winterbadger (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterbadger) wrote2006-02-14 01:41 pm
winterbadger) wrote2006-02-14 01:41 pm
Entry tags:
"We're not going to have 500 years"
Thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
selki for pointing out this article. There are some thigns I don't like about this guy, but I think he's about 99% correct in the observations he makes.
selki for pointing out this article. There are some thigns I don't like about this guy, but I think he's about 99% correct in the observations he makes.
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(I've been in England too long)
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And he's also spot on in pointing out the weird, sick connection between Israel and the millenialist evangelical Christian Right in the US, what I call the Cromwell factor.
His analogy of the KKK:Detroit::Zionism:Palestine is certainly offensive, but effective in describing (IMO) how Arab populations see the US, Israel, and our actions. And, to some extent, in describing how Israel has behaved in the Occupied Territories.
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The whole "poor displaced Palestinians" thing can get to me. Yes, they live in appalling conditions--but it's always Israel that gets all the blame. Israel isn't the reason there are 4th generation "refugees" in camps in Lebanon. Israel resettled its refugees--maybe it wasn't perfect but they did it. Meanwhile the Arab world prefers to cry crocodile tears. Perhaps Saudi Arabia should be sending heart surgeons instead of radical imams?
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I disagree; it's one of the main reasons Arabs hate the US. There are other factors for certain groups, but none that are common to literate, well educated Arabs, poor unworldly Arabs, and rich, powerful Arabs.
The whole "poor displaced Palestinians" thing can get to me. Yes, they live in appalling conditions--but it's always Israel that gets all the blame. Israel isn't the reason there are 4th generation "refugees" in camps in Lebanon. Israel resettled its refugees--maybe it wasn't perfect but they did it. Meanwhile the Arab world prefers to cry crocodile tears. Perhaps Saudi Arabia should be sending heart surgeons instead of radical imams?
I don't know enough to address what Arabs individually have or have not done to ameliorate conditions for Palestinian refugess. Certainly the lack of serious action by Arab (and Iranian) governments has been damning. However, that doesn't excuse the way Israel has behaved. If any other country occupied territory by force of arms and routinely dispossed, humiliated, imprisoned, and tortured the inhabitants of that territory, the United States would be up in arms.
Well, unless that country were China. Or Russia. Or...
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Well, let's see, those 4th generation refugees have been denied citizenship, denied the right to work in many professions, kept in camps, blamed for the civil war. Ironically, athough the Palestinians were denied citizenship to preserve the Lebanese demographic balance, the largest growth has been in the Shia community.
The only Arab country to grant citizenship to Palestinian refugees is Jordan (and even then I think it was only to 1948 refugees who went to the east Bank--West Bankers didn't get citizenship). After Arafat supported Saddam during the Gulf War, all the expat Palestinians were simply sent back home.
Jordan and Egypt had 19 years to make Palestine independent. They didn't, because the Arabs never wanted an independent Palestine until it became clear that it was independence or Israel.
Don't get me wrong, I support the two-state solution because I don't believe anything else is possible. But the Arab leadership has whipped things up to the point where it no longer even matters. They hated America just as much when Israel was sitting down at the table and they'll keep hating it because they've been raised on extremist propoganda that says Israel and the Jews are evil.
And it's not that I approve of everything that Israel's done, I just get tired of "evil israeli villains!" Last week it was the Guardian comparing Israel to apartheid. Well, Israeli policies are wrong but that doesn't make them the same (and there's the little issue of the Arab citizens of Israel--who do suffer discrimination in fact if not in law, but then so do Arabs in France.) And it's so damn condescending, Europeans who don't face suicide bombers telling Israel to act like some European human rights ideal.
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It's all very well to point out the mote in the eye of the Arab states, but it's no justification for the beam in the Israelis'. Israel doesn't have any control over what the Arabs do, but it has responsibility for its own actions, and its actions in the West Bank and Gaza have been nothing short of horrific.
Last week it was the Guardian comparing Israel to apartheid. Well, Israeli policies are wrong but that doesn't make them the same (and there's the little issue of the Arab citizens of Israel--who do suffer discrimination in fact if not in law, but then so do Arabs in France.)
I didn't see the article, but if they were talking about the Occupied Territories rather than the state of Arabs in Israel, I think that analogy is pretty apt.
And it's so damn condescending, Europeans who don't face suicide bombers telling Israel to act like some European human rights ideal.
Not on the same scale as in Israel, but it's kind of hard after Madrid and 7/7 to say that Europeans don't face the threat of suicide bombers.
And I always get a lump in my throat when I hear Israel comdening terrorists, because without guerilla terrorism in the 20th century and state terrorism in the 20th and 21st, Israel would not have been created or survived. Many of Israel's prime ministers have been former terrorists. Is terrorism unconscionable, morally indefensible, and repugnant? Yes. No matter who uses it.
