It is not enough for them to destroy homes, and offices, and infrastructure, and to massacre human beings. Their goal is to massacre and destroy joy, pleasure, sense of self. Their goal is to shatter the soul.
“…the Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” Moshe Yaalon, former Israeli military Chief of Staff, 2002
What kind of subhuman beast targets a zoo, and shoots the caged animals at point blank range? The same kind of beast, I suppose, who forces a hundred or so men, women, children, infants, and elderly people into a house, holds them there for hours, and then proceeds to shell the hell out of the house.
They have destroyed two zoos now in Gaza, terrorizing and slaughtering the animals, and demolishing the facilities. The first one was a small children’s zoo in 2004 (see the second article). It is not an accident or a coincidence, it is completely intentional, and intended to kill any joy or pleasure or sense of identity or control over their own lives for Palestinians. It is intended to reduce them to the most base and basic existence.
It has long been their practice to systematically destroy Palestinians’ cultural, social, educational, and recreational facilities, particularly those for children. They have repeatedly targeted these types of facilities in the West Bank, and in Gaza. It is part of the effort to convince the Palestinians “in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people”.
Whatever the Palestinians are able to build for themselves, Israel will destroy. And yet somehow they are unable to destroy the Palestinians themselves and their will to survive. The Palestinians will never be defeated. The Palestinians represent the personification of the word صمود. Steadfastness, perseverance, endurance, resistance.
Israeli troops shot and killed zoo animals
By Ashraf Helmi, Videographer, and Megan Hirons, Photographer
January 25, 2009The Gaza Zoo reeks of death. But zookeeper Emad Jameel Qasim doesn’t appear to react to the stench as he walks around the animals’ enclosures.
A month ago, it was attracting families – he says the zoo drew up to 1,000 visitors each day. He points at the foot-long hole in the camel in one of the enclosures.
“This camel was pregnant, a missile went into her back,” he tells us. “Look, look at her face. She was in pain when she died.”
Around every corner, inside almost every cage are dead animals, who have been lying in their cages since the Israeli incursion.
Qasim doesn’t understand why they chose to destroy his zoo. And it’s difficult to disagree with him. Most of them have been shot at point blank range.
…The few animals that have survived appear weak and disturbed.
“The foxes ate each other because we couldn’t get to them in time. We had many here.” There are carcasses everywhere and the last surviving fox is quivering in the corner.
…
Inside the main building, soldiers defaced the walls, ripped out one of the toilets and removed all of the hard drives from the office computers. We asked him why they targeted the zoo. He laughs. “I don’t know. You have to go and ask the Israelis. This is a place where people come to relax and enjoy themselves. It’s not a place of politics.”
…
Inside one cage lie three dead monkeys and another two in the cage beside them. Two more escaped and have yet to return. He points to a clay pot. “They tried to hide”, he says of a mother and baby half-tucked inside.
…
We ask him why it’s so important for Gaza to have a zoo. “During the past four years it was the most popular place for kids. They came from all over the Gaza Strip. There was nowhere else for people to go.”
And they’ve done it before, in 2004. Nothing is safe, not even animals in a children’s zoo. And oddly, this somehow demonstrates the wantonness and viciousness of their inhumanity more starkly and more vividly than the horrors they visit on human beings.
And of course, as always, like a five year old caught stealing cookies from the cupboard, they simply could not keep their lies straight, and thus proved themselves liars by changing their stories as each successive one proved implausible.
May 22, 2004 by the Guardian/UK
The Day the Tanks Arrived at Rafah Zoo
Among ruined houses, a haven for Gaza’s children lies in rubble
by Chris McGreal in al-Brazil, RafahAsk to be directed to the latest wave of Israeli destruction in Rafah’s al-Brazil neighborhood and many fingers point towards the zoo.
Amid the rubble of dozens of homes that the Israeli army continued yesterday to deny demolishing, the wrecking of the tiny, but only, zoo in the Gaza Strip took on potent symbolism for many of the newly homeless.
The butchered ostrich, the petrified kangaroo cowering in a basement corner, the tortoises crushed under the tank treads – all were held up as evidence of the pitiless nature of the Israeli occupation.
“People are more important than animals,” said the zoo’s co-owner Mohammed Ahmed Juma, whose house was also demolished. “But the zoo is the only place in Rafah that children could escape the tense atmosphere. There were slides and games for children. We had a small swimming pool. I know it’s hard to believe, looking at it now, but it was beautiful. Why would they destroy that? Because they want to destroy everything about us.“
…
The army also initially denied that soldiers deliberately wrecked the zoo that provided Rafah’s children with virtually their only contact with live animals, even ordinary ones such as squirrels, goats and tortoises.
