(no subject)

[curiouswombat]

I do not often discuss politics on my journal - I'm not a very political person. However I have found myself writing long comments on a couple of my friends journals on the subject of the current events in Lebanon, and the fact that Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank has it written into its constitution that it wishes to demolish the State of Israel and return the land to the Palestinians.

I felt that it would only be right to say these things under my own name, so to speak. I fear that my position may upset my friends who are Jewish, and this is not at all my aim, but I do believe that the current Israeli government are wrong.



Following a link to the constitution of Hamas in beckyzoole's journal I commented -

That Hamas state clearly that they believe the land known until recently as Palestine is theirs is no surprise.

The problem is that their beliefs and those of the founders of the modern state of Israel are identical - both believe that God gave that land to them. But the Muslim Palestinians believe that He punished the Jews by taking it from them and giving it to the Palestinians.

They see it as their land - because of course, until 1946 it primarily was, although not all the Palestinians are Muslim, a large minority are Christian.

And so the organisations who believe in driving out the people who were just shipped in and given the houses and land of the long-standing population will of course have followers, just as the Zionists who believed that they should be given the land had followers - those who inhabit the land today.

People will vote for Hamas because the less militant politicians have been unable to get for them any of the things they were promised when the 1946 land-grab happened. The British, Americans etc. generously gave land, which was not theirs to give, to the Jewish people, but the owners have not, as far as I can tell from a lot of reading around the subject over the years, received a penny piece of the promised compensation.

Had the international community done anything to improve the lot of the people they simply threw out of Palestine, those people might be less likely to follow Hamas, who see the return of the land as their divine right. Just as I know that my mother received payment when she left the house in which I was brought up and so I no longer see it as my birthright. Had she simply been forced out of it at gunpoint, forced into something akin to a hovel, and told 'tough!' I might feel that I still had a good claim on the property.

Had the Israeli government been persuaded by the international community to get out of the land they occupied, and back to their agreed borders, and to pay what had been promised, it is possible that many of the displaced persons would have become settled in the Gaza strip and the West Bank and no longer be all that bothered by the calls of those who want to reclaim the land. This would have relied on the countries who actually do own those areas finding that acceptable, but it is quite possible that they would.

As long as the USA has the knee jerk reaction of always vetoing any attempts by the international community to try to make Israel obey international laws and improve the lot of the displaced Palestinians, organisations like Hamas will have followers.

I have never understood why, as the decision to give the Jewish people a homeland was that mainly of the USA and the UK they didn't give them one of the central states of the US, or a county like Lincolnshire in England. Yes there were already people living there, but there were people living in Palestine!

I have also wondered why, as so many Romanies were also tortured and murdered by the Nazi regime, no-one gave them their own country. Perhaps we should just be grateful that no-one did, or it would be another source of strife, but it is a fair question! (End of self-quote)

And where someone said in bedawyn's journal What bothers me about the Palestinians is that I can't figure out exactly what they want other than for every Israeli citizen to pack up and leave. I again found myself drawn to reply passionately on behalf of the Palestinians - I apologise that some of this overlaps with what I wrote above, but it is again simply a cut and paste from bedawyn's journal -

(Quote)
And some of the things the Palestinians want are
(1)the compensation that they were promised by the USA, the newly formed Israeli government and the UK when they were forced out of their homes sixty years ago, of which they have seen nothing.

(2) the land that they were pushed into when Israel was formed, in neighbouring countries who had no say about taking the Palestinian refugees, and which they were then forced out of again when Israel refused to return to the nationally agreed borders.

(3) the land they have been farming before the Israelis built a wall between their houses and their farms.

(4) compensation for the houses that have been demolished time and time again by Israeli bulldozers.

(5) reparation for the lives of the people who were often inside those houses at the time.

(6) reparation for the sort of things like the taxi driver interviewed a couple of days ago who pointed out three quarters of a house, where a couple of days before he had had a whole house, and the heap of twisted metal which had been his (American built) taxi, which had been flattened by an Israeli tank - so that he now has no way of making a living to enable him to mend his house.

(7) The Israelis to stay out of the land that they say they have 'given' to the Palestinians. Even if it is like I take your bag of sweets off you, now I generously give you a sweet out of the bag - now I snatch it back from you and jump up and down on it.

Many of them would of course like their original land back - after all if someone took your house off you at gun-point, then you were never given a penny piece for it, even years after you might still feel that it was yours. But they mostly accept that through no fault of their own they have had to pay the price for the fact that the Jewish people suffered in Europe - they just want to not have to keep on and on paying the bill for something that was nothing to do with them in the first place.

