Some weeks ago, I posted an item with thoughts about Israel. Since then I got some supportive comments, and also a bunch of anti-Semitic foulness (saying Jews are a rat-like race who deserve to be exterminated, that kind of thing) warning me against discussing such things on my comics website. Because, y’know, where do I get off deciding what to talk about on my website? Since I don’t want to give any of those fine anti-Semitic folks the slightest impression that I might be taking their warning seriously, I thought I’d post my latest concern over what might happen next. And considering that two weeks ago I was commenting that I was worried Marvel might go up on the market now that things are going well, and now the Comicon “Splash” is reporting that very thing as a possibility, my worries tend to materialize.
A couple weeks ago, 17 Israelis were blown up. In retaliation, the Israelis dropped a bomb on Yassar Arafat’s bed, knowing that he wasn’t in it. Kill 17 Israelis, lose a mattress. Even the most jaded Middle East watchers were wondering what was up with that. How is even briefly pressing back in on Arafat but doing nothing beyond that commensurate with the loss of 17 lives?
And I keep thinking about Sean Connery in “The Untouchables,” telling Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness how to take on Al Capone. He said, “You want to know how to get Capone? Here’s how you do it. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago Way, and that’s how you get Capone.”
Here’s what concerns me. With anti-Semitism on the rise, with the Palestinians showing far less interest in a homeland than they are in simply killing Jews and killing Jews and killing Jews, the Israeli government may decide they’ve nothing left to lose. Imagine the following edict from Ariel Sharon (a guy with two girls’ names, so he’s already testy):
“The Palestinian people do not distinguish between innocent people and military targets, and believe they can kill Israelis with impunity and will continue to do so. Very well. We shall do likewise. If next week, a suicide bomber kills ten Israelis, we will round up a hundred Palestinians at random. Men, women, children, makes no difference. Men and women are killing us, and children are being raised to kill us, so they’re all the same. We’ll round them up, line them up and kill them. Boom, dead. If in retaliation a bomber kills a hundred Israelis, we will round up and execute a thousand random Palestinians. For every one Israeli who dies, ten Palestinians will die. And if this is upsetting to the Palestinian people, there’s an easy way to stop it: Stop blowing up Israelis. Your collective fate is in your hands.”
How would the world react to that? Well, they’d probably scream at Israel. But they’re doing that anyway. They’d probably lose sympathy for Israel. But they’re doing that anyway.
*Should* this happen? Am I hoping it will happen? God, no. It’s a barbaric notion.
But I’m afraid that, sooner or later, it might. Because that’s the Chicago Way.
PAD
• 
Recent Comments