The Inconvenient Truth of Palestine

I can’t imagine that there are not plenty of reasonable Palestinians in Gaza that would want a different governing body, but I also can’t imagine that there are enough of them with the resolve and means to forestall what Hamas has put into motion.

 

I love how you put this. While a life long Catholic, I married a reformed Jewish woman, as well as married into an active in their faith family. We have all empathized with the situation of the Palestinians, including her family members in Israel. However, that empathy ended with the slaughter. Once again we are set upon the path of the violence-hate-more-violence-stop active combat - repeat.

Sadly, what is about to come next in Gaza, will not move anyone to a Ghandi or MLK - like revelation. And, so it goes.

 

You might be right. Perhaps the ratio will be different here in a few weeks.

 

I mean the Israelis and/or Hamas would assassinate that guy

 

The fig leaf is in believing that giving ordinary folks warning or expecting them to rise up against Hamas will justify their deaths. It's the kind of lies humans tell themselves to justify killing and wars throughout history. It's a false veneer that isn't nearly as righteous as some want to believe it is.

Dead innocent Palestinians at the hands of Israel's military are no less tragic than dead innocent Israelis at the hands of Hamas terrorists.

 

Thx, wtg, but I’m aware of that part of history. Jews didn’t originate in Europe, though, so some of them ended up there for a reason and were for the most part unwelcome. Arabs and Jews must have substantial commonality in their biological DNA. At some point economic or natural resource differences must have resulted in someone pissing in someone else’s tribal shoe (sandal?). Was it before Christianity and Islam were born, or some time prior?

 

I'm in agreement with the removal of Hamas and sympathize with the original poster. That aside, I think history has shown that once an enemy is defeated, it's in the victors best interest to ensure the defeated are able to rebuild their lives in a somewhat sovereign space of their own without draconian measures placed upon them. Otherwise the cycle continues. I think of Germany post WW1 and the different approach post WW2. Of course there has to be a lot of built-in stipulations. For the Palestinian people, that means a space they don't 100% agree with and probably a space that the Israelis don't 100% agree with. It seems that would the only reasonable way forward.

 

The Native Americans fought until they realized it was a fruitless endeavor. It did take several generations, and afterwards, came some hard times until a few leaders started to take advantage of their situation being on sovereign land. The NAs in Arizona started to open bingo halls 35 years ago, followed by casinos. The state fought them but ultimately lost. Today, there are NA casinos all over the state and many of the NA people are employed, happy, and doing quite well. Just visit the Talking Stick complex on NA land next to Scottsdale next time you are in town. Plenty to do, eat, shop, and play.

Eventually, the Palestinians will have to accept their fate and understand the continuous fighting is fruitless. It hasn't gotten them anything in the last 75 years. Won't get them anything but the same in the next 75 years. They can continue to whine about the past, lob a few rockets into Israel, and take some hostages. But that will only end the same way, with more of their own blood being shed, no peace, no victory, and no future. Or, the Palestinians can step up and control their own destiny, accept the past for what it is, and start moving forward.

The Palestinians are certainly not the only people with a complaint about losing. Heck, I have family originally from Poland and Austria that had businesses, land, and items stolen by the Nazis, and family originally from the Ukraine who had land stolen by the Soviets. Whining about what was taken from my family generations ago does me little good today. And thankfully, my family didn't look back, but moved forward, and my family and I are doing just fine. One day, hopefully, the Palestinians will do the same.

 

I think the notion that "they've been fighting forever" is a little simplified. Religious antagonisms are age old of course, but I think everything happening today has more to do with nationalism, boundaries and the legacies of imperialism and colonialism, lines on maps drawn recently in the grand scheme of things and the consequences of that. Religion is more of a means to achieve national or political ends and motivate people against the other, not the cause of the conflict itself. Indeed, Jews and Muslims live side by side here, and practice their religion freely. Its not utopia by any means, but it shows its possible in the right circumstances, namely where legal equality can be counted on in some way.

 

Be that as it may, it's 24 more hours than the 1,000+ dead, hundreds taken hostage, thousands injured and/or raped.... got (even if it amounts to no more than time to get right with God, contemplate your end, say your good byes....maybe even figure a way out...).

 

Perhaps that's something to think about before supporting (tacitly or otherwise) a regime that attacks the country that provides your electricity and water, kills their babies in their cribs, rapes their women in the street and takes their Holocaust survivors as hostages.

