Hot Potato

After 38 years, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. We dropped what had become a hot potato. The political, social, and deadly cost of trying to protect 8,000 Israelis living in small communities on the edge of the out-of-control and massively overpopulating terror homeland of Gaza was just too much. After the divisive splitting of the entire country into pro-pullout and anti-pullout factions our army moved in to evict our people from their homes and villages. The scenes of tearful soldiers helping the folks they’d been sent to evict was more painful than we had expected. Click to see an album of snapshots.


I’d used the Gaza As Hot Potato image in cartoons before. The Dry Bones cartoon to the right is from February 2004. I'd always pictured the release as bringing instant relief (like dropping a hot potato). So the shock was that "letting go" was so painful, and that is the subject of today's "The Pain Is Plain" cartoon. Looking at last year's 'toon is a reminder that, in cartooning, as with anything in life, "hindsight is 20-20."
Just compare the last panel in the two cartoons.