When I was a child, Israel was a place that existed in the Bible and in Sunday sermons in church. We read about it in Sunday School. It was no different than, say, Tasmania, but with people who were always fighting somebody and disobeying Yahweh. There were great stories of creation, floods, plagues and the little guy beating the big guy. For me the best stories were the ones about the exodus from Egypt – plagues, parting seas, burning bushes and golden idols. Somehow, this was all important because Jesus was a Jew, who lived in Judea, which used to be a part of Israel but by then was part of the Roman Empire. Jesus was very important to me for reasons I could not quite describe, but Israel was just a place like England, with its Knights of the Round Table and Admiral Nelson, always invading or being invaded by Scotland and France.

My first encounter with modern Israel was the movie, Exodus, which came out in 1960, when I was 15. I was very moved by the movie and the words of its theme still resonate: “This is my land, God gave this land to me.” Exodus was about the movement to establish a modern Israel. I thought, “Good for them,” and moved on.

We had one Jew in our high school class in suburban Atlanta, and nobody cared, one way or the other. Later in life, my best friend for much of my early- and mid-adulthood was a Jew and I didn’t even know it until Beth told me one day (her milieu in New York was Jews, Irish and Italians).

Later, as I matured, lost my faith, and began to try to understand why things were the way they were, I began actually thinking about Jews, discrimination, the diaspora, the Holocaust, and the establishment of Israel. Since I was no longer a Christian, I was more objective than I would have been otherwise, although I was never a big Old Testament guy.

It seems to me that the whole modern-Israel thing rests on three foundations:

• Yahweh is God and therefore his gift of Israel to Jews must be respected.

• There was a great deal of cumulative guilt and sympathy resulting from the Holocaust.

• Jews, ironically, punch above their weight in the Western world. The entire world population of Jews is around 15 million people – about the size of the cities of Mumbai and Beijing.

The first is up for debate, given the various religions of the world.

The second is real and deep and profound, although the passage of time has diluted it significantly. It will basically be gone in another decade or so, much like Pearl Harbor, “a day that will live in infamy.”

The third is also real and is one component of what is, to me, a bizarre antisemitism among many people around the world. We live in a strange world in which racial discrimination is perhaps the major taboo after pedophilia, and antisemitism is – not exactly ok, but accepted in many parts of the population. Ok to hate Jews; not ok to hate blacks.

I gave up on trying to make it all make sense a long time ago. The best I can do is to describe what is going on.

So you take a mostly-empty part of the world that no one cares about except its inhabitants, which is a significant exception, and turn it over to the Jews. This is post-World War II, and much of the world is having its boundaries redrawn and millions of people are on the move. Whole countries are being formed and iron curtains are being put up. A number of flash point would be created.

But, speaking of hating Jews, Israel happens to be in the middle of a large area populated by Muslim countries.

It turns out that Jews, together with Christians, are “People of the Book,” according to Islam. Jesus and Moses are among Islam's Prophets. Most humans are in a subcategory, but People of the Book have a special status – not quite damned and not quite saved. People of the Book are basically to pay a special tax and be left alone, while the third group – I’m not sure how to describe it diplomatically, but how about, discrimination is ok.

That’s not how it turns out. Jews are not ok and are perceived as the enemy.

A lot of this is opportunistic political rhetoric to unite a country behind a common enemy. Prior to the Gaza War, that dynamic, while still strong, was waning. The timing of the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel may have been influenced by the probability of an accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

It is not a stretch to assert in overstatement that no one in the Middle East cares about the Palestinians. No country is offering refugees asylum and none, except for Iran, is providing meaningful support.

In any event, there have been several wars by Israel’s neighbors to try to wipe it out, none of which succeeded.

Which gets us to the recent status quo. Israel is under continual threat from Muslim countries. It is continually being physically attacked from Gaza and from Lebanon. Several nations, particularly Iran, have vowed to wipe Israel from the map.

Which brings us to Gaza and October 7.

Let’s have a thought experiment.

Let’s say that every month or so, drug lords in Mexico would place a bomb in the US and kill several Americans. Or would cross the border and shoot somebody and rape others. This goes on for years. Hundreds, thousands of Americans attacked.

And we react, striking targets in Mexico. Hundreds, thousands of Mexicans attacked.

Over the years, atrocities pile up on both sides – these children killed here; this nurse raped there. It is clear that Mexico is provoking the US and is the primary agitator, but, after all, the US stole Texas and other land from Mexico – it was theirs (Native Americans are not considered by either side). All of a sudden, these Protestant Europeans showed up on Mexico’s Catholic land, back when that mattered a great deal. And Americans did enough outrageous things to cause Mexicans to be genuinely angry.

One day, a group of Mexicans crosses the border. They kill more than 1,200 Americans, raping essentially every woman they can find. And then they take 251 Americans hostage back to Mexico. The lowest, most depraved of human behavior.

What would be demanded of the government? How would we react, even if Trump were not President?

Yep, at that point, I’m on team Israel. Wipe the bastards out. Atrocity does not begin to adequately describe the October 7 attack. Just an abomination.

By “the bastards,” I mean Hamas.

Bad guys, no question.

Even if you sympathize with them, they have taken things way too far.

But Israel makes a fateful decision. Instead of killing some part of Hamas in retaliation – the time-honored way - they decide to take out the entire organization. Israel has taken all it can take. The straw broke the camel’s back and Israel is not going to have its citizens killed, raped and taken hostage any more. This cannot be a token reprisal. This has to be annihilation of Hamas.

Only, Hamas is enmeshed into Gaza. It has purposefully set up operations in schools and hospitals. A major attack on Hamas would necessarily be a major attack on all Palestinians.

Israel turned to scorched Earth.

Maybe the idea was to get the populace to rise up against Hamas, but that did not work.

Gaza has been leveled.

Some 70,000 Palestinians have died.

Another abomination.

We now spend time measuring relative abominations.

There is no way to do that.

Whichever side you come down on, you’re wrong. As Beth would put it, you are picking your favorite Menendez brother.

You cannot – must not - morally support abominations.

But, non-Hamas Palestinians are caught in the middle of dueling abominations.

So, what is the solution?

Of course, there is not one.

The US became culpable by not reining in Israel early in the process. It is now too late.

Israel is on a roll and has now turned to Hezbollah and is slowly destroying Lebanon.

And Iran.

More abomination.

And the US is doing the same to Iran.

The Iranian government and army are bad guys, but now, so is the US.

Metastasizing, multiple abominations, including by us.

And the ultimate reality is that there is no way to make it stop or make it better. If everyone quit destroying everyone else today, the old prejudices and anger would resurface, this time on steroids, and with justification on both sides.

Maybe someone will win and, over subsequent generations, anger and outrage will diminish. The atrocities may fade into the mist, much like Japanese atrocities in World War II, or even the Holocaust.

That’s the best we can hope for.

A plague on both their houses - and on ours.

Human nature is a bitch.