I understand that it must suck to be Israel. That’s a hell of a place to be Jewish. Of course, at this point, I think at least a large part of the area’s hatred of Israel comes from the country being an asshole and a bully. But that’s understandable. If I lived there, I’d have to be properly medicated—high doses of Valium. Otherwise, I’d be basket case.

But I really don’t understand the last two days. Egypt brokered a ceasefire two days ago. Everything seemed to be going well. And then Israel launched an attack that killed more Palestinians in Gaza than all the Israelis killed by projectiles from Gaza in the past three years. And what coverage are we getting about the situation here in the United States?

Most of it could be taken right from Elliott Abrams at the Council on Foreign Relations, Why Did Hamas Provoke a Conflict?

But that’s not what Abrams wrote earlier this week before the ceasefire. He wrote this today. Note that everything he writes is true. He just fails to mention anything that Israel has done wrong. You know, little things, like breaking the ceasefire and killing a bunch of people. And as always, he makes a very big deal of the mostly impotent rockets from Palestine.

I admit that I don’t understand what is going on. It is hard to sort through all the conflicting information. It certainly seems that Israel has done something very bad, but I’m sure they have their reasons. The problem is that most of our media just follow the Elliott Abrams line that Israel is always right and Palestine is always wrong. And as a result, we never get anywhere near the truth.

Afterword

It is interesting to compare Abrams bit of agitprop with The Daily Beast article by Yousef Munayyer. Munayyer seems to be every bit as much of partisan as Abrams but he presents the conflict between two groups of people with conflicting desires. Abrams presents it as a conflict between good and evil. My internal sense of drama tells me that I have to side with Munayyer. I think there’s a general rule here: when someone presents a conflict as clear cut, he is lying.

Munayyer ends the article:

Aaron Carroll, our go to man for healthcare reform and chewing gum swallowing, has written an article over at The Incidental Economist, Zombie Life Expectancy Arguments. In it, he provides five charts that show that it is wrong to say that we should raise the retirement age because people are living long. In particular, he shows that while life expectancy at birth has gone up 10 years since 1950, life expectancy at 65 has only gone up 4 years. What this means is that fewer people die as babies but that doesn’t mean a thing regarding Social Security.

The situation is even worse than this 4 year number indicates. Most of that comes from upper income people. Since 1977, those in the upper half of the income distribution have seen their life expectancy rise 6 years. But those in the lower half of the income distribution are only living 1 year longer. In other words, the people who most rely on Social Security are not living longer and so the whole argument goes away.

There are a couple of other perspectives to look at regarding raising the retirement age. First is one that a lot of people talk about: those doing manual labor might have a hard time continuing to work until they are 70. The people calling for changes in the retirement age are all white collar workers who don’t need to do anything that requires physical strength or fast reflexes. We really need to take these workers into account when discussing these issues.

The other issue that I give a lot of thought to is age discrimination. In the high tech field, I started experiencing this at 30 years old. More to the point, age discrimination is everywhere. Sure, Morley Safer keeps his 60 Minutes gig even at 81, but he’s a star; they get to do whatever they want. But the manager at Big Lots? At 65, he’s going to find his life harder. In fact, he’s probably going to find his life harder at 55. We have a very ageist society—old people are not appreciated. Or at least not appreciated enough.

So it is wrong to push up the age for retirement benefits when the society is not similarly pushing up the age that it thinks people are still valuable members of the workforce.