Wishing I was Never Born

No, that's not my sentiment, that's Nasrallah's. I didn't sleep very well last night. In fact, I didn't fall asleep until about 6:00 AM. I wanted to write everything I was thinking and feeling then but couldn't. I couldn't get those thoughts to settle down and become one coherent picture. I don't know that they're coherent now, but I need to get them out some-how, so I'm going to try, and I'll put them as I thought them while I was watching the sun come up this morning.

It's about a quarter to 5:00 now, and I can see dawn approaching from the horizon. I can see out towards the Judean desert and over to Jordan when the light just starts flowing. It's one of the most beautiful sites I've ever seen. But, right now, it's just approaching dawn. It's the magical time of the day that Shakespeare used to rap poetic about. It's when you can see the exact line in the sky that separates night from the birth of day. It's that beautiful hue of light blue that I can't even begin to try and name. Stars are still out, but I can see the hint of sun right next to it. The entire neighborhood is silent except for the occasional chirping bird, but even they fade into the background of the exquisite stillness that I feel. Not a car on the street, not a human being for as far as I can see. It's as if the world is paused and in fast-forward and the same time. This is the time that I love. This is the kind of quiet I long for, where it feels like nothing exists but me and that moment. No-one else is privilidged to be in it.

Then, I'm startled by this feeling of fear that just overwhelms me, and I start shaking and crying. I'm looking out down the street, and I start thinking that it's so quiet, how can I not hear what's happening about 100 kilometers north of me? It's so quiet, I feel like I should be able to hear a pin drop 100 miles away, let alone a bomb. But, all I hear is the low drone of the fighter jets flying over head, traveling north, flying high to save my people. That's when I know that the quiet can't stay for very much longer. I was expecting a rocket to fall on my street any second now. Now, I dreaded the once beautiful sun-rise. With sun-rise comes reality. With sun-rise comes death and destruction. With sun-rise comes more hatred. What I was looking at wasn't real. It was painfully beautiful, but it wasn't reality. It was too quiet to be reality. Today, reality is ugly, and it is vengeful, and it is venemous hatred. As I am watching the sun rise over the Jordan Valley, I realize that the monsters to my north are waking up and watching the sun-rise also. They are hearing the same loud call to prayer that I am hearing right now. But, they're not looking at the beauty that I am seeing. All they're seeing is time. They're waiting for the light the of sun to mark the starting gun to when they can kill more Israelis. As I am praying to G-d to make the quiet stay for just a little while longer, to delay the sun-rise as He delayed the sun-set when Am Yisroel faught Amalek thousands of years ago, but this time for peace; not for war, some-one that I have never met and will never know is asking Allah to aid his hands as he tries to kill more and more.

As I am praying to G-d to please just end this madness before my family is hurt or killed, men and women who follow blood-thirsty haters like Nasrallah are praying to G-d that I will die and then wishing to G-d that I had never been born. I believe I have the purpose to live. They believe that they have the purpose to kill me. It's a disturbing thought, watching the sunr-rise with awe, while some-one is watching to tick down the minutes to when they can kill again.

Then, the only question that remains is, why? Why do they hate me so much? Why do they want to kill me? Why? Why? Why? But, the answer is simply that there is no "why?". It is just is. I am surrounded by people who want to kill me simply for existing, and they believe they have an answer to the "why", but they don't. It's not logical. It's not rational. Then, there are the people are the world who want to make up reasons and excuses for those that feel they were born for the sole purpose of killing me and my people. They try to explain the problem away, as if this hatred was normal and understandable. They try to explain the hatred in such a way as to try to get me to see that my existence in time and space is my fault. Their reason for hating me is my fault. It's like trying to tell a black person that they're to blame for having different color skin, and that's why racist animals lynch and burn their people and put them into bondage. It would be like telling a black person that it's perfectly logical and rational, even more so; their fault!, that some-one hates and despises their very existence simply for the color of their skin.

So, here I am, watching one of most pristine and wonderous acts that G-d has created, and I am sorrounded by all four corners of the world by people who, either, want to destroy or tell me that it's completely logical for people to hate me simply for being a Jew. Oh yeah, post modern, pseudo-intellectuals will give me perfectly logical explanations for this simple truth, though they'll tell me that there is no "truth", only different theories. "Well, you stole their land, so it's perfectly understandable for one of them to come into your home and night and kill you while you are sleeping." "You have tanks and f-16s. They only have rocks, so it's heroic to fight you, and only logical that they resort to blowing themselves up on buses and in crowded shopping areas to even the playing fields." "They need a fair shot at winning too, in order to get out of occupation."Etc. Etc. Adnauseum.

