Dead Boys

Three Israeli boys were hitchhiking home from Yeshiva.  They caught the wrong ride, and ended up dead.  Bibi, as usual, blamed everybody he didn't like, and punished them all.  A bunch of young stone throwers found their stones met with bullets.  Then, an Arab teen — who probably wasn't even hitchhiking — was kidnapped and killed.  Revenge, people said, as if shooting the stone throwers was not enough.

Bibi "disapproved" the reprisal killing, even though he himself had created the atmosphere that made it pretty much inevitable.

Those three Israeli boys, it seems, took a ride with a couple of Palestinians — now conveniently disappeared.  Clearly, they were bad guys — but, most likely, they didn't "represent" Hamas.  Most likely, those Israeli boys had taken rides from Palestinians before, and never had a problem.

Nobody wants dead boys, but nobody seems to want a two-state solution either.  Bibi seems to want to continue the apartheid state, so Israel can continue to be the "Jewish" state.  Maybe a two-state solution is the wrong answer, though.  Maybe Israel should be the model for the multi-ethnic democracy that isn't working in Iraq or Syria.

Maybe Israel is the last, best hope.  Most likely, though, it's just hopeless.