The Israel/Hamas conflict has been bringing back painful memories of childhood that I would rather forget. I suppose that those memories have also shaped to a certain degree my view on the conflict. As far as I can tell, Hamas has been launching rockets into Israel for years now. I've been hearing about it on NPR for a while now. Now Israel has launched an offensive to stop the rocket attacks and destroy smuggler tunnels that go in and out of the Gaza strip. The whole world is trying to bring about a cease-fire or treaty or something. There was a cease-fire but Hamas decided to break it for whatever reason. I heard some audio clips from the Israeli spokesperson and one from Hamas. The Israeli guy said that they will agree to a cease-fire if Hamas stops launching rockets. The Hamas official said we will agree if Israel stops the offensive first and that they will keep launching the rockets until they stop.
Now that is what brings back the bad memories. People who start something and when someone reacts, they get huffy and say you need to stop or apologize because you attacked me. When I was a kid and someone hit me and when I reacted by hitting them back they would get angry with me and hit me again and call me a jerk or something. It always pissed me off and I didn't understand what the hell was going on. If I did something to someone else, they would do it back. It seems pretty normal to retaliate and keep it even. But I don't understand when people get upset about a retaliation that was equal to the act that started it in the first place.
My "favorite" example was when I had a run in with Craig in elementary school. I was playing with a friend throwing a ball against the wall(sounds fun, eh?) and he ran by and kicked the ball away from me. I chased after the ball and when I went to pick it up, he ran back and stomped on my hand. It hurt and pissed me off and I called him a "dick". Now I didn't yell it out or anything. I mostly said it under my breath but he heard me. About five minutes later, a recess monitor came over and told me I need to not call people names. I explained what happened and she said that it doesn't matter. I had to apologize to the person who kicked my ball away and stomped on my hand. I got lectured for the rest of recess. He got off with nothing; he didn't even get told not to step on people. Not fair.
(This was also the same guy who grabbed me by the throat from behind and told me he was going to kill me. He pulled out a switchblade and asked if I wanted to die. I was already terrified being that I had just started going to public school after four years of private school and didn't know anyone. He held me there for a few minutes while he and his friends laughed at how scared I was and kept asking if I want to die. Then he flipped open the switchblade and it was a comb that looked like a knife. Then he slammed me on the ground and they went off laughing. Again the recess monitor didn't do anything.)
Any wonder why I spent the majority of the next ten years reading by myself? I spent about 5 to 18 hours a day reading. Pretty sad. On the other hand that's the only thing I'm good at.
Any ways that brings me back to what I was saying. If Hamas started the whole stupid thing, they shouldn't complain and say the other people need to stop first; we are just reacting to their actions. What is wrong with you stupid people?
I know I rambled a bit and didn't really make it too coherent but hopefully you get the idea. By the way, I hated growing up.
2 comments:
So did I. Childhood sucked (and by childhood I mean everything before college). I too spent 95% of it reading by myself. Good thing they didn't tell us that nothing was going to change when we grew up--some of us might not have bothered to.
It's nice to know that I'm not the only one.
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