On Anti-Semitism and the state of Israel
There are certain phrases used to dismiss opponents and end arguments that really get under my skin, because they tend to be used by people who can't make a real argument for their side, and yet with a certain small minded type of idiot, they seem to work.
One we've seen a lot lately is "hate America". Anyone who disagrees with anything President Bush says is said to "hate America", when in truth speaking out against improper behavior (factual or perceived) in our governmental officials is one of the most American, most patriotic things we can do, and the fact that we are free to do so is one of the defining qualities OF America.
Another one we've been hearing a lot of lately is calling someone an "anti-Semite". This invariably comes up whenever anyone expresses anything other than 100% support for Israel and 100% condemnation for Hezbollah in the current conflict.
But how are we ever supposed to make any headway in brokering any kind of peace with this sort of opinion? Secretary of State Rice started her trip over to that troubled region saying she was only going to meet with Israeli representatives, she had no plans to meet with Lebanese or Hezbollah representatives because they were terrorists and we do not negotiate with terrorists. Well, great, how will we ever broker any kind of peace agreement between the parties when we're excluding one of them from the talks?
And similarly, how are we ever going to make any headway with the Islamic contingent of this conflict if we don't at least pretend to some impartiality. Look, it's a war. There are atrocities and tragedies on both sides. This conflict between these two opposing ideologies has been going on for years, the idea that we can easily point to who started the current “war” is ludicrous. Yes, the triggering event was the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah forces, but I'm sure if you asked Hezbollah, they would say that event was in retaliation for some other event... which was in retaliation for some other event... etc.
This area of the world is like two little children fighting over the same coveted toy. Taking the toy from child A and giving it to child B and announcing that the toy now belong to child B doesn't solve the problem if child A sincerely believes the toy was his to begin with.
Which brings us to the question that people keep trying to ascribe to liberals, although in truth the only people I've heard mention it are conservatives claiming it's the view of liberals: does the state of Israel have a right to exist.
Let's take a look at the history of the modern nation of Israel. First off, it was formed in a fashion pretty unique among nations: it was created by a 1948 United Nations treaty. That treaty drew out a specific boundary that belonged to Israel, and since then, Israel has dramatically increased their boundaries.
Keep in mind, the city of Jerusalem is holy in three different religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. With this in mind, the original UN decree left Jerusalem as a UN administered international region belonging to neither party, but since that time Israel has declared Jerusalem to be its capital and has essentially taken it over, along with expanding its borders by taking over such areas as Sinai (returned in 1982), the Gaza Strip (returned last year), the West Bank and Golan Heights.
Now, for its part, Israel is surrounded by hostile countries (no wonder, remember this was essentially the same in our previous metaphor of a parental figure coming along and taking away one of their toys and giving it to a rival child) and has to be hyper vigilant because one lost battle and they're screwed.
Still, they have not been blameless over the nearly 60 years of their official existence, and clearly the Islamic peoples of the region have reason to be angry as well. Some of "their" land was taken away and given to people they regard as heathens, people who then proceeded to annex a city holy to Islamic culture. If it had happened in reverse, you can bet we'd be angry. If the U.N. tomorrow decided to carve out a chunk of Italy and create a Palestinian state, and over the next few years the Palestinians decided to annex all of Rome and make it their capital, would not Catholics be a bit miffed?
So, let's proceed from that starting point. Let's recognize that both sides have legitimate concerns, questions and complaints, and then attempt to move forward to resolve some of them.
Anything else will never even BEGIN to make steps towards a lasting peace. It may not ever be possible, but it certainly won't be if you start out by dismissing the concerns of one of the two parties you're trying to get to the negotiating table.
And if you can't do that, at least have the decency to stop smearing anyone willing to look at the region with an open mind with a label such as "anti-Semite". I don't hate the Jewish people. I don't hate Israel. But I recognize that in any human endeavor, both sides have points and concerns, and it does not mean I am against Israel that I recognize that their opponents also have real concerns and real complaints.
