Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Sharon Not Such a Big Jerk After All?

Sharon Says He Won’t Stop Gaza Pullout (washingtonpost.com): “About 8,200 settlers live in 21 Gaza settlements among 1.3 million Palestinians. Sharon decided the settlers cannot remain in the hostile, poverty-stricken seaside territory. His plan also calls for evacuating four tiny enclaves in the northern part of the West Bank next summer.”

Good for Sharon. It’s, at least, a start.

I recently read some screed somewhere–I don’t remember where–where the guy’s argument was that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is all fair-and-square, essentially because the Israeli army won the battles necessary for taking those territories. Although the guy who wrote the thing didn’t seem to realize it, his conclusion was nothing less than that old favorite: Might Makes Right.

Americans (North, South, and Middle) ought to recognize that argument. It is, after all, how we justified our “expansion” into the territories of the Sioux and Ojibwe and other native nations. (Well, that and the ridiculous notion that we were going to bring culture to the impoverished savages. Hmm….seems like we’re still using that excuse in the “Third World” countries only now we use McDonalds and Coca-Cola and television instead of guns and small pox.)

Well, anyway. I’ll give Sharon some credit for wanting to carry out this limited withdrawal from the Palestinian lands.