Leaving the Promised Land

The Jewish Settlers who are leaving Gaza are pretty unhappy and not even the two to three thousand dollars they will each receive are enough to dry their tears. You can't blame them much. The same joker who told them they should go settle there and obligingly kicked out everybody who happened to be there already, is the same clown who's telling them they now have to leave. That's Ariel Sharon, in case you were wondering. I don't know how much of Gaza could be considered the promised land even by the most ardent of ardent zionists. When old Jehovah made out the deed to Israel he wasn't very specific as to what was included in his heavenly land deal. And so when Moses looked down at the new land for the chosen people, it just so happened people were living there. God hadn't gotten around to giving them their eviction notices yet. So, it was up to the Israelites to battle and fight their way to actually get the 'promised land' they were promised. Some promise, huh? You'd think being the special chosen people of God he would have chosen the most primo real estate for the Israelites, but if there's milk and honey in Israel - I aint' seeing it. Tahiti. Now that's a promised land - fabulous weather, lovely scenery, and bare breasted island beauties who give you all the coconuts and free loving you could want. If you ask me the Tahitians were the chosen people. They were just smart enough to keep it to themselves that they were the real chosen ones. The Tahitians knew that if they went blabbing about their special 'chosen' status the big guy might get mad and rain fire and brimstone down on them. As he's been known to do. The question of who actually owns the Holy land is a pretty thorny one for sure. It's been under dispute for the last five thousand years when the Palistinians were called Philistines and five thousand years from now, whatever humans are left in the area will still be fighting about it. I don't need to visit the future in a time machine to figure that one out. In the old days - throughout most all of human history - there never was much question of who owned what. The Pharaoh, Emperor, King, Caeser, Czar, Khan ... whatever you wanted to call him, he owned everything, which included everyone else. The high muckety muck with the biggest, strongest army got to claim anything he could, and if he could completely slaughter his neighbor's entire population and take all their land and homes and cooking pots ... well, that was fair. And nobody thought any differently. The idea that the first group of people who are at a place automatically own it, is one that I would strongly dispute. I know that, as the ancestor of Northern Europeans who brought disease and slavery to the new world, my opinion might be a little suspect. But hear me out. At some point in history there was one person who was the actual, very first person to set foot on the continent of North America. Should that one person have the right to claim ownership of the whole entire land mass? Most everyone living here in North America are not, in fact, descendents of that one person, which means pretty much everybody, including 'native' Americans and not just genocidal white-skinned devils, are trespassers and we should get out. Don't you think? Okay. Maybe you can say that the group that the one first man setting foot in America was with owned everything. What if that group was in Alaska and another group were in Florida, but came a minute later than the first group. They're invaders, aren't they? Probably you can agree that there isn't any problem with these groups sharing the continent. Right? And if you add another small group in California and maybe another in Texas and another in Nevada - still no problem. At some indefineable point, however, it does become a problem. Which is why Israel will never be at peace. No matter who used to own what or should own what or lived in the land one, two, three thousand years ago, both the Palistinians and the Israelis are both there and they're both going to stay there. Period. Dismantling the settlements in Gaza is a very good idea, as is removing other settlements in what are now Palistinian controlled lands. Those settlements were and are nothing but a provocation and the Israelis who settled in them pretty much had no good reason to. If I were an Israeli being evicted from Gaza right now, I would take my two or three hundred grand and head off to the promised land - Tahiti.