I was reminded of the old saying"it takes one to know one", when I read about the current situation in Palestine. There is avirtual civil war going on out there, with Hamas and Fatah jockeying for power - and tearing each other to pieces in the process. So neighboring Israel shouldbe really worried; right? I wonder. Look at the fringe benefits to Israel. No more Katushya rockets are being lobbed from the other side; and there hasn't been a suicide bombing for quite a while. The Palestinians have got their hands toofull fighting each other, to bother about Israel right now. Which is not abad thing - for Israel.
In a sense, the situation in Palestine right now is not that different from what is going on in Iraq.There is a near civil war there too. The difference lies in the reactions ofthe parties directly affected.
The USA,with a typically Western mindset, is worried that the increasing sectarianviolence in Iraqwill plunge that country into chaos and dismember it. Israel, on theother hand, would not be too concerned about the chaos in its neighborhood, solong as its enemies conveniently keep killing each other. After the two sideshave fought themselves to a standstill, the resulting Palestinestate will pose a much lesser threat to Israel. Moreover, for them, it's a propaganda victory of sorts. Another example of hot-headed,politically-immature Arabs squabbling among themselves; and, for once, theusually vociferous Arab states cannot blame the "Zionist entity" for the internecine battles. My hunch is that Mossad may be covertly encouraging the conflict;though that would be very difficult to prove.
To appreciate the difference inperception, one has to understand the Semitic mind which, in essence, is not thatdifferent from the Arab mind. They are from the same region after all. The common mistake the West makes in dealing with intransigent Arabs is the belief that the latter operate under the same set of ground rules as the former. Israel,however, understands that - in terms of civilization and mindset - the Arabs, particularly the more militant ones, are about a millennium behind. That is one reason why the Koran, written almost one and a half millennia ago, is so relevant and topical to them. They are still fighting the battles of Mohammed;they still regard those who do not share their faith as infidels, out to get them; and decreed by Allah to be converted or destroyed. That partly explainswhat is happening in Lebanon right now. Hezbollah, the "Party of God" cannot stomach the fact of their country becoming a modern, secular state. In their minds, it is against the will of Allah; and must be resisted at all costs.
Israel knows this and is cleverly exploiting it. It has studied its history. Upto the earlier part of theprevious century - with the possible exception of the OttomanEmpire - petty Arabs sheiks were constantly fighting amongthemselves; thereby preventing the formation of any cohesive nation or kingdom.So Israel is quite content to stand by and watch the turmoil in Lebanon too. As long as Hezbollah has it's hands full with other 'enemies', Israel will be off their radar. Another old foe, Syria, too, is too busy fermenting trouble in Lebanonto pay much attention to Israel.
So Israel has got a breather; and you can bet it is utilizing it wisely. While George Bush is pumping additional troops into Iraq for a 'surge' of dubious effectiveness ; Israel is building up its own defenses. It wants to be ready for the 'enemy', whenever he attacks. Israel is not out to make the world safe for democracy. It does not give a rat's ass about democracy, or the world. The only country Israel cares about - is Israel.So far it''s worked pretty well for them.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 21
Israel, whether these terrorist groups are fighting each other or not, is always and will always be looking over it's back. Worried? Eh, maybe not. But I doubt that she is breathing a sigh of relief.
What has failed to be mentioned is that fundamentalists of ALL religions have historically tried to turn back the hands of time and return to a simpler living. From the legal war in the U.S. regarding Creationalism v Darwinism to the current situation in the middle east. The extremists point their fingers at science, technology and modern philosophy to explain the demise of family and religious values while the most successful times for both Christianity and Islam have come when these groups embraced science and philosophy; think of the Renaissance and the Golden Age of Islam. The past is simply that, the past, and one must look to tomorrow to grow in humanity.
For a while it's going to be in chaos. I would expect to see a lot of moving around as the more secular Palestinians flee Gaza and the imposition of a repressive Islamic state, and the more fanatically religious move into Gaza for the same reasons. Once the dust settles, however, Israel faces a new more deadly situation. They have a fanatical religious demi-state on on their border that is governed by terrorists who have no problem attacking them.
Unfortunately, Israel cannot win this one I don't think because no matter what they do to protect themselves is going to result in the wrath of the world coming down on their heads. Fanatics will funnel into Gaza because if there is one thing they hate more than us it's Israel. If Israel reacts with restraint, then the fighting will go on endlessly. If they strike decisively and with sufficient force to win they will have to literally destroy Gaza in the process which of course ignites the rest of the Arab world against them. It's simply a no win situation because in the Arab mind they are not allowed to defend themselves, even when directly and viciously attacked across their own border.
Agreed Firoze.
