What would you do?

 

If someone offered you a choice between taking $1,000 or $50,000 as a gift, no strings attached, which would you select?

I imagine the $50,000.

I don't understand why people say the 1,000 people killed October 7th in Israel gave Israel the right to kill 50,000 people who do not have the right to defend themselves. Not just kill but destroy everything in their lives, starve them, destroy their hospitals.

It's amazing that according to Netanyahu they only bomb where Hamas is hiding. 

Growing up, I learned about the Holocaust. I believed Israel had a chance to build a place free from prosecution. Up until the 1967 War, I thought Israel could do no wrong. Okay, I was naive and really hadn't read much about it.

Only when I was student teaching, did I meet my first Palestinian. She talked about how her family had been displaced, the land Israel had stolen from her family, the limitations forced upon them by Israel.

Moving to Geneva in 1993, I had Palestinian neighbors. One woman taught me and other friends belly dancing followed by great meals.

I met more and more people, not just from Palestinian but also from other countries in the region, especially Egypt and Syria. I was lucky enough to have a neighbor that became a sister-of-choice and spent time with her family in Damascus seeing life through the eyes of people who lived daily with the uncertainty of the region.

In the U.S. if you are pro-Palestinian, you are considered anti-semantic and thus anti-Jewish. People forget that almost all of the people in the area are semantic people. 

Taking a country from one people to give to another is a sure way to breed hatred. I imagine that the Gaza children who survive this war, whose parents and siblings were killed, will have little mercy for Israel. Destruction breeds hatred.

The argument the land belonged to Israel historically is equally sick. Country borders move. They are artificial. I wonder what would happen if everyone in the United States that is living on Indian land was suddenly driven from their homes so Indians could have it back.

There was no way that I could be anything but horrified by the genocide of the Jews during World War II. I am also horrified by the genocide in Gaza even if the numbers are smaller. The Oct. 7th attack was terrible by a group that is fighting back against the Israeli oppression.

1,000 against 50,000 is disproportionate. 

Taking hostages inflamed Israel, understandably, but the hundreds of Arab prisoners in Israel who are held without trial and rough conditions again tips the scale on what is disproportionate.

I'm horrified about the illegal settlements, the unfair rules the Arabs lived under that make it almost impossible to have even the base things that we take for granted. 

Destroying a people does not make anyone safer. It creates more hatred.

I am horrified that if Israel does it, they get carte blanche along with weapons from the U.S. to increase their killing ability. I am horrified about how they treat the Arabs in the area, the breaking of international laws. That people fight back, is totally understandable.

When Americans talk to me about Israel having the right to defend themselves and I ask them what they know about the history, it is next to nothing. Gaza has the right to defend itself too.

I wish everyone of them would invited a Palestinian to dinner and listen to their side of the history over the last decades.

Now merely saying you are pro-Palestiniancin the States, especially if you are not a U.S. citizen can get you deported, denying the speaker's freedom of speech. If you invited Palestinians to your home, and under these current U.S. Administration you are leaving them open to  being grabbed and deported even if they did nothing but have ordinary lives. 

So $1,000 or $50,000...what will it be? Isn't it time to look at both sides? Invite a Palestinian to your home and listen to what they have to say.

P.S. I am not anti-Jewish, but I am anti the atrocities of the Israeli government.