[Without a higher moral vision, the left is just another player in
an endless saga of bloodshed and suffering.]
[[link removed]]

GAZA AND THE PALESTINIAN/ISRAELI CONFLICT  
[[link removed]]


 

Matthew B. Hallinan
November 22, 2023
Beyond Biology [[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Without a higher moral vision, the left is just another player in
an endless saga of bloodshed and suffering. _

,

 

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is perhaps, the most complex
political dispute on the planet. What makes it so complicated is that
both sides see themselves as victims, and each depicts the other as an
aggressor. And on one level, both are right.

Israel was born of antisemitism. This is an important starting point
for understanding the conflict. There is a tendency of many on the
left to see Israel as simply an instrument of Western Colonialism.
While certain Western Powers did play an important role in the
creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, seeing Israel from this
perspective fails to take into account the impulse that drove millions
of Jews to seek refuge there.

Zionism, the idea that Jews should return to their ancient homeland in
Palestine, was initiated by Theodor Herzl in response to the Dreyfuss
Affair. Dreyfuss was a French Army officer who in 1896, was wrongfully
accused of spying for the Germans. His trial and conviction revealed a
shocking level of antisemitism, not only in the French military, but
also, in the larger society. Herzl, an assimilated Austrian Jew, was
devastated by this revelation. Doubting that Jews would ever be
accepted as full citizens in European society, he issued a call for a
First Zionist Congress to meet in Basel in 1897.

Zionism played an important role in the birth of Israel. But it
actually came on the scene quite late. It did not have a major
demographic impact in Palestine until the rise of Hitler and the Nazis
during the 1930s. In 1922, even with support from the controlling
colonial power, Great Britain, Jews constituted only 11% of
Palestine’s population. By 1931 that number had grown to 16%. After
1934 (when Hitler was appointed chancellor) immigration gained
momentum, and by 1945, Jews constituted 31% of the population of
Palestine–Muslims 60%, Christians 8%.

The end of WWII left millions of European Jews without homes or a
homeland. Most did not want to return to countries that either could
not protect them, or actively collaborated with the Nazis. This added
a new dimension to Zionism. More than simply a safe place to practice
their religion, the creation of a Jewish state was increasingly seen
as fundamental to their survival. The Holocaust had convinced most
that they must acquire a capacity to defend themselves. They needed a
state of their own. “Never again” would they allow themselves to
be led like lambs to the slaughter.

That’s pretty much where the founders of Israel were coming from. A
people traumatized by an organized, methodical effort of a major
industrial power to physically exterminate them. I do not see Zionism,
as such, as the driving force in the creation of Israel. The main
impulse was survival. Zionism provided a religious and mythological
framework that connected a vast array of different nationalities to a
cultural core and to a land from which they had been separated from
for 2000 years. Religion in Israel is more than a belief system: it is
a “deed” to the land.

The Palestinians

My involvement with this issue began in 1987 when a Palestinian friend
invited me to travel to Jerusalem to spend a few weeks in their home.
From what little I knew about this conflict, I was sympathetic to the
Palestinians–but more sympathetic to the Israelis. I held a view
that I believe was widespread in the American left at that time. I
thought the Jews did what they had to do to secure their
survival—what any people in their place would have done. At the same
time, I understood that the creation of Israel inflicted a wound on
the Palestinians. However, I saw the on-going conflict as due to the
stubbornness of the Palestinian: their refusal to come to terms with
the existence of Israel and their unwillingness to accept a solution
that could be mutually acceptable.

My friend knew my thinking on the situation and organized a trip that
would allow me to see things from a different perspective. We visited
every major city and refugee camp in the West Bank and Gaza, and
talked with a wide variety of different Palestinian activists and
groups. I didn’t take long for me to recognize what was wrong with
my previous point of view. I had not understood what the Palestinian
realty was all about.

