Fair enough.
The final choice is theirs, and it may comfort them to know that, whatever their final choice is, many people worldwide can see clearly the impossible position in which she has been consciously placed. By friends (?) who should have known better.
****** impossible position in which she (israel) has been consciously placed***
This is neither new nor a first. Jews have historically been placed in impossible positions. Don't be here, don't be there - just don't be.
Europeans have believed and treated Jews as outsiders - but that's not true. Jews have lived in European countries for almost two thousand years. Since groups of Europeans have come and gone - displacing one another (Goths, Visigoths, Celts, Slavs, all the Germanic tribes, Picts, Norsemen, etc.) Jews have actually been "in place" longer than some of the so called indigenous Europeans.
There has been a great deal of inermarriage as well as melding of people through conversion to Christianity. It is estimated that in modern day Spain fully 85% of Spaniards have Jewish ancestors. There was also tremendous intermarriage and conversion in Germany (ironic isn't it?) At one time one third of the population of Warsaw was Jewish. Salonika was majority Jewish until the Nazis wiped out the Jewish community that had lived there since Biblical times and especially since the Expulsion from Spain in 1492.
So this idea that there has been a wall of separation between Jews and other Europeans is a fabrication of the imagination. It is no accident that European Jews look European - many are blondes with blue eyes.
Yet this idea of "outsiderness" persists and has just been transferred from the Jews as a group/religion to the State of Israel as a country.
It's still the same old line:
Don't be here, don't be there - just don't be.
....................................................
However, the impossible situation in which Israel is placed is the same position in which we are placing ourselves.
Don't speak of who is enemy.
Don't accuse the enemy of wanting to kill us.
Don't warn off the enemy.
Apologize endlessly for any and all "profiling." Well, if you can't speak of the enemy and aren't allowed to recognize the enemy - guess what? You can't defend against the enemy.
In the second world war everyone recognized what the Japanese enemy looked like. When we erred - we erred on the side of winning. Mistakes were made, but they were the mistakes on the side of survival.
In this war on terror we are often our own worst enemies.
So, we demand the same of Israel - even if she disagrees with us she has no choice but to placate this great friend who supplies the bullets.
However, in all honesty it has to be said that Israel also suffers from the PC angst of the leftwing which infects our own body politic - and will eventually cause the demise of the body. It's the rot within.
And now the rot within controls Congress and we can see the results shaping up.
Things like wishing the new commanding general "G-D speed" but threaten him by not endorsing the troops he says he needs, underminging the morale of the soldiers he leads, and threatening to take away the money for the bullets.
Between the rot within and the threat from without - the future looks dim for both Israel and the United States.