But in a wider perspective, the US doesn't understand the Mideast at this point in time and is trying to impose it's 'Christian style of Democracy' into the Mideast countries.
Until the US government and the current and future administrations learn how to deal with what is currently being called 'Rouge Countries' like Syria and Iran and even North Korea, there will be a slow growth into war in all these arenas on this Earth of ours. Many, many, many will also die because these so called rouge countries will simply be left to their own devices, because the US and other countries will not be able to cope with them. For example we in the US want to see democracies everywhere. While these rouge countries don't, they're very happy with their kingdoms and theocracies and have no desire to be told what they must do.
Where will Russia be is one of the issues also. As the US wants Russia to support the 'make them all democracies' effort, but Russia has lived with these rouge countries for thousands of years, and I don't think that Russia will join in on that effort at all.
This is a very sad commentary, not because it's an accurate depiction of the average Muslim, which it is not, but rather because it's the picture they are choosing to present to the world. It's my opinion that were a poll taken across the U.S. you would find that most Americans, based on what they see every day on TV, view Muslims as ignorant, backward, violent and as terrorists or terrorist sympathizer.
I've heard people say things like "well, they elected a terrorist government, what did they expect to happen?" This shows an abysmal lack of understanding of the situation over there. While I do think electing terrorists into government is stupid and self-defeating in the long run, I also know that groups such as that often are providing security, food, clothing, and other necessities to desperately poor people.
It's much to complicated for a ten second sound bite, so I guess the idea won't get much play here in the U.S.
Terrorism is born out of desperation. We in the "Christian" West fail to grasp that. In fact, American and European meddling in the region has helped to grow more in the recent past.
Plus, these are wars that have been fought for millenia (way back before the Common Era). The saddest irony is that both Jew and Arab are both Semetic (genetically). We can't stroll in and try to change everything overnight by funding Israel to be our policeman in the region; nor pump more money into the "surge" in Iraq. Like anything else in the Middle East, it's going to take time and cooler heads.
Your hunch, about the Moussad [with a little help from their 'friends'] is probably dead right. Politics and war make for some strange bedfellows and these bedfellows have been around the track a few times. It's easy to generalize, speaking of a western mindset, but I do believe that the seemingly obvious problems in the middle east are part of a world wide phenomenon born, as one commenter here said, of 'desperation' and, I would add, plain old fashioned greed vis a vis control of global resources -- dare I say the word 'imperialism?' Call it what you will-- it has worked for a long, long time and ain't quite dead yet.
While our speaker Pelosi has hastened to state our continued support for our friends in the middle east, most of the prospective presidential candidates are studiously and steadfastly avoiding the issue.
Israel should not rest on her laurels and ordinary people all around this flattened globe are beginning to ask the same questions and are coming up with some of the same answers, none of which bode well for peace, harmony, prosperity and supposedly cherished western traditions.
Let's see .... Israel doesn't care, the Mossad is behind it, the Palestinians are the same are the Israelis, you just imagine it .... and ... you get it all wrong, but you are consistant with how this has been portrayed by history and the haters of Israel.
I just love how the Palestinians are a people (NOT) and thus deserve their own country in the eyes of Arabs, and apparently you, but the Israelis, the Jews, an historic documented, living, and civilized people who have given much to the world do not seem to have a right to a country, nor to be left alone to live in it.
When one really started to look at the history of this region and these people's all the beliefs that are switched to like TV channels when there is nothing on all have about as much truth to them. The truth is that the Palestinians are not a country, and when will it be plain to you that they are kept prisoner by the Arabs who simply will not accept them as their own people, their own kind, their own religion, but would rather strand them in total misery and turn them towards Israel's destruction.
You compare Iraq and Palestine ... that's another joke in itself, but think of why the countries there do not want to split Iraq into Sunni, Shiite and Kurd sections. It would give legitimacy to the existence of a nation for ethnic groups that cannot live together, in short Israel. If the Kurds get 1/3 of Iraq, how much land in the Middle East would Israel really be due, if this partition was being done today on reasons of ethic fighting, as in Iraq.
One thing the Arab countries, and the Palestinians in particular have not tried, and that is pretty much precluded by their brand of Islam ... becoming civilized human beings who do not solve their problems with machine guns, and who do not need machines guns to celebrate thieir culture.
If there is, It's the Jews.
of Hamas,
in Palestine,
Who owns his own woMan
He won a war
gets to parade around
in back of a pick-up wearing his mask
carrying his Green flag
waving his gun around
sooting it in the air.
Like the Peacock, he the Macho man in Palestine
of Hamas
who owns his own woMan.