Among the zoo’s more popular exhibits were kangaroos, monkeys and ostriches, which children could sit on.
The destruction was comprehensive. The fountain and its tiles were a jumble of rubble in one corner. There was no sign of the swimming pool.
One of the ostriches lay half buried in the rubble. Guinea fowl and ducks were laid out in a row. Goats and a deer struggled with broken legs.
Some of the animals were still on the loose, if not buried under the debris. One of the two kangaroos was missing; the other was cowering in the basement. A snake and three monkeys were unaccounted for. Mr Juma accused Israeli soldiers of stealing valuable African parrots.
The army’s explanation evolved through the day. At first it said it had not destroyed the zoo, then it said a tank may have accidentally reversed into it.
By the end of yesterday, the military said its soldiers had been forced to drive through the zoo because an alternative route was booby-trapped by Palestinian explosives.
Finally a spokesman said the soldiers had released the animals from their cages in a compassionate gesture to prevent them being harmed.
صمود
Steadfastness, perseverance, endurance, resistance.
فلسطين
Palestine.
احنا لا ننساك فلسطين
We will not forget you, Palestine.
And we’re supposed to sympathize with the traumatized Israeli military. Israel always suffers. Do I need to go and see Waltz with Bashir? It seems that Israel itself may have turned into an enormous zoo, which, incidentally, ‘supports our values’ no matter what. Evidently a value of the US and the renowned West is to carry out military devestation as in Gaza. Bomb Afghanistan! Can anyone really believe that this policy well lead to anything but more pointless misery and despair around the world.
“We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.” Golda Meir
Any wonder why they’ve resorted to being hooded? They’re now confined within the Israeli borders:
It’ll come. Justice is slow, whether by man or by The Universe…it comes. and Israel will be brought low and shamed.
There’s nothing to add.
How is it possible for you not to know better than to refer to Israelis in a collective sense as ‘subhuman’?
Where does it say so?
It’s called going from the general to the specific.
‘Them’, ‘their’.
Then transitioning to the specific.
Clearly the set-up is that this particular individual was only carrying out ‘their’ plan.
It’s extremely offensive to use the word ‘subhuman’ in this context. Need I remind you of the term Untermensch?
Now I do think you’ve got it wrong. ‘Subhuman beast’ just means something like ‘nasty bastard’, ‘inhumane monster’. It is monstrous what has happened. ‘Untermensch’ is something of an entirely different order. The Nazis never had a monopoly on highly uncivilized behavior. No matter what word is used, who can deny that Israel does intentionally and sytematically destroy—literally destroy—any vestige of Palestinian human dignity. We might rightly call such a state program subhuman.
Untermensch is a literal translation of subhuman. There is no distinction between them.
I am not going to tolerate any efforts by either side to dehumanize. What the Israelis do is human and what the Palestinians do is human. And it really is not too hard to avoid using charged language.
So, now I have graduated from anti-Semitic liar to Nazi.
And by the way, BooMan, if I referred to Nazis who committed atrocities in the Holocaust as subhuman beasts, I wonder just how readily and passionately you would object. My guess is you would object even less readily and passionately as you have objected to some of the rather charged language we have seen here occasionally regarding Muslims and Arabs.
It’s your blog, so you decide the rules. But when it comes to Nazism and Israel everyone, everywhere, is walking on eggs. A spade is called a spade regarding Nazis. Oddly enough, Untermensch might well be appropriate for Israel’s attitude towards the Palestinians. I have finally decided that the horror show coyly referred to as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or whatever, comes down to racism: apartheid. I thought Carter had gone crazy when he published his book and that shergald had gone completely around the bend when (s)he kept showing the cover of Carter’s book but now I understand. The whole deal comes down to racism on the part of Israel and the west. These people are absolutely unwilling to allow the Palestinians to regain their space, land, possessions, etc. If a Palestinian says I want my house, back, my land, no one reacts. Not until there is general recognition that the Zionists carried out ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians, the people who lived in Palestine when the European Jews arrived there in droves, will we able to save ourselves. On to Iran, on to Afghanistan, on to Pakistan. Obama must be mad.
I can’t wait until this book is published here
Controversial Bestseller Shakes the Foundation of the Israeli State
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
January 28, 2009,
http://www.alternet.org/story/122810/
What if the Palestinian Arabs who have lived for decades under the heel of the modern Israeli state are in fact descended from the very same “children of Israel” described in the Old Testament?
