Some guy goes into a Jewish business in Seattle, and murders one innocent woman and wounds five others.
What’s his excuse? He’s “mad at Israel.”
Well, I have some news for you genius: None of those six people were “Israel.” Nor all of them in one room together.
In fact, there is no such thing as Israel, unless just used as shorthand for land (which can not bear responsibility for anything) or for the individuals who control the government: Olmert and his advisors, the military chiefs, etc.
The same flawed thinking is evident in the arguments of the defenders of those officials who repeatedly cry, “Israel has a right to defend herself.” Israel is not a woman, it is just shorthand for land and officeholders (see above), and states don’t have rights. Only people have rights.
States have powers. Powers delegated to them by their constituents (flawed theory here too but close enough for this argument’s sake) who, by definition, cannot delegate authority that they do not have. Such as for example, slaughtering civilians en mass.
Once individuals become nothing but members of a group in their enemies minds, they can, apparently, be killed much more easily.
So cut it out. This is America, the land of individualism. All you Americans who percieve a personal or religious stake in the Middle East’s religious wars can get on a plane and go fight your way back to the Middle Ages your damned selves.
Leave the US out.
Update: Jeff A. Taylor at Reason Hit and Run wonders why this event is not being reported as a terrorist attack:
“Is it because a terror attack would pre-empt Bush administration claims that its policies, like the PATRIOT Act, have kept America terror-free since 9/11? Is it an attempt to deny that violence in the Middle East does, the evidence indicates, motivate some to do violence in the U.S.? Or do we have some unspoken notion that terror can only result from a conspiracy of two or more persons? Or is it bodycount?”
My take is that all of the above are factors, though the first two probably carry more weight. It was the Bush-has-prevented-any-more-attacks garbage that made his vote total close enough that he could get away with the theft of 2004, though even he now admits that it was American foreign policy that provoked the 9/11 attacks.
