Give the Bully Your Underwear
Give the Bully Your UnderwearThe Gaza Withdrawal
I must confess that I am still embarrassed to this day. If I were running for political office, this could be dug up and used against me. I was stupid. In my English class in college, it was explained to me that the Arab-Israel conflict was very complicated and that it would be very difficult to explain it in a short unit in English. It was explained to me by my Jewish – turned Christian, Yiddish accented, Hebrew speaking teacher. Surely if HE couldn’t explain it, then it must be hard to understand, so, when writing my essay, I resorted to the method used commonly by the uninformed today and prated on about how Israel needs to let the Palestinians live there too, in peace.
My English teacher hadn’t told me that the central theme in the Palestinian platform was to destroy Israel. My English teacher hadn’t told me that the leader of the “Palestinian Movement” was himself an avowed terrorist who would say soothing words in English for the West, but then foment violence among his people in Arabic. My English teacher hadn’t told me that God had made an everlasting covenant with Israel, that the land was theirs. My English teacher hadn’t told me that it was all actually pretty simple. Israel belongs there.
My English teacher had fallen prey to a common fallacy: If the bully keeps kicking you and giving you a wedgie[i], obviously he wants your underwear, so give it to him. If a bully keeps beating you up, perhaps you need to discuss the situation with him, understand him so that you can get along. Perhaps if you talk about things it will get better.
My English teacher didn’t know what I found out in the second grade.
Torry. A lanky second-grader with cowboy boots. Me. A skinny second-grader with shins. Torry liked to take out his frustrations on my shins, kicking them daily. It hurt! Running didn’t help. Talking didn’t help. I didn’t know what to do; it was infuriating. However an answer came one day in the form of instinct. Torry kicked me one time to many. I found myself throwing him to the ground and wrestling him. Soon a crowd gathered around the fight – a circle of gleeful children, thrilled over the day’s entertainment. But their faces changed when they saw that Torry was at a disadvantage because I was sitting on his chest pounding and pounding him in a fury born of pent up shin energy. They grew concerned and quickly pulled me off of him, my arms swinging wildly in blind fury.
It was a generation ago. There were no lawsuits. We didn’t even get sent to the office. But from that point on, I was shin-kick free. I had respect from Torry. He even smiled and waved at me after that. Wow! What a lesson for me! Beat up the bully and life is better. Subsequent to that second-grade experience, I observed this in action many other times.
Israel has withdrawn from Gaza because they think that appeasing the bully will make him get along better with them. Neville Chamberlain was fooled in the same way. These days, if Torry in second grade, was caught kicking me in the shins, he and I would be in for long sessions of therapy to understand the conflict between us, whereas our relationship problems were solved in less than two minutes right there on the playground.
The Palestinians don’t just want Gaza, they want to push Israel into the sea. They want to kick Israel in the shins until they back into the Mediterranean, give them car-bomb wedgies until they give up Jerusalem.
Well, bullies only understand a strong arm, a violent response of overwhelming superiority. Giving a bully your underwear won’t make things better. The bully will only laugh and beat you up after school.
[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedgie
posted by Keloki @ 7:42 PM
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