And what if most modern Israelis aren’t descended from the ancient Israelites at all, but are actually a mix of Europeans, North Africans and others who didn’t “return” to the scrap of land we now call Israel and establish a new state following the attempt to exterminate them during World War II, but came in and forcefully displaced people whose ancestors had lived there for millennia?
What if the entire tale of the Jewish Diaspora — the story recounted at Passover tables by Jews around the world every year detailing the ancient Jews’ exile from Judea, the years spent wandering through the desert, their escape from the Pharaoh’s clutches — is all wrong?
That’s the explosive thesis of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?, a book by Tel Aviv University scholar Shlomo Zand (or Sand) that sent shockwaves across Israeli society when it was published last year. After 19 weeks on the Israeli best-seller list, the book is being translated into a dozen languages and will be published in the United States this year by Verso.
As Israeli journalist Tom Segev summarized, in a review of the book in Ha’aretz:
There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened — hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua.
But this begs the question: if the ancient people of Judea weren’t expelled en masse, then how did it come to pass that Jewish people are scattered across the world? According to Zand, who offers detailed histories of several groups within what is conventionally known as the Jewish Diaspora, some were Jews who emigrated of their own volition, and many more were later converts to Judaism. Contrary to popular belief, Zand argues that Judaism was an evangelical religion that actively sought out new adherents during its formative period.
This narrative has huge significance in terms of Israel’s national identity. If Judaism is a religion, rather than “a people” descended from a dispersed nation, then it brings into question the central justification for the state of Israel remaining a “Jewish state.”
And that brings us to Zand’s second assertion. He argues that the story of the Jewish nation — the transformation of the Jewish people from a group with a shared cultural identity and religious faith into a vanquished “people” — was a relatively recent invention, hatched in the 19th century by Zionist scholars and advanced by the Israeli academic establishment. It was, argues Zand, an intellectual conspiracy of sorts. Segev says, “It’s all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel.”
Judaism is what holds the Jewish people together, not some ethnogenetic factor or unitary culture. Genetically, Jews range from Black Africans to white, blue-eyed northern Europeans. It is likely that most Jews are not really Semitic at all, but are the product of Judaic proselytism. Jewish cultures certainly extend beyond the Eastern European corned beef-on-rye cuisine that they are associated with in the US.
The question is: does this diversity matter at all. Probably not. However, if Israelis paid more attention to their Judiac roots as opposed to Zionism expansionism, perhaps this conflict would have ended long ago. That’s the only hope such knowledge can provide.
No time to go into this in any detail right now, but the question of Jewish identity/Jewish culture is an interesting one.
As I studied Zionism and Zionist history years ago, I learned that one of the early tasks the Zionists took on was figuring out how to define the Jewish people for the purpose of selling the Zionist project both to Jews and to the powers that be. It was critical, as were many decisions the Zionists made, both for political and P.R. purposes. After considering several options, they decided that the Jews constituted a nation. This had a lot to do with what the European powers required to decide that the Jews were in a position to demand a state, or even a homeland. There is one book in particular in my library that goes into this in quite some detail.
For purposes of clarification, are you saying that there really is/was a Jewish conspiracy?
A Jewish conspiracy?! My goodness, where did THAT come from?
I am saying merely that in the late 19th and early 20th century, the Zionists, who were at that time a very tiny subset of “the Jews”, were sophisticated enough to make certain decisions based largely on putting themselves in the most favourable position to achieve their goal of a Jewish state. It’s the kind of thing any group with a goal would be well advised to do.
Comparing humans to animals in political discourse is inflammatory. That’s the reality. There is just too much history and baggage of devaluing oppressed people by comparing them to animals.
I’m deeply concerned about the devaluing of animals. I have engaged in many discussions about animal welfare, animal behaviorialism and animal rights.
What the IDF did in the Gaza zoo was horrible and cruel on so many levels, both to the animals themselves and the people of Gaza. But its behavior was inhumane, not inhuman or subhuman. Animals don’t commit genocide. People do.
.
