Tornado Alley (PROG)

[oldberkeley]

Stephanie- I won't be posting any Google links with this (I'm starting to feel that the ability to google is now passing for wisdom!) Enough is enough.

Anyway: I'm an admirer of yours, and of all the other outspoken liberals on the Tornado Board and elsewhere. More and more it seems we're being pushed into the punishment corner and expected to sit silently, facing the wall. I won't and never have, you and others don't, and that takes courage.

Plus you've got some real chutzpah, like me: I always had to not only tell it like it is, but also rub their noses in it. My mean streak, I guess.

But....

I am very surprised and disappointed with your position, and that of some others on the board, on the latest horrors in Israel and Gaza.

Israel does have a right to defend their country. Rocket attacks, tunnels built for kidnapping and murder, bus bombs: what would you have them do? Instead of spending all their time and resources building tunnels to spread death, Hamas should put their money and work into improving the above-ground infrastructure.

Better still, the people of Gaza and Israel need to get rid of Hamas. Hamas does not want a two-state solution, a three-state solution, or a twenty-state solution. They want the destruction of Israel, and if possible, the cherry on their sundae would be the excruciating death of every Jewish person in the world.

Please...please..you and others, it is not necessary to inundate me with Google links. I have been a serious student of the Middle East for over 50 years, and I've traveled there extensively. I've read most of the primary source documents that many of those articles and blogs refer to, and I keep up daily with the reliable news media.

Again, the whole mess is just a horror. I have nothing but compassion for the everyday people of Gaza: I can't, none of us can imagine what they're going through.

Progressive liberals must stick together, must fight together, but on this issue I leave you, my friend.