Israeli Blogger Guilt Syndrome

November 22, 2006 - 10:23 AM by Allison

I can totally relate to this post by Yael, because I, too, often feel silly whining about the little frustrations in my life when so much is happening around me. IBGS is definitely a serious condition that has to be overcome in order to blog freely about oneself, and resist the irresistable urge to rant. Sometimes, though, a good rant is in order. Clearly, Yael needed to get this out of her system:

I had planned to write about my ulpan class and other little trivialities of my daily life but it feels strange or completely self-absorbed to be writing about that while so much havoc is going on around us. As happens every day, rockets are raining down on Sderot and on the kibbutzim in the area near that city. One person was critically injured, not expected to survive, today so far and several others sustained more minor injuries. Several days ago an elderly woman was killed and a young man so severely injured that he is now a double-amputee with both legs gone. I feel anger and despair at the stupidity of it all. I won’t call the people who are shooting these rockets militants because militants aim at military targets whether it is soldiers, or bases, or someone shooting at them. Militants aim at military targets and sometimes hit, but not by intention, civilian targets. These people, however, are trying to kill only civilians with their rockets. That makes them terrorists because terrorists target civilians specifically.

And they are not shooting these rockets to protect their people or do to anything but hurt their people. Because of course they are trying to get a strong military response in return. And, of course, they will get one. They are trying to get more restrictions placed on the populace. They’ll probably get those too. And they are shooting these rockets which gain them absolutely nothing without the support of the majority of their populace. Yesterday a study was released showing that more than 60% of Palestinians think that the rockets are counter-productive and cause them harm. A majority want the rockets to stop and there to be a return to dialogue.

Stupid. Stupid and senseless acts.

And what are our politicians doing? Well Olmert and Peretz are busy slamming millionaire (billionaire?) Arkadi Gaydamak for footing the bill and taking children and their families, who have been living under incredible duress with daily rockets falling on them for over a year now, for a little two day break away from the chance of being killed. In other words, they have been busy making themselves look like utter IDIOTS. Because I’m sorry publicly and verbally attacking a philanthropic act undertaken because the government itself is doing nothing for these people makes the attacker look really petty, really, really bad, and just points up even more strongly how useless they are as a leader. Olmert basically went so far as to say that the families who took advantage of giving their children a two-day break from the barrage were unpatriotic. Ok, Olmert, let’s see you put your money where your mouth is and move yourself on down to Sderot. Live in an unfortified home and hold all your meetings with other important ministers down there in one of the unprotected schools. Let’s see a little patriotism, Mr. Squirrel. Further, no one gives a right damn that Gaydamak is not doing this most likely from pure motives of the heart but rather from his own political aspirations. No one really cares that his money is as dirty as it comes, if the somewhat more than rumour but can’t be proved in a court of law mafioso suspicions are true. Got that? Because at least something good is being done for these people for once.

Sorry, I have to go off and scream now for a bit. If I get a bit of time later, I’ll write about my own little self-absorbed life.

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