Israel

[andrewducker]

Well, the people have spoken and I don't know whether to feel proud or worried that so many people have any interest in my opinions. I think I'll avoid berating three quarters of you for being sheep and just bask in the warm glow of your adoration.
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I've spent a fair amount of time considering the whole Israel situation. I feel, when I have feelings on Jewishness, like a very distant Jew. True, all of my grandparents are Jewish, but my parents are atheists whose main contribution to my Jewishness was to chop off bits of my penis at an early age and make sure I saw Fiddler on the Roof. I know more than the average person about a few bits of Jewish history, I've visited Auschwitz, and I can recognise Hebrew, but I can't actually read or speak any. The only time I've been to Israel it was to visit Eilat for a diving holiday, and while I do have family there they're not close family, and I don't actually know any of them.

I do, however, feel a strange compulsion to have an opinion on the Israel situation, and I've spent some time reading up on the history of the country in it's current incarnation (i.e. post 1881, when the first wave of Jewish emigration to the area occured). I've considered the wisdom of the Balfour Declaration, the effects of migration from different countries, the way that Israel's relationships with its neighbours have fluctuated, and the various border lines drawn, redrawn and then argued over. I've thought about the necessary resources to make a stable country, the problems with a one-state solution, the tactical problems caused by the Golan Heights, and whether a country that only really existed for 300 years over 2700 years ago has a right to it that outweighs that of the people that lived on it since then.

And I've come to one, very simple, conclusion.

I wish people would stop killing each other.

I mean, there are ancillary thoughts that go with it, but the more I thought about the actions of this country and that country, and the religious and historical factors that went into decision A and response B, the more I remembered that deep down I don't believe in either religion or countries. I believe in people. And I have no patience for people who use religion or nation as an excuse to hurt those around them.

I believe that the fighting will not stop until the people involved do not live in fear of attack, until they have jobs and homes and security and hope. This, I believe, is what happened in Northern Ireland - where vast amounts of subsidies helped bring the economy and the standard of living up to the point where people would rather live than fight, and everyday life wasn't something they felt they had to blame on someone. This wasn't a quick process - I don't believe there's anything that can be done that will erase the hurt within one generation (and it will almost certainly more).

I don't believe you can make Israel go away. I don't believe you can make Palestine go away. But I do believe that people can learn to get on with their neighbours, if they're given the chance to do so. And that making living conditions better for all concerned is the best way to do this.

Oh, and it would be great if they'd all stop killing each other.

Comments

[prynne.livejournal.com]

Yes!


And I really liked this:

deep down I don't believe in either religion or countries. I believe in people. And I have no patience for people who use religion or nation as an excuse to hurt those around them.

[spaj.livejournal.com]

Hmm,, about to contradict myself, but:

"And I have no patience for people who use religion or nation as an excuse to hurt those around them."

Agreed, but this doesn't apply to Palestine or Israel. This is a situation where both sides are acting on their principles and beliefs. It's not an excuse. They both believe in the rightness of their cause, and are prepared to act on this belief.

Although mis-guided, I harbor a certain admiration for this kind of fervour.

Secondly, this does not apply (any more) in Northern Ireland. There is no fervour. If I had seen just one suicide bomber in Ireland, I would perhaps be swayed. Northern Ireland is a country of cowards and criminals, using terrorism as a thin veil to continue to exert a stranglehold on the populace. If there are people there who are acting on principles, then I haven't seen them. And if you think that your taxmoney has made a difference, you're sorely mis-guided. All they've done is bought a tea-cosy to hide the mess away from the eyes of the media. As Gerry Adams once said, when asked about the decomissioned arms, "They haven't gone away, you know".

Adam

[andrewducker]

You know something - there were riots in Belfast last year, and it made massive news coverage, because they were the first big riots in several years. This is an improvement over riots in Belfast not being news at all. I remember when there were bombs going off all the time, and yet there seems to be a lack of that going on right now. It's not _over_, and there are still unpleasant things going on, but I think you underestimate how much better it is than it was for most of the 20th century.

[spaj.livejournal.com]

Hmm

Nope. Sorry. There were riots when I was there, every night for a year, for 3 years. Barely made the regional headlines.

Yes, they've stoped blowing things up. That's what the governments wanted. They haven't stopped the crime. And Crime doesn't make the news anyway.

And when you reference the 20th century, it was at it's height when you were 5 and I was a twinkle. It was rather nondescrip in the 30s40s50s60s. There was still hope there that the British would just hand over the remaining provinces. Also, the coming to terms with the independance of the South.

I stand by what I said. And more importantly, (because you're way off point to pick me up on what is a technicality) Northern Ireland is full of immoral bastards. I have respect for the Easter rising of 1916. Men of principle, and standards.

'Paramilitaries' and 'Politicians' are all criminal scum.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

While there may not have been suicide bombers in Northern Ireland, could hunger strikers be an equivalent? Are suicide bombers a universal, or a more culturally/religiously specific phenomenon?

