Dennis Fox, psychologist colleague of mine and Middle East peace activist frames some questions on the Gaza conflict, and suggests some answers:
2. Who started the broader conflict? This is a central question, or would be if the rest of the world paid much attention. Interpretations vary depending on the starting point. Here are some possibilities: Hamas’s takeover of Gaza, Hamas’s election to office, the 1967 Six Day War leading to the Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, the 1948 establishment of Israel, the late-nineteenth century arrival in Palestine of Zionist immigrants determined to create a Jewish homeland, and even Napoleon’s plan to create a Jewish state in Palestine to defend French interests. Israel’s supporters – and Israeli negotiators in the never-ending “peace process” – refuse to go back in time, while Palestians’ supporters know that the further back you go, the more the violation of their rights is clear.
3. What kind of conflict is it? Is this a national conflict between Israelis and Palestinians? A religious conflict between Jews and (mostly) Muslims? A geopolitical conflict between Israel, the US, Western Europe, and their conservative Arab allies on the one hand, and on the other Arab states less beholden to the US, Iran, and other states at odds with US dominance? Alternatively: Does the conflict reflect the actions of two equally responsible enemies engaging in tit-for-tat retaliation, who might someday make peace as equals (the framework often adopted by “neutral” peacemakers and dialogue advocates)? Or is this a conflict between Occupier and Occupied, between a powerful nation and a weak but stubborn resistance? If the latter – as I have come to see it – are the sides so unbalanced that journalistic and academic “even-handedness” becomes a support for oppression?
4. Does Israel deserve, and does it get, exceptional treatment? This is very touchy. Is Israel held to an unjustified higher standard as its defenders claim, a standard that simply proves anti-Semitism? Or does Israel get away with actions that would not be tolerated for any other modern state, and certainly any modern democracy? Does Israel deserve a Jewish state simply because Zionists took it, following the colonial model of Western states arising over the objections of defeated native peoples, or does the development of international law and the creation of the United Nations after World War II mean statehood by conquest should no longer be tolerated even for a state that absorbed Europe’s Jewish Holocaust victims? Israel’s dismissal of international condemnation as proof of bias often seems to me a convenient excuse. Anti-Semitism exists, but doesn’t explain everything.
5. Where’s justice? As I’ve explored at length on this blog and elsewhere, there can be no final settlement until history is uncovered and justice addressed. Justice is tricky, I know, but having been on both sides of this issue over the decades, I think that defenses of Israel are more strained, more rickety, more based on exceptions to ordinary standards of justice and humanity than defenses of Palestinian rights.
For me, resort to tribal notions — often expressed as what’s best for the Jews, or the claim that only a Jewish state can defend Jews worldwide — are mired in comforting nostrums that long ago lost whatever validity they may once have had. If Palestine had really been a land without a people, a Jewish state would have gone differently, maybe even becoming the light unto the nations I learned about so long ago. But creating a Jewish state over the objections of people living on that land was a historical injustice that will never – never – be forgotten. It has led, ironically, inexorably, inevitably to Jews endangered precisely because they live in the Jewish state that was supposed to protect them. And it has led to Jews oppressing, and even today killing, innocent non-Jews in the name of that Jewish state.
Framing the conflict as tribal – the core Zionist argument — justifies Israeli actions no matter how grotesque, from this latest invasion of Gaza to the four-decade occupation to the six-decade imposition of Jewish control over Israel’s own internal Palestinians. I might add it also justifies similarly particularistic views and actions by groups such as Hamas. I would much prefer framing the conflict as one between those committed to a tribal worldview and those embracing a more universal justice-based outcome. There are Israelis and Palestinians on both sides of that divide, and any justice-based future depends on them.”
via dennisfox.net
In this “tit for tat” sequence, the question isn’t “who started it?”, rather you need a “L’Hospital’s rule” (used to determine the limits of fractions with infinite terms by taking their derivatives). I’d ask “Who escalated it?” For example when the recent ceasefire was allowed to expire, Israel went into Gaza with one of their “hit teams” and killed several Palestinians – one of whom was the target. At this point Hamas started firing rockets into Israel. The story we get in the USA omits the first cause (Israel’s attack), but that’s nothing new. (BTW, I’m Jewish – but I moved to Texas in 1950 (where I grew up) and saw how negroes were treated. Hey, that’s how Palestinians are treated – only worse.)
Thanks for letting me vent Eliot.
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I’m glad the UN hasn’t decided to give the area where I live to the persecuted tribe who has a historical and religious claim to the land.
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Letter to the world: What did you think was going to happen?
