This may very well get the Dog into some hot water, but he is going to venture into the I/P situation once again. Before the Dog starts let him say that he feels that there is no moral high ground for either Israel or Palestine in this situation. That might piss off many (or even most ) that read this essay, but the list of atrocities and provocations on all sides have gone on for so long as to make the idea of being morally justified on one side ridiculous. The Dog believes that there needs to be a viable Palestine and that there needs to be a viable Israel, and there must be a way for them to live in peace with each other. How that is accomplished will, of necessity, have to come from them.
But this is not what the Dog wants to write about today. There is a lot of anger in this conflict, obviously. To some here is focused small scale, e.g. the kids on either side that live in fear, that have been wounded in the fighting, killed or seen their homes damaged or destroyed in the randomness of falling munitions. That is easy to grasp, but it does not really tell the whole story.
The Dog, being a canine that works with numbers, thought that it might be useful to give some perspective on the amount of suffering and fear we are seeing on both sides. Most of us know that the recent rocket fire is disrupting the lives of 1 million Israelis (every rocket warning means going to a bomb shelter, day or night. No sleep, fear of going outside, work and home life completely interrupted) and that 1.4 million Palestinians are in the Gaza Strip war zone, with all of the fear of dying, moving, staying and being injured that being in a war zone entails. But that is still a distant land and hard to comprehend what that would be like for Americans.
In order to give you some perspective, the Dog has compared the numbers there to what it would mean in if a similar number of our population where proportional to the US population.
First the Palestinians – There are about 10 million Palestinians world wide (estimates vary as many of them are refugees and it is hard to get an exact count). This means that about 14% of their population is in the war zone right now. If that were US citizens it would be the same as 42.7 million of our fellow citizens in an active war zone. It would be equivalent to all of California, Oregon and half of Washington State being in a war zone. Let that sink in for a minute. Think about the level of anger you would be feeling.
If we just look at the Gaza Strip, the active war zone the numbers go way up, since all of the population there is in risk. Basically the population of Gaza is 1/220th of the US population. So, if we take the around 500 Gazains killed so far and multiply it by 220 we would have a proportionate number of 110,000 Americans killed. We went to war in two countries over an attack that killed 3,000 of our citizens, or 2% of the proportional size as has died in Gaza since the start of this war. As the Dog said above, he is not going to get into justification, but it is easy to see that if we were to suffer the level of loses that the Palestinians have, it would be enormously hard for anyone to call for restraint in our responses.
Now the Israelis – Their overall population is 1/43rd of the United States. So the 1 million or so people that are under random rocket attack on a more than daily basis would be equivalent to all of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware being under constant random bombardment from rockets. Think about the level of social and economic disruption this would cause. Think about the level of anger not just the citizens of those states but the entire country would have if this were the current state of affairs.
This conflict and its raising and falling levels of violence is a disaster for our species, not just those in the war zones. We can talk all we like about the causes, but the overriding reality is that for those that are in those situation it is a daily and deadly thing. Nothing can be more important than ending violence on both sides. There can be no justification for the level of fear and death that is being inflicted on each side, and there can be no solution until there is an end to violence.
The Dog is going to encourage (since that is about all he can do) the people on both sides of this issue here in the States, to stop trying to justify actions by the side you support. It does not help; it only continues the level of fear and anger on the other side that is part of the fuel that keeps this wild fire burning. We will can not make the peace work, that is the sole responsibility of the people directly involved, but we can help by saying that none who use violence in this conflict have our support. The Dog doubts that this will be a popular idea, but it is the one he is putting forward.
The floor is yours.