The debate over relative victim-hood disappears when you are over
there. One people have all the rights and the power to enforce
them—the other have no rights. They are essentially powerless. That
doesn’t mean that Israelis are always abusing and mistreating
Palestinians. It means that whenever there is a conflict between an
Israeli and a Palestinian, it is ultimately up to some Israeli
(police, judge, administrator, military officer, etc.) to decide how
to settle it. That’s the bottom line to living under military
occupation.

If military power, the ability to defend themselves and control their
own fate, is the central motif of Israeli culture, powerlessness, the
subjugation by outsiders, has been defining feature of Palestinian
history. It began when their homeland, without their consultation or
consent, was divided in two to provide the territory for the new
Jewish state. They rejected the decision of a UN, which at that point
in time, was dominated by a few major Western Powers. They attempted
to resist militarily, but were overwhelmed in a short, one-sided war.
By the end of that war, somewhere between 700,000 and 900,000 thousand
Palestinians lost their homes and ended up in refugee camps–many in
Gaza. Indeed, the current population of Gaza consists largely of the
descendants of those refugees.

The 1948 war—the “Nakba,” or catastrophe for the
Palestinians–was only the beginning of their tragic saga. A critical
turning point came in 1967 when another war resulted in the Israeli
conquest of what was left of the land granted to the Palestinians by
the UN resolution–the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. For the
past 56 years, Israel has controlled these territories and has
prevented the Palestinians from consolidating them into a nation.
Instead, they have subjected them to one form or another of military
rule.

Unless you are living and travelling with Palestinians, walking in
their shoes so to speak, it is difficult to get a true picture of what
a military occupation is all about. It is a life of constant
harassment, humiliation, and insecurity.

Military checkpoints are everywhere, making any trip to see friends or
relatives an unpredictable and complicated hassle. Everything the
Palestinians want to do—buying a new car, remodeling a kitchen or
putting a new bathroom in one’s house, requires written permission:
interminable paperwork. Decisions are arbitrary, and denials cannot be
appealed.

And then there is the relentless encroachments of the
settlers—bullying and threatening their way onto the land, seizing
farmsteads and homes that lack “proper documentation” or are on
“sacred” soil—mentioned in the Bible. Their threats are backed
up with automatic weapons and the certainty that in stealing other’s
lands, they are doing God’s work.

Many of the settlers are Americans. I talked with a number of
them—one who had spent the summer of 1967 in San Francisco (the
Summer of Love –“come to San Francisco with flowers in your
hair”). They see immigration to Israel as “returning” to their
real home–a place they have been disconnected from for over 2000
years. Apparently there is no statute of limitations when it comes to
abandoned real estate in Palestine. They see the Palestinians who live
in the villages and cities, the people whose parents, grandparents and
distant ancestors built the houses, erected the fences and planted the
olive trees, as “squatters:” illegitimate interlopers who need to
find some other place to live.

Young Palestinian men are rounded up on the word of informants they
cannot confront or cross-examine. 40% of Palestinian men have been
arrested and held under one or another of the 1600 military orders
that control every aspect of Palestinian life. When charged with a
crime, Palestinians are tried in Israeli courts and can only be
represented by Israeli lawyers. Because they are not citizens of
Israel, they cannot vote in Israeli elections and thus, have no
political or peaceful means to influence the laws and policies they
have to live under.

Israelis like to talk about their generosity in granting Gaza
self-rule. One only has to go to Gaza to see what a poor gift that
was. Gaza is a little strip of desert surrounded by Israel, Egypt and
the Mediterranean Sea. It has no natural resources and 96% of its
water is undrinkable. It is one of the most densely populated places
on earth, made up of impoverished war-refugees and their descendants.
80% of its residents live below the poverty line. It has been
accurately described as an “open-air prison.” Israel did not give
it—it dumped it.

A slow-burning fuse

Palestinians are not fools—they know what is going on. They have
been haggling and negotiating with Israel since 1967 to get control
over the lands taken in the war. Negotiating with Israel, according to
a joke going around, is like this. Two men decide to have lunch
together. They order a number of different plates, and at some point,
they begin to argue over how to divide up the bill. While the argument
is proceeding, one of the men begins eating off the plate of the
other. That’s a pretty apt description of the Palestinian’s
experience in negotiating with Israel.

