Clarity In The Murk

David Cohen at the Brothers Judd (I offered to rechristen this place the Brothers Murphy when Sean asked about posting here, but he declined) does a nice job of summing up my view on Israel and the Palestinians:

The point, of course, is that this sort of "context" is infinately reductive, with each side able to point to one earlier step of which they were the victim and which, had it not occurred, would have averted all the succeeding violence. In the west we still distinguish, perhaps naively, between people strapping bombs to themselves and seeking out civilians to murder, on the one hand, and military action, on the other. We also have noticed that, if the Palestinians simply wanted a state, they could have had one years ago. Unfortunately, they don't simply want a state, they want a particular state and that state has different ideas.

In my college days, various forums would address Israel and peace in the Middle East where the same few antagonists would repetitively engage that the infinitely reductive discourse about who started it first. That experience soured me on both participants, but more recent events have brought me the same clarity as Mr. Cohen. I suppose that makes me the stereotypical religious conservative who supports Israel, but so be it. What's right is what's right.