What will we do with these Jews?

Am I the only one who looks at that photo and thinks of some of the images of The Passion of the Christ? Another Jew being forced to go where he would rather not?

I’m uncomfortable with the Jews being forced to leave Gaza, for several reasons, partly because it seems to be so easy, these days, to simply blame Jews.

It doesn’t matter that (Israel) is a liberal democracy that grants rights to women and non-Jews while (the Palestinians have) and assassins for rulers and sends its kids to summer camps where they learn the joys of good ol’ fashioned Jew-killing.

According to the hard left’s script, Israel was created when some Europeans (hisssss) invaded the sovereign nation of Palestine, even though we all know the Jewish homeland is somewhere outside Passaic, N.J. Then for no reason Israel invaded the West Bank and Gaza — which for some reason had not been set up as New Palestine by the Egyptians and the Jordanians, but never mind — and made everyone stand in line and get frisked. Those who joined the line in ’67 are just getting through now. Evil Zionists.

Nor does it seem to bother some that the Palestinians would make their cities “Jew free” while 20% of Israel is home to Muslims, and that Christians are also free to live there. Try being a Jew or a Christian in, say…Saudi Arabia, and see how easily you can manage that.

I am not alone in being worried. Gloria Salt is worried too:

The evacuation of Gaza is now a fact. It’s not over yet, and there are plenty of (figurative) landmines yet to be avoided, but the withdrawal is the new reality. The question is, what’s going to happen now?

Maybe it’ll go something like this. The Palestinians of Gaza, flush with an exhilarating sense of opportunity, discover that they can indulge in a new, unexpectedly sweet luxury: thinking about Israelis as something other than the enemy. They’re proud of their role as the spearhead of Palestinian independence, but are well aware that the example they set will be as carefully observed by their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank as it will by the Israelis. They define success as swift, tangible improvement in the daily life of all Gazans, something they hope will soon be enjoyed by Palestinians throughout the West Bank. They see the withdrawal as a chance to assert their dignity as a nation that wants to construct a viable future—a nation that loves life, in other words, and has had enough of the romance of a future-stealing culture of death.

…

Or this could happen. The Palestinians of Gaza, flush with the satisfaction of having thrown out the Israelis, wonder what even more mortars and suicide belts might accomplish. They discover that they can now openly indulge a long-held fantasy: that they might eventually wipe the Israelis off the face of Palestine, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. They’re proud of their role as the spearhead of Palestinian independence, and want to show their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank that there’s more where that came from. They define success as more Israeli concessions, satisfyingly wrung out of them through the language of Israeli entrails splattered on café walls – the only language Israelis understand, after all (to which the Gaza withdrawal attests). They see the withdrawal as a chance to assert their dignity as an Arab nation—a nation that rightly reviles its primal enemy and has had enough of this nonsense of a future beside the Jews.

Given the Islamists reputation for tolerance, particularly when it comes to the Jews, were I a betting woman, I’d bet on the latter option. You’ll want to read all of Gloria’s piece, it’s pretty good.

Here is what I am fearing right now: I’m fearing that these pictures of Jews being moved at gunpoint will, aside from filling some with glee, also make the whole idea of “moving Jews at gunpoint,” seem “usual” and therefore doable and even palatable for some. I fear that those among us who give a bare glimpse to headlines and frontpage photos will look at it all and think, with their eyes glazing over, “oh, more Jews being moved…to Israel, right? Well, nuthin’ wrong with that…what’s on HBO tonight?”

The stuff going on in Gaza feels like a beginning of something else, that’s all.