They want to be able to live on the scraps of land they have been forced into without finding someone has built a wall in their garden, or bulldozed their grandmother. Most of them would just like to have the sort of things that you and I take for granted.
(End quote)

And the current situation in Lebanon is tragic. Lebanon was just beginning to get itself back together as a country after years of civil war. There were still Hezbollah 'freedom fighters' (or terrorists, or 'the Resistance' depending on how you look at things) in the borderlands where Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet, but they were mainly in the area that had previously been occupied by Israel for many years, and as far as one can tell from interviews on TV most of the population were just glad that there was no more fighting.

Totally unacceptably, to me, Hezzbollah seem to have gone into territory internationally accepted as Israel to attack and the kidnap two Israeli soldiers. Now they probably should have known it would provoke Israel into totally disproportionate retaliation, having seen the destruction in Gaza recently, and to me the initial blame for the situation is definitely at the door of Hezbollah.

But the way in which the entire state of Lebanon has been attacked is unforgivable. I heard a rabbi on the radio last week explaining that 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' is not actually an exhortation to wreak revenge, but is meant to limit the extent of revenge - in effect you should only take an eye for an eye - not two eyes, two arms and a leg.

So yes, Hezzbollah are firing rockets into Israel - but the revenge wreaked by the Israelis is totally out of all proportion. That this is so must be obvious to anyone - after all the governments of Italy, France, the USA and (slowly!) the UK etc. are only evacuating their nationals from the Lebanon - they aren't evacuating them from Israel.

The impression I am getting is that an organised and prosperous Lebanon is not acceptable to the Israeli government - they see it as a threat, and took any opportunity that they could to bomb it back into the state it was in during their previous occupation and Lebanense civil war. Now this may not be true - but this is the impression they give.

President G Bush has the same knee jerk reaction as every US president before him 'Israel is always right' - and so it seems as if no matter what the Israeli government do to any of their neighbours they get no flack for it, because the US government will always veto anything that in any way criticises Israel.

Most people I have met from Europe in general believe that this is to do with the number of Jewish people living in the USA, but I cannot believe that all, or even most, of those people believe that Israel can treat anyone however they like, without any consequences. Therefore I really do wonder why the US government behave in this way. Whatever the reason, simply blaming Syria is not a logical reaction, and the US government must have some of the blood of the Gaza Palestinians and the Lebanese civilians that the Israeli armed forces have bulldozed, shot, shelled etc. on their hands.


So that is how I feel - month after month I read in newspapers, magazines etc. of the suffering of the Palestinian people - the women, children, elderly people - who had no say in their current situation at all. I despair at the way they have to live, never knowing from one day to the next whether they will have a house to come home to, or whether they will find it bulldozed because someone decided it was 'too close to our land' or simply in the way when we decide to drive down your street in a tank because a teenager threw stones at one of us. I hear psychologists tell us over and over again that abused children become abusers - which may well account for the way the Israeli government work, but bodes very badly for the way that the Palestinian children will behave when they grow up, as they learn that shooting people, bulldozing their houses, confiscating their land etc. is the right way to behave, because no-one even admonishes the people who do these things to them.

Now I wait for you all to shout at me, and defriend me.

Comments

[elsaf]

I'm (ethnically -- not religiously) Jewish, and I'm not going to yell at you or defriend you. You've got a lot of the situation exactly right. Huge injustices exist in the mideast. And Israel, and it's enabler, the U.S., are responsible for many of them.

However, I think you may have it tilted just a bit heavily against Israel. The state of Israel is not blameless, but it isn't the only transgressor here. Part of the reason this situation can't be solved is that the Hamas and Hezbollah partisans are not willing to accept any form of compromise. And until they do, the sore in the Middle East will continue to fester.

I think Israel was wrong to punish all of Lebanon for the actions of a rogue faction. The central government in Lebanon isn't strong enough to suppress Hezbollah. It is not the fault of the civilians in Beruit that Israel has suffered at Hezobollah's hands.

Nobody is blameless in this mess. Things were considerably better for the Palestinians six years ago. They weren't any closer to the "Right of Return" (a major sticking point in Palestinian/Israeli negotiations), but a large number of Palestinians were working inside Israel and participating in the economy. The security barrier wasn't cutting them off from their farms, and any chance of employment. And relations between individual Israelis and individual Palestinians were gradually warming.

What happened six years ago? Well, the main thing is that George Bush took the White House in a disputed election, and the diplomatic efforts of skillful operatives such as Madeline Albright were cut off and replaced with neglect and willful malfeasance.

