There was that book, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. The basic point was that everything we complicate or ignore in the adult world is contained in a few simple lessons that we learn playing in the sandbox when we’re 5 years old. Here is about a third of what Robert Fulghum has on his list:

 ·  Share everything.

·  Play fair.

·  Don't hit people.

·  Put things back where you found them.

·  Clean up your own mess.

·  Don't take things that aren't yours.

·  Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.

This is a straight cut and paste from the beginning of a list on a page about peace.

It’s not complicated, but it has a lot to do with what is going on between Turkey and Israel right now, two countries who are doing very little of playing fair or saying you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

Here’s the deal: Turkey's foreign minister says that Ankara will cut ties with Israel if they do not apologize for boarding a Turkish aid ship on its way to Gaza. Afterall, people died.

"Israel has three paths ahead: It either apologizes, or accepts the findings from an international commission investigating the raid, or Turkey will cut off ties." -- Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Then Turkey backpedaled a bit, saying it would be difficult to repair relations without a formal apology. But Israel flat out says that they have no intention of apologizing for the raid.

Turkey’s demands have been pretty simple: an apology, some compensation, agreement to a U.N. inquiry into the incident and a lift of the blockade of 1.6 million Palestinians living in Gaza Strip. All of that, except the lifting of the blockade, should be pretty simple for Israel to do. You raid an aid ship in international waters, end up killing people, and you don’t apologize for it? Then you won’t let the U.N. do an inquiry into what happened and you want to do that inquiry yourselves? If this was Iran, would we be so accommodating to that kind of behavior? Doubtful. Israel is getting some “kid-gloves” treatment here, and they know they can pull it off. But Turkey deserves much better. They deserve, referencing the opening Kindergarten list, that Israel “Play fair,” “Don’t hit people,” “Clean up your own mess,” “Don’t take things that aren’t yours,” and, especially, “Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.” I mean, this is basic stuff.

The U.S., for our part, is more than a little exasperated. With everything else going on in the world, we don’t need two of our allies in the Middle East picking at each other, to stop throwing sand at each other afterall. But this one just may have enough ego involved to stymie relations for the long-term. Of course Israel should apologize. And maybe Turkey shouldn’t be trying to help out the people that Israel is trying to blockade. They fundamentally want two different things, that’s all. In my world, you figure it out and move forward. It’s called, “Plays well with others.”

Photo Credit: Ernst Vikne