Liam.
posted by Liam at 7/27/2006 11:08:00 PM
9 Comments:
The question is whether Hezbollah really wants peace at all. (Disclaimer: These things below are things I've heard, not things I came up with myself; unfortunately I cannot cite, but I probably heard most of it on NPR.)
First, Hezbollah was originally created by Iran, after the Iranian revolution, with Iranian goals: an Islamic state in Lebanon, with political power and religious power in the same hands. In fact, Hezbollah leaders originally were overtly loyal to the Ayatollah Khomenei.
Iran doesn't want peace between Israel and its neighbors. Nations at peace with Israel get Western connections; nations at war with Israel get Western censure; Iran hates the West. Fostering conflict with Israel is an important way for Iran to keep from becoming isolated.
In the ensuing decades, Hezbollah has withdrawn somewhat from Iran and set its goals further back. It realizes that in the short and medium term an Islamic state in Lebanon is unlikely; a sizeable part even of the Islamic population of Lebanon doesn't want an all-powerful Islamic state. Therefore they have become a political party among other political parties, and realize it make take decades or even generations before Islam runs Lebanon.
But they don't want peace with Israel. In fact, when innocent Lebanese are killed by Israeli forces, it helps Hezbollah, because it mobilizes the ones who remain. "I don't really agree with Hezbollah, but I really hate Israel, and Hezbollah is the only one who is fighting Israel, so I guess I'll join."
Logical?
(Yes, I'm parrotting NPR. But these ideas make sense to me, and if you have competing ideas, I am open to them.)
Friday, July 28, 2006 4:51:00 PM
I agree with just about everything you've said here, and my point wasn't to make Hezbollah out to be the victims (although I think a case could be made for the Lebanese people being the real victims here, caught in a war between Hezbollah and Israel).
My point was to blow off steam at certain militantly pro-Israel people who would have us believe that Israel is peopled entirely by saints who have never, in their entire lives, been anything but martyrs and victims and that every little thing they do is justified.
I don't think I need to make a case against Hezbollah, because in this country the vast majority of people already have a really bad opinion of all things Arabic since 9/11.
But the situation in that region is largely the fault of the countries of the world deciding to seize a large portion of land belonging to other people and create a new country out of it. I'm not sure there is a solution.
How people have behaved on both sides since has not always helped the situation, and I can certainly find examples on both sides of blatently inflamatory behaviors.
So please don't believe I was arguing that Hezbollah were the good guys in this.
I'm just rejecting the automatic assumption that any recognition of poor behavior on the part of Israel and its citizens stems solely from some hatred of the Jewish people, instead of from the (correct) impartial (or as impartial as a human can be) viewing of all of the circumstances.
Don't worry, Ross, I still love you my friend. It's just that it's neither because of nor in spite of your ethnic heritage. Other than the occasional mental image of one of those cloth "flippy fliers" whenever I see your headgear, your religion and ethnicity mean exactly zero to me.
Liam.
Friday, July 28, 2006 6:06:00 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701420_pf.html
I hope after you read my response that you can use the above tag to read the article by Warren Christopher, Sec. of State under Carter. In it he state that in 1993, in response to Hezbolah's rocket attacks, Israel attacked Lebonan territory occupied by Hezbolah. After a period of time, during which Hezbolah was taking a beating, a truce was sought to stop the fighting. In 1996 Hezbolah attacked again only with better equipment and arms. It seems they really were intent on getting rid of Israel and used the peace time to re-equip with the intent of attcking Isreal again. After a cease fire was again called to stop the fighting (it seems Hezbolah was again taking a beating) Hezbolah used the time of peace to once again re-equip with better rockets and firearms than even Israel could ascertain. They did this with the often stated vision of wiping Israel off of the map. Given this history and their stated goals, do you really think another cease fire to give them even more time to re-equip again to a better and higher degree of military weapons should be called for,so they could once again try to "wipe Israel off of the map"?
President Truman during WWII saw the fallacy of a negotiated peace with an entity trying to wipe you off of the map, and stated publicly that we would only accept total surrender from Japan and Germany or they would have their ability to wage war removed from existance.
