(no subject)

( A major rant - read at your own risk. )

My first thought as I write this is of Lanie Kazan in Beaches waiting for a kid to finish up at a water fountain on a hot and humid day on the Atlantic City Boardwalk: “Hurry Up, I’m Shvitzing!”

For those of you who don’t know Yiddish, Shvitzing means you’re perspiring. And it’s already 100 degrees in the shade here in the country.

But if my immediate thought is on the heat, my only true thoughts are on Israel. In the past ten days, there have been a barrage of press and a host of opinions including polls. You can find them anywhere from the usual media channels to right here on LJ. I find the negativity of the polls a clear sign that people obviously don’t know anything about the State of Israel and merely believe everything they read or hear on the news media.

My first suggestion: bone up on your history (www.eretzyisroel.org).

Let me get to the point: How would you react if we had a terrorist group start sending bombs into the US? It’s happened before. And we didn’t start it. You must realize that these fundamentalist terrorist groups have one mission in life: to eliminate democratic countries such as the US and Israel. Of course Israel is an easier target; it’s close by, it’s a tiny country and it’s the only Democratic country in the Middle East.

 While we all want to live in a world where people get along, it’s not possible. History shows that countries have been inundated by Terrorists and Dictators for centuries. The people in these countries are fed a high dose of propaganda and due to their lack of education and their inability to explore the world outside, they get sucked into the movement and in many cases become casualties in their own right.

The main fight of all this conflict has truly been over Jerusalem. Not only is it the religious center of the Jews it’s also the religious center for many Muslims. While most Jews and Muslims have cohabitated for centuries, respecting each others religions, there have always been a band of extremist hotheads – on both sides – who felt that only one religion can dominate. Point blank, the Muslim extremists are a much larger group than the Jewish ones.  I have no respect for the Jewish fundamentalists nor do I for the Muslim ones. You don’t see the Jewish fundamentalists recruiting suicide bombers but you do with the Muslims. And while I’m not going to touch the whole Palestinian regime – or Arafat, who in my opinion always robbed his people blind – but I will tell you that when Syria and Iran started funding Hezbollah and other terrorist groups to eliminate western, democratic societies, I knew right then and there that a war was going to heat up again. It just was a matter of when.

The war between Israel and Hezbollah reminds me of bullies who used to pick on me as a kid. You get to a boiling point and you fight back even if you’re smaller than they are. Israel is being bullied by a terrorist group that really is two countries – Syria and Iran. Israel has every right to fight back. Let’s face it, Israel has the best armed forces in the Middle East and they have a huge number of active and reserve troops because unlike here, you go into mandatory military training at age 18 and once you are released a couple of years later, you’re on reserve until sometime in your mid 40’s.

 So while there may be a bunch of armchair opinions, sensationalist reports from CNN and Fox, take the time to find out what’s really going on.Living here in the US with our creature comforts and our freedom of speech is one thing but when democratic rights are being threatened by religious extremists is quite another.

For more information go to The Jerusalem Pos.The Post  is the oldest English speaking newspaper in the Middle East. (www.jpost.com). The other is my friend Brian Blum’s blog (www.thisnormallife.com). Brian’s blog offers a more humanistic approach – an American living in Israel. And if you go onto the JPost site, take a look at Alan Dershowitz’s essay today.

I think about the Israelis fighting back just like I do the men who fought back the Police at the Stonewall Inn. Granted Hezbollah and Israel is enormous in comparison but they had one common goal: nobody is going to be bullied any more.