The Same Thing in Two Different Places, Or: Ireland, Israel, Coincidence?
by hulk
Ian Paisley refuses to share power with Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. Who is he? I dunno. Some kinda elected guy. In today’s episode, watch hulk reduce two complicated issues to simple bullet points. I wanted to say something about our horribly inflated budget, but everyone dozes when I start ranting about taxes and government waste, so feck it, enjoy watching elected officials piss away your money.
Anyway. Some unofficial Israeli and Palestinain negotiaters met in Geneva this past week to make a peace agreement while Jimmy Carter proved old people really can be flexible by bending over to kiss his own ass. I guess we’re gonna forget that this man was the most incompetent president we ever elected just because he built some houses. Ok, I’ll let it go.
I forget, what was my point? Oh yeah. The Medicare bill and whether or not it can cover my early onset of Alzheimer’s. So these negotiaters came up with the agreement that Israel will give up a bunch of land to the palestinians and remove the fence. And the palestinians will um…stop blowing up stuff. But of course they can’t say that because no palestinians are blowing up anything, its just uncontrollable terrorists operating completely independent of Arafat and his stolen billions.
The thing is, the fence has to come down. And Israel needs to crack down hard on the settlers in the west bank lest they be seen as hypocritical. These people are so territorial they’re burning palestinian farms and driving people out of their homes. They need to be stopped, and the fence needs to come down. Let’s face it, we need to bitch-slap Sharon.
At the same time, the Palestinian terrorists need to be stopped. Problem is, it just isn’t as simple as pressing a button. Let’s face it, it’s all cyclical. The Israeli army blows something up and accidentally kills civilians, and the terrorists strike back. Or the terrorists blow up a schoolbus and the Israeli army strikes back. Repeat. The leaders of these groups are the real bastards, they just recruit stupid young kids who think they’re doing the right thing. And of course the leaders of these groups get their funding and support from Arafat and Syria. But apparently we have some stupid policy against assassination, so we can’t just kill Arafat. I wish we could.
What needs to happen, in both Israel and Northern Ireland, is a strong agreement from both sides, with strict and painful enforcement upon their own citizens. It’ll suck for a while and this generation will bear the brunt, but it’s the only way to end the cycles.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I’d rather let the world support itself, but then we couldn’t have that oh-so-fun position of leader.
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Raging pessimism, comin ‘atcha. Both sides need to crack down on their own, you say? I couldn’t agree more. Will that happen? I doubt it.
The recent election in Northern Ireland left things more polarized than ever, with hard-line parties on either side winning more seats in the representative body than moderate parties. The Lord Mayor of Belfast when I visited there (he himself preferred to be called Mayor, believing the “Lord” part of the title to be a leftover from colonialism) was a former IRA sniper who had killed an estimated 30-100 men. Sure, this was a big victory for the Republicans in Belfast, to have their first Catholic, pro-united-Ireland Mayor to be elected. But the other side condemned him as a murderer… which, in truth, he was.
What I’m trying to say is, I agree with hulk, but I just wonder if it’s even possible at this point for both sides to agree. There are years of historical oppression on the one side, years of backlash and bombings on the other. Is reconciliation even possible?
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