Saturday, July 29, 2006 9:12:00 PM
OK, but... how do you do that? Hezbollah is not a government, it is not a country. It has more in common with al Qaeda or the IRA than with Japan or Germany.
So how do you totally remove Hezbollah? How do you shut them down entirely when, in fighting back, you throw the lives of so many innocent civilians into upheaval such that many who were not particularly against you when you started are now firmly behind Hezbollah, because they're the ones fighting the nasty people who are bombing our homes and killing our friends and family members?
That's what happened in Iraq, where in spite of the rhetoric, there was very little in the way of organized terrorism or even hatred against the United States among the populace, until we came in and replaced a fairly stable existance (under a dictator whose brutal tactics some such as Bill O'Reilly are now even saying are ones we should be using to keep the peace) with a ruined infrastructure and mass violence.
Many Iraqi citizens who previously had no quarrel with the United States now hate us. With every Abu Ghraib, with every Haditha, with every 13 year old girl raped and then murdered with her family, with every attrocity (real or rumored), we become more hated and al Qaeda gets more support.
The same is happening in Lebanon. The Lebanese people were not, by and large, supporters of Hezbollah (except in that Hezbollah, and no one else, was providing a lot of the basic services for the poor and such), but now that their homes are being bombed and their friends and relatives being killed, they're reacting in much the same way a lot of non-thinking people have in this country to the events of 9/11: "Those bastards killed our people and destroyed our property. They had the nerve to attack us, we have to support the people who are fighting for us."
In the U.S. after 9/11, that was George Bush and his wholely disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, non-existant search for Osama bin Laden, criminal negligence in the aftermath of Katrina, and on and on. There is still a fairly sizeable contingent of this country that says not merely "I'm willing to forgive his crimes because he's on our side", but even go so far as to deny that there are any crimes committed, in their unswerving support of the most anti-American President in my memory (and that includes Richard Nixon).
In Lebanon, it's Hezbollah, where the people are starting to forget the terrorist aspects of Hezbollah's actions and are looking to them not as the SOURCE (or cause) of the bombs dropping on their cities, but as the good, patriotic Muslims fighting the horrible Israelis who are killing us and bombing our homes.
So what's the solution? Kill more? Carpet bomb the whole country until you know you've killed all of the membership of Hezbollah... because you've killed everyone? And because Hezbollah is as much an ideology as an organized group, would it not then spring up again, hydra-like, in another form, by another name, in another Islamic country (in solidarity for the masacre in Lebanon)?
That's the problem with this whole "War on Terror". Wars against groups who share an ideology are wholely different than wars against countries. You can defeat a country. You can take it over. You can depose its leaders. And if you do it well and don't unduly affect the lives of the majority of the citizens, you may even do it without too much negative opinion in the conquered state.
But as long as there's anyone who has some ill feeling towards a shared enemy and some solidarity with those who are part of an ideological group, you can't really kill the beast. It has no heart, and if you lop off one head, it just grows another one.
And yet I'm STILL not saying Hezbollah is right and Israel is wrong. My point, from the very beginning, is that whether you like their tactics or not, whether you consider them to be uncivilized brutes or not, there are some legitimate complaints on the side of the Islamic nations, and to dismiss those out of hand just fosters the idea (regardless of veracity) that Western nations hate Islam and are really fighting a war against that very religion, instead of merely against its most extreme factions.
Until we deal openly and honestly with the complaints of BOTH sides, and try to find some way to address at least the most legitimate (the things less grandiose than "Those people have no right to exist"), we can never even hope to have peace in the middle east. As long as one side perceives that everyone at the bargaining table dismisses their concerns and is biased against them, there will be very little incentive for that side to engage in any kind of real, honest negotiation.
Liam.
