"Israel" committed mass murder. "Israel" slaughtered these innocents. The "Israelis" are cold blooded in repressing and oppressing the Palestinian people. Let's face it "Israel" is.
The Israeli Right, and Israeli Hawks, have done a great disservice to the cause of keeping their nation safe. The Israeli Right, and Israeli Hawks, have acted stupidly and brutally and are harming their homeland not helping to secure it by embracing Netanyahuism like many in this country embraced Bushism after 911.
My friends Annot, Avi, Michael, Jacob, Sasha, Vi, Anatol, David, Sarah, Paul, Nikolai, Benjamin, Ari, and other people who are beloved to me inside of Israel do not support the hardest line that their government takes. They are also "Israel".
They did not storm any boat. Bulldoze any home. Starve any child. They aren't proud of the IDF being used to like an attack dog instead of a defensive force.
In fact, they are working hard to try and bring about change they can believe in in their home. Just because they have not succeeded, doesn't mean they aren't there trying.
They aren't the hard Right. They are Israelis who are anything but, and they love their country without becoming, or behaving like, the Israelis that a Bill Kristol or a Charles Krauthammer might long to be the whole of the Jewish people in the Holy Land.
They don't embrace thuggery and violence when confronted by social problems with no easy answer. They embrace nonviolence and doggedly pursuing peace and they are proud patriots of their home while they do it.
None of them are cheering today.
They don't support what is being done in their name.
Neither do many of their friends and family members. They were the first to explain and embrace the idea of land for peace. To take a hard line with the activities of the Settlers and arbitrary evictions from disputed areas of their homeland.
They certainly don't support collective punishment, or attacking peace activists. They are more liberal than I am, to the point where they make me seem like a conservative by comparison.
If you are mad at Benjamin Netanyahu, say his name.
If you are livid at the far Right, at the hawks, say so.
The people I love inside Israel are not them. Not those people.
They don't deserve to be tarred by a broad brush label when specific people have done a disservice to their own and their own nation out of anger and fear and stupidity.
I fear for their safety and security.
I support them, because they are good people.
They are no more Netanyahu because they have Israeli citizenship than I am Oliver North because I am an American.
They never smeared me as a Bushie during the dark days of 'aluminum tubes' and 'yellow cake from Niger'.
Their home is often unsafe, and one of the reasons its unsafe is the actions of those who claim to be their staunchest protectors and defenders.
I fear for their safety and security.
Not just from evangelical psychopaths, the crazies and nutjobs who might blow them up while they sit at a cafe drinking one of those glass bottles of Coke with the label in Hebrew I have on my alcove with a candle in it, because I do worry about them and the harm they do, but also because of the utter insanity and kneejerk Jack Bauerism of the Hawks, the Hardliners, the Settlers, and the far Rightwing.
Condemn when you are filled with outrage.
But condemn and excoriate those who are to blame.
Please keep your condemnations specific to those who deserve condemnation. It is hard to be a pacifist liberal Israeli in a time where their country is dominated by the Jewish equivalent to John Bolton and Dick Cheney.
They didn't blame me for the sins of George W. Bush.
They grieved and felt my anguish with me.
If you are mad at specific Israelis, name them. Know them.
Learn the names of those in charge. Who ordered which to do what where.
Leave "Israel" this and "Israel" that, as if everyone in the country is proud to have Netanyahu at the top, alone. It's lazy, and it tars many good people for the sins of others, and it makes a hash of trying to have the conversation you actually wish to have when you are anguished and outraged.