Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right

I have approximately 4,567,234 thoughts going on in my head and heart (is that even possible?) about what is going on here. Chances are, only one or two of them are actually original thoughts, but I am pooling together for the sake of clarity, as Nietzsche put it, “Out of chaos comes order.”

To all those posting the same thoughts, emotions, feelings, and vitriolic diatribes on Facebook  – WE GET IT. We cease, they fire. If the Arabs put down their weapons blah blah. If they learned to love their children more than they hate ours yada yada yada (in disbelief I have the audacity to ‘yada yada’ Golda Meir).  Human Shields. Terror tunnels. Defying Hamas with legumes and Christmas tree ornaments (you know who you are). I am with you – ok? But stop.

Live your life.

Mourn our lost soldiers.

But stop preaching to the choir. I know you won’t stop, just like I won’t stop railing on you for doing so. You have your way of coping, I have mine. I respect that. We live in a society where it is acceptable to cope in weird ways. My two-cents though? You want to defy Hamas? Just be. Do art projects because your kids enjoy them, not for any other reason. Post your normal, everyday feelings – not to sway people, but for yourself. You’re not going to win the debate.

Now, I have no doubt that the different coping mechanisms and reactions are themselves reactions to the idiotic things spewed by others, but you won’t win. Really. They are set in their ways. As I see it, there are three types of people.

Clowns to the left of me – those who do not get why we are fighting and for what we are fighting, who cling steadfastly and oh so blindly to their kumbaya virtues and tree-hugging values, those who shout to the world their desire to “free Palestine” and don’t even realize (or care) how ‘free’ Palestinians are under Hamas.

I don’t know how else to put it – but in this current conflict/war/mess/regional glitch – these are the de facto supporters of terrorism. They don’t even realize it. Or maybe they do. But what is for sure is they provide no thought provoking or intelligent input as to how to practically resolve our little Middle East tiff.

Which brings me to the ‘jokers to the right’, those who want to carpet bomb Gaza and ‘turn it into a parking lot’, and conversely but equally, those who want me and my people dead because we are Zionist Pigs (read ‘Jews’, no one really gives a s**t whether we are Zionist or not). They are all lost because they are two parts cray cray, one part… ok three parts cray cray.

So that leaves me ‘stuck in the middle with you’.  I would like to think that this is where I am.  Kind-hearted Jews and Arabs that don’t wish harm on each other, those who believe that terrorists and those who aid and abet them must pay the price, those who realize that what we are doing in Gaza is not a massacre, but a just war to defend our very right to live, while doing so with a very heavy heart (innocent civilians do NOT deserve to die even though they will and there is no avoiding it in the current context).

Does the world care that we are moral? Probably not. Does it care whether Hamas is barraging us with THOUSANDS of rockets? Doesn’t seem like it. But we have to put that aside. We just got to do our thing.

So we fight. And we cry. And we mourn. And we just go on living, because right now, it’s all we really have left.   Our little existence may be f**ked up, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. Because it is the type of f**ked up that represents all the good in this world.

Oh, and one more thing:

מי כעמך ישראל