Back to Gillingham, decent when its sunny

Well, I'm back. Not that the clowns at my agency knew that, despite informing of the exact days I would be off. Woke up at 4.10am on three and a half hours sleep, toddled down to the rendevous for my bus at 5.50am, waited around ten minutes before going back inside and checking every five minutes for the fifteen mins thereafter. It was only at around 9.40am that I was told I had an enforced day off. Oh well, free day though I'd rather be working and earning cash, even in this heat.
When I'd kicked off for Leicester on National Express last Monday, the moment the bus started moving masses of hands shot up to fiddle for the air-conditioning. It was like oxygen masks faling down but in reverse with all these arms dangling against gravity. Found out 'dead slow' is proper terminology on leaving London Victoria coach station. On the way back to London, I had a slightly agitated bus driver with a tart sense of humour (dirty weekends, jumble sales, buses with wings! Who would have heard the like).
Many things have happened in my absence. I turn my back for ten seconds and war breaks out in the Middle East. Gah! I do not dispute the right of Israel to exist. Neither do I that of the American-Jewish lobby. Nor that of the British board of Jewish Deputies. All three for me are valid entities. The way they advance their interests, however, is disputatious.
Furthermore, I believe that Israel should not have to suffer the needling of small rocket attacks on its northern or southern frontiers. But Israel being Israel, as sure as eggs are eggs, uses a sledgehammer to crack a nut, which puts everyone's back up. As if the Gaza situation wasn't bad enough, the military decides it would like a two-front conflict. The Gaza trouble was well flagged by the Israeli political establishment though whereas the army just acted straightaway on the abduction of two soldiers along the northern frontier, the Israeli PM and others only catching up later judging by news interviews. The army is Israel and Israel looks to the army. That can engender a feeling of impunity and I believe the Israeli army is out of control; the biggest generator of anti-semitism in the world today is not the crackpot Iranian president or Russian skinheads, but the Israeli Self-Defence Force.
Let's compare and contrast. Both conflicts flared-up as a result of the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. The targeting of military installations and personnel is a legitimate act of resistance under the UN Charter for oppressed groups. No civilians in Israel were hurt until the Israeli army came down hard. When North Korea snatched Japanese citizens did Japan declare war on North Korea (in an act of self-defence)? No. When non-Americans are seized in 'Extraordinary Rendition' by the CIA, some ending up hanging from meathooks in the houses of American mercenaries, do the countries whose sovereignty was violated declare war on the USA? No. And who would deny that Israel takes prisoners without due legal process (although they do prefer 'targeted assassinations', a term Israelis rightly take offence at considering these are anything but targeted with all the collateral damage). Kidnapping half of the elected Palestinian govt. and issuing death warrants for the other half is hardly likely to produce moderation among Arabs, something the West continually harps on about. So because Israel is a bit pissed off, it rips up the 'democratic peace theory', that democracies do not go to war with each other and even if one queries the credentials of the democratically elected Hamas government, there can be no doubt about the Lebanese democracy that emerged in the much-trumpeted 'Cedar Revolution' of 2005.
But it was the fault of the Lebanese for not controlling Hizbullah, under a UN resolution passed. UN resolutions, however, have told Israel to get out of the West Bank now for 39 years, so what basis has Israel to demand the enforcement of the one for the Lebanese? Moreover, India has blamed Pakistan for not controlling Islamic militants who bombed the Mumbai train network, killing over 200. Does India strafe the border of Pakistan? No. Islamabad's writ doesn't even run in Baluchistan or the Tribal Areas (the latter believed to be the hideout of a certain ObL). Does NATO storm in from Afghanistan, laying down the law and carpet bombing? No, much to the chagrin of NATO commanders.
All the same Hizbullah are a nasty organisation, a cancer that needs to be cut out. But the Lebanese government was starting to politically engage Hizbullah the first step to a solution. Then Hizbullah seeing how distraught Israel was at the captivity of one soldier in the south, that they decided to take two in the north. Now with the infrastructure of Beirut, that the late Rafik Hariri had spent a decade building up, being pummelled into rubble, Israel has managed to achieve a rare feat, to unite the Christian and Muslim Lebanese. And Israelis wonder why no-one in the Middle East likes them. So the Lebanese don't want a ceasefire but misery to rain down on the Israelis and the Israelis feel exactly the same way against the Lebanese. All because the Self-Defence Force had to act like a bull in a china shop. In 1967, it came down like a ton of bricks on the Arab countries and taking the West Bank, creating the PLO. It came down hard on the PLO which fled at first to Lebanon where Israel attacked it further, occupying southern Lebanon. This harsh occupation gave rise to Hizbullah. After 18 years of their Vietnam, the Israelis pulled out, leaving Hizbullah victorious. Wherever Israeli has been over-zealously tough, it has just given rise to more problems for itself and in the end it suffers reverses.
The proper response of a good friend would be to say 'steady on, old chap. That's a little over the top'. The American and British Jewish lobbies are therefore not good friends to Israel. I find the verdicts of the British Board of Jewish Deputies hilarious because they are more po-faced than a hippie revivalist movement ("I mean, it's, like, all about peace, man. Just get with it."). The utterances of the British lobby seems to advance the view that Jews are incapable of doing wrong. But humans are fallible creatures and Jews are humans like the rest of us, unless the British Board says that Jews aren't human and then I'd have to disagree with them. They and the American lobby ensure the focus is always on the plight of Israel (a nation created, no less, by terrorism). The technological advantage of Israel, maximises Mao's dictum that 'one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic'. One Israeli dies for every five Palestinians or ten Lebanese. Yet, it is presented that Israel is hard done by rather than of it gratuitously spanking away international goodwill. The reason why Congress values Israeli lives as of more worth than Palestinian or Lebanese lives is because the Jewish lobby is stronger than the Palestinian or Lebanese lobbies on Capitol Hill. The only two presidents to not kowtow to Israel, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush were one-term presidents, partly as a result of American-Jewish influence. Who needs to control the world when you can control Washington? but Carter and Bush 1 ultimately acted in Israel's interests; the lobby frequently acts in Israel's short-term but not long-term interests.
What Israel can't grasp, with the army woven into the fabric of its society more tightly than in Turkey, is that they hastened dramatically the departure of the British via terrorism. The Palestinians see that and conclude that they too can create a state with enough terrorism. The success of Hizbullah in driving out Israel from southern Lebanon has reinforced that. The Israelis are paying a high price for the actions of their founding fathers and making their neighbours pay a higher price to boot. That is why the Middle East is such an intractable place in the Levant region.