Turning now to my good friend Bruce, who has me branded as a jew-hater:). You, of course, have it all figured out, being a Champion of Israel and all...and have berated me for making crap statements like "the Palestinians are the same are the Israelis"...actually, old chap, they do come from the same Semitic stock (and I'm not the only one saying so). and I'd be really interested to know how you deduced from my article that I do not believe the jews do not have a right to their own nation,
I am no champion of Israel either. I am a champion of what I perceive in my own experience and learning as human and civilized. I also did not say the Palestinians and the Israelis are the same, past the meaning that we are all human beings. The Palestinians are prisoners of their situation ... a situation that could end tomorrow, or anytime, except Islam will not let it. Islam ... and specifically, I do not mean all Islam, I mean militant Islamic Fascism ... the expansionist kind ... the kind that is causing problems worldwide ... now for at least 30 years that I have been aware of, with an arc that just gets worse.
Your sarcasm that Israel should he happy at this situation, your insinuation that they caused it, your statement that Israel is "cleverly exploiting it" ... Firoze ... with Israel always so cleverly exploiting everything Arab and causing so much havoc, how is it that Islam spreads from Morocco to the Phillipines, and has militant branches at war in multiple places around the world, while Israel is actually reducing its size?
Read a bit about the Ottoman Empire there Shelley. Continually sideing with the wrong side in the major wars. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, leader of the Holy Land before WWII was planning pograms against the Jews and sided with Hitler and commanded his own SS division? The Muslims Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas and Hezbollah draw much of their history and culture directly form the Nazis.
There are many instances, but this picture/article is a nice one:
Hezbollah's Nazi roots
Another one of both Hezbollah and Hamas:
PICTURE: The Hezbollah & Hamas Salute
One does not have to be Israeli, Jewish, Christian or anything to be against this kind of hatred, ignorance and tyranny Firoze.
This is way late, but couldn't resist. Not to worry -- Tony Blair is on his way!
The Israeli-Palestinian debate has never emerged from the murky backwaters of moralism. On the Right, Christian and Zionist apologists portray the Israeli-American alliance as a moral imperitive, founded in our common Judaic-Christian (i.e. European) heritage and democatic values. On the Progressive Left, the Israeli occupation is blamed for the erosion of economic and civil liberities in the Palestinian territories.
Neither of these positions should be of any concern to American foreign policy and the millions of American citizens whose duty it is to shape that policy. If Israel finds its demise in an imperialist struggle to recapture the ancient dream of a bronze age people, then so be it. If the would-be Palestine is gobbled-up piece meal by the slow creep of Jewish expansion on the West Bank, then so be it. Americans need to realize that it is our nation that is the great people. We cannot exercise a sentiment that even remotely resembles patriotism when we speak first of the interests of other nations and only later consider what intersts remain for our own consumption.
To be blunt, the Israelis and the Palestinians are two insignificant peoples presently at loggerheads over what is, by any reasonable standard, a dried up, filthy strip of land. Could we, for once, set aside our moral posturing (i.e. charges of anti-semitism, non-combatant targeting, etc) and simply treat these peoples as geopolitical assets or liabilities, nothing more nothing less? Could it be that we shun this instrumental perspective because of our various brands of moral favoritism? Is it possible to reconcile these moral favoritisms with a patriotic sentiment that puts American interests before those of any other nation? Can this alliance be characterized as anything other than one of the most unproductive and one-sided in world history?
Undeniably, the dominant moral favoritism in American foreign policy has tracked the interests of the Israeli lobby. It may well be that one can explain how the U.S. has gained any net utility from casting its lot with a nation that is only the size of metropolitan Cairo. The decades and millions spent in single-minded support of Israel no doubt have improved returns on that rather odd bet. But its wisdom is still far from apparent. If any journalist wishes to be serious on this matter, he/she need only try to spill a few words on how America is likely to gain or lose measurably (not morally or faithfully) from our present alliance. How has the alliance aided us in Iraq? How has it been of any aid to our interests in Afghanistan?
Lastly, I would say that in pursuing this national inquiry we must, most of all, remember that this is a dialogue on national policy, and that it is analytically of singular significance for the individual. Electoral politics is of no matter. Each individual facing these questions--that is all questions affecting national security--must be made to answer them from the perspective of what is good for the nation (America), not from the perspective of their party, their church, or their secret nation of foreign allegiance. Those who choose to follow these other dictates of conviction should be openly chastised as having chosen to ally themselves with parochial or foreign interests over those of the nation.
Israel ROCKS!
The Hebrew People, who cling to Yahweh for their very survival, and have for thousands of years, are His chosen people; and though they have made mistakes, like even Christians and the New Testament Church (Catholics and other Christians) have, they are the very Apple of His eye, and He has planned to bless them and to bless the earth through them.
Another Zionist Christian for Israel,
Father St. John of the Cross
P.S. My Rabbi is Jewish!
God Bless Israel.