I had a nightmare about the last two combatants standing .. facing each other

[Peacetrain]

in the middle east.. ..pointing a rifle at each other.. their friends family countrymen piled up at their feet.. what will the winner have won? What will that last standing person have saved and protected?

This is beyond insanity.

[Skidmore]

1. A hollow victory on a pile of bloody rubble

and the scorn of the rest of the world.

[Peacetrain]

2. There is nothing being won there but rubble..

so true..

Edit to add.. the last time I had a nightmare like this was when I was a little girl, and had nightmares about the Russians.. that was during the cold war..

[Skidmore]

4. What will be won

is the empty land and the claim to it to build new cities whilst displacing the Palestinian people. This was referred to as an ethnic cleansing on another thread and I think that it is an accurate name for the slaughter the world is allowing to happen there. Where are these people supposed to go? The young are being exterminated wholesale. This wipes out cultural history and memory. I have seen something similar happen. It makes it easier for the victor to start anew with a clean slate--just erase the problem and no one remembers. This is a crime against humanity.

[Peacetrain]

8. Everything, everything, everything..

will be filtered through the experiences that each side carries forward.. the pain becomes historical.. and generational.. Somehow Skidmore, after WW2 we were able to move forward as a world with Germany and Japan.. after horrific killings and imprisonments.. and destruction of governments.. somehow we were able as a world to separate the governments from the actual people in a country and move forward..

I do not know how.. but someway, the middle east has got to move forward..has got to stop and look beyond the pain that went before.. I don't know how..

The Islamic nations are going through a gut wrenching realignment in their religious philosophies.. to top it off

At some point all sides have to let go of their pain and move forward, for the sake of their future generations.. there are no winners in this battle..

[Skidmore]

10. The nasty ball of vipers at the core of this is the very fact that

religion is twisted up in it and some of the eschatalogical teachings of the fundamentalists of the religions involved demand a certain political outcome. Zionists and Christian fundamentalists exploit one another to that end. Muslim fundamentalists bring their own twist on how that outcome should appear. When we started to hand real power to the fundamentalists in this nation we helped the whole world step backward and we lost any chance to be brokers in the conflict. Israel has enjoyed a protected status for too long and has been allowed to flaunt international law with impunity for decades. S

What I know to be true is that this is not a "conflict" but a contrived immoral act of extreme punishment and aggression aimed at totally destroying a people and grabbing the land they live on. There are no winners to be sure, especially when one side holds all the face cards. There is a difference between fighting to hold onto your life and livelihood and fighting take something from someone else.

[Peacetrain]

11. The idea that you can keep an entire people

locked into a desert prison with no access to the outside is just heart wrenching.. A people cannot live in fear of rockets coming in its impossible.


I am a devout Christian.. and you hit it right out of the ball park with putting the blame where it belongs.. a using of religion for power.. Christian, Jews, Muslims.. they bastardize their own beliefs to do that.

The thing that truly amazes me is that Jews and Muslims are much closer in belief systems and practices than Christians and Jews.

[DetlefK]

3. That's easy: The one true religion will have won!

[n2doc]

5. Except the pile of bodies is much higher on one side

The end game appears to be the ethnic and religious cleansing of Palestine, so that Israel may have "breathing Space". The present Palestinian Government agreed to acknowledge Israel's right to exist, that was apparently too much for Netanyahu to take.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. Why I really don't discuss this on DU: I was present, as a kid, during the following events.

Read up. Nightmares? I heard the shelling, I was in Safed while it was in mourning. Palestinian operatives took 150 kids hostage, 20 or so wound up dead. Then Israel responded with bombing of refugee camps, more kids and adults killed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/16/newsid_2512000/2512399.stm

This was 40 years ago. They are still doing the same things.

[Peacetrain]

7. I can't imagine what that must have been like..

I am so sorry..you had to experience that..its a hopeless feeling..

[clarice]

9. No doubt about it. "Wild eyed pistol wavers". nt