Israel - Palestine Conflict: Is peace possible?

About Us

Tour

FAQ

Signup

Login

Welcome to our New Political Community - Take a Quick Tour of our Features including our Discussion Forums custom designed for U.S. politics. SIGN UP today to join in the discussion.

Forums > All Posts > Israel - Palestine Conflict: Is peace possible?

Displaying all 6 Forum Posts

You must be logged in to reply to a post.

2010-10-02 10:44 AM

Schmidt
Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 1058

This is a continuation of the discussion at the end of the tread on Republican Islamophobia. Because that discussion had deviated from the original subject matter, I chose to give it a new forum posting and title rather than having the discussion lost under another thread.

To understand the conflict, one cannot just look at the present. The history of the area goes back thousands of years. That history is captured by archeological evidence, but also is contained in the scriptures of the three principle religions of that area: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In comparing those religions and their customs, I find more similarities than differences and often ask myself why they should be fighting at all.

Indeed, if one were to look at their genetic make-up, you cannot distinguish the indigenous Jews and Muslims living in Palestine from one another. They are both semites. There are however minor differences in the DNA make-up if you look at a wider area, but in my view the whole topic of genitics to prove a point about original ownership of the land is moot. If we applied that argument to the extreme we would all be Africans.

The ancient history going from the Neolitic period to the Chalcolithic period (~10,000 BC - 3,000 BC) is based on archeological evidence. From 3,000 BC onwards the archelogical evidence is complimented with biblical references, but these don't always agree. In fact it is difficult for scholars to correlate the two in most cases. However, I do note many similarities between references to events and prophets in the Bible and Qur'an although these also lack archelogical evidence. And certainly there was a lot of conflict with outside invaders imposing their customs and beliefs, a time when many of the Jews fled to parts of Europe to escape persecution. I don't propose to get into any of that history except for one event. In 634 AD, Muslims arrived in Palestine, defeating the Byzantine Empire's forces at the Battle of Yarmouk in 636. Umar ibn al-Hhattab entered Jerusalem in 637 to commence a new period of Muslim rule.

Why is this event important? Because (except for a brief period of Crusader occupation) it not only marked the beginning of Muslim rule for Palestine to the end of World War I in 1918 when the Ottoman Empire was defeated, it also marked a new beginning for Jews, as they were permitted to return to the Holy Land and practice their religion freely for the first time after 500 years of banishment .

The period up to 1918 wasn't entirely tranquil as the Christian Crusaders ruled Palestine from 1099 to 1187, but it is noteworthy that the Jews and Muslims fought together against the crusaders. I find this important because much of the current day rhetoric suggests that Jews and Muslims cannot live together in peace. History proves them wrong...they did just that for centuries with only minor skirmishes.

Regardless, all three religions have left their mark in the area with temples, synogogues, mosques and churches and a rich history contained in their respective scriptures. It is thus a Holy Land to all three religions and as such can invoke enormous religious passions...but also wars and conflicts. Although Jews and Muslims lived in peace with each other for centuries, this tranquilty started to become unraveled, not by anything that they did, but by outside forces. In 1881, with the implementation of Pogroms in the Russia and the Ukraine that killed thousands of Jews, some 2 million Jews fled Eastern Europe, mostly to America, but also to Britain and France. There is no question that those Jewish emigrants of that time added to the richness and diversity of America's culture. Our gain was Russia's loss.

But it also marked the beginning of the First Aliyah, in which the first wave (35,000) of European Jews immigrated to Palestine.This was followed by many more Aliyahs over the next six decades, in which thousands and thousands of Jewish immigrants simply overwhelmed the indigenous population of Palestine and led to the inevitable conflicts. This was even before the State of Israel was formed in 1948, an event that led to numerous wars over the next 60 years. It is the background to the current day conflict that I have learned from reading the Jewish Virtual Libray, Wikipedia and other sources. There is much more that I could add, but this post is already too long. We can carry on this discussion into the modern era, but I'll leave it for now and pick up on it later. Others can chime in.

2010-10-04 09:49 AM

Schmidt
Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 1058

I will continue this thread by focusing on the Jewish perspective on returning to their ancestral homeland. Note that Jewish diaspora was created as a result of oppression by the Romans against the Jews. The Great Revolt (66-70 CE) is one notable event which according to the Jewish Virtual Library, "as many as one million Jews died in the Great Revolt against Rome." The Great Revolt was followed by the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (132 - 135 CE) in which the Roman Emporer, Hadrain conducted a campaign of persecution and slavery against the Jews. It wasn't until the year 637 CE under Umar ibn-al-Khattab's rule that the oppression stopped. This latter point will invite some disagreement from those that want to demean Islam, citing the Pact of Omar's restrictions on non-Muslims. The authenticity of this document has widely been discredited by Jewish and Muslim scholars but it still is used to invoke hatred today by Muslim haters such as Pamela Geller. For an intellectual, in-depth discussion of that topic, one can read this March 2010 posting by Danios in Loonwatch.