And by the way-let's look at a map. Gaza shares a border with Egypt. Why is there no pressure on Egypt to accept fellow Arabs who are suffering? Is that not the easiest of short term answers? Why is it always "Israel has imprisoned the Palestinians in Gaza"? Bullshit. That's just a lazy media talking point. And Gaza has significant frontage on the Mediterranean. Why has there not been a coordinated effort among Arab countries over the years to execute a sea departure for persecuted Palestinians willing to leave and create a better life for themselves and their families? Arabs helping Arabs.

My grandmother Ida left Mother Russia for America alone, as a penniless, uneducated 12 year old to escape the Bolshevik Revolution. Smuggled on a daisy chain of steam ships to arrive months later at Ellis Island. Never saw her parents again, and was only reunited with her older brother Abe in NYC a decade later when he literally just showed up at her door one day long after the war was over.

100 years later...here we are, their progeny now all college educated and thriving. I just wish she (and her parents) had lived long enough to see the fruits of their extraordinary bravery. Could any of us put our pre-teen child on a boat to save them if it meant never seeing them again? I'd like to think I could but honestly don't know.

Perhaps the Palestinians would be well served to summon that kind of bravery instead of supporting a regime whose sole goal is to wipe Israel off the map.

 

aside from the Israelis this is who I really feel for.

 

I agree in principle. And it brings to mind another quotation attributed to Golda Meir: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. But we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”

 

Seemingly, blindly moving to incendiary levels …

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch...8394f-4415-4e6e-b27f-669af84703a8_598x564.png

 

Boundary changes in the last century don’t seem too different to me from the boundary changes for a few thousand years. That part of Asia has had tribes/cultures/lineages overtaking others on a regular basis over the centuries since humans settled down in the Fertile Crescent. There were Arab vs Arab, Arab vs Turk, Mongol vs all others, Europeans vs Arab and Turk and Jews, etc. At some point Arab vs Jew became a thing. Was it really as recent as post WWII?

 

I am a bit more of a fence-sitter on this issue, about which I will admit great ignorance, but I don’t mind your more pragmatic approach. I do wonder what your end game would be. Say the Palestinians give up and say, “Ok you won. All this land is yours, and we have no claim to it.” Then what? Are they immediately made full citizens of Israel? Or are they kicked out? Or are they sent for reeducation or put on a reservation?

 

lol yeah I'm not sure telling someone you're going to kill them in 24 hours and then killing them 24 hours later is any better than killing them immediately by surprise. Just sounds like a huge slice of mental anguish to accompany their imminent demise.

Sort of reminds me of the convos we had about that titanic sub that imploded. Some said they would prefer to slowly run out of oxygen over the course of hours opposed to having it implode instantaneously. Not me. Give me the quick death.

 

Great question. No easy solution, but I think the two-state solution that was brokered under Clinton is workable. But it relies on the Palestinians to agree to stop attacking Israel first and foremost. Then it relies on Israel holding up their end of the bargain and literally keeping the lights on in Gaza. This would be the start. Where it goes from here, who knows. But as the saying goes, a journey of 1000 steps starts with the first one.

 

Well then, I guess the task falls to you. With all the delicate nuance you can muster, make the case:

How might one defend a coordinated terrorist attack on civilians?

Should Israel just take it due to [insert: whatever case you laid out above]?

 

Great post. The statement by the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban comes immediately to mind "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". As you have accurately pointed out Israel was willing to accept a two state solution from 1947 (before the country formally became independent) and for decades thereafter. Interestingly, during the years preceding the founding of Israel as well as during its early years, the term "Palestinian" referred to Jews born in Palestine not Palestinian Arabs. Until the PLO was founded Palestinian Arabs self-identified as Arabs rather than as Palestinians.

This is an excerpt from a piece by Benny Morris, an Israeli historian who has been criticized by the Israelis for admitting that there was forcible relocation of Palestinian Arabs and by the Palestinians/Arabs because he exploded the myth of the Nakba (the narrative that all of the 700,000 Palestinian Arab refugees were forcibly expelled from the Jewish state):

Most of Palestine’s 700,000 “refugees” fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops.

The displacement of the 700,000 Arabs who became “refugees”—and I put the term in inverted commas, as two-thirds of them were displaced from one part of Palestine to another and not from their country (which is the usual definition of a refugee)—was not a “racist crime” . . . but the result of a national conflict and a war, with religious overtones, from the Muslim perspective, launched by the Arabs themselves.​

From a longer article on the subject:
The Nakba Obsession

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