lucky

I watched Match Point.  It was OK.  Kind of predictable.  But, watch it for the Woody Allen storytelling and for the devastatingly hot and slimy character played by Jonathan Rhys Miller-  the cutie who was in Bend it Like Beckham.  Oh yeah, and there's that gorgeous Scarlett Johanssen creature, whose character had this very odd awkwardly loping walk.

Anyway the premise was that much of what happens to us is just pure luck.  Actions, feelings and beliefs only go so far.  Fate, destiny, birthright - secondary.  What happens to us is, the story goes, is the result of the luck of the draw, the drop of the ball.

So besides catching up on netflix, we watched a lot of news about the middle east.  The Lebanese people - so many of them innocent children - killed by Israeli fire.  The Israeli fire in response to Hezbollah's, and this terrorist group supported by the Lebanese government was using the building occupied by innocent civilians as a shield from behind which they were shooting Israelis.   Not lucky.

We are, luckily, sitting in a comfortably air conditioned room with an abundance of food, water and space, watching this unfold, and picking sides. 

My husband has very strong emotional and family ties to Israel, and throughout his life is a fiercely loyal being.  And that includes being as strongly against something as well as for.  My support of Israel is ideological.  I don't feel it in my gut and soul like true Jews do.  I'm more for.

We live in a fairly diverse area, and 1st and 2nd generations from Syria, Lebanon, Iran make up a healthy chunk of the population. 

Here we are brunching at a new diner this weekend, run by an Arabic-speaking-family.  It's quite good, but, Salty says he's not 100% comfortable supporting them when their homelands are at war with his.

My argument with him always is that the Lebanese, Syrians, etc. are in the U.S. because of the promise of freedom - religious, expression, thought, well-being.  No matter the country of origin of the recent immigrants, remember that our euro-families were newcomers at one time, and were shunned and had to fight for their lives, right?    He tells me I'm too bleeding-heart and I don't understand. 

Maybe he's right.  I don't have family abroad whose safety has been threatened on a daily basis for years and years by terrorists who just don't want them to live in the land they are entitled to live.   I don't have family who 50 years ago "emigrated" to the U.S. and Israel because their communities were slaughtered in Europe by maniacal tyrants.  I don't believe that Israel is my spiritual homeland. 

But I do want Israel to survive and thrive and be a place that welcomes all cultures.  And to be a haven for Jewish people who were driven from Europe and had to walk from freakin' Poland to Israel in order to be safe and start over.  It's ideologically the right thing.  I don't want the innocents slaughtered.  Perhaps the Lebanese government is thinking now, in hindsight, that providing for Hezbollah wasn't such a great idea.   Unluckiness, or fate, or stupidity? 

My husband would say - "it's very simple.  Return our kidnapped soldiers, and we'll stop.  Stop bombing us and we'll stop bombing you.  Let us run our country, and we'll leave you alone." 

And then he would explain to me the geographic scope of the fighting, like, it's as if New Jersey is Israel, and they're being attacked by Bucks County and NYC at the same time.   Imagine that NJ is more modern and different from NY, PA and, well, Delaware.  We (speaking as a Pennsylvanian) could either leave NJ alone and mind our own damn business and share the rivers that divide us, or we could terrorize the shit out of NJ to drive the mutts out so we could take it over because we want things to be our way because it's so much better.  Add to that the religion factor, and say NJ is 90% Jewish and the surrounding area is 100% not-Jewish, and what we'll need to do is open up some KKK style whoop-ass to cleanse the state.

Sick.  I wish it were as easy as luck.  Then again, perhaps some feng-shui principles applied to the Israeli entry points would help increase their good fortune.