— Woody Allen

I've loved that quote since Allen came up with it many years ago. It seems so appropriate right now, given what's going on in the world, particularly in the Middle East.

I've been walking around lately in kind of a melancholy funk, and I think I'm beginning to understand why.

I can generally handle all the usual background noise, including the disastrous war in Iraq and idiotic yet politically calculated attempts to amend a perfectly good Constitution to prohibit flag burning and same-sex marriage.

For better or worse, I can stay pretty chipper despite learning about insane mothers drowning their children, serial killers on the loose, and even the coming apocalypse from global warming.

Like most people, I've grown a fairly thick mental scab that allows me to go about my business and enjoy life without the weight of the world dragging down my daily mood.

But the last few weeks have been different. It feels like gravity has been working out at a gym ... while I haven't.

I've got my share of personal challenges, but that's not it. It's this conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that's got me all farshimmelt. Like most Yiddish words, it loses a little something when translated into English, but in this case, farshimmelt means I'm a little confused, a little mixed up.

I know a little Yiddish because I happen to be Jewish, and because I happen to be Jewish, that's why I'm in the state I'm in.

I meant "emotional state," but the actual state I'm in happens to be New York, when a very strong part of me wants to be in the State of Israel, helping the mishpucheh (Yiddish for "family," or in this instance, fellow Jews) deal with the Hezbollah terrorists.

I've never even been to Israel, but it doesn't seem right somehow to enjoy this safe and relatively easy life in the United States while Israelis are targeted by rockets designed to kill as many innocents as possible.

I'm feeling guilty about that, but that's not all that's bothering me. In my opinion, Israel has no choice but to go after those Hezbollah monsters who are the subject of a sick, fundamentalist culture that approves of senseless killing while using women and children as human shields.

And yet, I see those pictures on TV of dead and wounded Lebanese kids, their mothers screeching in an agony I hope I can never imagine, their fathers holding their arms out, horrified and perplexed as to why Israel decided to bomb this street or that house.

I remember what the late Golda Meir, the grandmotherly former prime Minister of Israel, told Anwar Sadat when the Egyptian leader arrived in Israel to negotiate a peace agreement after trying repeatedly to annihilate the Jewish state.

"We can forgive you for killing our sons," Golda said. "But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours."

I see the pictures of those Lebanese civilians suffering. They get to me.

But the loss of Jewish life from a terrorist rocket or bullet or anti-tank weapon gets to me more. Maybe it's a vestige of the unimaginable human toll in the Holocaust, but I mourn more for the dead Israelis than I do for the dead Lebanese.

Both are victims of Hezbollah's evil made possible by Syria and Iran. But when "one of our boys" dies, it just hurts more.

There's no doubt that is contributing to my funk. I should feel just as bad for an innocent Lebanese as for the equally innocent Israeli. But I don't.

Lately, I've found myself thoughts drifting to a tune written by E.Y. "Yip" Harburg (born Isidore Hochberg) and Harold Arlen (Hyman Arluck), a couple of Jews in The Songwriters Hall of Fame.

When all the world is a hopeless jumble

And the raindrops tumble all around

Heaven opens a magic lane

When all the clouds darken up the skyway

There's a rainbow highway to be found

Leading from your window pane

To a place behind the sun

Just a step beyond the rain

The next line of the song is far better-known. It's "Somewhere over the rainbow."

The lyrics are a wonderfully brave and optimistic view of the future, particularly when we consider it was written in 1938, as the Great Depression was ending (Harburg's "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" was the unofficial "anthem of the Depression") and World War II was getting ready to begin.

"Over the Rainbow" makes me want to believe that the current conflict in the Middle East will — like all the other wars — eventually run its course, and the world can then be a place "where troubles melt like lemon drops."

But perhaps another Jew, Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Konigsberg) really is the one who has it right.

"Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering," he said, "and it's all over much too soon."

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Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 432-1000, ext. 208.