Dear friends who sadly and bravely, must endure my many posts during conflicts in ME,
I speak for most of your passionate Jewish friends when I say, please forgive us for the next bout of posts you are about to see. As I explain to you what you are seeing as I post to Facebook, I must first describe what I see every time I turn on the computer. Every time my browser opens during times of trouble in ME, I am inundated with five to six posts or news articles about Israel, per second. Multiple posts flood my eyes about intifada, about Jews being killed, about Palestinians being killed, about world condemnation of Israel, about lack of condemnation of Palestine etc etc etc. Day in, day out I see blood and more blood and more blood.
Please understand that for over a week now, I see blood spilled of people who could be me. I could be there right now and people could be attacking me with knives.
Understand that each time, I imagine how it could be me being stabbed or worse, one of my family members currently living there who could be stabbed and that imagine that I could get the worst phone call of my life, god forbid. A phone call, that many Jewish families living in United States, have sadly received over the years.
Understand that each time I see a new event, I realize just how little I can do besides join the IDF and go and start defending Israel which sadly, may involve at some point fighting Palestinians who are used as gun fodder by their own powers to prevent political change.
I don’t believe that that is the best way, so I write posts to tell people. But like the Greek Cassandra, each time I do that I sound like a crazy person. I realize that with every new post, I only sound crazier and crazier. I do it because I see silence and it only drives the desire to get the point across.
I know that you probably, at this point just don’t give a fuck. Most people in US assume that Israel is an insane place with insane people who are fighting for insane reasons. This ignorance I try to fight and show that part of the reason why they are fighting and dying is because we are supplying them with excuses and money to fight with and over.
I try as best as I can, illuminate the issue, to give it a humanistic side but the more I do it, the more people hate the conflict, and probably hate me, besides the choir to whom I preach, the other Jews who post and annoy you double.
So please understand that I’m in a catch 22: I can do nothing and feel like a shit-head, I can go into IDF and fight poor demented people who are fooled into killing people, or I can talk about it and anger people with hopes that I am a drop in the bucket that somehow makes a difference.
I’m really sorry, you have to see my posts, I’m really sorry you have to deal with this. Trust me, I want to deal with this and make these posts far less than you because I don’t want to worry about my relatives there, I don’t want to fear for their lives and I don’t want to deal with my fears and anger and helplessness through Facebook posts.
So hopefully this will blow over soon, for my family’s, mine and your sake, and we can get back to regularly scheduled Sam programming. But for now, please forgive me and your other passionate Jewish friends and remember, be thankful you don’t have to worry about your uncles, aunts, cousins, mother or grandmother being the target of some idiot kid who was told by an idiot Imam or politician that him going out there and slashing people till he gets shot is what will get him to heaven with 72 virgins and free Palestine. Because it won’t, it will only provide you with a billion posts until they run out of people who want to die, until they raise more kids and convince them to do the same, again and again and again, ad infinitum so long as you look away, provide them with excuses and give them money. But you don’t care about those lives, of Palestinians or Israelis, so maybe the only hope could be that the only thing that might stop continuing this absurdity, is the hope that these annoying posts will annoy you so much, that you might pressure your government to stop giving Palestinian leadership what they want: money and positive reinforcement of terrorism. It’s a long shot, but it’s the only hope I have as another young Israeli and Palestinian life is lost, in this insane war in an insane place for an insane reason.
Thank you.
Every Jewish person who posts about Israel on Facebook.