While I mentioned the Pogroms in my first posting in relation to Russia and the Ukraine, in fact these Pogroms were not new. Throughout history from the crusades until the 20th century, pograms were carried out against Jews. The first officially recorded pogrom occured in 1096 in France and Germany, but it was followed by others in England, France, Germany, Spain, Ukraine, Russia, and Morocco. Some of these were religious motivated but others were simply a result of "seeking to blame someone" when economic times got bad or events such things as the Black Plague stirred up fear. When one reads about these pogroms, they were often instigated by the same hysteria that drives political rhetoric today. Nor were they all confined to the Jews. Intolerance and persecution against other ethnic groups and religions has been a part of mankind for centuries right up to the present day, but it has been especially perverse against the Jewish community. That history is a testament of human's cruelty to their own fellow humans. It is the one area perhaps inherent in our DNA makeup that I cannot fully understand.

So I can certainly empathize with the Jewish people in their desire to have a homeland of their own, free from oppression. In a sense the first wave of some two million Jewish emigrants fleeing Russia after 1881 found that in America where they became an influential part of American society, making immense contributions to our country in the areas of arts and sciences, literature, the film industry, commerce, finance, politics and much more. However, the immigants to Palestine did not find what their compatriates found in America. That will be the subject of the continuation of this discussion. I accept that it is a very sensitive topic with much revisionist history, finger pointing and heated rhetoric, but hopefully it can be kept factual and intellectual.

2010-10-05 01:08 PM

CARLITOS BAM-BAM
Dallas, TX
Posts: 897

Hey Frank..what up my good man. I wanted to respond to your thoughtful research sooner, but I've been busy with mid-terms.
This may seem quite off topic, but I'm hoping to kind of develop the following basic ideas as they apply to Israelis vs. Palestinians,
and make comparisons between the respective security dillemas of the Israelis and Palestinians and our own, in following posts. I realize that this does not pertain to any historical information on the conflict, but it may help us bring proper editorial focus on the issues, as we discover the historical signficance behind them.

Funny thing the other day.........studying for a public policy test, it occured to me...that the task of policy advocates is to understand the collective form of mental illnes that besieges a society, preventing new ways of organization and other reforms that could positively impact the wellbeing of members of the political community.
And this has obvious implications when it comes to matters of war and peace. Uncontrollable Hatred is a symptom of mental illness...and ultimately, it is the product of the diseased settings that incubate and induce people to animalistic responses. We simply cannot do Politics without psychology. While it may not be appropriate in legitimizing policy from a legal stand point, a certain degree of paternalism is necessary to explain things to people that they do not understand, and to correct them when it matters as to what they believe. Understanding psychological conditions is a useful tool towards earning support without offending other potential supporters, irreparably. So, it is the duty of the statesman to forecast and respond to the responses of the American people to his or her prescriptions for policy....if the public's perception of the policies gets out-of-hand, that is the responsibility of the statesman, who let things go to the darkside. People are under no obligation to accept good ideas as good ideas, they often must tricked against their will into believing that good ideas are good ideas....but again to trick someone, one does not need to lie, or be unethical in any way, it merely means getting the person to think differently, without them necessarially realizing it at first, and then showing them through comparisons. But still that doesn't mean people are under any obligation to accept a good idea as a good idea, and the parameters of their willing to change are often set by how they are approached by the topic. People respect strength, but they are also turned off by excessive force. Here, personalities are needed to transcend the difficult balancing act required in confronting opponents and the non-aligned. Some people can say things better than others, as background, character, and affliation of a particular actor may have an effect on their percieved credibility or lack there of to speak on certain issues.
And it's the ability to be Nixon-going-to-China that enables great policy works.
George Bush had the opportunity to change the entire world. As Nixon-going-to-China in all things....A conservative with a heart. ie compassionate conservatism...how British?
But as leader of a nation attacked by stateless villians, he conformed to national sentiment under the enormous pressure to act.
In the end, attacking Afghanistan and Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people, spending billions of dollars, losing over 5,000 of our own troops, is easier to do...than the psychological difficulty we have in coming to terms with our self, and become a Nixon-going-to-China by offering true forgiveness and showing restraint. Bush could have changed the world, but he blew it. As a the toughtalking, military establishment supported, rightwing honkey-croney Prince-President, Bush could have shocked the world by remainding the American response to securing our own border and participating in international criminal investigations and police actions, but refusing to bomb poor people because of the stark similarity between doing that and the attacks on the innocents on our soil, which we condemned. If we had chosen a path of non-offensive resistance, meaning refraining from using violence, except in the act of real self-defense, Osama bin Laden would have been destroyed...the fundamental reality today is that invading other countries does not make us any safter...there are too many fucked up countries...invading one or two...will do very little good..in the big scheme of things. Preventing 9/11 did not require us occupying the Middle East. If given more time, the government could have probably stopped it, but if those entrusted with the nation's security had been doing their jobs, all along, it never would have had a chance of occuring. Notice how not a single plane has been hijacked by terrorists, since 9.11, that's not because we blew up a bunch of poor people, it's in spite of that fact. Under even more pressure, our domestic security has held up, because everyone now understands just how dangerous the consequences are of the gov't fucking up our domestic security. Despite trillions spent on military deployments abroad, we could be destroyed in a matter of 2 weeks, if provacateurs were given, again, the same free range to act in this country, that they had before 9/11.

