Israel. Middle East. Palestinian. Intifada. All keywords I shut out. Why? Because they fall below the level of one Lynch Factor. In a short time, however, it is likely to exceed a matter of 3000 deaths. But that doesn't change how many dBs the volume has been turned up on every injury sustained in that part of the world.
I am upset and I will continue to be upset at the focus maintained upon Israel and Palestine. American media coverage of their problems wildly distorts the perspective of injuries. We know, with Mad Cow precision, when every Israeli dies in this interminable conflict. But we have no equal in covering other nations. This is intolerable for me not because I believe 'jews control the media' but because it is a distortion of the priority in matters of human rights throughout the world in the interests of the American Empire and its role in global pacification. We have focused too long and a problem we have been unable to solve multilaterally, unilaterally or ass-backwards. If 100 people die in Liberia tomorrow, we won't hear about it. If 100 people die in the Gaza Strip, we'll hear about it for weeks. We will send billions to Israel and save no lives the IDF couldn't save themselves. We send nothing to Liberia where thousands of lives might have been saved. The math is simple 1 soul = 1 soul. Where are we saving souls? Certainly not in Israel or Palestine.
We used to hear about the Bakaa Valley as a harboring ground for terrorist. It used to be this way in Beirut, Lebanon. Hmm, maybe that was because Israeli forces were there.Now we don't care. My complaint is simple. The focus is undeserved and it distorts our world view.
I understand that my willingness to dismiss the prospects for Israel and Palestine will be met with fury. So I will say this once loudly, I have no reason to be anti-semitic in this stance, that is not the reason and you may conspire as many theories as you please to justify such a label. I refuse it and I barely have the patience to digifiy it here.
During my entire passive consideration of the questions of Middle East Peace it has always been the case that I believed in the appropriateness of a two state solution. Of course Israel has a right to exist. Nationalism is the paradigm and people have every right to soverienity. That right extends to the Palestinians as well.
However recently, try as I may to ignore this, I am confronted with a twofold reality. The first is in sympathy with the prosecution of occupation over lands Palestinians claim. I have few doubts that in the main, the IDF is being as reasonable and civilized as possible given their overwhelming military superiority. I think as well, that their achievement of assassinations can be justified on a strictly military basis. Politically, I think it stinks to high heaven and is an absolute disgrace. But I understand that keeping collateral damage to an absolute minimum is precisely equivalent to murder for hire. Wouldn't we like to know how the Israeli parliament picks such military targets? Ick! So on the whole, if you are at war with people, you might as well do it like the Israelis because on the whole, over the years they've killed only a few thousand Palestinians which is lightweight by any national standard.
The second part of this reality is that the Palestinians cannot, whether by attrition by the militant occupation or by inconsequential international support, or by reason of a lack of pacifist will, muster a standing government which is capable of handling diplomatic issues, controlling radical elements or a solid majority of factors necessary to move beyond (dare I say it?) tribalism. Of course it's more complicated. But what's Hamas, an NGO?
Hate me for the paragraphs OK, but it's all I can stand to think about the situation.
I hold Israel to a higher standard than the PLO. I would like to hold Israel to the standards I hold for any democracy, better yet, nuclear power. But I cannot. They don't deserve it in my eyes. I can go look for specific reasons, and something tells me that I may have to start reading all of the missives I've been getting from my subscription to Bitterlemons lo these many months. But I'm sure it will only depress me further. Perhaps it is better to be depressed and right, than willfully oblivious, especially if I'm going to have to answer to comments at Cobb.
I have said, jokingly, that I would rather have three Jewish states than one. We could aid one, bomb one and ignore the third. (I did so in a comic, and so therefore cannot find it in a text search.) But there is only one Israel and wishing it were not so doesn't help matters. So the combination of these two factors makes me think that perhaps between the Israelis and the Palestinians they could come up with one state.
Given that I have little faith that between them they would be able to negotiate a permanent peace between them as states, perhaps they might do so as citizens. It seems impossible to me that as nations they could ever resolve the property disputes between them without war, and while it is almost certain that Israeli law would give little or no recourse to nationalized Palestinians dispossessed of their properties, in the long run that may be preferable to war. If Israel were to grow up and grandfather the Palestinians what are the chances that they would continue their current course as a Civil War? On the other hands what are the chances that they would grant Palestinians full and equal civil rights?
This is something the Israelis have no impetus to do at the current moment, and it is for this reason that I heap shame upon them. But they are within their rights as a nation. Yet Arab Israelis certainly feel second-class pressures upon them as their families are split across the lines drawn and redrawn as checkpoints.
I believe a one state solution requires Israelis to be more respectful of Palestinians than they ever would be otherwise. I wonder if they could maintain their national conscription if it meant arming Palestinians. So long as there is a border, there are xenophobic excuses for civil rights abuses.
Mr. Sharon, tear down that wall.
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