The Evil that Men do.

It occurred to me that some grudges just don't disappear with time. Some remain like a bad smell across centuries. Take the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Israelites seem to think it their birth right to kick Arabs around senseless. Or at least stories in the old testament reflect this attitude. Someone should tell them plainly that it's not decent.

Everybody knows about the holoucast. It's written all over history books. And we all teared when Roberto Benigni's character in It's a Beautiful Life got excecuted at machine gun point. Other holoucast movies to recieve widespread acclaim include The Pianist and Schindler's List. I'm not saying that the holoucast was justified. Neither am I under the impression that the Arabs are totally without blame. But are we equally well-informed of Israelite massacare of their semitic cousins?

To provide a comprehensive list of such occurrences throughout history would be quite a task. I shall therefore here only highlight the more spectacular ones. According to Biblical accounts, this Jewish lad called Shamgar killed 600 Philistines (ancestors of the Palestinians) with an ox goad. An ox goad, by the way, is a narrow wooden stick used by sheperds to flog their herd into formation while they graze on the grass. Now imagine that! Killing 600 people with a narrow wooden stick. Even Rambo had a general purpose machine gun. This Shamgar character must have been quite a bad ass fighter.

His more illustrious counterpart Samson (of 'Samson and Delilah' fame) did one better by killing 1000 Philistines, armed only with the jaw bone of a donkey. Suddenly, the enorminity of David's feat against Goliath (a Philistine too?) pales in comparison.

It is also written in the bible that Samson went into Gaza, saw a harlot and "went into her". In what is perhapes a sick act of imitation, another Jewish lad by the name of Ariel Sharon is today sending his troops and bulldozers into Gaza and fucking the Palestinian inhabitants up, tearing down their homes and inflicting civilian casualties while at it. In an image beamed on television, an elderly Palestinian woman was seen scrounging around on all fours looking for her medicine amidst the rubble of what was her home. The war criminal Sharon's CV include the massacare of refugees, including women and children, at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982, not to mention numerous other atrocities commited while he was chief of the millitary. The Israeli military machine continues to roll on, equipped with modern state of the art jet fighters, bombs and nuclear weaponry funded by American taxpayer money. Their arsenal also include spin doctors, gazillionaire political lobbyists and media moguls like Rupert Murdoch, prolific manufacturers of hate and deception.

I visited Jerusalem a couple of years back, and while roaming the streets, I bumped into a group of young Palestinian school children who had such adorable toothy-grins and razor-sharp wit. Their brown and blue eyes were brimming with innocence and life and each of them walked with the confidence and swagger of one with the world at his command. They seemed totally oblivious to the opression and poverty imposed upon them and their families. After a charming picture session during which they repeatedly shook my hand and revelled at the sight of the blinking flash, I was told by the tour guide that these were the same kids you see on TV pelting rocks at Israeli tanks and troops. Blimey!

As I bade farewell to my new friends, their smiles seemed to tell me that every stone thrown at a juggernaut Israeli tank is a spit of defiance in the face of tyranny. So bring on your tanks, ox goads, donkey jaw bones, and what have you to the fight. These kids will bring their courage.