervention on our part would justifiably be met with suspicion, if not outright jeers. Who knows if any nation has clean enough hands to step in and help resolve the ongoing bitterness?
I’ve heard it said that the first casualty of war is truth. That’s a nice metaphor, but there is real blood spilling in Palestine right now, and no civilized nation should sit by and allow it to go on.