Saturday, July 29, 2006 9:41:00 PM
So how do you totally remove Hezbollah? This is your question in your response to mine. I know that negotiated peace agreements that give Hezbolah time to re-arm isn't the answer, it has been tried too many times in too many instances. Thoughout history when anyone has appeased aggresive tyrants, we have had larger wars later on that could have been MUCH smaller conflicts had one taken them on at the beginning. Germany was appeased by the other European countries by allowing them to keep the first small countries they took over in return for peace. Did peace reign, obviously not. If you are a student of history, look at the Crusades. They were a last ditch response by the world to the Islamic armies that, through war and occupation, had taken over most of the civilized world at the time. The last two or three countries along with the Catholic Church stood up armies and pushed them back through military defeat. And remember, that the Crusades were NOT pure and unbloody episodes, but they were in response to active aggression that tried to win the world to Islam through the sword. As in all wars, horrible injustices were committed by both sides, but history writes the outcome. The war was this long and this bad because peace was the sought after prize through appeasement. Following the logic my line presents, the only answer is the one you don't want to hear. The Bush Policy! They, meaning the countries that support terrorist, are either going to quite supporting them as Libya has done, or they are our enemy and get treated as such. Yes, Syria and Iran have to change either through peaceful means or otherwise. There is no doubt in my mind that all of the attrocities cannot be blamed on one side and the other is pure, but war is hell and Syria and Iran, through Hezbolah and Hamas will not quit trying to erase Israel until Israel is gone, or all of their ability to wage was is gone. I think the first response from your friend Ross states it best,The question is whether Hezbollah really wants peace at all.
Saturday, July 29, 2006 10:13:00 PM
Interesting that you should mention the Crusades, because serious attrocities were committed against the Jews during the Crusades.
The phrase you're looking for is not "history writes the outcome" but "the history is written by the victors". If Saladin and the other Islamic forces had won, the histories of the period would reflect the evil upstart Christians attacking the pious and heroic Islamic forces and being turned back.
Regardless, I think you missed my point. I understand yours, that people who feel they have a gripe may take the occasion of a time of peace to rearm. Who else rebuilt their stocks of weapons during the cease fires? Oh, that's right, the Israelis. When you have a time of peace, you build back up the stocks of weapons you had used up during the war, in case you need them again.
That the peace didn't last is true. And *IF* there was some way of stopping one side or the other in their tracks, it would prevent further future wars.
But do you get the fact that Jerusalem is important to all three major religions involved here, Judaism, Islam and Christianity? Or that Israel, in conflict with the founding of the Israeli state, has taken over the whole city?
I asked before, imagine the U.N. decides that native Americans really do have a fair claim on their own nation, and decides to create a nation for those tribes out of what is now Texas. There are large numbers of Texans who are none too sanguine with the idea that Texas isn't its own country, to have it taken away from them by the U.N., that would never fly. If it happened, there's be our own American version of Hezbollah, created largely out of displaced Texans, who would be forever fighting to reclaim their taken land.
But, regardless, you didn't answer any of my points: even postulating for a moment your implicit assumption that Hezbollah is evil and needs to be shut down entirely, Hezbollah is more like a political party than a country, an ideology rather than a government. You simply can't shut it down militarily. You can't. That makes it different from Hitler, different from Japan, different from the Islamic nations during the Crusades (and by the way, the Crusades were really about Jerusalem, so in a very real way this current situation is a continuation of that same age of struggle, three religions all considering one area to be holy and considering everyone else's claim on it to be the sullying touch of the infidel).
We went into Iraq in response to al Qaeda, but they weren't there. No weapons, no active threat to us, nothing but the fact that they were another predominently Islamic (although mostly secular) nation. And in so doing, we have not in any way made our nation safer, we have in fact increased the support for al Qaeda against us. Military action ostensibly against al Qaeda just made them stronger!
Again, until we find something that's actually PRODUCTIVE, we should be vary wary of taking steps, because the ones we're taking are counter productive. We go into Iraq, remove a non-threat, and build anti-American sentiment in the region, making us all less safe.
Cease fires may not solve the problem, but at least fewer people die during them, which does less to fuel support for the violence against the "other side".
