American ignorance

Israeli court dismisses wrongful death lawsuit
My progressive classmate out on the West Coast is bewailing the fact that a Israeli court has ruled against an American family who sued the Israeli government over the death of their daughter in 2003.
I don’t see why, because the young lady got what she wanted.
Gasp! I didn’t really say that. Oh, yes I did. She wanted one of two things to happen: A) She wanted the Israeli army to stop what it was doing or B) she wanted it to be the cause of her death so she could be a martyr to her cause. Well, she got her wish.
I don’t know if it was intentional or accidental, but putting yourself in front of a multi-ton vehicle which, whether you want to agree with it or not, has limited visibility, then you are taking your life in your hands. Since people can move more quickly and more agilely it is up to the people on the ground to get out of the way of the lumbering bulldozer. If you don’t, you get squashed.
Now, I know I am sounding cold-hearted, and maybe I am, but I have spent too much time wandering around in armored vehicle parks not to know that it is up to you on the ground to stay out of the way of those big vehicles. You don’t and you are ground into the ground; simple as that. No do overs, no make ups, no oopsies I didn’t want you to do that.
Now, this young lady, you have to respect her, because she believed in her cause. She believed the Palestinians in the Gaza strip in 2003 were getting a raw deal from the Israelis because they IDF was knocking down buildings around where attacks were being launched against the IDF and into Israel. She was trying to stop the IDF engineer teams from flattening the houses of Palestinians who lived in that area. She was willing to put her body at risk. It was dangerous, and if she didn’t know that she was more ignorant than I think she was.
Does that mean she wanted to die? I doubt it. I don’t think anyone really wants to die (except for some zealots who take religion to extreme), especially under a falling wall of cinderblock or the tracks of a bulldozer. Unfortunately, all too many people (especially American idealists) think that nothing bad is going to happen to them. They, in their righteous anger and purpose, will be invincible and immune from any harm. Wrong answer!
Right does not might make (nor, on the other hand, does might make right), but right can get you killed if you get in front of might. That is reality. That is the truth. That is a fact.
Now, I wasn’t in Gaza in 2003, and I wasn’t at the site of this incident. From what I have read about the incident, no one actually saw her go down, but they were aware of it moments later. The blame, thereby being attributed by her supporters, being leveled that the bulldozer operator deliberately and with malice just drove her down. Could be, I don’t know. At the same time, it might not have happened. I don’t know that either.
According to both sides, the IDF tried to keep spectators away from harm, but the young lady eluded their efforts and kept trying to block the operator from doing his assigned task.
Now, you can argue that the Palestinians are getting a raw deal from the Israelis. By the same token, you can argue that the Israelis are getting a raw deal from the various Palestinian and other factions that have lined up to drive the Jewish Israelis into the sea, if they can. Any way you look at it, people are getting a raw deal.
Just this week, on August 26, three mortar rounds from Gaza fell in Southern Israel and on August 27, two factories in the Israeli city Sderot were hit by multiple rockets. In response, IDF aircraft fired ten rockets into three alleged militant training camps in Gaza.  Israelis airstrikes in Gaza. 
So far, this year there have been some 440 reported rocket attacks on Israel.
Now, I know, the whole problem is the Israelis. If they weren’t there, then we would have peace and stability in the Middle East. (And if you believe that, would you be interested in buying a bridge in Brooklyn, or maybe San Francisco? I can let them go relatively cheaply.)
Granted, the Israelis are part of the problem, but they are there and have every right to stay where they are. The whole thing could have been solved 65 years ago, if the Arabs in the neighborhood would have just agreed to let the Jewish Israelis have the land they lived on and the Arabs had the land they lived on. However, that solution, known as partition was overwhelmingly rejected and a nice little war followed that ended up with what most of the world considers as the nation of Israel (with its pre-1967 borders) and the Jordanians holding what is called the West Bank, the Egyptians holding what we now call Gaza and the Syrians holding an area called the Golan Heights.
Two wars later, and the Jordanians and the Syrians had been thrown out of the north eastern area of greater Israel; the Israelis held all of Jerusalem and the Egyptians were back behind the Suez Canal. Another war later, and then the Israelis agreed to give the Sinai Peninsula back to the Egyptians (with an American battalion-sized task force acting as a buffer … by the way, they still are there) in exchange for a peace treaty.
Since the early 1990s the Israelis have been trying to make a deal with the various Palestinian factions to trade land for peace, but that has been a non-starter. Now, you can blame the Israelis, if you want (and I know people do) but you see if you keep lobbing mortars and rockets at people, they tend to get defensive and intransigent and the Israelis have. So, they build settlements on the tactically and strategically significant ground because it is in their interest to build them there. Of course, this makes everybody angry, but what do you expect? Do you expect them to put their heads on the altar’s chopping block and give their apparent enemies (remember the ones who keep sending in suicide squads to blow things up, snipers and lobbing mortars shells and rockets, as well as the other gangs who go around stoning people and tossing Molotov cocktails) free shots with the sword or ax.
I feel sorry for the parents of the young lady. However, she was doing what she wanted to do. She put herself out there. It was her choice and she easily could have stayed out of the path of that bulldozer. So, in that sense, the Israeli court was correct: The Israeli government was not responsible for her death. She was … and that was the way she wanted it. She is now a martyr.
Of course, we Americans in our ignorance always think we know what is best and what is right … if only everybody would agree with us (even though we can’t agree amongst ourselves what is right or wrong).