Dear world,
I understand that you are concerned about the state of things in Gaza. The rising number of dead terrorists, as well as the death of their human shields, and the photographs coming out of Gaza, are making things uncomfortable for you. It’s hard to ignore all of that devastation, so you are calling for an immediate, this-instant, don’t-make-me-come-up-there-young-man! ceasefire.
But I don’t understand; what did you think was going to happen?
What did you think was going to happen when you pressed Israel to pull every last Jew out of Gaza, and then you watched the population destroy the municipal infrastructure left to them, setting up rocket launchers instead of tending the greenhouses?
What did you think was going to happen when the population of Gaza elected a government which pledged to destroy Israel?
What did you think was going to happen when Hamas and Islamic Jihad sent rocket after rocket into Israeli towns for the past three years?
What did you think was going to happen when Hamas dug tunnels into Egypt, to import Chinese and Iranian missiles?
What did you think was going to happen when you permitted Hamas to hold Israeli Gilad Shalit for years, without so much as a peep about even letting the Red Cross in to see him?
What did you think was going to happen when Israel warned Hamas, repeatedly, that they would invade if need be?
What did you think was going to happen when Hamas terrorists blew themselves up in Israel?
What did you think was going to happen when Hamas violated their ceasefire?
What did you think was going to happen when Hamas used UN equipment to kill Israelis?
What did you think was going to happen as Israeli troops amassed at the border, watching rockets fly into their towns and land in fields and homes and kindergartens?
I ask you these questions because all along, you did nothing.
You failed to condemn the rocketers.
You failed to insist that Hamas live up to its agreements.
You failed to insist that Hamas release, or even treat humanely, Gilad Schalit.
You failed to insist that Hamas acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.
You failed to exert any pressure or express any outrage when Hamas poisoned its children with anti-Israel propaganda.
You failed to protest when Hamas launched mortars from UN schools.
Now, you wake up and protest. Now, you insist that all violence must stop.
Why? Because the dead people are named Mahmoud instead of Moshe? Jewish blood wasn’t enough to make you stir from your living room chairs?
Perhaps, to you, Jewish blood is cheap. Perhaps, to you, a few rockets a day, Jewish children growing up in bomb shelters, just isn’t enough to make you risk your relationships with Arab oil and its associated petro-dollars.
But you should have thought it through.
You should have planned ahead.
You should have realized that the other shoe was going to drop, and you should have put a stop to things back then.
We could have avoided all of this, if you would have protested three years ago, or two years ago, or last month.
I don’t know what you were thinking then, but I sure hope you’re going to start thinking now.
Sincerely yours,
A Jew
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It isn’t just that they want to destroy Israel, the Hamas charter specifically calls for the extermination of every last Jew on Earth, because God told them to.
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Should instructions from God be ignored ? Wouldn’t this eliminate Israel ?
You hope I am going to start thinking because of your comment ? This is the problem. I wasn’t waiting for you, but you are convinced I am.
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Lem — I don’t fully understand what you are driving at, but please don’t make a difference of opinion, even on such a charged issue, grounds for an ad hominem attack, if that is what you are gearing up for. Your comments, and everyone else’s, should be about the issues.
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Alan noted that Hamas wants to kill all Jews because their God told them to. The country of Israel was created by other people with another God who tells them what to do. There isn’t a basis for criticizing someone who acts on their religious beliefs if the criticizer also acts on religious beliefs.
After a long list of my failings, A Jew wrote : “…I sure hope you’re going to start thinking now.” I don’t know how this can be construed as other than a personal attack. My response was not an attack, but an observation that it is a problem to consider someone stupid and imagine that, if only they would start thinking, they would then agree with you.
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“A Jew”‘s comment was an open letter to the world. I wouldn’t take it personally.
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Israel had a more complex origin than that, but Hamas did not.
From the Hamas charter,
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).
“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. ”
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
“After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”
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It can be considered that the origin of Hamas is with its charter but, just as the origin of Israel could be either a UN resolution or the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, there is a history to the creation of Hamas.
If two people both believe that a piece of ground has been consecrated for them, how do you choose which one is right ? If the people are religious, neither person can give up on their God’s instructions.
That Hamas thinks meetings are a waste of time makes them rather average. Possession of land everywhere has been established by force. Victors want this practice to stop just after they have gotten theirs. Of course the vanquished want to continue.
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I think you’re overstating the religious influence in the history of Zionism, which was a movement in the popular style of 19th century romantic nationalism.
Specifically, it was in response to general anti-semitism of the period which increased generally just as anti-semitic laws were eased or eliminated, a reflection of the anxieties of industrialization and the consciousness of a bigger, wider, world-wide world which, for most, was still very far away, remote and unknown, like Palestine.
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