Because I don’t want to write a book on this subject, I would like
to end this blog with a few final thoughts. I will write more later.

1) For a historical overview, I would recommend reading Simha
Flapan’s book—“The Birth of Israel: myths and realities.” He
uses historical documents, dairies and personal papers to establish
that Israel’s Zionist leadership –all of them, from Ben Gurion
on– did not accept the boundaries laid down by the UN, but intended
to eventually bring the whole of Palestine under Jewish control. That
was, and still is, the Zionist vision of Israel. That is why Israel
never published a map of its boundaries—leaving expansion open–
and that is why it did everything in its power to prevent the
formation of a Palestinian state—which would have set limits to its
growth.

2) The establishment of settlements, which began under Begin, was
aimed at creating “facts on the ground.” The goal was (and is) to
establish an irreversible process of Israeli takeover of the West Bank
and Jerusalem. Israel has short-circuited the negotiation
process—and has made creating a Palestinian state extremely
difficult.

3) The new right-wing Israeli government is giving the green-light to
settlement expansion.

4) The formation of an alliance between the USA, Saudi Arabia, and
Israel threatens the one leverage the Palestinians have had in their
struggle with Israel—the ability to deny Israel peace and normal
relations with the Arab World until the Israelis come to terms with
the Palestinians. This new alliance promises to side-line the
Palestinian issue, reorganizing power relations in the Middle East
without solving the Palestinian issue.

How to Look at Hamas

All of the above was well known to Hamas. They acted to derail the
process towards a new political arrangement in the Middle East. I
believe they knew exactly what they were doing. They consciously and
deliberately designed a horrific crime against unarmed Israeli
civilians. They knew that this went to the core of Israel’s very
purpose for being—a state to protect its people from slaughter. They
knew that Israel would not be able to control its rage and desire for
revenge, and that in order to destroy Hamas, who was ensconced in the
population centers of Gaza, it would have to deal a devastating blow
to innocent Palestinians. This would enrage the Arab and Muslim world,
and bring an end to any efforts for a reconciliation with Israel.

So far, it looks like Hamas has achieved what it set out to
accomplish. Indeed, it may even have succeeded in giving life to the
moribund goal of Two-state solution.
Is Hamas to be congratulated? Do the ends justify the means? It
appears that many on the left are prepared to accept Hamas’
slaughter of innocents, and to see their brutality as merely payback
for past wrongs done by Israelis to Palestinians.

This thinking will spell the death of the left. The ends do not
justify the means—the means determine the ends. Wanton brutality and
inhumanity only begets more of the same. Many of us have lived long
enough to see how movements that sought to embrace the highest human
ideals were undermined by brutal methods—the purges of Stalin, the
Cultural Revolution of Mao, and the killing fields of Pol Pot. In
1948, over 100 Palestinian villagers—men, women, and children were
slaughtered at Deir Yassin by the Irgun. And the Palestinians have
never forgot it. Just as the Israelis will never forget October 7.
Reconciliation between these two peoples can never be built on acts of
cruelty and brutality. Hamas is an outlaw movement. It must be held
responsible for its crimes. I believe that it will end up doing more
harm to the Palestinians than to the Israelis

.
Without a higher moral vision, the left is just another player in an
endless saga of bloodshed and suffering.

[Thanks to the author for submitting this to xxxxxx]

_Matthew B. Hallinan received his PhD in Anthropology from the
University of California, Berkeley. In Beyond Biology, he brings
together his years of study and independent research to answer a
question that has long fascinated him: How could humans have gone
through the same kind of evolutionary process as every other animal
and yet have come out so different? This question has been central to
Hallinan’s intellectual life. His passion for the subject is not
driven simply by curiosity, but rather by a sense that time is growing
short for us to come to terms with our place in the natural
world. MORE [[link removed]]_

* Palestine
[[link removed]]
* Israel
[[link removed]]
* Gaza
[[link removed]]
* peace
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]