It’s a rhetorical question, to which the answer is probably “straight down the same old drain that it has been circling for thirty years and which have become even more circumscribed since the latest intifada and the election of an even more unsavory lot of gangsters than Yassir Arafat if that were &&$#@ing possible and why the &$##@ does anyone still care?” I certainly don’t, except for a lingering bit of curiosity about how long until… oh, but I’ll get to that.

Now the whole of Gaza looks like a sandy and surrealistic version of “Escape from New York”, combined with one of those nature films which have quantities of rats or scorpions or something equally unattractive, all crammed together at the bottom of a pit, or in a wire cage and either frantically clawing/stinging each other to death… and trying to escape, while the dispassionate camera stands above the tangle, and watches.

Watching dispassionately is about all that is left for all but the die-hard pro-Palestinian adherent to do. The rest of us have becoming increasingly disabused of our illusions and our natural sympathies. Fifty years of sucking on the international charity teat, and being waved as a bloody shirt every time someone gets a little narked at Israel, or the Jewish community, or the US, or whatever the middle-east cause du jour is. Thirty years of murdering Americans, culminating by rejoicing in the streets after 9/11. The unstoppable torrent of lies, sickening violence, whining self-justification, of children dressed up in little bomb vests, of honor killings and mob killings and plain old killings. Of hijackings and assassinations, and the desecration of Christian holy sites. The corruption of international agencies tasked with responsibility for looking after three, or is it four generations of those who backed the wrong side in a war they thought they might win, the perversion of the news agencies who are supposed to do more than shill for one side, and of intellectuals who have rather more invested in striking a pose in an artfully draped kaffiyeh…

Nope, every shred of sympathy I ever had for the poor, pitiful Palestinians dissolved about two years ago. In the words of a tee-shirt I used to have, “I used to be disgusted. Now I’m only amused.” And not even very much amused, since there is really only thing I have left to wonder about in this regard. And that would be, how soon the usual media shills, international charity busy-bodies and intellectual frauds will start prancing around, telling us how sorry we have to be for the Palestinians and demanding that we “do something”. Oh, yeah, and I wonder if it will have any effect this time around, outside the very small circle of media shills, international charity busy-bodies and intellectual frauds. Even Jimmy Carter must be getting fed up.

In answer to those impassioned pleas, I will do something, of course. I will go and make more popcorn.