I got kicked out of a pub once (a while ago - pre Islam) for having a legitimate go at a woman who had a disability. It was a bit of a shocker because as far as I was concerned, I was chatting to her like I would anyone else.
Whenever I heard a person with a disability speak on the radio or TV they always said they just wanted to be treated like everyone else, seriously, I must have heard that a ton of times.
So I asked this lady about how she came to be disabled and she was proper rude about it...Why is my face and arse mixed up....she snapped back at me. So I pointed out to her that she had started chatting to me first, I didn't elicit a conversation from her and she said, she wished she hadn't started one up. So I asked her if she was so stupid to think that she wouldn't get questions about her disability and I told her I wasn't being insulting just a proper interested question about a very huge and obvious part of her life. I did apologise and attempted to leave it at that.
However, she continued, likening it to someone asking a black man why he was black and I seriously had to stop myself from laughing and remarked that her logic was even more disabled than her body. Suddenly, the affable landlady went all Gollum on me "LEAVE NOW AND NEVER COME BACK!" because I "....shouldn't argue with a disabled person." Yeah really!
I asked the lady being condescended to, if she was happy being 'defended' in this way and she seemed smug that someone had, on the surface of it, stood up for her, so I left, under the scowling eyes of the raging landlady.
This story is what springs to mind when I think of the national identity of Israel. Something unimaginably awful, horrific and unjust happened to a vast number of Jewish people in history (not to mention a whole bunch of other nationalities too), and now the world is too afraid to treat Israel as normal. Even if you just look at the figures of those who have died on both sides of the conflict involving Israel and Palestine, you have to wonder how it gets away with such disproportionate responses when many other countries would not. Israel literally gets away with murder, over the top, needless killing, trading in on its own tragic historic losses.
Instead of being angry, vengeful and ungenerous, Israel could so easily be a nation that is known for its generosity and peacefulness given that itself has known so much pain and unjust persecution.
Stay prideful Israel, hateful and disproportionately murderous and one day it will be one too many murders and your major supporters will not be able to excuse your actions any more and they will all turn against you.
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