The Race and Settlement Head Office in 1942 distributed a pamphlet “The Sub-Human” to those responsible for that selection … and states the following:
The sub-human, that biologically seemingly complete similar creation of nature with hands, feet and a kind of brain, with eyes and a mouth, is nevertheless a completely different, dreadful creature. He is only a rough copy of a human being, with human-like facial traits but nonetheless morally and mentally lower than any animal. Within this creature there is a fearful chaos of wild, uninhibited passions, nameless destructiveness, the most primitive desires, the nakedest vulgarity. Sub-human, otherwise nothing. For all that bear a human face are not equal. Woe to him who forgets it.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
The image of the rat was used both by Nazis in their dehumanization of Jews, making it easier for neighbour to turn on neighbour during the Holocaust. The rat metaphor was also adopted in America when it came to locking up Japanese-Americans in internment camps later in the Second World War, following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour and the United States’ subsequent entry into the conflict. Most recently, Steuter points to the 1994 genocide of Tutsi populations by Hutus in Rwanda. International tribunals have condemned journalists for inciting and provoking the massacre, particularly radio stations, which painted Tutsis as cockroaches and calling for their extermination. As animal metaphors grew in the coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq …
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The cockroach metaphor is only one of a number of vermin metaphors that have been used by Israeli officials in public statements to refer to the Palestinian people as a whole. It appears that in their (those Israeli officials’, that is) eyes the Palestinian people in general are well below the status of Untermenschen. We do not know, of course, what they (Israeli officials, that is) call the Palestinians in private statements.
so, you choose to perpetuate this and justify it?
Give it a rest.
You will notice a strange consistency with me. I condemn the tactics of both sides as immoral, stupid, unjustifiable, and counterproductive. By treating each other as subhumans they destroy each other’s and their own humanity. I won’t allow it to go on here.
There is simply no equivalence between labeling as cockroaches and vermin an entire population that one is holding in a brutally oppressive occupation and pointing out that those who planned, ordered, and carried out utterly senseless acts of vicious cruelty have dehumanized themselves.
Why do you make the rather odd stretch that “they” refers not to the relatively small collection of Israelis who make the decisions, order, and commit the deeds described, but to each and every one of the 7 million citizens of Israel?
Or in your interpretation does “they” refer only to the 5.5 million or so Jewish Israeli citizens? Does “they” exclude the 1.6 million non-Jewish citizens of Israel? Or does it only exclude the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel? In your mind is it only Jews whom I am calling inhuman beasts?
And how can I remedy this, Booman? Shall I be required to refrain from the use of pronouns from now on in order to remove any opportunity for you to put the nastiest possible construction on what I say?
don’t get smart with me.
you know what I expect.
Isn’t it just a little fucked up, whenever someone calls out the Israeli reenactment of Nazi terror in the ghettos, to insinuate that the person making the observation is Nazi-like? Maybe “fucked up” is a bit strong of a phrase, but “weirdly ironic” doesn’t cover it, in my opinion.
And since when do the Israelis get a special context?
Oh yeah, if they didn’t get a special context, they’d be roundly condemned like every other bunch of racist European adventurers who set up a colonial “homeland” in someone else’s homeland.
Let me see if I can restate the original, and perfectly valid, point in terms that are acceptable in the Kid Gloves for Israel Context: soldiers who would slaughter a whole zoo full of defenseless animals for no conceivably valid military purpose are a despicable, sorry-ass bunch of horribly cruel motherfuckers.
Feel free to debate that point. And by debate, I mean debate, not another rote repetition of the classic Israeli apologist’s fallacy:
big improvement.
Corvus, I would want to include those who planned and ordered the destruction of the zoos and the slaughter of the defenseless animals in your condemnation. These were not the actions of a “few bad apples run amok” by any means. There is, as I said, a consistency and a purpose to actions like this. When they (meaning those who plan, those who order, and those who execute) do things like this they (meaning those who plan, those who order, and those who execute) not only destroy something of value that the Palestinians have created, they (meaning those who plan, those who order, and those who execute) send a very clear message to the Palestinian people. It is a message of hopelessness, and it is a message of hate.
And they (meaning those who plan, those who order, and those who execute) still do not understand this thing called صمود. From what I am hearing these days from Gaza the shock and the grief are quickly being replaced by rage. That is the absolutely predictable result.
I certainly can’t argue with that. Those that make the plans and give the orders are the ones that are ultimately accountable. For reasons I don’t fully understand, no matter what the plans are, one can always get a bunch of young men to put on uniforms and carry them out, whether the plan is to shell a school or to blow oneself up on a bus. The only more reliable constant in armed conflicts is that those giving the orders invariably live longer than those carrying them out.
