It's just highschool politics, you know

"it's still highschool politics you know. Nothing's changed, jerks and assholes still don't know shit about [anything]"
-Against Me!, Justin

Am I the only one who remembers high school? Certainly that cannot be the case. Think back to your own days in the crucible of early adult-hood, when the jeans you wore and the people you hung out with in the halls were more important than anything that actually took place in the classroom. Cliques were constantly forming, breaking up and reforming; popularity was the key to survival and often your own morals were the currency demanded. Of course you remember the bullies, everyone does; those kids who tried to hide their own troubles by creating ones for the rest of us? Remember that time in the change room after gym class, when Joey Sanders and Rob Brathwright started shoving you around in front of everyone, or the time they surrounded and humiliated you behind the school during the fire drill with everyone either laughing along or doing nothing to stop it, and worst of all in front of Sara McMillan, the girl you hadn’t the courage to so much as look at let alone talk to? All the anger and frustration, the jeers and the spitballs were almost too much to bare, right? Those kids who made your life seem so unfair and brutal, those kids who’s home lives were more screwed up than you could ever know, they tortured you and crippled your self-confidence. How many times did you feel like lashing out, like giving those assholes what they deserve? One day you almost did, and it nearly broke you. You were seconds away from doing something unspeakable, of validating your anger and making them pay. You thought you hated them so much, and that hammer on the bench in shop class began to look like the answer.

How many times have you heard scenarios like this, stories of kids pushed over the edge into horrendous violence? Columbine, Virginia Tech, schools across the continent where the system failed and people died. It doesn’t take much for the victims to be come the villains, for emotions to get the best of people, and retaliatory ideas to take over. The backlash is always worse than the torment that caused it, especially in light of the fact that it all could have been solved long before it escalated to that level. Take this scenario and blow it up, make it fit the scale where people are nations and spitballs are rockets. The broken families that were the root of Joey’s anti-social behaviour are now the shattered and marginalized societies that breed extremism and hatred, places where frustration and anger at home make people look for someone, anyone, to blame, to take it out on, be they deserving or otherwise. Is the metaphor becoming clear? This cycle of anger and violence that so clouded your judgements, and urged you to just lash out with all your might is the same thing now clouding the minds of Israel’s leaders and anyone who supports this unwarranted war. Israel has been pushed to the breaking point. They didn’t just pick up that shop class hammer, they brought Uncle Sam’s shotgun to school and now people are dying by the hundreds, and what do the rest of us do? Nothing, just as no one in high school would step in; they were all to caught up in their own struggle up the ultimately meaningless social ladder. Worse, our country, one that claims to support human rights, to be the unbiased voice of reason, is actually cheering this violence on. We did nothing to stop this before the fighting started, and that is a black mark we must wear. But worse, we’re doing nothing to stop it now. We’re allowing Israel to hide behind their anger, using it as an excuse to commit disgusting acts, acts that without the veil of retribution would be nothing short of war crimes. Yes, obviously Hamas bears much of the blame, but that doesn’t make this war allowable. How many times did Joey say ‘Come on man, just throw a damn punch! What are you, a pussy?’ Would the cops have listened when you tried to explain your six dead classmates by saying ‘they earned it’? And what about Mrs Smith, Shelly Johnson and the others who got caught in your cross fire? Is it enough to say ‘well, too bad, they were in the way’ or ‘Rob was hiding behind them’? Israel shelled a UN compound today…first a school and now the UNITED NATIONS’ GAZA HEADQUARTERS! Even if you believe that really were returning fire on extremists, what good can possibly come of this? Clearly Israel is blinded by rage to what they have become. They have lost control the way you almost lost control way back in high school shop class. They are now terrorists, using fear and violence as a solution to their problems just as Hamas is so adept at doing.

Whenever something like this involves the kind of emotional energy, the anger, loss and frustration that this necessarily does, to expect that the two sides can be objective enough be rational, to avoid seeking simple, bloody revenge is not only foolish, it is irresponsible in the extreme. What we need is for the world to demand in one voice that Israel stop this violence. The only thing they are accomplishing is unwarranted death and further radicalizing already sympathetic Palestinians. To continue to stand on the sidelines is to condemn more innocent people to death, just as the silence of your classmates so long ago contributed to your torment and eventual breakdown. Every country that abstained from voting on the UN resolution condemning Israel’s actions this week has Palestinian blood on its hands, and we, for voting against it are even more culpable. This madness has to stop, it has to stop now, and the only way that is going to happen is if world pressure forces Israel to see the monster it is becoming.