Gaza is no longer in the headlines but the killing and destruction go on. There is no comparison between the scatter shots from Gaza and the devastating bombing campaign in a densely populated area. The homemade rockets have killed three Israelis in the last year. The Palestinians have been living with the Jewish boot on their necks for generations.
The fact remains that if you drive people from their ancestral land, pen them up in refugee camps, continue to build settlements on their legally owned lands, they will hate you and fight back in any way they can. For six years I lived in the Middle East and worked and lived with Palestinians from the camps.
They are a generous, caring people - a people without a country. Israel is the most aggressive country in the region. Israel has bombed Iraq and Syria and has bombed and invaded Lebanon three times. Ariel Sharon ordered the massacre of everyone in two refugee camps full of old men, women, and children. How brave.
We give Israel $10 million a day, furnish the country with the latest and most lethal weap-onry and forgive the cost. We give Egypt $2 billion a year to play nice with Israel. Our tax dollars at work. When anyone dares to criticize Israel, he or she is called anti-Semitic and reminded of the Holocaust in newspapers, books, magazines, movies and TV to put them on a guilt trip. Do the Jews not see they are doing to the Palestinians what was done to them? Gaza has been compared to the Warsaw Ghetto. Have they no empathy? Does their god condone all this brutality?
Shan Ealey, Vallecito