I should note that while don’t have any sympathy for the Israeli regime, I can’t muster any for Hamas, either. The Palestinians are not well-served by Hamas’ complete lack of creativity. The rockets and the terror attacks are not working. They have never worked and never will, at least in terms of any of the ostensible goals of the Palestinians. They are, however, quite effective at generating large numbers of martyrs to fuel future support for Hamas among the foolish young men who are always available to carry out orders. The Palestinians deserve — and desperately need — more intelligent and creative leaders.
So do the Israelis. Unfortunately, Israel’s “friends” seem unable and unwilling to explain that. Both sets of leaders depend on the conflict to keep them in power. Peace is not to their advantage.
“Both sets of leaders depend on the conflict to keep them in power.“
That is not entirely accurate in the case of Hamas. In fact, Hamas has done more to halt the conflict than any other party to the conflict, including Fatah. And the party most likely to resume, perpetuate, or escalate the conflict at any given point is Israel. This is not a matter of opinion, it can be demonstrated with numbers.
Take the breakdown of the most recent ceasefire for example.
As you probably know, a bilateral ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began in June, 2008. According to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and quite a comprehensive report from the right wing Israeli think tank, Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, rocket and other fire from Gaza dropped 99% during the 4.5 months between the start of the ceasefire and November 4-5 at which time the ceasefire began to break down. According to both sources during that 4.5 month period there was no fire from Hamas. The majority of the rockets and other fire came from the military wing of Fatah, with a much smaller number coming from Islamic Jihad.
There is a lot of interesting stuff in the ITIC report.
The ITIC explicitly acknowledges that Hamas was determined to keep the cease fire, and for the most part successfully kept other militant groups who were not a party to the cease fire in check (I am paraphrasing because I do not have the report in front of me at the moment, but would be glad to provide direct quotes later if requested).
As to who broke the ceasefire, that has never been in doubt. Both the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and the ITIC acknowledge that the breakdown of the ceasefire began when Israel made serious attacks inside Gaza on November 4-5. It was then that the rocket fire resumed. In fact, on its website the Ministry of Defense referred to the rocket fire as “retaliatory”.
The ITIC report refers to rockets being fired in the direction of attacking Israeli forces as well as toward cities and towns in Israel, suggesting that it was at least in part defensive rather than retaliatory. Unfortunately, the ITIC report does not go into detail on this, so it is not possible to say based on the report how much of the rocket fire was defensive and how much was in the direction of cities and towns, or what the timing was. It is a fact that there were no Israeli deaths or injuries by rocket fire until after hundreds of Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli bombing of Gaza.
It is also quite interesting that the ITIC report refers to the escalation that Israel initiated on November 4-5 as being the first time Hamas has been “directly” involved in rocket and mortar fire. They also acknowledge that Hamas’ aim with the rocket fire was not to end the ceasefire, but to make an “equal response” to Israel’s violations of the cease fire. That Israel’s aim on November 4-5, and in subsequent attacks WAS to end the ceasefire is clear, since the deadly and destructive assault that began on December 27 was planned in March, 2008, including the timing at the end of the Bush regime and before Obama’s inauguration.
Israel’s claim that the 22 day attack on Gaza that began on December 27, 2008 had anything to do with stopping rockets is beyond risible. Keeping the ceasefire had resulted in a 99% reduction in rocket and mortar fire that lasted for nearly five months, and Hamas was prepared to renew the ceasefire and keep renewing it indefinitely. Therefore, it is clear that the best way to stop – or in this case to virtually stop – the rocket attacks is to agree to and observe a ceasefire, and to agree to renew it when it ended, not to break the ceasefire just in time to launch an attack that was planned months before.
And finally, just about a month ago the findings were released of a study that clearly demonstrated numerically what many of us have observed for decades – that in the overwhelming majority of cases when there is a ceasefire or a significant lull in violence it is Israel that violates it. This study found that in 78% of the cases of a significant lull in violence Israel will be the one to resume. In addition it found that the longer the lull has lasted the more likely it is that Israel will be the one to break it. The study used mainly data from the Israeli human rights group, B’tselem, which keeps excellent records. The report also cited data from the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
In relation to this study, Israel has a lifelong history of violations of ceasefires, truces and other agreements, and of deliberate provocation, and breaking the ceasefire is often intended as a provocation itself. These were recorded starting in the late ’40’s and the ’50’s by UN and other neutral observers, and in some cases admitted to by Israeli military and government officials. For example, Moshe Dayan described in detail the practices used to deliberately provoke the Syrians along the DMZ.