I'm not against trying to solve the problem, I'm really not. But if you have a headache, and you try banging it against the wall as a solution, and it somehow doesn't work, only a fool argues that continuing to bang your head against the wall is justified because doing nothing leaves you with a headache.
Liam.
Saturday, July 29, 2006 11:09:00 PM
The phrase you're looking for is not "history writes the outcome" but "the history is written by the victors".
I know the phrase, but I wrote what I meant. If you look at the historical writings, you will find that in the end, history is written correctly. Even the war between the Blue Bellies and the American Indians are now being corrected. They were not all that bad, and we were terrible, but both sides did commit horrible deeds in the name of their own.
Who else rebuilt their stocks of weapons during the cease fires? Oh, that's right, the Israelis. When you have a time of peace, you build back up the stocks of weapons you had used up during the war, in case you need them again.
In this quote from you, I have to agree with the fact that they both rebuilt, but for what purpose. Hezbeloh for the purpose of ridding the world of Israel, and Israel for the purpose of defending itself against that or other attacks. Egypt and Israel agreed on a peaceful solution, both sides have done what is right, and there is no war between the two parties. Your remarks make me believe that you think Israel cannot be trusted anymore than Hezbolah; I think that is wrong and history proves it.
But do you get the fact that Jerusalem is important to all three major religions involved here, Judaism, Islam and Christianity?
This also is taken from your response and I answer with this statement. Judaism and Christianity are allowed in Jerusalem at their desire, so is Islam, at peace, no matter who is in charge and yes the Israelis are in charge.
But, regardless, you didn't answer any of my points: even postulating for a moment your implicit assumption that Hezbollah is evil and needs to be shut down entirely, Hezbollah is more like a political party than a country, an ideology rather than a government. You simply can't shut it down militarily. You can't. That makes it different from Hitler, different from Japan, different from the Islamic nations during the Crusades.
Again, this is from your response. Sure, it is an idealogy but is supported by a country from which they get their MONEY and WEAPONS!! We can fight them, and we must destroy their ability to wage war now, or fight it in a later time after Iran has gone nuclear or whatever will be in the future.
I really admire the way you debate. Actually, if someone else were reading this (which some probably are) they would award you the win, but remember this debate 5 or 10 years down the road. If we don't do it now, then we will have to do it after. The only solution besides war that we have right now is to put a substantial force between Hezbolah and Israel that has the abiliity to fire and defeat either side that breaks the peace and bring Syria and Iran to admit to their deeds and quit. Don't count on it!
I would really be interested in seeing your solution to the problem.
Sunday, July 30, 2006 12:15:00 AM
Unfortunately, I don't have one. At the moment, no one does. Smarter people than I have tried and so far no workable solution has come up.
Which makes my argument both easier to make and also a bit cowardly: It's easy to point out what's broken, it's a lot harder to figure out how to fix it.
But the fact remains that I really do believe we're beating our heads against the wall here on the argument that if we stopped then we wouldn't be doing anything at all about that damn headache.
My impression is that Iran and Syria and the Islamic nations probably view this war in much the same way Christians of the 11th century viewed the Crusades: As battling back the encroaching forces of a competing religion that threatens to overwhelm them.
Really, my whole idea here is that we need to do our best to understand both our enemy's position and our own. That doesn't mean that we have to agree with that position, but we have to try to at least understand what that is.
For instance, we need to do away with the "they hate us for our freedoms" garbage. It's nonsense. They may hate us for our support of Israel in their conflict together; they may hate us because they view our society as decadent and as polluting theirs (note that similar arguments are being made by more extreme members of the Religious Right to justify all sorts of new restrictive laws in this country).
Heck, when our President invoked the Crusades and talked about this current war on terrorism as another one in that series, they may very well hate us because they have the impression that we hate them and would like to wipe them off of the map, and that this is the age old war of Christianity vs. Islam instead of the new war of the United States against those who would harm us.