The incentives that were keeping the worst Israeli hard-liners in check were withdrawn, and everything went downhill from there.

But, in the end, nothing that went before can count now. If there is going to be a solution to this problem, it's going to have to include a measure of wiping the slate clean. Everybody is bloodied. Everybody has lost loved ones, property, lives. Everybody has to accept their losses and agree to move forward.

Not that it's going to happen.

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

Very interesting; thanks for posting. I've wondered how this was perceived abroad; of course I mostly have access to US media. Also, it's been busy at work and I haven't had the time to dig through a zillion web pages!

I agree with you about the despair the palestinian people clearly feel; and I think that's a big part of the problem. I don't think you can solely blame Israel though-- that fence, for example isn't built because the bad guys want to suppress the poor palestinians. It's there because the nihilistic death cult that seems to have taken control of a lot of palestinian public life expresses itself by detonating human bombs at supermarkets and restaurants.

I think a lot of the blame falls squarely on Fatah. It's their overwhelming corruption and unwillingness to compromise that led to a lot of this; they deliberately refused to crack down on the terrorism. They used Hamas as a safety valve for their corruption and incompetence, and that made it clear that fatah wasn't going to accompolish anything.

I agree that Israel is over-reacting, and that the results are likely to be tragic. What I don't know is what they should do. Hamas and Hezbollah refuse to accept any compromise. They are deliberately provoking Isreal, and they are targeting civilians.

BTW-- I'm not jewish. From the conversations at work though I suspect I'm probably fairly representative of local public opinion on this one.

[jerusha]

I doubt you'll see many people yelling at you or defriending you for expressing well thought out opinions. I also think that there are many here in the US who are clueless as to why Israel and Palestine are fighting, and while some might have a knee-jerk reaction of supporting Israel no matter what, many more likely don't. I agree with you to a certain extent; the Palestinians have been the whipping boys/girls of the Israelis for years now, and they deserve to have the international community lend them a voice.

[gillo]

On the whole I agree with you. I think there's a lot of guilt for dailing to stop the Holocaust, and a lot of deeply entrenched positions. And both sides constantly use lines to the effect that "If they didn't want us to bomb them they should have..." - followed by whatever impractical political suggestion they think is the placebo.

I am disgusted that Blair is so ready to toady up to Bush and take his line. Why is it not possible to condemn Hizbullah - who, I think, mainly wanted to radicalise the Labanese population and stir up hatred of Israel anew, before Lebanon became too peaceful and prosperous for most folks to care. And why is it not equally possible to condemn Israel for bombing airports and civilian residential areas?

The only people responsible for the killings are those who carried them out, in person or by giving the orders. If the West pretends any different, we are merely playing into the hands of the men of bad will, the people who genuinely seem to think that violence on this scale will solve something.

You wrote a good rant. Sorry to add mine.

[kantayra.livejournal.com]

You're not going to get any disagreement from me. This is pretty much how I feel about the whole issue. The creation of a Jewish state in the Middle East was 1) superbly stupid, 2) downright offensive to the people already living there, and 3) incredibly greedy since the reason Israel was set up where it is was pretty much entirely so that the west would have a foothold in the region. And, also, because heaven forbid that white Christians should have to move out of the way. *eye roll* But, yeah, I pretty much agree with you, and I'm with you on the 'yikes!' about expressing these types of views, too. I mean, honestly, the creation of Israel was designed to benefit the west, while fucking over the Middle East.

Most people I have met from Europe in general believe that this is to do with the number of Jewish people living in the USA, but I cannot believe that all, or even most, of those people believe that Israel can treat anyone however they like, without any consequences. Therefore I really do wonder why the US government behave in this way.

Are you ready to be truly terrified? And to think the US is an even bigger bumfuck country than it already is? *shudders* Well, here you go:

The born-again Christians believe that, in order for Jesus to come back and the apocalypse to happen (and strike down all those darned liberals!), Jerusalem has to be controlled by the Jews. It's some twisted interpretation of Revelations or something. And, of course, when Jesus comes back, all the Jews are going to hell, but nutjob born-again Americans are going straight to heaven, yee-haw! *rolls eyes so hard she gets brain-freeze*

And, no, I'm seriously not kidding. This is pretty much the neo-conservative reasoning behind backing Israel. Does your brain hurt? I know mine does. *shudder*

God, this is just depressing me... I had two friends who were on a dig in Israel when this all started up, too. Our department still hasn't heard whether they got out all right or not... *sigh*

[mommanerd.livejournal.com]

I did appreciate reading your viewpoint. You presented your thoughts and arguments very well. I don't object to honest opinions where the isn't some kind of underlying axe to grind and I gained a lot of fodder for thought. I certainly am not about to defriend you, even if I am a nutjob born again Christian.

