Please don't misunderstand me.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/06/26/middleeast/iran-zarif-us-trump-obliteration-intl/index.html


Iran has threatened to destroy Israel before, which would be a bad idea for a number of reasons.  For one thing, using a nuclear weapon on Israel would poison everything around it.  Nobody can control fallout from a nuclear weapon.

I have previously said that I don't want to talk about Israel a lot because I doubt my ability to be objective, because I don't know enough about it, and because I don't want my being a(n admittedly unobservant) Jew to mislead other people to give me an authority that I don't have.  I think it's accurate to say that Israel was created in the aftermath of WW II, when it was irrefutable that Jews needed a recognized legitimacy in a world that had persecuted them and driven them from place to place for centuries.  Land was taken from people who were already living there to create this state, which would make anyone angry, and it wasn't random land, it was land of religious significance to people everywhere.  It is impossible to overstate the visceral and enduring impact of giving this particular part of the world to form a Jewish homeland.  To threaten to destroy Israel is maybe a manifestation of a thought process that is guided by absolutes.

Nobody really knows how to solve this problem.  The only conclusion that I ever get to after thinking about it from my meager store of knowledge is that there are now many Islamic states and only one Jewish state.  Being an American, I'm supposed to be wary of any government that has an official religion.  If any generation has ever lived in a world without contradictions, I don't know that, either.

I will say again that I'm unhappy about the lack of recognition given to so many other genocides that have taken place, in which Jews weren't the target.  There have been many.  I think that it's time that everyone take stock of humanity's capacity for good and evil without flinching and to change the perspective on genocide.  Genocide is the inevitable without setting in place societal defenses against it.  It is not an anomaly.  Violence is the only constant of every human society.  We are a species that likes to kill, that even glories in sadism.

When I shower today, I will be watched by people who think that I deserve this degradation.  I am a primary source of amusement for them every day.  My anguished cries for help have gone unheeded for 9 years; my dehumanization as a law-abiding citizen and resident of the United States is total, is normalized.  The only escape route which I have ever been offered is to sleep with and/or work for one of my abusers.  Right and wrong aren't included in how my abusers think about how they treat me or how everyone else who uses the facilities which I use is also being criminally violated.  I'm mentioning this to emphasize that Iran is not the only place where things which can be construed as human rights abuses occur.

As I have said before, I don't tell President Trump what to do, nor do I want that much power.  Sometimes he listens to me and sometimes he doesn't.  He has many experts advising him, and I'm not an expert.  What I was trying to say yesterday is that there is less opportunity for dialogue to fail when each side understands why the other side thinks what it thinks.