I don’t think there’s any credible debate that the European colonial invaders who call themselves the State of Israel are the aggressors in this situation. Even the supporters of Israel base their main argument for the supposed right of Israel to exist on the “facts on the ground”, which is to say that the State of Israel is a fait accompli whose justification is that it exists and could not be dismantled without tremendous inconvenience to the invaders and their recent descendants.
All that said, it seems that debates over the I/P conflict, at least the parts that don’t degenerate into name-calling, turn into painstaking tabulations of relative evil of the sort you just disgorged. Yes, most of the episodes of armed conflict are initiated by the Israelis. Yes, Israeli attacks are far more devastating than Palestinian attacks.
The conclusion we are obviously expected to reach is that the Israelis are n times worse than the Palestinians, for whatever value of n the speaker cares to articulate.
The conclusion that actually makes sense is that the Israelis do so much more damage because they are vastly better-armed, better-funded, and far more technologically advanced than the fighters in the Palestinian ghettos. Unless, of course, we are expected to believe — with straight faces — that Palestinian forces, if suddenly equipped with armor, assault helicopters, fighter-bombers, and modern artillery, would sit on their hands in a show of moral superiority because launching an artillery barrage against a school is very, very bad, as opposed to merely strapping on explosives and committing suicide on a crowded city bus.
Whatever.
The root problem here is that we have two groups who, because they suffer from religious delusions, would be perfectly happy to massacre each other if they only had both the means and the opportunity. Oh, I know that there are both secular Jews and secular Palestinians who hate each other as well, but there is at least some hope for them. The religious ones? Not so much.
If any progress is going to be made here, leaders in the rational parts of the world will need to stop tiptoeing around the loonies and say, look, no more killing in the name of imaginary gods and long-discredited books of superstitious nonsense and outright falsehoods written by bronze age savages. We cannot afford to have the foreign policy of most of the civilized world (and enormous chunks of the uncivilized world) dictated by people who actually believe contra-factual nonsense like the creation of the world by an obviously non-existent god, the Flood, angels and devils and other delusional fantasies. Religion doesn’t need deference, it needs treatment.
I know there probably won’t be much enthusiasm for this approach. The American right essentially is a religious movement, and the American left’s reaction to the long history of religious groups killing each other is, weirdly, to protect religion and even encourage it through tax exemptions otherwise reserved for positive social forces. But if we are really going to be a reality-based community, we are eventually going to have to confront the problem head on and say the obvious: that religion is, by and large, a collection of egregious lies long since disproven by science, and that it is one of the chief dangers facing the human race, being capable of consistently inducing mass psychopathology wherever it is allowed to operate.
One need look no farther than the psychopaths of the Levant, the well-funded ones in their tanks and the impoverished ones in their explosive vests, to see where this bullshit leads. Among us now, we have the same kind of extremists assembling arsenals in the form of Joel’s Army (or whatever they call themselves this week) and the Christian Identity movement.
Do we want to emulate the Levant, where the contagion of religion has been allowed to reduce an entire region, once civilized, to lunatic savagery? Or allow a repeat of the West’s own experience with another crippling Levantine religion, which dissolved Classical civilization and halted social and scientific progress for nearly twelve centuries until — by sheer luck — the savages turned on each other and the rise of the modern nation state and the science that drove it was able to seize the initiative?
We can, of course, continue to split hairs over which bunch of psychopaths is marginally less evil than the other, or we can opt out of their sick little game — while it is still little — and shore up actual rational civilization.
I have to disagree with you pretty much across the board.
First, it is obvious that I did not make my point clear. My point was not at all that Israel is “n times worse than anyone else”. My point was that it is not a case of both sides needing to keep the conflict going. The number one impediment to a resolution of the conflict is that Israel has never had the will to do what is necessary to make peace. The evidence is overwhelming for anyone who takes the time and effort to look beneath the surface. For example:
1. In 2002 in Beirut the Arab League – the official organization of all Arab states – unanimously approved a peace proposal that included everything Israel claims it wants – peace, full recognition, and normal relations. In exchange the proposal calls for 1) Israel’s withdrawal from the territories it occupied in 1967 in compliance with international law and UNSC Resolution 242, to all of which Israel is a signatory, 2) acceptance of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with its capital in East Jerusalem, 3) a just solution to the refugee problem to be mutually agreed upon in compliance with UNGA Resolution 194.
The Arab League has kept that proposal on the table for seven years, and unanimously reaffirmed it in 2007. And for seven years Israel has given the Arab League its middle finger for that proposal, refusing to even discuss it or use it as basis for negotiation.
