Sharon Buffington wrote on 9/14: I > am an idealist in many respects. I say...why can we not all get along? > Being a Jew and losing relatives in the Holocaust I am fully aware that > there are bad people in the world. However, I am a non-violent person. > I believe in using our military to clean up cities, paint old people's > houses, and on and on...and yet...I also know we need to protect > ourselves.
You would think > people would understand that war or aggression or whatever you want to > call it...NEVER solves the problem. Did Hitler solve any problems? Do > the Muslims or Irish solve any problems? Are Israel and Palestine > solving anything? Aggression under a myriad of ideologies..religion, > ethnic cleansing...does nothing more than call for counter attack. It > is all so sad. How do we stop? By not playing 'catch' back and forth. > The one who puts down his or her mitt is really the winner. > Dear Sharon, There I was at Yom Kipour thinking about your post. Then the rabbi made a speech in which he said that at some point Moses asked G.. to show him His glory (i.e. His power). And G.. answered; "I'll show you My kindness". So there I understood where the calls to non-violence made by you and other JMDLers come from. Indeed these are highly noble ideals worthy of G.. Him(Her)self, and thus I respect you for having those. Nevertheless, things are not always what they appear to be. Remember, when Nazis took Jews away, they never told them they were going to be gased because otherwise they figured the Jews would defend themselves, having nothing to lose. They said they would be "relocated with their families". The theatrical set up was so well perfected that until the last minute the victims believed they were going to take a shower. The rumors about the extermination were simply too horrible to be believed by most Jews (some fought, but not many). There have been entire books written about this evil machinery and all its trickery so I won't elaborate. The point I'm trying to make is this: there have been a lot of Israel/Sharon/Bush/Jew bashing in the world media, especially in Europe. This has led to hundreds of antisemitic incidents in France alone (synagogues burned down, jewish school buses attacked, etc) over the past year, and most have been unreported by the official media and minimized by the French govenrment. Now those media are criticizing Israel for using violence (I call it self defense but that's another debate). My personal feeling is very simple: we Jews didn't disturb anybody for 2000 years when we had no army and no way to defend ourselves. Now that we do, we are being bashed for using it. Those same people would much prefer the old undisturbing version of docil jews quietly being led to slaughter. Please Sharon let history teach us something. Laurent
