Why I Don't Live In Israel

This is the kind of article we love.

It is personal and, therefore, lends itself to lived history, from which wisdom, eventually, emerges, unless your government kills you first.

AlterNet: Why I Don't Live In Israel:

This war is not different from the others. It's just the same. It reminds us of the wars that preceded it. I was born into the Yom Kippur War and lived through two other 'official wars': the first Lebanon war, the first Gulf war. I remember as a kid: lists of soldiers killed in battle read on the radio after the hourly news; knowing the next name could be one of my friends' brothers or fathers. I remember as a teenager: sirens, gas masks, and fireworks shows of patriot missiles chasing Scuds in the sky. I remember as a mom: driving in the farthest possible lane from a city bus, just in case it was the one carrying the suicide bomber that day.
Wars are all the same and this one is no different. For Israelis, they all go back to 'that' war. That war that turned my great-grandparents into smoke, that horrible, monstrous act of genocide that keeps creeping up on us.

Jews were not a party in World War II. They were victims -- they had no army and no choice. But Israel does have an army and a choice. Israel is choosing to endanger its citizens and soldiers, to ruin once again the lives of many civilians in Lebanon, in order to prove its strength and to keep 'that' from happening again.