Abba Eban said that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. That is deeply ironic since it is in fact that Israelis who never miss an opportunity to give the middle finger to an opportunity. It is not complicated what they have to do to live in peace, they just do not want peace badly enough to do it.
Based on your comments above it seems clear that your concept of the conflict has little or no basis in reality. It did not begin as a religious conflict, and it is not now a religious conflict, although admittedly over time some extreme religious elements have taken center stage. Zionism was a secular, not a religious movement, and the objections to Zionism on the part of Palestinians was not religious, but the same objections that any existing population would have to foreign colonizers bent on taking over the land for themselves. Further, some of the most active and militant Palestinians have been and still are not Muslims at all, but Christian or Secular Palestinians.
And you seem to think it is a conflict between two parties that simply hate each other. They hate each other, so they fight. The conflict is not a result of hate, hate is a result of the conflict. The conflict is over something very real and concrete. For the Palestinians, it is over their most basic rights as human beings, their rights to dignity and freedom, independence, and self-determination in their own homeland. Their right to feel safe and secure in their own homes, and to fee their children are safe and secure and will have a future. And it is about their right not to have their homeland stolen out from under their feet.
The basis of the conflict is that a group of secular – not religious – European Jewish colonizers came to Palestine, which already had an existing, well settled, ethnically and religiously diverse urban and rural population, with the goal of turning it into am Jewish ethnocracy. In order to do so it was necessary to remove by one means or another the existing non-Jewish inhabitants. They removed the great bulk of that population, and greatly expanded the territory granted for the by means of the 1948 war (see for starters Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and also Benny Morris’s The Origins of the Palestinian Refugee Problem” and “1948 and Beyond. They have used conflict and war ever since to continue the ethnic cleansing at a slower rate, and to continuously expand their territory.
Peace is not Israel’s priority despite their cries to the contrary. If it were they would not continue to take actions that are clearly antithetical to what is needed to achieve peace.
Months before the 1948 war began, Ben Gurion reassured his fellow Mapai party members that they would not be limited to the territory granted by the partition plan by saying to them “The war will give us the land. The concepts of ‘ours’ and ‘not ours’ are peace concepts, only, and in war they lose their whole meaning.”
I neglected to mention what is perhaps the most immediately significant evidence that this is not a matter of two groups of religious fanatics who just want to blow each other up.
While “America’s top Diplomant”, Hillary Clinton yaps on and on about how Hamas must 1) renounce violence, 2) recognize Israel, 3) agree to abide by previous agreements made by the Palestinian Authority, she seems unaware that Hamas 1) has recognized Israel for the last three years, repeatedly stating that they accept a two-state solution with Israel existing inside the pre-June, 1967 boundary, 2) has agreed for the last three years to abide by all previous agreements made by the Palestinian Authority.
In the mean time, no word about putting any requirements at all on Israel, despite the fact that Israel 1) has not and will not renounce violence, including explicitly stating that they will use “disproportionate” violence, 2) has not and will not recognize any right on the part of the Palestinians to an independent existence, let alone a state (in its platform the Likud, which is virtually certain to be the next ruling party, “flatly rejects” a Palestinian state west of the Jordan river, states that colonization (aka “settlement”) of the occupied territories is the “unassailable right” of the Jewish people, explicitly describes the Jordan river as the “permanent eastern border” of the State of Israel, thus explicitly acknowledging Israel’s expansionist ambitions), 3) has never suggested it will alter its history of ignoring any and all agreements past or present that it does not feel like abiding by, including various international conventions and treaties, and specific agreements it has made with other countries.
Every Arab state, and every significant Palestinian group has not only recognized Israel, but has to one degree or another reached out to Israel and presented, or at the very least agreed to possibilities for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Would you care to rethink your idea that this conflict is basically about “two groups who, because they suffer from religious delusions, would be perfectly happy to massacre each other if they only had both the means and the opportunity”?
We can argue this one into the ground, though I’m not going to waste a whole lot of time arguing against the patently absurd argument that religion is not the major driving factor on both sides.
The more important question, and one for which no decent answer has ever been presented, especially in the post-Cold War era is this:
Of all of the long-running, pointless, brutish conflicts over worthless stretches of territory in the world, should Americans give a shit about this one, much spend billions of dollars supporting either side and allow our foreign policy to revolve around it? Why this one and not any one of several internecine wars in sub-Saharan Africa which have claimed far more lives? Why this one and not the Kashmir dispute, which has also exceeded the I-P body count, could potentially lead to nuclear war, and involves two highly populous nations that actually would have an effect on the world if they disappeared tomorrow? Or for that matter, why this one instead of the as-yet-unfinished Korean conflict, which also dwarfs the I-P conflict in every conceivable sense?
