Read what Jimmy Carter has to say about the current situation in Gaza [An Unnecessary War]. I wish Canadian politicians would be as rational as Carter and appreciate that this is a complex situation where nobody is totally right.
The one thing we can be sure about is that war is wrong.1
1. Firing rockets at your neighbors is war.
[Hat Tip: Runesmith's Canadian Content]
||The one thing we can be sure about is that war is wrong.1
ReplyDelete1. Firing rockets at your neighbors is war.||
Somewhat simplified! Sara Dowse has a lot better response:
Shocking cynicism of a poisoned homeland
Sara Dowse
January 8, 2009
It has taken me days to begin writing this, so horrified have I been by Israel's latest actions. My sense of justice, however - as a mother, a Jew, and above all as a human being - impels me to try.
The massacre in Gaza has its roots in virulent European anti-Semitism and the 1917 Balfour declaration, when the British government promised Zionists that Jewish people would have a homeland in Palestine if Britain was victorious in World War I.
The key word here is homeland, and it should be remembered that the promise was qualified by the condition that such a homeland would "not be to the detriment" of the Palestinians. The steady increase in Jewish immigration under the British mandate provoked riots and protests, but Palestinians were still in majority until, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Zionists unilaterally declared an Israeli state.
Despite the suffering of the Palestinians, whose land was taken from them, for many years the sympathy of the developed world was with Israel, refuge for the survivors of the Nazi slaughter of European Jews, and beleaguered by surrounding hostile Arab states.
With the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel could no longer be accepted as a victim. Yet it has continued to play on the sympathies of Western governments, most particularly the US, and Jews of the diaspora. In reality, Israel has been a colonising state, masquerading as the most democratic, most humane, most modern nation in the region. It has served the Western powers to have such a proxy in the Middle East, and most recently, under the Bush Administration and in concert with the Israelis, they have played a cynical game of divide and rule, encouraging the Israelis in their blind refusal to negotiate with Hamas, just as for years Israel refused to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the forerunners of Fatah, whom they now support.
Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, but the legitimate, democratically elected government of the Palestinian Authority. We may not like what it stands for, but that is no reason for sidelining it. Undermining that government by Israel and the West is but one of a string of cynical actions on their part.
The rationale that Hamas has refused to accept Israel's existence or to eschew violence is yet another example of how the truth has been twisted. What Hamas rejected was the continued, barbaric Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and the laying down of arms against an aggressive military occupation. I have heard with my own ears the Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, say exactly that. Is he to be trusted? It would have been worth a try.
And who now would trust Israel?
So here we have it: a tough, technocratically savvy, nuclear power with the backing of the largest military power the world has known, bombing, then invading, a territory the size of a small city, with a population of 1.5 million, most of whom are civilians, to "defend our citizens".
The ceasefire was meant to lift the Israeli blockade on Gaza, but it didn't. It was meant to facilitate the release of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were members of the elected Hamas Government, but it didn't.
Israeli planes raided southern Gaza in November. The Hamas rockets continued. Which side broke the ceasefire? Hamas may not be blameless, but the situation is far more complex than Israel claims. The fact that more than 600 people have died because in a couple of weeks the US will have a new government and next month Israel will have an election, is the most shocking form of cynicism the Palestinian people have yet faced.
Since the 2006 invasion of Lebanon I have undergone what for me, as a Jew, has been an agonising realignment of my feelings about Israel. I have come to believe that a specifically Jewish state has been a terrible mistake.
A homeland is different from a state. There have been examples throughout history and there are in our own time polities with mixed ethnic populations and official sanction for their living in harmony together. Australia is one.
I don't know how it will come about - I hope with as little bloodshed as possible - but I look forward to the distant day when the land becomes a multicultural country again, perhaps as a federation, perhaps in another form, but similar to what it was before it was destroyed with the poison of ethnic territorial nationalism.
Sara Dowse is an author who wrote Sapphires, a novel about three generations of Jewish women.
If Australians will forgive me, Australia does have it's moments with the Aboriginal community and their past with respect to this community isn't all roses. While it's hardly at the level of a war or civil conflict, it's not some "idealised dream" either.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that any country has a completely clean record on this sort of thing really (NZ included).
I fully agree with you, Kiwi. And the Howard government in Australia was almost on par with the Israelis when it came to self-righteous, sycophantic, and murderous behaviour. In particular the in the 'Tampa'-affair, which is a serious smear on Australia.
ReplyDeleteThat same Howard also acted as a suppository for W. didn't leave him much glory either.
Hopefully it will improve under the Rudd government, but I am not holding my breath.
BTW, I am NOT a roofu!