Another unpopular position

Posted on August 5, 2002 in Peace

A common argument you hear these days for ignoring Israeli actions against Palestinian civilians is the September 11 tragedy. The way this argument goes is that because the operatives of Osama Bin Laden were attacking on behalf of the Palestinians and the Iraqis, Palestinian civilians no longer deserve our sympathy. A variation on this argument derives from the understandable outrage that many Israelis, Jews, and others feel about the recent suicide bombing attacks. (See Lizzamayhem for a particularly vitriolic example.)

Such reasoning I think plays directly into the hands of Jew hating organizations such as Hamas. One need only consider the application in other current affairs to realize the dangerous absurdity and injustice of the stand. Suppose we were to say that all those fools who have been supporting Traficant in his fight against the Government should go to prison. Or suppose we went farther and said that everyone who benefited from any vote Traficant made in Congress (he was bribed, after all) was fair game for prosecution? Only dogmatic Traficant haters would find this a reasonable next step. And yet, we think such reasoning is valid when we declare someone an enemy and expect them to sacrifice their lives.

My beef with both the Israelies and the Palestinians is that they are waging unjust war against each other. Who started it? I say that question is bullshit and only serves to keep the fighting going. Palestinian and Israeli civilians are not fair game for the respective sides. In my opinion, the operatives of Hamas and Ariel Sharon all deserve to be punished as war criminals. Neither side is making any sincere effort to locate and attack the opposition’s military force and neither side is attempting to bring about peace. Both sides are justly afraid of extermination. Both sides want land to live on. It can be given.

Apologists for both sides won’t make the first move. The Israelies want to keep Sharon because of Hamas and Hamas keeps attacking because of Sharon. Each side defends its own terrorists. If we truly hate terrorism, we must by obligation hate any extreme violence that is being done in the name of the safety of ourselves, our loved ones, or our people. This is the problem. I put it to Lizza and others on both sides of the fence: when are you going to start not being part of this big problem?

My brief program:

• The demobilization of the Israeli army on the West Bank and the introduction of UN peacekeepers in all border towns and on the West Bank..
  
• The introduction of an international fact-finding commission to be charged with the investigation of atrocities and the prosecution of all war criminals, Israelis and Palestinians.
  
• The immediate closure of all West Bank Israeli settlements.

For many reasons, I feel that both Israelies and Palestinians are not able to manage their own destinies fairly at this time: including the effect of oil money; the wild dreams of Christian fundamentalists who are just dying to bring on Armagaeddon so they can get into heaven (when you have friends like this, it’s time to worry about what you are doing); the horrible memories of world wide Jewry from the Holocaust; the sheer opportunism of the international arms trade which keeps selling the combatants on both sides weapons, political in-fighting within the PLO; machinations within the United States to keep the conflict boiling for purposes of political opportunism — to name a few. Both sides have some reasonable requests that greatly resemble the other’s demands: freedom to live their lives in the towns where they were raised; security against attack; and self-determination. It’s time to stop making the civilians suffer and it is time for both sides to honor the mandates that led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. It is time for people who say that they are sick of the violence wreaked by one or the other side to become sick of all the violence, to realize that when they react blindly in support of blanket attacks against civilians “because they support the people who are doing this to us” they have become true devotees and supporters of the Terrorist Mystique.

I feel compassion for all the civilians. As each days news comes in with more atrocities (you get more information about the Israeli attacks in the international media than you do in the American) it becomes a terrific struggle for me to avoid playing into the hands of propagandists. All too many about me are losing their heads and giving in to hatred. Lizza and her counterparts on the Palestinian side (they do sound very much alike) will call this wimpiness. I think it is a measure of character to stick to my hope and my optimism when all about me are going crazy and screaming for blood. The wimps are those who can’t hold the course for peace when rogues attempt to sway them or kill the innocent.