Never again?

This is a really good article about the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. An excerpt which pretty much sums up my thoughts after reading a lot about things over the past few days. I feel for the Israelis, but as the US squandered the good will of the world through our government’s rash actions after September 11th, so, too are the Israelis now in Lebanon:

Israelis, too, are a traumatized people, and Israel’s current actions are driven in part by a hard determination, born of the Holocaust, to “never again go like sheep to the slaughter.” But if “never again” drives the politics of reprisal, few seem to notice that the reprisals themselves are completely out of scale to the provocation: For every crude Qassam rocket falling usually harmlessly and far from its target, dozens, sometimes hundreds of shells rain down with far more destructive power on the Palestinians. For one missing soldier, a million and a half Gazans are made to suffer. Today, Israel’s policy is a case of “never again” gone mad.

The irony is that, contrary to helping build the safe harbor they have sought for so long, the Israeli government, just like the U.S. in Iraq, is only sowing the seeds of more hatred and rage.