NEITHER HERE NOR THERE

Neither here nor there -

When I was a kid, I was a puny little thing, short, skinny and asthmatic. I'm not telling you this because I'm looking for your pity, though, come to think of it, if you wanted to send a brown envelope stuffed with small unmarked notes of compassion, by all means please don't hesitate to contact me at the email below.

Just kidding.

I was tiny, and the world of boys is a savage tribe. If you are small, there is always someone bigger who is looking to make perfectly clear who is boss. I got picked on, bullied and beaten up. This was in the years shortly after the dawn of time when there were no government-funded anti-bullying ads on television. Not just because television hadn't been invented yet, but because society was a lot more rough and tumble. Parents were more likely to turn you loose to walk a mile and a half through the snow to attend the school of hard knocks, than they were to demand that grief councillors be called in if you returned home with a black eye.

At a young age I adopted a strategy. Whenever a bully hove in site with mayhem on his mind, I didn't hesitate. I struck first, as hard as I could, with a fist to the face. The strategy worked. The big bully was totally surprised, and that was usually the end of it.

Word got around. I was a tough little S.O.B. the big guys thought. Wrong, but useful. Bullies left me alone. I only had to use the strategy a few times, but it rarely failed me, particularly when I went into grade nine at a downtown Ottawa high school with a student population of nearly a thousand. That year I turned thirteen, broke through the critical barriers of 100 pounds and five feet tall. My sister's male friends in grade thirteen thought it would be great sport to lock me in my locker at lunchtime. It only happened once.

Then one day, the familiar circumstances seemed to be repeating themselves: the verbal abuse, the menacing manner. I responded. Bang, a fist to the face, and the boy facing me went down.

Then something happened that changed everything. I heard a voice from nearby shouting "Cut that out you bully! " I froze in my tracks and took a closer look at the kid on the ground. He was smaller than me. The bystander was right. Without noticing it, I had grown and I'd just punched out a little kid. I was the bully now.

I recollected all this when I heard on the news last week that Israeli forces had boarded unarmed vessels carrying relief supplies from Turkey to Palestinian refugees in Gaza. On television the flotilla of relief vessels looked to be the size of long liners, but open boats, filled to overflowing with cargo and volunteers. In the attack at least nine of the unarmed peace workers were killed.

Everyone knows the story of the Nazi objective in the Second World War to rid the world of the Jewish people. Six million human beings brutally murdered for no other reason than their religious beliefs. It is one of the most barbaric chapters in human history, bullying on a scale so vast that it has its own name: The Holocaust.

The State of Israel was established in the wake of this horrific slaughter. Carved out of the Middle East it dispossessed numbers of non-Jewish people who had nothing to do with the Holocaust, but were angry that Great Power politics had left them without a home. Forced to defend themselves against new enemies on all sides, the Israelis adopted the tactics of a one hundred pound thirteen year old resisting having his five foot tall frame crammed into a school locker.

They struck first. And hard.

But like a skinny five footer, the State of Israel grew stronger. It became the dominant force in the region. The memories of what had been done to the Jewish people clouded the self-perception of the State. It too lost track of the moment when it crossed the line from bullied to bully.

If Israel listens, it may hear voices from around the world shouting " Cut that out you bully!"

pickersgill@mac.com