2010-10-08 09:06 AM

Schmidt
Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 1058

Kaboom, your thoughts are timely. The psychology of human behavior, specifically how fear, anger and hate can transform an otherwise peaceful and clear thinking people into a hostile one, is complex. In some cases, prejudices that have been suppressed or subdued for years can suddenly be triggered by events that expose the ugliness of the prejudices. The events following 9/11 that led to our war in Afghanistan can be argued, and maybe understood and justified by many. But what is much harder to understand is the broad support from an uninformed American public for the war against Iraq. The ease to which Americans bought into that war has its roots in an American exceptionalist mentality, but also in false stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims...an underlying hate. The fact that two years after 9/11, 69 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was involved or responsible for 9/11, can certainly explain the impetus for war in the first place. But in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that so many Americans held onto that belief two years later is a case study for psychologists...they use the term cognitive dissonance. More frustrating is that what seems so apparent to those of us armed with a list of facts and logical arguments, can find those facts so easily dismissed by those that refuse to engage in this type of intellectual thinking..."elitist thinking."

The October 11th issue of Newsweek has an article, I'm Mad as Hell...and I'm Going to Vote that addresses the topic of anger. Quoting Ronald Pies of SUNY Upstate Medical Center, "There is a 'magical' dimension to intense anger: it transforms the world from one in which the person feels helpless and impotent into one in which the person has the illusion of power and control." Although the statement was made in the context of the American economic situation, it could apply to the impetus for war as well. For many really patriotic Americans, war makes us feel good about ourselves. It takes away the anxiety and fear.

I can understand how anxiety and fear can transform itself into anger. Long term anger can also transform itself into hate, where previously hate didn't exist. However, I believe that much of the hate in this world was acquired not from anger, but rather from our parents, our family and friends, our work colleagues and the community in which we live...a form of group think that at times can transform into anger and mob rule. Would the anger in the mob mentality leading to hostile actions against minorities such as blacks in the southern United States or Jews in old Europe have existed without underlying hate? We also see it in the United States today where many Americans advocate rounding up and deporting some 12 million undocumented Hispanic workers. Those Americans, if they have any kind of critical thinking skills, seem to have it blocked out by their hate.

One of the most egregious examples of hate transforming into murder (prior to the holocaust) was instigated by the French, Spanish and German populace against the Jews during the Black Death (1346-1351). Jews were falsely blamed for causing the plague by poisoning wells, and the ensuing ignorant mob mentality led to the torture and murder of thousands of Jews. It is a classic example of how ignorance and fear can transform into anger and irrational actions, but would it have happened without underlying hate? What is noteworthy is that many of the leaders at the time including Pope Clements VI and King Pedro the IV of Aragon tried to intervene on behalf of the Jews, but once mob mentality set in, they were powerless to stop it.

In the United States today, the emotions raised by a large segment of the population against the Islamic Cultural Center to be built two blocks from Ground Zero suggests that the underlying hate against Muslims has not gone away. The fact that an obscure Pamela Geller can stoke up that hate so easily despite rational pleas from Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama is a testament to how cruel and illogical humans can behave when they don't engage in critical thinking.

In trying to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of today, one certainly needs to delve into the psychology of the human mind...those of both the Jews and the Palestinians. I'll continue that part of the dialogue later.

2010-10-08 05:17 PM

CARLITOS BAM-BAM
Dallas, TX
Posts: 897

In the same way that the Radical Conservatives offer Smaller Government as a one-size fits all solution to our domestic problems, they tend to offer massive retaliation as a one size fits all solution to every international dispute. The cognitive dissonance is beyond imagination.
They simply do not have to think...all they have to do is apply their standard stupid operating procedures: less is more, except when it comes to blowing our enemies up. They are cross-dressing, one-eyed Nazi monsters in the making. American Fascists. Period. End of Statement.
God Save the Republic.

2010-10-11 10:36 AM

CARLITOS BAM-BAM
Dallas, TX
Posts: 897

Found this on the WB @Time.com

"In the West Bank, a National Economy — Without the Nation"

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2024196_2197348,00.html#ixzz1244pQ6nu

You must be logged in to reply to a post.

About Us

FAQ

Advertise

Links

Login

Sign Up

Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy

OBAMA ACCOMPLISHMENTS - REPUBLICAN DIVORCES - REPUBLICAN INFIDELITY & AFFAIRS - REPUBLICAN SCANDALS & CONTROVERSIES