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April 16, 2006
Makes you think...
When I am home, I keep on checking my email and wasting my time on the computer, so on the weekends, I usually take refuge in the local cofe here and read under the LA sun (which has been rather mean lately).
Today, I went out and sat outside in the local Starbucks and started reading. About 15 minutes later, this elderly couple showed up and sat at the table next to me. They were speaking Persian, so I could not help myself and heard all of their conversation. The man, about 60-70, started, like all Iranian, to speak about politics, and about Israel-Palestine for that matter. The wife just listened, and so did I, although he didn't know!
He was militantly on the Israeli side. He kept on telling his wife that Israel should stop acting like a "pacific Jew" and use its power to end the conflict once and for all (nothing wrong with that), but the suggestion was a bit surprising. He said "why don't they just drop about 1000 tons of bombs on their heads and just be done with them? Or they are about two million of them, right? So, just surround them with a wall and starve them to death, those pests! Who cares what the rest of the world will say, they are just two million of them, or maybe less. They keep on causing problems for our people, and even now that Israel has a government of its own and Jews have power, we still refuse to use it. A few insects here and there, just crush them! If they were worth a human life, they would know better and leave and go to an Arab country and live in one of those pig slums. They are not human and they should just die, and then we will solve the 'Palestine problem' forever".
The whole thing has an uncomfortable ring of a sort that one does not expect the victims of a genocide to utter. Isn't this odd?
Posted by Khodadad at April 16, 2006 04:58 PM
Comments
Did you say something?
Posted by: Amir at April 16, 2006 10:06 PM
If I understand correctly, this was an elderly Iranian Jewish couple? Assuming that is correct, I suppose that most Jews are just as "human" as most Germans were during WWII. It seems very easy for one human being to de-humanize another. Genocide has happened repeatedly in history. The "Holocaust" was certainly not the first time! I am sorry for this old man that he can not see his common humanity with Palestinians. But, I am just as sorry for the Palestinians, too.
Posted by: David at April 17, 2006 10:18 PM
I am an iranian journalist and I have started writing an english weblog. I wonder if you come and visit me.
Posted by: azadeh at April 18, 2006 12:10 PM