Let me ask you, in response to your comments about Jerusalem, how would you feel if Jerusalem were taken over by Islamic forces, and it continued to be run the way the Israelis have, allowing all access at peace. Nevertheless, the people controlling the area would now not be our long time friends but someone we at least currently perceive as hostile to us. Would Christian extremists and Jewish extremists really be comfortable with that situation? Or would it grate on them that someone who believed in a religion which (as is the nature of each religion) seems to them to be a false one has power in THEIR holy city?
So yes, I think you're right that both sides rearmed and that Hezbollah did so with the more immediate plan to attack again. But I think that if Islamic forces controlled the holy city, that might actually have been reversed (well, not Israel, per se, but a radical faction therein). I really think that the claim that Hezbollah just wants to eradicate Israel is as much a useless oversimplification of the facts as "they hate us for our freedom".
My guess is that if Israel hadn't expanded their territory into east Jerusalem, Golan Heights, the West Bank, Sinai and the Gaza strip (expansion at least somewhat analogous to the expansion the crusades were in response to), hadn't proven to be aggressive at times, and weren't in prime control of one of Islam's holiest cities, this war might be a whole lot less of a concern.
That doesn't necessarily excuse the tactics, and it doesn't mean there'd have been NO friction (after all, it was still area that was primarily Palestinian before the U.N. gave it to the newly created state of Israel after WW II), but again I'm trying to figure out what Hezbollah's real goals are, what their real complaints are.
On to your point about Iran and Syria, supporting Hezbollah: For right now, we can safely assume that Iran and Syria are our opponents in the region. They are, to use an overly simplistic term, our enemies. In "The Art of War", the brilliant Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote:
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
I believe this refers to more than simply knowing the enemy's tactics. I believe that not only is it not anti-American nor weak on terror to want to understand the motivations of al Qaeda, Hezbollah and any other enemy who wishes to do us harm, it is in fact the best way for us to come up with the proper response. Understanding doesn't mean agreeing with, it doesn't (necessarily) mean forgiving or appeasing or even giving in to the wishes of your opponent. But if you don't take the time to understand what's really under his skin, you may very well miss real possibilities for advancement in your blind enmity for one another.
But I agree with you, I don't have a solution. Tempers are too high, mutual hatred is too strong (in certain circles), and more importantly, mutual paranoia about the other side's motivations, for there to be any easy solutions.
Maybe you're right, maybe the best solution would be a large, multi-national U.N. peacekeeping force situated in the area, keeping BOTH sides at bay, not fighting but ready to join in opposing whichever side launches the aggression.
But that can't be something we (or anyone else) does unilaterally, or it just becomes one more country to hate, one more country in the war. It would have to be a force of many nations, stepping in and saying "Enough is enough. Until you calm down and we can actually talk about everyone's real complaints and try to broker a lasting peace, we're going to sit here in the middle and smack whichever of you makes threatening moves towards the other."
It's not an enviable position to be in, to be sure, but to return to my headache analogy, it's the first suggestion I've heard that sounds more like some variety of "take an aspirin" and less like some variety of "maybe if we chose a wall made out of birch wood instead of pine...".
I don't like Hezbollah's tactics. But I understand them. And I honestly believe some of the same patriotic Americans who point to those tactics as justification for endless wars of aggression against the Hezbollahs of the world and their supporters would be happy to employ just such tactics if they felt their own country was occupied or threatened by a superior force. It's fairly easy to condemn terrorist tactics when you have the superior strength on your side. Remember that by the rules of warfare of the day, our revolutionary fathers were terrorists in their own right, fighting an ambush style war that was completely savage by the "civilized" rules of war in practice at the time.
People who feel their cause is just but their enemy is mighty will do whatever they can to win the day. When a David is up against a Goliath, he’s got to pull in some unfair tricks (although admittedly having God on your side isn't quite the same kind of unfair trick) because in a fair fight, he gets creamed.
So what makes Hezbollah (and al Qaeda, and Iran and Syria) feel that their cause is just? Understand that, and at least you understand the motivation that leads them to feel that their actions are not cowardly terrorism but advancing their noble cause in the face of a superior (in strength) opponent.
