Hi Asher,
Sure, it's not simple, otherwise it would have been solved by now.
Agreed!
Yet, I fail to see how harassment, taking of legally owned land, rock trowing at children, curfews only for Palestinians for no reason, etc., etc., IOW the systematic (!) dehumanization, will create a better future. IMHO it only creates more people without a future, with nothing to lose ...
Bart, this is amazingly argumentative and judgmental! Each of the items, with no context, is listed as if it is true! "Taking of legally owned land", (just the first statement}, is not documented or explained in context. In the USA, cities are always taking land for eminent domain.Arabs might have have built homes on public land with no permits. No doubt some misjudgments occur. Even plain theft must occur as in any society. It could even be that the Arab has an uphill fight in courts. However, ultimately, the law has to be followed and Btselem and other Jewish organizations advocating for Palestinians, will take up their cause. What systematic dehumanization? The Palestinians teach their children to hate. Math taught with the sums based on how many Jews are left after killing a number. Songs of hatred in summer camps. Kids taught to have homicide vests. Jews are not taught like that anywhere in the world.
Throwing stones at children? Come on. for sure there must be some nut some time doing that. However, no civilized values-based society like the Jews have built in Israel, would tolerate such behavior. I'm sure there must be at least one child molester in Holland. But what does that mean for the Dutch as a people? Do they now come to be called on this? Are they now going to be labelled, yes the Dutch people themselves, as "perverts"?
When Jews, Israelis and friends of Israel, see the problems packaged so neatly as
"Yet, I fail to see how harassment, taking of legally owned land, rock trowing at children, curfews only for Palestinians for no reason, etc., etc., IOW the systematic (!) dehumanization, will create a better future. IMHO it only creates more people without a future, with nothing to lose .."
The impression is received as there is zero empathy for the Jews, just one neat meme package of sentiments concerning the Palestinians. What's fascinating is the lack of concern for the Darfur victims: A million displaced blacks, (pagan and Christian) hundreds of thousand of real rapes and murders and there's not a 1/100 of the passion for their cause! It's just fashionable to focus on the Palestinians as victims and not the far greater tragedies, real slaughter, not humiliation. The 20th and 21st Centuries have created empathy by fashion and outrage by exception: selective outrage. In all the gassing of hte Kurds and Iranians, by the Iraqi Baathists and the filling of Yemeni valleys with poison gas by the Egyptians, the massacre of ~ 60,000 Palestinians )Black September) by the Jordanian Army under king Hussein with the rest being driven into exile by way of Syria, the shelling and total destruction by Assad senior of Syrian towns that rebelled against his iron dictatorship ...we could list more... bur none of these lead to student movements, mass demonstrations of any consequence.
Why? We had no strategic interest and the victims were not on the fashionista list of preferred victims.
Where was even 1/1000 of this empathy for thousands of Muslim teachers and children, hands wired behind their backs and shot by Serb Christians after the Dutch UN soldiers there to protect them were ordered off by the Serbs and left without even bothering to ask their consciences if these were human beings being left to be slaughtered. That was not "humiliation". The fact of the matter was that Europeans had no sympathy for European Muslims! What's become clear is that a. Europeans consider themselves fair and just, and b. they have objections only to what happens to their pet fashionalble victims, right now the Palestinians. Other victims, the Tibetans, Chechnyans, Darfur Blacks, Kurds massacred regularly from the air by Turkish bombers, are too different and distant to really make a fuss about! What mass movements are there for these unimportant victims? What amazes me is the rationed selective moral outrage that is only expressed for folk whose friends have oil!
I don't know if the following link can be seen outside of the Netherlands, but the Dutch Jewish broadcasting organisation aired an interesting 5 episode documentary series called "Israel, between dream and reality". Large parts are English spoken (and Hebrew, Arab and Dutch), so it might be interesting to have a look at one of the episodes with Col. Danny Tirza (he was the architect of the wall):
http://player.omroep.nl/?aflID=11117968
It shows how many in Israel have no idea what's going on, because they are (literally) shielded from reality, and how things escalate over time. Like the image that kicked of this thread, photography and cinematography/video prove to be important tools in informing both sides of this conflict.
Cheers,
Bart
If the Europeans can also show moral outrage for folk who are powerless and without important allies, will their opinions count for much. The abandonment of
Darfur
Chechnya
Tibet
Congo
Somalia,
Kosovo
Rwanda
Zimbabwe
with
real massacres, make the words of the Europeans rather empty. If Europe would intervene in Sudan, it would take just 20,000 soldiers and they could have save hundreds of thousands of lives. Yet, even China and Russia in Tibet and Chechnya could have been tackled. So what do the Europeans do? They gang up on the people who they drove out of their lands. If a girl takes a picture of Arab prisoners seated, they see that as humiliation! Certainly is foolish and disrespectful. However the Europeans should feel humiliated themselves for having outrage only where there's no risk.
When the Europeans practice selective outrage, how can they be trusted by the Jews?
This doesn't give the Israelis a pass to wrong the Palestinians! It just removes European influence and wisdom when it is so sorely needed. Unfortunately, the Jews and Palestinians are going to have to make peace despite themselves, but on their own. Maybe the Americans will help bang their heads together so they see some sense!
You may wonder why the special fuss over Palestinians. Well it could be they have the most valid and noble claims. for sure they do need more rights and help, the must have a state, but why the concern from Christian Europe? I wonder whether it's our inheritance from the Crusades. Wide-eyed missionaries have labored for so long under the delusion that they can bring blessings and salvation to the Muslim world by converting Muslim children at the other end of a piece of bread or a schoolbook. The Americans, (a lot of the US State Departments Arabists) where dedicated to advancing the lot of the Muslims. They found that Muslims are not so quick to relinquish thousands of years of culture and belief for Christianity. The missionaries and schools then aimed their sights on the Armenians, as if their belief in the Trinity and resurrection was not genuine enough and proceeded to convert them, making forts to Jesus across the Turkish Empire. In Palestine, they turned attention to the Jews. At first they really believed that Jews, given the chance, would accept Jesus with open arms. Hey, that would fulfill prophecies and hasten a second coming! This seemed far more attractive than dealing with devout Muslims! So they actually helped with Jews farming on desert land, trying to make it bloom again. After that silly experiment failed, (the deserts bloomed, the malarial swamps were drained, but they had no converts! So they devoted themselves to work in the Arab countries setting up colleges in Beirut and Egypt, and putting conversion on the back-burner, so to speak, with proselytizing by seduction instead.
Asher