:o)

[rincaro.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I really have no idea what to think about it all. I'm a Christian, but I've never heard of some of the nonsense referenced in the comments.

It makes me think about the whole indigenous thing. I've recently come across a lot about that recently, and in particular about Native Americans and reclaiming the land and all that. And I just have to wonder what the heck would they do with all of us if we just up and gave them back their land?? And what about the societal collapse that would take place?

So who does the land really belong to? I have no idea. But I agree with you that the whole thing is being handled horribly wrong.

[ottawa-fan.livejournal.com]

No yelling from me - I agree with you on most points. The whole thing is so outrageouly unfair. It's difficult for a simple and straightforward person to see how this whole situation could have been allowed, much less encouraged the way it seems to be. Too many people in power seem to be eager for Armageddon - it's too insane to just be greed or racism.

I grew up in the States, and I can remember realizing in my teens that the textbooks that taught history wrote about Israel existing in the middle east without teaching that it was a relatively new creation - there was no mention of Palestine. They just left it out. I don't know why a relatively small minority wields such political power.

It's very discouraging to look at the state of the world right now.

[rahirah]

Nah, I agree with most of that - though I can't in any way, shape or form condone the actions of the suicide bombers, either.

(sigh)

[caegey.livejournal.com]

I truly appreciate that you voiced your well thought out opinions on this incredibly complex and emotional subject. Having grown up in America and lived in Europe for the better part of 15 years, I have been exposed to most sides of this issue. I agree with just about everything you said, but more importantly, thank you for opening up the debate.

[bearfacedcheek.livejournal.com]

*Applauds* Not ranty at all very well put points and i'm in general agreement.

Although you did mis the part about Israel currently having over 60 un resolutions against it and yet George Double-ya doesn't see this as any reason to act agaisnt israel despite it seemingly being ample reason to act against other middle eastern countries. Check out http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/un.html its full of interesting facts.

My main concern is that the very onesided support of Israel by the Uk and US and the very ham fisted methods we've employed with iraq and afganistan. Come across as very very anti muslin.

It worries me that our administrations are demonising islam in this way. This kind of behaviour will make an enemy of islam and i don't think we want that.

It's also very hard for any western led peace talks to be successful then the palestinian side must feel so strongly (and with good reason) that the west is very much on israels side.

Palestine and lebanon of course are not blameless but teh blame should be apportioned more fairly for the west to have any credibility as meiators for peace and *chokes* freedom.

[gamiila.livejournal.com]

Thanks for taking the time to write up this very well thought out and well-presented argument. Since I'm at work I can't get into this in depth, but the answer to your question contained in the section

I have never understood why, as the decision to give the Jewish people a homeland was that mainly of the USA and the UK they didn't give them one of the central states of the US, or a county like Lincolnshire in England.

is simply, that Chaim Weitzmann and his Zionists, who got Britain to sign and declare the Balfour Declaration in 1918, would not consider accepting land anywhere else in the world, as they believed they had a God-given right to Eretz Yisrael. It ties in with the belief that as long as the Jews remained scattered in the diaspora, and the land of their fathers was not returned, the Messiah would not come; but there were more practical considerations for it as well: the mere notion of Israel, or Jerusalem, could unite the Jewish people like nothing else. Can you image the Jewish people as a whole getting excited over Lincolnshire?

[bedawyn.livejournal.com]

Now they probably should have known it would provoke Israel into totally disproportionate retaliation, having seen the destruction in Gaza recently

Noam Chomsky was saying on Democracy Now (http://www.democracynow.org/) recently that Hezbollah was actually hoping to provoke Israel into opening a second front, in order to divide their attention and take some of the pressure off Gaza. Whether that's true or not.... *shrug*

[spikeverse.livejournal.com]

I agree that Israel has long mishandled things with their neighbors. All the bombing of towns and homes in Palestine in retaliation for a suicide bomber or other attack is wrong. And destroying Lebanon like this is just not smart. It is only going to make the situation worse.

However, they didn't just decide to put a Jewish state there and then import Jews. Jews have always been there. Many more started arriving in the prior century. In addition, Israel is full of Arabs who chose to stay and live there. And their population grows faster than the Jews.

I'm more bothered by my belief that Israel is doomed. My parents traveled around there in 1989. I should have gone with them then. I don't think there will ever be a time to go there again in my lifetime.