Is there any reason other than the religious beliefs of American evangelical Christians and American Jews that propels this, an inconsequential conflict between two inconsequential ethnic groups, to the status of the world’s most important conflict?
You are dead wrong in your belief that religion is the driving factor for either side. Of course, I have the slight disadvantage of having studied deeply and broadly, and having been involved with both sides in this conflict for more decades than I care to admit, including acting as a moderator for Jews and Arabs discussion groups for years, so what on earth could I possibly know about what drives either side?
As for your “worthless stretch of territory” remark, I have two responses: 1) One person’s worthless stretch of territory is another’s person’s beloved home. It might be worthless to you, and that is fine, but don’t dare to tell those who live there or who were ethnically cleansed from there that their homeland is worthless. 2) You clearly have never been to Palestine or really know very much about it if you consider it a worthless stretch of territory.
Should Americans be involved in this conflict, support either sided, spend billions, and let their foreign policy revolve around it? Absolutely not. For the best interest of America and its people, and for the best interest of the people living there, America should keep its fingers out of there. And in all reality, if the U.S. had stayed out of it instead of constantly propping up and egging on its miscreant child, Israel, and otherwise stirring the pot, it likely would have been resolved by now.
And ditto for the rest of the Middle East. Keep your fingers out.
Ok, Hurria should edit the diary, take out “subhuman” and replace it with “inhumane sadist.” I personally think using an “animal” comparison for people who would terrorize and slaughter captive animals just to be assholes is far too kind.
You have a good point there.
However, the purpose of the slaughter of captive animals and the destruction of the two zoos was not “just to be assholes”. These actions are very consistent with other actions undertaken by the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) over the decades whose purpose is to destroy social, cultural, artistic, literary, and educational institutions. Anything that represents an attempt at maintaining identity or even a normal life on the part of Palestinians, and anything that could allow them to advance their standard of living will sooner or later be hit if not militarily, then economically or some other way, such as using various pretexts to bar school and college students from reaching their classes.
They hit particularly hard and consistently at children’s and youth facilities, particularly those that are likely to give Palestinian children a sense of identity and purpose, or provide them with an education. A recent example is their refusal to allow a group of Fullbright scholars from leaving Gaza even though they had visas in place to enter the United States.
At first it all seemed utterly senseless and pointlessly cruel, but over the decades it has become clear that it has been a matter of policy for most Israeli governments during the forty-plus years of occupation.
Israel knows all about being Collective
as in delivering Collective punishment, purposefully disproportionate. Israelis have this Attitude, Arabs are sub-human so torture is OK.
ask the dead in Gaza…. over 1,300 this round.
ask the maimed those without limbs
ask those burnt by phosphorous.
ask the Palestinian doctor who lost 3 girls. He works in Israel, live in Gaza. They bombed his house. His Jewish colleaques aired his wailing,live on TV.
When do we stop giving Israel the green light to kill.
ask the Palestinian doctor who lost 3 girls
The Israeli government just said this attack was reasonable.
.
will leave Gaza and move to Israel to secure the future of his five surviving children. Through his Israeli contacts and live broadcast, the IDF secured quick transport for the injured children to Israeli hospital care.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“There’s no difference between one’s killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It’s exactly the same thing, or even worse. Golda Meir
Hurria,
Thank you for all the informed knowledge you bring to the discussion.
I don`t comment much on these diaries but read & follow them to learn more. I`ve had strong feelings about the situation for years, but tend to keep my opinions to myself. I find it strange that a wrong turn of phrase, innocent in it`s presentation, can be so upsetting to some, but to help keep the peace, I keep quiet. You have only reenforced my opinions though. Thank you.
As far as killing defenseless animals in cages, that is not forgivable, but to deprive people of basic needs, beyond health food & clothing, to kill hope, to prevent children from seeing a kangaroo, or a fox, is a dichotomy of unfathomable proportions if one proposes to seek peace, something at odds with the actions of slaughtering animals.
Wandering in the desert for forty years would not be too harsh a punishment for those who ordered it, allowed it, or carried it out.
Thanks very much for your comment, KH. We are fortunate on this blog to have a number of people who are well-informed on the subject. It makes for a broader, richer discussion than you can find in most other places.