Israel; Keep Your Pimp Hand Strong

A little while back I went home for lunch from work, which is rare for me, and was rewarded with some disturbing news. My fiancé had gone and done something that I thought was not only disrespectful to me but also was just a poor life decision. The details are not important, only that I was really angry, such to the point where as I was driving back to work I seriously contemplated staying on the interstate and not going back to work or my home. At the time her actions made me feel undermined, powerless and frustrated to the point that I did not know what to do next because all of the choices were not good ones.

Obviously I calmed myself down enough to go at least go back to work and decided to deal with the situation when the day was done. However, as drug addled and uneducated as the kids in my substance abuse rehabilitation program are, they are infused at times with a near divine wisdom and uncanny empathy when they are not completely focused on themselves. After a 10-minute group that simply went nowhere because my head was at home yelling at the love of my life or on the road to nowhere in particular so long as it was away from her, the kids finally asked why I looked pissed off. Since I clearly couldn’t hide my emotions I used this situation, as a model for dealing with situations that you cannot control and referred back to the Serenity Prayer.

Now my kids were more interested in the finer points of my home life than they were in developing the serenity to accept the things they cannot change. That’s when one of my more shrewd boys called out this memorable phrase, “Yo Mr. Mark, when you go home to your wife or whatever she is, just remember to keep your pimp hand strong.”

In other words, he was advising me to not let her walk all over me and make her understand that what she did was not a good thing. Retaliation is never a good thing but there are instances when an action requires an equal or greater response in order for there to be some semblance of stability. The opposite would be to placate and appease, and if you need an example of how those choices tend to end, see our current conflict with Iran.

On June 12th the military wing of the Palestinian ruling party, Hamas, ended its 16-month, unilateral ceasefire on the weekend after two days of supposed Israeli attacks. At least 17 Palestinians were killed, including a senior militant leader and seven members of a family picnicking on a beach.

When this story was first reported, most if not all the news stories had Israel as having been the aggressor in this particular exchange. This would make sense as the papers tend to favor the Palestinian cause and any bit of information that tarnishes the Israeli’s while promoting the Palestinians usually gets highlighted. However, as with much in the mainstream news, they only got the story half right and missed the main point.

According to Chron.com, ” Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Tuesday that Israel was not responsible for a blast that killed eight Gaza beachgoers, rebuffing Palestinian accusations that blamed an Israeli artillery round.

An Israeli inquiry concluded the blast was caused by an explosive buried in the sand, not from Israeli shelling on the afternoon of the Palestinian family's beach picnic…According to Israeli findings, shrapnel taken from two wounded Palestinians who were evacuated to Israeli hospitals showed that the fragments were not from the 155-millimeter shells used by Israeli artillery.

One theory is that the shell was planted there and then set off to make it look like an Israeli massacre, which would garner sympathy for yet another intifada. Israel had been shelling certain areas of northern Gaza for weeks, trying unsuccessfully to stop Palestinian militants from setting up and launching homemade rockets at Israel. These defensive maneuvers were followed by a deployment of Israeli commando forces in to Gaza to ambush rocket squads.

Hamas’ contention is that Israel maliciously killed innocent Palestinian women and children and thus calling off the “cease fire” is the right response to an unwarranted attack on a developing sovereign nation. This contention by Hamas is of course hooey.

According to the Age.com, Israel never recognized the so-called truce in the first place. ”It was frequently broken by other factions, notably Islamic Jihad, which killed 10 people with a suicide bomb attack in Tel Aviv two months ago. Since the Palestinian ceasefire was announced in March last year, 48 Israelis and at least 360 Palestinians have died in the conflict. The collapse of the ceasefire coincides with mounting tension between Hamas and the former ruling party, Fatah.”

Hamas has stood by its claim that it does not recognize Israel. Hamas has further committed itself to the total destruction of the state of Israel and to see every Jew pushed into the sea. This is not exactly a recipe for a “good neighbor” policy. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that Israel should use this opportunity to strike back hard against Palestine as, in my mind, Hamas is clearly declaring war against Israel. Now we all now how well Israel does in wars against Arabs so I say give Hamas what it wants, total war.

Of course life is not that simple and so the dance continues. Ireland On-line reports that, ” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas put off an ultimatum to Hamas to accept a document that implies recognition of Israel, but he insisted that the Islamic militants, who head the Palestinian government, must accept the plan with no changes or face a referendum.

Abbas backed away from the brink of an open confrontation with Hamas yesterday, when he extended his deadline until the weekend.

The delay gave Hamas some breathing room as it struggles with a devastating international economic boycott and clashes with Abbas’ Fatah movement. But Hamas leaders insisted they won't cave in to deadlines.

Israel must continue to contain Hamas so long as they wish to perpetuate pseudo-war in the Middle East. They have a good friend as they’re going to get in Abbas but Fatah is not calling the shots right now. Until Hamas decides to at least stop calling for the destruction of Israel then the Jewish state must continue to press against the militants seeking to murder its people. Israel cannot afford to let Hamas use state negotiations as a shield to hide behind while it continues to kill under a banner of supposed peace. Like my kids would say, when it comes to Hamas, Israel, keep your pimp hand strong.