(This is a parable referring to how Joe Biden is dealing with Israel in respect to the terrible events occurring in Gaza)
Jimmy had graduated from college but did not have a job yet. Mom and Dad had given him a new car for a graduation gift. He was having a great summer going out with his friends.
One morning his dad saw Jimmy’s car was in the driveway, but it was now scratched up and dented. He asked Jimmy what happened. Jimmy said he had been driving in one of the poorer sections of town and had run into some junk someone had left in the street. “You know what those neighborhoods are like.” And his father agreed, being the mayor of the city.
His father said he could get the car repaired but it would probably take a week or so. Jimmy said he couldn’t go that long without a car, so his father got him another new car and gave him the keys.
Two days later he saw the new car, now even more dented than the last one. Asking Jimmy, he was told that the people in the poorer section of town had blocked off a street and were having a party. That street was on the route Jimmy often took to his friend’s apartment and so Jimmy had driven through the barriers and through the people having a party. He said he probably hit a few of them, but they did not have any right to block a public street he wanted to use.
Jimmy no longer wanted his old, repaired car so his father got another newer car for him and gave him the keys. His mother was a bit concerned about all the new cars but agreed that boys were only young once.
By now, his father, the mayor, began to hear rumors of a veteran in a wheelchair who was now in the hospital after a hit-and-run last week. And another rumor about a car driving though a block party recently, injuring 5 people and killing one old woman.
The mayor said he would investigate that incident.
Meanwhile, the next weekend his son again brought his new car home with much more damage and now expected another new car, which he got.
Again, there were rumors of hit-and-run incidents, in the poorer section of town, with even more deaths this time, some of them kids.
By now the reports began to identify the driver and the car, as well as some of the passengers. It began to look like it might be Jimmy. His father quickly got to work with the newspapers making sure that there was not much clarity in the reports and also offering alternative narratives including the misuse of streets by the residents of those neighborhood.
This continued for many weeks with the same reports of incidents with more deaths and injuries, always in the poorer section of town and always with a lack of clarity about what had happened and who was really at fault. Soon in began to be blamed on gangs in that part of town.
But Jimmy continued to require new cars, and week after week his father continued to supply them, now with the help of some of the other successful businessmen in the community.
Tensions grew in the town and soon there was a split in the community between those who were concerned about that part of the town and those who thought “those people” deserved whatever happened to them. There were some demonstrations in support of the poorer neighborhoods, but the police quickly dispersed the demonstrators, and the newspaper discounted them as the work of outside agitators.
Soon the incidents began to multiply as others joined in the forays into the poor neighborhoods to show that they would not be stopped or intimidated by the death and destruction that was occurring.
Meanwhile Jimmy’s parents were hard put not to suspect Jimmy’s involvement and what that might mean for their son. They began to understand that many people saw the whole affair as not right and that as parents they should probably stop giving him new cars and perhaps even take away his driving privileges for a while. But they knew that this would look like they accepted his part in the incidents and their lack of responsibility as parents, or, even worse, that those people in the poorer section of town deserved some kind of protection and maybe even some justice.
So, their solution was to wring their hands and shake their heads and to say, “What to do, what to do”, and continue to provide a new car for their son whenever he needed one.
What else can a parent do?