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The articles argued that Israel is fundamentally based on apartheid, which is false. The fence and a few petty laws passed recently (for example on immigration of Palestinian spouses) make it seem like a reasonable comparison, but the reality is much more complex. Again, within Israel proper, legal equality has gradually developed over the years. Education is a problem but arose from a reasonable basis--Arabs wanted schools that taught in Arabic. They can send their kids to Jewish schools (which teach in Hebrew, and have Bible classes--there are separate religious schools) and some do. Arab schools receive equal funding from the national government, but Arab municipalities are poor (and often very corrupt--a few are notorious for it) so don't have money to top it up. And the parents are poor too, so don't have money for the "extras" that schools offer and which parents have to pay for. SO overall, there's less money, and fewer kids getting their bagrut (matriculation certificate required for university).
The restrictions only apply to Palestinian Arabs--and unlike South Africa, Israel doesn't lay legal claim to the West Bank and Gaza. It does lay claim to East Jerusalem and offered the Arabs there citizenship, which they declined (leading to the various complexities of the recent election). (They do hold permanent resident cards, and unlike Arabs in the West Bank, have full access to things like the health funds, National Insurance, etc.)
Furthermore, there are legitimate security considerations involved, even though the actions are not always proportionate.
It's kind of funny, within the Jewish context I'm fairly liberal and within the religious-Zionist context I'm nothing short of a kofer (heretic) - I'm anti-settler and I believe in the two state solution. (We can't rule them, we can't kick them out and a binational state is ludicrous. Hello, Lebanon anyone?) But the constant grinding down of Israel in the liberal press gets me down. Israel is the fount of all evil, the Palestinians are poor and oppressed...
And I'll admit it, Jews like me who grew up in the Zionist context just don't understand the Palestinians. We grew up with blue boxes and Hadassah and the image of the chalutzim. Our self-image was of building the country. If we weren't there, we were raising money for hospitals, for schools, for planting trees. We were voting for the World Zionist Congress. And we just don't understand why the Palestinians don't and didn't do the same.
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Corruption is no respecter of sectarian differences; there's plenty of corruption in the Jewish parts of Israel too. The real question is why the Arab towns are uniformly poorer.
The restrictions only apply to Palestinian Arabs--and unlike South Africa, Israel doesn't lay legal claim to the West Bank and Gaza.
Well, it occupies all of the West Bank, so it hardly needs to make a claim that wouldn't be recognized anywhere outside of Israel anyway.
Furthermore, there are legitimate security considerations involved, even though the actions are not always proportionate.
Security considerations do not explain the destruction of Palestinian agriculture, homes, businesses, and government offices.
(We can't rule them, we can't kick them out and a binational state is ludicrous.)
Not to mention that the Palestinians, like everyone else, have an inherent right to self-determination.
But the constant grinding down of Israel in the liberal press gets me down. Israel is the fount of all evil, the Palestinians are poor and oppressed...
Well, this is what happens when Jews have a state of their own; they get held to account when they are repressive, violent, and unjust. Israel is not the fount of all evil, but they *are* acting in an evil way, and, yes, the Palestinians *are* poor and oppressed.
It makes me very sad to think it, but sometimes it's occured to me that the founding of Israel was a test for Jews from HaShem, to see if we could be just and fair rulers, or if we would just do as others had done to us. And it seems to me that the latter is predominating over the former.
And we just don't understand why the Palestinians don't and didn't do the same.
Well, give them several thousand years of statelessness and they may develop the same traits and behaviours that the Jews have done.
But it's hard to convince someone there's a point in planting a tree or building a wall when the next day settlers or the IDF may come along and bulldoze it.
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I catch flack from people every time I point that out - but truth be told, bombing people to smithereens from bombers that they can't defend themselves from, and bombing everyone near a 'bad guy' is every bit as effective a form of terrorism as what happened on 9/11 or with suicide bombers on public busses. Hell - it's MORE effective, as there is a little less backlash. It is still terrorism. Terrorism is an idea, and we can no more effectively declare war on it than we can on love or drugs.
Baer is also correct that now we have opened Pandora's box and there is no easy way out. We are screwed either way, and the only people who are not screwed are the same people who get special case escape clauses all the time, the extremely wealthy and well connected. Neither Bush nor Cheney will give up their retirements, but you better bet you sweet bum most American's will have to.
I wholeheartedly hope Isreal does fine, but it is many decades past due the time for them to stand on their own. We should be giving them no military aid (by the way - all military aid our government "gives" other nations is basically a fleecing of the tax payer to give money to the rich weapons makers of the world, mostly right here in the U.S.). Isreal should be fine on it's own - and gee, if they have to talk to their neighbors a little and perhaps even compromise, how is this a bad thing?
The same is true for the United States. We've been the bully on the toy pile since the end of World War II. That will NOT last. Probably not for another 50 years let alone 400... It is inevitable that other nations and cultures will catch up and perhaps even pass us by... we'll be forced to talk to our neighbors too, rather than dictate our terms to them unilaterally.
For a brief window in time we had an opportunity, and at least a very strong minority of people supporting a world leadership policy rather than a world domination policy, but that is all thrown out the window now. Mostly with Reagan first, but now with Bush II for sure.
We still have an opportunity to use the oil that remains to build an oil-free infrastructure, boot-strapping us out of dependence on fossil fuels - but we will squander that too. The American people keep voting to squander it, and they vote not only at the polls; but also in their choices of vehicles, and how they treat each other and "foreigners" and even their own families.
Sorry to be so cynical - but I can't see this any other way (though the optimist in me keeps trying).
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