[e-halmac.livejournal.com]

I wish people would stop killing each other.

quite

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Reading American news stories (from a wire service roundup on our intranet at work) and reading BBC stories, there is a terrifyingly wide gulf between the way stories are reported. I'm sure you can imagine what I mean.

If the EU actually got its shit together and started pretending to be a real superpower, perhaps they'd muscle up to America on this and other issues and say "Oi! We're not going to stop what we're wanting to do, just because you don't like it!"

[thadrin.livejournal.com]

That will only ever happen if Tony Blair stops acting like he's Bush's bitch.
Twelfth of never.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I think you'll find some of the EU other than Britain now, at least quietly, not very keen on the suposed Axis of Evil either - eg Spain.

[thadrin.livejournal.com]

There's no way for them all to be happy.
(Hezbollah - "We will not stop until there is no israel", Irael demanding their right to exist and so on.)
That being true, they won't stop killing each other until everyone of them is dead.

I've stopped trying to work out who's right and I'm afraid that I'm losing the will to care anymore. The only solution I see is letting them just keep going until one side is annihilated. At some point someone (place your bets. We have some intriguing odds on those cheeky Syrians...) will probably end up nuking Tel Aviv.

Obviously, that sort of thinking is bad.

[andrewducker]

There's no way for them all to be happy.

Absolutely not. And I don't really care if the more extreme members are happy. But killing people just pushes the remaining ones further to the extreme and pushes moderates to join in the first place.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

You can't make people happy, but maybe you can stop them suffering unnecessarily. Of course if to live is to suffer there's another way you can take that...

[0olong.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, we don't actually need them all to be happy (You Can't Please All The People All The Time, and all that)... we just need them to stop despairing to the extent that they see their best option as being the persistent terrorising of their neighbours.

I'm not saying that's easy, but the mutually irreconcilable aims of the more extreme segments of each society aren't necessary, permanent barriers to peace. Most people, in general, just want to get on with their lives. Sometimes the sheer weight of that desire can be enough to convince the people who keep on fighting for their idea of 'justice' to stand down. That can only happen once just getting on with your life becomes a viable option for all concerned, though...

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Yes, but according to, er, some, people want justice more than peace. And until they get it, well, anything goes.

Actually I agree with you. The Berlin Wall fell mainly because socialism proved to be a disaster for living standards and state finaces and people couldn't be convinced anymore to back a regime which kept them in (relative) poverty. China hasn't has a recurrence of Tiananmen revolution because Beijing yuppies would rather have mobile phones than human rights.

I'm not quite sure where this gets us in Palestine now though. Eexcute all the radical Muslims and give the rest new fridge freezers? Peace : a piece of piss. (My new election slogan.)

Is it actually proven that improving teh stabdard of living was what brought us (some way out of ) the Troubles? Certainly, the equivalent of your "I wish people would stop killing each other" - the Peace Women movement - didn't do it.

Sorry for the flippancy, this is how you feel after watching District 13..

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Reading the comment above, I expand the theory.

Everyone is taken into a waiting room and asked "Will you stop before there is no Israel?"

If they say no, you shoot them. If not, you give them a bungalow and a freezer.

Thios is done on public TV pour encourager les autres..

Shame it's against human rts really.

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

i'm kind of faintly appalled by surliminals take on this, and surprised too. I take it, at the most general, as a sign that something big is happening in our collective space, and people are begining to polarise, act weird, pontificate and generally bear witness to an Event. When an Event happens, people rush to explain, to name, to claim. Surliminal, I know you'll read this so I'm not going to comment on yours because it made me angry, again a general testament to a political event, polarisation, trouble. Andrew, I know this may sound inflamatory but my first reaction to you saying I wish they would stop killing each other was that that is the moral equivalent of saying I wish men and women would stop raping each other. It completely elides the power relationship of the situation. Surliminal at least made it clear how she thought that one fell out. Do you really think this situation is a struggle between equals?

[andrewducker]

Choosing to take sides on this one is as stupid as deciding that all men are guilty of rape.

[andrewducker]

On a slightly less fatuous note - if it was _just_ Israel and Palestine then the power balance would be terribly uneven. Israel, however, is acting like a terrified country, because it's surrounded on all sides by countries that are larger than it, and make statements about how it shouldn't exist. Israel, as far as I can understand, doesn't see Palestine as "That small country we keep doing hideous things to.", it sees it as "That part of the overwhelming outside forces that lies inside us."

There is no right side here - Lebanon has been allowing terrorists to strike into Israel from inside its borders on a constant basis. Palestine's leaders seemed to think that kidnapping Israeli soldiers was a bargaining method. And Israel has over-reacted in a lethal way.

To pick a side and declare that Israel is wrong, or Lebanon is wrong ignores the history of the area and the complexities of the whole situation. There is no simple reaction or solution. We are not building to an Event where people must take sides and then grapple with each other in the streets for The Fate Of The World. We are dealing with yet another skirmish in a 100 year mess that will not be sorted out by any violent means.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Er, I did include the key word "flippant" - and for future ref I won't see comments on someone else's lj unless you reply to me - no reason to look back.)