Demonstrations In New York Make Several Things Clear

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63. I just want to take another opportunity to say, since I don't normally jump into these threads

...how much I appreciated when the Israel/Palestinian issues were restricted to their own forum.

I think this debate divides us unnecessarily among Americans and among Democrats, and I believe that's what it's designed to do in this election.

There's a good reason why there's nothing but the back and forth in these posts. It's because the U.S. isn't Israel, in any shape or form. We don't conduct our social, government, or military affairs as Israel or Palestinians do.

We may well have an opinion about what Israel or Palestinians in Gaza should do, but we're about as influential in all of that as we are in the air we breathe. We take it in and we breathe it out, without a wit of responsibility for where our next breath of air is coming from; as if we control the very miasma of life itself.

It is an anathema to our nation's ages-old tradition of unfettered political dialogue to describe 'demonstrations' in the U.S., which don't usually come with anything more consequential but shouting in the air, as threatening to anyone.

Demonstrations are most often the antithesis of violence, not the practitioner. When they aren't peaceful and non-threatening, they are criminal matters.

So far, 'demonstrations in New York' have been peaceful events, absent of the bombings and shootings that other aggressors and defenders mire their countries in generations of armed conflict and unrest.

If anything, they should be a welcome alternative to the wanton killings that perpetuate between the combatants in the Middle East and devastatingly spill over into the civilian populations.