The Sunshine Empire

Watching the ongoing coverage of the situation in Gaza today I was struck by how honestly even handed it seemed. Both on CNN and Fox, there seemed to be honest discussion of the situation that caused Israel to act and the tragedy of the civilian costs in the Gaza strip itself. In normal military incursions of this type there are thousands of refugees that flood into neighboring areas to escape harm. Yet due to the Hamas movement controlling Gaza it has been sealed off. With the exception of Christiane Amanpour badgering the spokesman for the Israeli government yesterday everything has been free of bias, yet I read a story today that claimed American Media is almost totally biased against the Palestinians. I have to say though, I have a hard time siding against Israel in this situation. It is tragic the toll of human life that being wasted in Gaza, but Israel did the same thing to southern Lebanon when Hezbollah shot off rockets. It’s not like this should have been a surprise when Hamas ripped up the cease fire and started shooting rockets at houses in Israel.

The flip side of this is why this is a problem for the United States. The center of all problems with terrorism that the United States has, all stem from the relationship with Israel and Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians. So it was no surprise when American embassies were picketed with pro-Hamas rallies today. Listen, the rockets and bombs that we sell countries don’t kill people, the people who push the button to launch the rockets and bombs do. But whether valid or not, every unpopular decision that Israel makes is automatically an American decision as well. That is the world political situation clear whether we like it or not. This means that this is a very dangerous time for Americans as well, but notice how the terror alert code thing has just fucking disappeared. In 2004 six Mexicans could walk through a bank parking lot with duffel bags on the way to the Home Depot and the whole country would be at Defcon 5 color orange. I don’t think anything will happen, but despite my feeling Israel is justified in what they are doing, they should pick an end point and get this over with. Because the longer this goes the worse it gets for us.