The Pyrrhic Dance, by Jean-Leon Gerome.

What the hell? The Israelis and Palestinians are back in the news again for some reason. There’s all sorts of transglobal bickering going on right now about the same old shit.

Their most recent war was back in the summer of 2014, when Gaza was firing dumb rockets at Israel, and the Israelis were shooting smart missiles back. Like an idiot, I jumped into the fray and gave it my two-cents’ worth. I guess I can’t resist a good fight.

I did some research on the history of this conflict, back then, and wrote a post. That old post was on an old blog that I have long since abandoned, due to lack of public interest. But the post suddenly seems timely again. So if you’re curious, here is . . .

THE HISTORY OF THIS BULLSHIT

Arab Muslims seem quite unhappy these days with all the conflict going on in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Israeli Jews are singing, dancing, and toasting, “Mazel Tov!” At least that’s what you can see in their travel ads and brochures. Perhaps they’re just trying to attract tourism dollars.

But the recent war between Israel and Gaza left me wondering. I wanted to know what the real history was behind the never-ending conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. So I shut off the History Channel, which was airing reruns of some pawn shop show, and did a little research into real history.

What I found was so good I had to write it down. It’s a little long, but if you’re curious about the whole Israeli-Palestinian clusterfuck, read on. Here is why I think Israelis seem so happy:

The Old Testament portrays the Philistines as bad guys who deserve to be smitten by God, with the help of his Chosen People. “Philistine” sounds a lot like “Palestine”. They’re really not the same, but many well-meaning Bible-thumpers have fallen for this homophone and assume that the Palestinians are descended from the Philistinians.

From 1881 to 1945, Jews increased their population in Palestine from 4% to 33%, with immigration. This immigration was inspired by a worldwide Zionist movement backed by many prominent Jews and Christians. They favored the Jews over the evil Philistines. Er, I mean Palestinians.

Heck, even a few prominent Muslims initially liked the idea of a Jewish state. A homeland for all those poor scattered Jews—what a great idea! At least it sounded great in theory. After all, what could possibly go wrong? Setting aside a piece of land for the exclusive use and domination of one religious group or race seemed harmless enough to the mindset of many folks in those days.

So the immigration of Zionist Jews into Palestine, between 1881 and 1945, was allowed by the Ottoman Empire; and then the British Empire, who occupied Palestine after World War I. But quite a bit of the immigration was illegal. Just like us, the British failed to build a good enough fence. But I’ll bet the illegals still got driver’s licenses.

From 1947-1948 Czechoslovakia supplied a tremendous amount of weapons and ammunition to Jewish militias in Palestine. Those crazy Czechs! Why would they want to put their noses into Palestine’s business? Well as it happens, no one would take a check in those post-war days, and they needed to raise some cash.

They were actually selling off captured German armaments and making a bundle of money off of their war souvenirs. Plus, some of their war factories survived the war, and they were kept in use producing German weapons. After all you wouldn’t want to lay off a bunch of poor factory workers just because the war was over. Think of what that would do to the unemployment rate.

The Jewish militias used their Nazi weapons to behave like, well, Nazis, ironically enough. They took 60% of the land that the United Nations had recently designated for Palestine, from the Palestinians. They did this by massacring and leveling entire Arab villages, and terrorizing 750,000 Arabs to the point that they fled their homes. They absorbed these arrogated lands into lands already allocated to them by the United Nations, to create most of the current state of Israel. Now that’s chutzpah!

In 1967, Israel displayed more chutzpah by launching a surprise attack against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. This enabled them to take more Palestinian land along with land from Egypt and Syria, in just six days. On the seventh day they rested.

In 1973 Israel ran out of chutzpah. They narrowly avoided defeat in the Yom Kippur War, when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack to try to take their land back. Karma’s such a bitch.

Israel was saved by the United States after the Israeli army began preparing to use their nuclear arsenal, in a last ditch effort to avoid defeat. The U.S.A. was trying to keep Israel from touching off a global thermonuclear war. So you see we really were the good guys here.

We resupplied the beleaguered Israelis with an airlift of tanks, artillery, ammunition and supplies, and gave them valuable intelligence from our spy planes. Their army quickly rallied and surrounded the Egyptian army.

But Egypt was backed by the Soviet Union in those days. Oops! So this nearly touched off another nuclear war between the U.S.A. and Soviet Union. Neither side wanted to go up in smoke, so they negotiated a compromise. The Israelis were convinced to show mercy on the Egyptians, and they let the Pharaoh’s people go. Armageddon was averted.

The only price we had to pay for helping Israel was the small inconvenience of waiting in long lines for gas, while angry Arab nations cut off our oil supply. Oh yeah, we also had to drive 55 mph for the next 13 years.

Israel enjoys immense popularity in the United States, because after all, they are the only Chosen Ones in this world besides us. This popularity has enabled them to procure $3 billion per year in military aid from us, much to the dismay and anger of Arab nations, as well as many other countries. Well they can just suck it up. They’re just jealous because their national debt is not as high as ours.

Israel’s popularity in the U.S.A. has enabled them to get away with occupying the West Bank of Palestine since 1967, while routinely committing human rights abuses against Palestinians. Or to look at it from another angle, the Palestinians sure know how to accommodate a guest.

The occupation allows Israel to establish settlements and effectively colonize the West Bank. Their settlement colonies use the resources of the West Bank to bolster the Israeli economy while leaving the Palestinians dirt poor and powerless to improve their economic condition. Something tells me the Palestinians need a Tea Party.

Israel’s popularity has also helped it to maintain the world’s largest open-air prison. Inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have not been allowed to leave by air, land, or sea, since 2006. The prison population has divided into several rival gangs, with names like “Hamas” and “Fateh”. Hamas means “zeal” and Fateh means “victory.” Yeah, yeah. Hamas also means “hype” and Fateh can mean “One of these days Alice, pow! Straight to the moon!”

Well anyway, Israelis can be happy that their greatest fear of a prison break arises from grossly inaccurate rockets that rarely cause any harm or damage. This is mainly because a whole 5% of these rockets were blocked by their vaunted “Iron Dome” during this summer’s hostilities. Yes that is not a typo. The vaunted news organization Reuters reported it at 5%.

But the vaunted Iron Dome was very expensive, so it’s no surprise that some Israeli politicians quoted figures like 60% or 84%. Like all politicians, they do “vaunt” to be re-elected ever so much.

The rockets were intended by Hamas to force negotiations for a reopening of Gaza’s borders. It’s kind of like saying, “Talk to me, or I’ll destroy you with my peashooter.” The rockets did have an effect. They gave the Israelis an excuse to invade Gaza and kill thousands of Palestinian civilians with impunity. This put the joke on Israel. Look at how many Palestinian souls escaped Gaza with the very help of Israel’s own military.

There are many other reasons why Israelis can be happy, but these are the ones I have found most interesting.

Besides, I’m out of jokes.