Job Interview – Palestinian Style
My next door neighbour years ago had been a Colonel in the British Army. One of his duties had been to enforce the British mandate in Palestine before the Second World War. I remembering him saying that he got on well with both the Jews and the Arabs and in many cases the only way to tell them apart was by their name. He didn’t like Menachem Begin, but I don’t suspect I would not have, if he tried to kill you with a bomb in the King David Hotel.
What has happened since has been a tragedy for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
I can remember the Six Day War of 1967, where nearly everybody had sympathies for little Israel, who was being threatened by their much larger neighbours. But since then we’ve all had more sympathy for the Palestinians, as the Israelis and the corrupt Palestinian leaders have driven them further and further into abject poverty. I will not aportion blame between the two sets of leaders, but feel that if they’d talked and cooperated, they all might be in a better state.
And now we have this sex scandal in Hamas. And for a bit of balance, the assassination of one their leaders. One is for the tabloids and the other for the serious papers.
If both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict behaved with dignity and compassion, and perhaps admitted sometimes that they were wrong, we might find a solution. But then they all believe it’s so much more satisfying to reach for their weapons.
Weapons rarely solve a problem, but they can make it a whole lot worse!
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The Anonymous Widower 
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