I wish I had an answer. But just because I don't doesn't mean I should just shut up and bang my head against that wall one more time, hoping that this time will be the time that the headache is finally beaten.
Liam.
P.S. I'm enjoying this debate quite a lot. If nothing else, it's made me go out and do a batch of additional reading on the Crusades and the history of the region, so in a very real sense this debate is helping me to be more informed.
Sunday, July 30, 2006 1:19:00 AM
A couple of additional thoughts have occurred to me.
1) The Palestinians, at least, have a pretty legitimate beef with the current set up. Until the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel, both Jews and Palestinians were peoples without a nation. After the 1948 decision, the Jewish people had Israel, the Palestinian people still had nothing. The decision set 55% of the disputed land area up as Israel and left the remaining 45% to arab control, but didn't explicitly set up a state of Palestine. While Palestine may not be directly involved with Hezbollah (at least I'm not aware of any direct links), most Islamic nations are going to feel some kinship with Palestine the way most Christian and Jewish nations will feel some kinship with Israel.
2) I think the reason why Christianity and Judaism do not clash in the same way that both do with Islam is because Christianity proceeds out of Judaism. It is in our history that we WERE Jews until Christ came and taught us a new direction. On the other hand, the diversion between Islam and Judaism was a much more contentious one from the very beginning, and is a much older rift. Many people don't even realize that Islam and Judeo-Christianity are all branches of the same core religion. Not that this is apropos to the current debate, but I'm having insomnia and these are thoughts I'm having.
3) Also not germane to the current discussion, but just interesting to think about are the parallels between the Sunni/Shiite division and the Catholic/Protestant division. Sure, in this country we all pretty much get along and, except for the occasional overly zealous person, most people recognize that we're all Christians in various forms. Nevertheless, we've all heard about the years of conflict between the predominantly Catholic country of Ireland and the predominantly Protestant country (area?) of Northern Ireland. It's just a good reminder for us to all tuck away lest we look at the Sunni/Shiite battles and allow that infighting to convince us that Islam is really a savage religion and doesn't deserve our respect: We Christians have our own embarassing areas of strife between the various sects that all essentially believe the same things.
4) The roots of the modern state of Israel begin well before the 1948 decision, when in the late 1800s, the first of several waves of Jewish people immigrated to the area that would become the state of Israel. So to return to my imperfect analogy regarding native Americans and Texas, it would be as if Native American tribes all decided that Texas was the start of it all for them, and the place that they really felt the most connected to, and so started moving back there. Over the first 40 years, establishing a local population of 11% of the total, then increasing that to 30% in the following 20 years.
I understand Jewish connection to the place and the motivation for moving back there, but still, over the years from 1881 til 1940, it was almost like a coordinated assault, with the local Jewish population going from almost nothing to 30% over those 60-odd years.
Think about the group of Religious Right extremists who are trying to all move to South Carolina to try to take over the state and make it "properly" Christian. Or the "Free State Project" members who are trying to move the majority of the nation's Libertarians to my own state of New Hampshire in order to create a libertarian utopia.
The people who are already in South Carolina, or here in New Hampshire, kind of resent these attempts by outsiders to come in and try to take over control of our states. Not greatly, because so far neither group has had much success in creating much more than a very minor statistical bump, but if suddenly the Free Staters in NH accounted for 30% or more of the voting population, and they started actually getting their people elected and their agenda enacted? You can bet we'd all be a lot more annoyed by it.
Which is analogous to the way Jewish people "invaded" Israel over 60 years.
And again, I understand why they did it, and I'm not finding fault with them for it, per se. But I can certainly see (being one of those states under a kind of ideological invasion) where it might not sit well with the people who until that time had pretty much owned the area.
And (just to bring this back to the original point of the original post) I don't think recognizing this fact makes me anti-Semetic or anti-Israel. It just means that I'm trying to be open minded to understand why the Islamic residents of the region are so annoyed by it, and I can certainly see some legitimate reason for their feeling kind of persecuted and screwed by the whole deal.
Liam.
Sunday, July 30, 2006 2:36:00 AM
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