Fair enough.
As you might have guessed, I support Israel in the conflict.
I'm not jewish. Mom is Swedish and dad is German. So although I see myself as a Swede, I'm also half-German. My dad has told me about the family history on my fathers side. Pretty depressing. His mom had 7 brothers, 6 of which died in the war. Three were infantrymen, one was a 109 pilot, those four all died in Russia. Two were just 3 and 5 yrold kids who was killed in allied bombing raids. Grandmom never wants to talk about the war. I went to visit her a couple of years ago, and she showed me the cemetary where the two young ones were buried. She never said anything, but dad has told me she was there that night when they were killed. It was in Dresden btw.
My dads father comes from a kinda welthy family. They used to live in East Prussia. When the russians arrived in 1945, my grandfather and his brother managed to escape. The russians killed the rest of his family. He never did like those russians after that.
Hm, kinda drifted from the subject here.
Israel.
Well, to me the issue is very simple. You have a country, it is small and it is surrounded by enemies. For as long as the country has existed, all its neighbours have tried to exterminate it. They have fought war after war against the tiny country, each time attacking it several countries at once, every time outnumbering the forces of the tiny country with horrible odds. Yet somehow the tiny country manages to struggle on and survive.
The tiny country is the only one in the region who shows any kind of respect for the values I share, and the tiny country is the only country in the area that seems to "follow the rules". Surrounded by dictators and madmen, the tiny country is a democracy.
The soldiers of the IDF has earned my respect because of what they have managed to do against hopeless odds. I have nothing but respect and even admiration for them. At the same time, they have balls of steel. Take a look at the F-16 strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 81. If they hadn't done that, Saddam would have had nukes in 91. Now there is a happy thought.
They have the best intelligence agency in the world. They have to, otherwise they would soon be dead. Without the Mossad, OBL and his thugs would still be roaming afghanistan trying to invent new ways to slaughter westerners.
I sympathize with the Israelis, perhaps because I can identify with them, under different circumstances, it might just as well be me who would have to patrol the streets as an infantryman trying to spot the next suicide bomber.
Their enemies on the other hand are horrible. To me they represent pure evil. You have persons going to any length to kill civilians, women and children. They will stop at nothing. I have read countless reports on exactly how sick they are too. They have suicide bombers walking up to women with baby carriages and then detonating their explosives. They have snipers shooting at 10 month old children. They have kill-squads entering villages and houses slaughtering as many as they can. They use artillery to shell villages. They prep the explosives with rat poison in their attempts to increase the fatalities after a suicide bomb. They seem to be capable of anything. 9-11 showed that.
They possess a hate that scares me. A level of hate that I dont think we ever can understand. Can any of you think of something that will make you mad enough to strap on a vest filled with explosives and walk up to a woman with a baby carriage and detonate the bomb? I know I cant.
So, to summarize. On the one hand you have Israel, a country much like my own, with much of the same values and rules as we have in my country. They have an army that I respect and I admire them for what they have managed to do. There is a war going on right now, and they are the frontline, and thanks to them, I can sleep better at night.
On the other hand, you have some of the worst criminals in the hístory of the world. These are the guys who invented most of teh elements of modern terrorism. They seem to stop at nothing, and they are trying to get their hands on various weapons of mass destruction. So they can kill more innocent civlians.
To me the choice is easy, and to me it is important to take a stand in the conflict.
