Ron Schmidt, Tolna

It’s 2023 and the Biden administration is lecturing Israel about excessive Palestinian civilian casualties. The country that firebombed Tokyo and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki now moralizing. Please excuse me while I regurgitate.

Lest anyone jump to conclusions, I think it was the right thing to do. Better than 18-year-old draftees dying in a foreign jungle. Skin color may have made it more acceptable. That’s another issue.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austen says that Israel’s actions may be tactically successful but not strategically so. He suggests that it may even further radicalize the civilian population. I’ve got news for you, Lloyd. It’s a little late for that to come to be a concern. May 75 years of Palestinians being 3rd class citizens.

Western civilization belatedly got a conscience. The Holocaust put it on a guilt trip. How to assuage the guilt? Solution. The establishment or restoration of the state of Israel. Zionism. Homeland for the Jews. Problem: Someone else was living there. Palestinians. Palestine, a protectorate of Great Britain. The sun ever set on the British Empire.

Palestinians are primarily of the Islamic faith. Not at all compatible with Judaism. Frankly, West Texas would have been a safer place or homeland for the Jews than Palestine. Fanatical fundamentalist Islam will never accept the Jews. To them, Jews are “infidels.”

When I hear that the solution for this conflict is a separate state for the Palestinians, I just roll my eyes. Yes, there should be. Will it be the solution? Hardly. Palestine as a state will still be a proxy for Islamic fundamentalism. It’s too small to be a truly independent state.

Judaism and Islam, along with Christianity, are all faiths of the “True Believers.” You can be sure that a conflict made in Hell is a religious one. The world is absurd to those who think. The world is tragic for those who feel. With me, it’s both.