Heard on streets by an anonymous source... (:

After being slaughtered by the millions, after having suffered for millennia at the hands of Romans, Arabs, Spaniards, French, English, Germans, Russians, etc., I don’t blame the Jews in the slightest for seizing and maintaining their ancestral or spiritual homeland by force-of-arms, just so they can have one tiny little sliver of land and an itty-bitty corner of the world that they can call their own. In their place I would probably have done much the same thing.

The (relative) handful of so-called indigenous people who were there already were largely the descendants of those who had seized the land by force-of-arms themselves. It’s been several centuries since that happened, so folks tend to conveniently forget that before it was Arab, Palestine was Byzantine-Christian for centuries, and Roman-Christian before that, and Roman-pagan before that, and, before that, Jewish, for a millennia or two. Before that it was Canaanite and Philistine and Lord-knows-what-else.

Palestine is like the busy intersection of several roads. It controls ancient trade routes and military pathways between Asia and Africa and Europe, and living there has, historically, always been like setting-up house in the middle of a very busy highway. Every so often, the occupants there get run-over by a very big truck (invading army A or B or C, seizing the land, or just passing through on the way to someplace more important than that sun-baked sliver of coastal land).

After a 2,000 year absence, the Jews are back - genetically, to some extent, quite possibly, and spiritually, to be certain - and they’re there to stay.

The so-called indigenous population, egged-on by their more fortunate Arab or Muslim brethren and neighbors, left their homes during the 1947-1950 time frame; on the promise of those brethren that the newly-re-established Jewish State would be destroyed, and its adherents driven into the Mediterranean Sea.

Those misguided Palestinians who left their homes, and their descendants, have, in some cases, been rotting in refugee camps and their successor settlements for 60 years; most of an entire lifetime; rather than finding the means and the motivation to let go of old grudges and old dreams, to face reality after four failed wars to reclaim Palestine, and to move to some other part of the region or to some other part of the world, and get on with life, rather than ancient blood feuds.

The Israelis aren’t going anywhere in our lifetimes, the lifetimes of our children, or the lifetimes of our grandchildren; to the devil with world opinion, in their eyes, if the world begrudges them a tiny sliver of land to call their own, after all that they and their ancestors have been through at the hands of many of our own ancestors and distant cousins.

Again, I can’t say that I blame them for holding to such a position.

And, they have my grudging respect and admiration, for finally - finally - standing up on their hind legs and saying “enough - never again”.