anti-Semitic<\/a> tone. That ugliness is always somewhere close to the surface, and it’s beginning to bubble up through the cracks in places.<\/p>\nSo much spin! I don’t doubt that\u00a090% of what we read and see here in the States is meant to make us hate one side or the other. But not all of it is spin. There is a historical truth that is not at all difficult to discern. There is one side in this conflict that would cheerfully commit genocide against the other. That side is not Israel.<\/p>\n
I have to go with my gut. My gut says Israel is doing what it must. I know this is an\u00a0unfashionable\u00a0position, but I’m standing by it.<\/p>\n
Update (7\/30\/14):<\/strong><\/em><\/span>\u00a0A friend asked me to clarify some of my remarks. Here’s my response:<\/p>\nDear ________,\u00a0if you monitor Israel\/Gaza chatter on Facebook or Twitter, you’ll see why I said\u00a0taking Israel’s side is unfashionable.\u00a0I meant to chide those who call\u00a0Israel an apartheid regime;\u00a0after writing my\u00a0post I posted links\u00a0to it on Facebook and Twitter, hoping some of them will see and read it.\u00a0<\/span>
I was<\/em>\u00a0initially sympathetic to the Gazan civilians, as any warm-hearted human would be. I still am. But as always happens with a new Israel\/Palestine conflict, my thoughts quickly came back to what the Palestinians would do if they had the weapons, organization, and discipline of the Israelis, and I was soon re-grounded.<\/span>
The Muslim\/Arab nations’ end goal is the elimination of Jews. They’ve said it so emphatically and often, one has to take them at their word.\u00a0I think the chattering classes on Facebook and Twitter will eventually realize their warm-heartedness is leading them to embrace\u00a0a genocidal cause, but it’s going to take a while, particularly if there’s a cease-fire and Israel goes right back to building settlements.<\/span>
One last thing: I have\u00a0Jewish friends but no Arab-American or Muslim friends.\u00a0Honesty requires me to say so, and to acknowledge my friends’\u00a0influence on my opinions.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the past two days my sympathies with regard to Israel and Palestine, which were initially with the Gazans, have started moving back in a pro-Israel direction. I keep asking myself what my country would do in similar circumstances. I hate what’s happening, but I can’t bring myself to condemn Israel. Moreover, some European pro-Palestine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2,22,9],"tags":[1613,1615,1607,1608,502,1614],"class_list":["post-15058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-personal","category-terrorism","category-war","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-propaganda","tag-spin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15058"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15072,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15058\/revisions\/15072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Over the past two days my sympathies with regard to Israel and Palestine, which were initially with the Gazans, have started moving back in a pro-Israel direction. I keep asking myself what my country would do in similar circumstances. I hate what’s happening, but I can’t bring myself to condemn Israel.<\/p>\n