Rockets in San Diego

If I've heard this question once, I've heard it 20 times: "Well, if they were shooting rockets into San Diego (or Seattle, or any border city), what would we do?" As if the two situations could be identical.

There is a long history over there between the Israelis and the Palestinians. They've been ... "unfriendly" ... for quite some time now. How many hundreds, thousands of years?

At this point in time, the Israelis have the Palestinians rather penned up in Gaza. Israel (and Egypt) have been blockading Gaza for over 18 months now, controlling every thing and every person coming and going. It's almost like a huge concentration camp. Gazans have been running out of food, water, electricity, all strictly controlled by Israel and Egypt.

Under the circumstances, I would not be surprised if they dug tunnels under the borders. We frequently discover tunnels from Mexico and Canada into the U.S.

But wee have not been fighting the Mexicans across San Diego for centuries. Likewise, we haven't been fighting with, or blockading Canada to our north. So it is very unlikely that Mexico would launch rockets into San Diego or El Paso. We don't have the same history. To transfer actions over there - that have quite a lot of history - over here, to justify what Israel is doing, is quite the rhetorical stretch. But I hear it, almost every day.

As if the Israelis have done absolutely nothing to provoke, in any way, any Palestinians. As if Israel is an innocent bystander in the conflict. It is certainly not right for anyone to fire rockets at any other people. It is also not right to strangle a whole people, or to bomb them when they are trapped in a cage, like the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians.

Someday, maybe, both sides will learn to live together. Not this day. And not tomorrow. I'm not holding my breath.

Bill Moyers covered the situation pretty well in this past Friday's Journal on PBS.