We Hold These Truths to Be Inevident
We’ve all come to accept certain clichés as truth: A cat always lands on its feet; There is nothing new under the sun; The media is slanted to the left. Our minds are given to knee-jerk prejudices that are easy to skim over. In this way, we can accept certain ideas without really bothering to process the huge amount of data involved to actually come to a conclusion that would usually be far less conclusive and not as easy to explain, as inWe’ve all come to accept certain clichés as truth: A cat always lands on its feet; There is nothing new under the sun; The media is slanted to the left. Our minds are given to knee-jerk prejudices that are easy to skim over. In this way, we can accept certain ideas without really bothering to process the huge amount of data involved to actually come to a conclusion that would usually be far less conclusive and not as easy to explain, as in: Cats mostly land on their feet when they have a large enough distance to fall so they can turn their bodies in the proper position. Now our pat logic is given to equivocation, and suddenly nothing is black or white. No one wants to live that way.
This is the only logic I can come up with for the tremendous amount of negative press that Israel has been getting lately. There is some sort of inherent support for the underdog built with in us, and, no doubt, a small shake of anti-Semitism. (As an aside, Palestinians are Semitic, too, but most American’s don’t recognize that fact.) I understand the David vs. Goliath mentality. Those poor oppressed Palestinians have to fight the big, bad Israeli army with 30 year-old weapons and 3 billion year-old rocks. I, too, usually root for the underdog, except when it comes to the Yankees, but the vilification of Israel is absurd.
An article that captures the extremely complicated nature of what is going on in the region is here , at Alternet.org. The fact that this article even exists on Alternet is quite a surprise to me, since out of the 25 or so opinion pieces that the site has on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, all but 3 are outright anti-Israeli, and the other two are more along the lines of “I’m trying to keep this fair, but those Israelis have tanks, and that is just not fair.”
Here are some assumptions about this conflict that are just plain wrong:
The Israelis are imperialist, trying to kick out the Palestinians in giant land grabs.
Wrong. Admittedly, the Zionist movement certainly lends itself to imperialism, but the creation of Israel as a nation was more or less compromises by other imperialist states that just didn’t want Jewish refugees continually pouring into their countries. The British, in fact, promised the dual creation of Palestine and Israel, at the same time, but only got as far as moderately securing Israel and left the region to its perpetual chaos.
The Israelis treat the Palestinians poorly, pushing them to refugee camps and ghettoes.
Incorrect, and insidious. This has been popular lately to bandy about, because it assumes the Jews are doing to the Palestinians what the Germans did to Jews. But it is horribly wrong. In Israel itself, 20% of the population is Arab. These Arabs can vote, they enjoy the highest longevity and literacy rates within the region, and they are not forced to live in any certain area. So what is the difference between the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinian Arabs? The Palestinian Arabs insist on living in a Muslim state. Would Israel allow these Palestinians to live in Israel proper? Yes, Israel has one of the most liberal immigration laws in the world.
The Israelis are blocking the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Nope. The Israelis don’t want the Palestinians to be well armed and have strong opinions about this sensitive area. There is also quite a squabble on where the capitals of Israel and Palestine would be, since both want Jerusalem. But all in all, Israel has been pushing the creation of the Palestine. Of course, there are a lot of niggling details that the Israeli government can’t agree on as a whole. The left and the right political spectrums are divided by these details. And yet, Israel has always made concessions to the Palestinian demands on the new state. It is the PLO, however, that nixes these deals, because they will not make concessions. They will not agree to reductions in weapons or dividing Jerusalem.
A further argument against the Israelis is that they have no right to the land, since the Palestinians have been there for centuries, but this is not entirely correct. The Jewish state has expanded in population considerably since the creation of Israel, but Jews were always there, as were Arabs. The codifying of Israel into a nation only displaced Arabs that were unwilling to live under a Jewish government. These Arabs initially emigrated to other Arab nations, but these nations kicked them out. These other nations forced the creation of the refugee camps, and these nations also immediately invaded Israel. When Israel beat them back, it took the disputed lands as buffer zones. I’d like to point out that Texas did something similar to the Mexican, and yet very few Mexicans are blowing themselves up in Huston Taco Bells, in naive protest for their ancestral lands.
This issue is tremendously complicated, and I do not intend to be anti-Palestinian. My sincere hope is that the creation of Palestine will bring a modicum of sanity to the area, but I don’t believe it will, because the issues at hand are never about the people who have to live through it. There is no difference between the teenagers dying in Tel Aviv by suicide bombers and the teenagers who are the bombers. They’re all being lied to by someone. But the idea that Israel is a monster in a region of poor innocents is something that would make Goering smile. It is a propaganda masterpiece that American’s are swallowing willingly.
I just can’t figure out why.
Posted by Jonathan at 06:15 PM, 22 April 2002
