the world under one banner

my word - there're a lot of them. now meeting in malaysia, to discuss how to get rid of us... under regular circumstances, business as usual.

to quote dennis miller:
Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five Million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it.

i really do feel like i'm sitting inside a pack of matches. i find endless amusement in reading comments posted all over news-sites. fantastic that people all over the world actually pay attention to the crap on al-jazeera.

here we go with the flashback:
once upon a time, in the year 2000CE (or AC, depending on who's counting), i lived with psychotic american. for a number of reasons, which i'd rather not list in one place (it'd be creepy), we didn't get along.

in fact, we did "didn't get along" extremely well. i was rather busy - studies, work, and girlfriend. he spent all day fantasizing about being the next john doe (se7en), or ikara gendo (neon genesis evangelion). i didn't have the desire / time / energy to stroke his ego, and he got nasty. he did some really horrible things, and some very unsettling things, and i'd had enough.

so i made a deal with him. i'd stay out of his life, and he'd stay out of mine. this worked for a day; then spot, a friend of spot's, and i arrived home at 3am, to discover a world of post-it notes with some, erm, interesting things written on it.

the first one being "you can stick our deal up your bisexual ass". last time i checked, i'm not bisexual. but that's not relevant. a short while later, i moved out. after a couple of weeks, i'd all but forgotten about him. and aside from an incident here or there, the next couple of years were sans-psycho.

during my last year of studies, i was introduced to a really cute girl at a party. she'd been in israel a couple of months, i'd never seen her before. when i told her my name, her eyes widened: "so YOU'RE the guy that burned down his primary school!"

WTF? we sat down for a very strange conversation, where i learned that she'd been living with psychotic american, and he was still obsessed with me. and telling some very obscure stories.

every time he comes to mind, i wonder at what point he's going to begin whatever it is he's planning for the people on his list.

back to present:
israelis and arabs get along like gasoline and tires in the middle of a lightning storm. shit happens. ok, we're surrounded by them, but nevermind. they've got oil, we've got orange juice, and everybody wins.

we have so many internal problems in this country, that it's a wonder we haven't come to outright civil-war... but then, "the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death."

aside from the arsim, but we let them be because they're stupid. and like parktown prawns, there ain't nothing you can do about 'em.

anyway, throughout our communal history we've made deals to stay out of each other's lives. the problem is that the arabs obsess, and *hate* us with a driving passion that leads them not only to lie to the rest of the world, but to themselves as well. it's not that nobody knows about this stuff. but their propaganda machine is so well-integrated - and as for memes, the muslim meme is a particularly potent and aggressive one. forget about tolerance.

after having finally managed to extricate ourselves from lebanon, and putting them out of mind (aside from an incident here and there), years have passed, and we've suddenly discovered that the feelings weren't quite mutual.

in my opinion, one of the most important things that we can do about our present - and future - situation, is to create a message, and get it heard. see, we don't think we need to have a message. we're a country of people, each one trying to make his own path in life. we're HUMAN. and civilized too, but i'm not going into my general critique of what it means to be civilized.

wafa sultan makes an excellent point about the contributions jews and israelis have made to the world. part of the reason we can make those contributions is that we can't be fucked to spend all our time hating our neighbours and figuring out ways to get at them. we have our little matchbox, and somehow it's enough. hell, we're even sharing it with arabs.

so i guess my question is as follows: how do we get the arab world interested in advancing and competing with other civilized nations? and taking care of their own problems?

how do we get the psychotic americans of this world interested in doing something positive and meaningful with their lives?

how do we cause these people to take satisfaction in creating, instead of destroying?

you see, if we can't answer these questions... if we can't realize good solutions... we've got violent and criminally insane door-to-door salesmen on our hands. israel's the first door on a long road. the man inside is defending his home, but the number of salesmen coming down the road is increasing rapidly (hell, they're taking over the EU at the moment). they're not going to be satisfied with selling the man inside things he doesn't want. they'll be satisfied when they've lynched the poor blighter - if they can lynch him, they'll have the confidence to raise their sights.

that image above? that could be the only flag this world is left with.

or maybe i'm wrong. maybe it's just personal.