Of the 2,700 or so posts that I have written since Kiko’s House came kicking and screaming into the blogosphere, I count fewer than 10 on Israel, several of them on the sad decline and death of Ariel Sharon, a man whom I once loathed but came to admire, and only a couple on Israel and its Palestinian neighbors.
The chief reason for this is the utter intractability and predictability of the relationship between the two peoples, which has to be the ultimate current events film loop of my lifetime – which coincides almost exactly with the lifetime of the state of Israel.
The ability of the Israelis to do things nearly as self destructive and ultimately futile as the Palestinians is a never ending source of amazement to me, but the whole mess also quite frankly boring and I’ve felt like I have little or nothing to add to the cacophony . . . er, debate.
If that seems a little harsh, then screw you. But before you go away in a huff, let me tell you a story.
We’ll call it The Story of Three Davids.
In many respects, Shaun David Mullen is a mirror image of David No. 1 — my grandfather, David Snellenberg.
Like me, he was as bald as a billiard ball, enjoyed an occasional cigar, questioned authority, enjoyed baseball, had a deep love of America and was a student of its history. He introduced David No. 2 as a young boy to journalism and as a result every one of the thousands of my bylines in newspapers from Philadelphia to San Francisco to Tokyo during a long career included my middle initial — “D” as in David — in his honor. (I’ve dropped that as a blogger because it seems, well, too officious for the medium.)
Granddaddy Snellenberg and I had something else in common: A deep ambivalence about David No. 3 — that would be the Star of David, or the nation of Israel.
Granddaddy came by this view honestly. You’ll have to judge for yourself whether I do.
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