Gaza Coda

B"H

In reference to my Tisha b'Av/Gaza piece, Alisha found the blog of the woman who interviewed Avi Farhan for Al-Jazeera. Much as her questions in that interview would lead one to suspect, she expresses a generally narrow, self-righteous, ideological outlook; so the blog wouldn't be so interesting, if not for the comments! At least on today's entry, her commenters seem to cover about the widest and best balanced gamut of perspective on Israel/Palestine I think I've ever seen gathered in one place. (Thanks, Alisha!) My favorite is this eloquent entry by some woman named Miriam:

Time cannot be reversed. Neither Israelis nor Palestinians are going to disappear into the sea. The solution will involve significant compromise on both sides, and belittling the pain of compromise on either side will accomplish nothing. No suffering can ever make up for any other suffering and all suffering must be acknowledged and lamented. This week marks a big change for Israel, and even though I am suspicious of Sharon's motivations, I cannot help but feel that any change in the direction of leaving the territories provides some hope in an otherwise static state of despair. The real triumph will come when Israelis and Palestianians realize that our futures are being hijacked by zealots on both sides who would rather enact their narcissistic fantasies of "heroic" martyrdom than make concrete progress toward a workable solution. It is much, much braver to face the habits of hatred in your own heart than to commit symbolic public acts in the service of inflexible principle.

(Emphases mine.)

I was going to post my own comment there, but I don't think I would put it much better than that.

Shabbat shalom!