Then, I have to hear people, liberals, like gert say that they believe that I have a right to defend myself but just not in the manner I'm doing it. Israel has jets, and they just have missiles, so Israel must tie her hands behind her back in order to make it a fair fight. Oh yeah, and let them get the first punch in for good measure. Last time I checked, war was won by superior force; not by giving yourself a handicap in order to give the enemy a decent shot at winning. If "disproportional use of force" would have been the catch-phrase 60 years ago, we'd still be fighting World War II. Proportional, by definition, enotes a tit for tat method by which you do something. If some-one punches me in the face once, propotionally, I must only punch them back once and only in the face. No extra body shots to gain an advantage. No knock-out punch either. They didn't give me one, so I don't give them one. In Israel's case, proportional use of force would be if all the northern cities and towns in Israel start shooting rockets and missiles indiscriminately at Lebanon. Or, if I strapped myself or my children with explosives belts and start walking into crowded Palestinian towns and buses and blew myself up. Fight fire with fire. But, no, we understand that using those big evil tanks, artillery, and fighter jets, equipment that has state of the art precision, the chance of civilian casualties drops significantly. It's people like that that explain away terrorism and call it freedom fighting and simply "armed resistance", but then when the same thing happened to them, like Northern Ireland "fighter" attacking Great Britain, then they call them terrorists.

Enough of that rant. I don't have to justify my country's acts to any-one. Especially, when by any objective definition of the word, what Israel is doing is just and moral. She is protecting her citizens from death and destruction. There is nothing more moral and just than that. It would be unjust and immoral for Israel to listen to the voices of the Europeans and the UN and stop doing anything, thereby putting further people, further citizens into harm's way. So, we get back to the hatred. It seems to me that if some-one were trying to logically explain away racisim, they would only be trying to cover up and logically explain away their own hatred and racism. It seems to me that when some-one tries to explain away why some-one just tried to blow themselves or shot a missile into my parent's settlement, then they are simply trying to explain away and justify their own latent anti-semitism. Some people can't accept the fact that Israel exists, that Jews own guns and tanks and f-16s. Some people can't accept that Israel would try to exert power and influence just like any other country in the world. Some people are uncomfortable with Jews in a position of power. Some people can't accept that Jews proclaim that they have a G-d given right to self-determination like any other nation in the world, and then go about ensuring that they determine their own destiny. For some, like those firing missiles and suicide bombers into my country, it's a hard thing to swallow and stomach. For them, Israel must always be subservient, and they must always cower to the will of others. For people like Chirac and Anan and even gert, they have a hard time understanding that Israel, those Jews, have the nerve to say "No, we refuse to be slaughtered, and we refuse to stand and wait around while you feel you have some inherent right to decide my destiny for me. I will not be led like lambs to the slaughter by you again. I will not wait around while your countries decide what my fate is to be. I decide what my fate is to be, and I decide to live. I will not die, because you are too much of a coward to defend me. I CHOOSE TO LIVE!"

The sun is a dark red, orange, and yellow hue reflecting off the desert hills off in the distance. My thoughts won't settle down enough for me to go to sleep. Rockets will start to fall again like rain pelting from the sky. I will wake up to read that more people are injured and more people are killed and more people are condemning Israel for having the nerve and the gall to defend herself from those that wish to destroy her. I will wake up to a world that will not report that over 1,100 Katyusha rockets, filled with shrapnel for extra killing power, and 600 Israelis have been injured, including my fellow Arabs and Druze. Those terrible non-Jews who made the terrible mistake of choosing to live in the evil Zionist entity over poverty and suffering and servitude in other Arab/Muslim countries. I have to watch a world that believes it has some sort of right to tell me how to defend myself and curse me for doing so. I have to watch a world ask me to use restraint while they say nothing to and of those that are shooting over 50 rockets an hour into over 50 cities, towns, and villages. I have to get up to a world who believes that they know what's best for us even-though they can't answer honestly, "What would you do if this were happening to you?"

I can't stand the world's hypocracy anymore. I can't stand that I, simply for being born a Jew and living on a tiny spot of land in the middle nowhere, have to justify my own existence and live up to the world's double standards. They say that they don't hate Jews, but they proceede to hold the Jewish State to stanards that they wouldnt dare ask of another country. My people are dying, and it's up to my country to stop the bleeding, but I am being asked to stop it without even using so much as a bandaid. The world's hypocracy and its liberal moral-relative equivicating makes me sick. I want to shut off the world. God damn it! I just want to live my life, have a family, make some money, and then die after a long normal boring life. I don't want to be hated. I don't want taht hatred to be justified and called something else. I just want it all to stop and go away, like the world wants me to just stop and go away.

The sun's almost all the way up. I need to get some sleep and prepare for another day.