I want to be clear.I
abhor and condemn the attacks by Palestinians on Israeli citizens.Protesting what you see as oppression with
violence and murder isn’t striking out with righteous anger, it’s murdering
innocent people because you’re mad.It’s
unjust, it’s vigilantism, it’s abandoning law and worst for the Palestinians,
it ultimately reinforces any stereo-type the more conservative Israelis and
Israeli politicians may have about Palestinians.It reinforces their own militantism, their
own impatience, even their own brutality.
But that’s the rub, as the saying goes “An eye for an eye
just leads to a world full of blind people.”It’s rather easy to say, “When they stop rioting, I’ll stop punishing
them”, just like it is easy to stay, “When they stop punishing us unfairly (in
our opinion), we’ll stop rioting.”It’s
also easy to say “Can’t we just get along?” and pretend that simply turning the
other cheek solves the issue.No one
makes that choice after getting BOTH cheeks slapped, none of the parties in
this dispute feel like “just getting along” and each feel they’ve been
violated.Each is right.Whether you think the Israelis are “more” in
the right or not, it is untrue to suggest the Israelis haven’t done wrong
here.Whether you hate the Israelis, it’s
absurd to suggest the actions of the Palestinians were “in proportion” to the
offense.I personally feel the
Palestinians have been “more” wrong, but that at $1 will get you $1 of coffee
because that opinion solves nothing.It
may justify militarism, but it solves nothing.
What also solves nothing is continuing the militancy (on
either side).The recent outbreak of
violence shows with stark clarity
that there is enormous antipathy sewn into the youth in the Palestinian
territories.We can say that it’s all
brain-washing, but that’s whistling past the grave, some of it is sure, but
some of it is also, just like in any dispute, as a result of what has been seen
as needless crackdown, needless antagonism (like building additional Israeli
settlements on the West Bank or on ground Muslims considered holy).We can say with certainty that firing rockets
aimlessly into areas where there are schools, where children play, is seen
rightly as unprovoked attacks upon the utterly innocent.All of us can understand the idea of “making
war” on those who attack you, few (if any) of the rational among us can justify
involving people who have had no choice and no voice, whether that’s an Israeli
3rd grader killed by a blindly fired rocket or a Palestinian toddler
killed by an errant bomb, each “fired” with apparent ambivalence.
The powerful actor here is Israel, right now.The nation with the short term upper hand but
long term problem, is Israel.Their
people fear attacks, rightly, but because of that fear they elect the
strong-sounding, if not strong-thinking.It takes courage to turn aside from retaliation.It is the person who lashes out in anger when
he is the powerful one with nearly
all the might who is taking the easy road.The truth is that Israel must start to consider, as a nation, and as a
policy, what it feels the middle-east will look like in 20 years. I fear that Israel will be in flames in 20
years.Contrast that with the situation
20 years ago, and then 20 years before that.20 years ago was 1995.Things
were probably better then than now, in part because Yitzhak Rabin had placed a
moratorium on further settlements on the West Bank.20 years before that was 1975.Israel had just prevailed in a war with
Egypt, Syria and, limitedly, Jordan (in 1973).In 1977, Menachim Begin and Anwar Sadat won the Nobel prize for peace
for hammering out the first permanent peace treaty between an Arab state and Israel.
So, to say that these folks will always be at war with each
other, are incapable of finding a peaceful solution is not only untrue and defeatist,
it dooms Israel to perpetual war.Furthermore,
it ignores that things aren’t “the same” as they’ve always been, but in fact
are getting worse. It ignores that the “meeting violence with violence”
approach of conservatives not only has failed, it’s made things worse, worse
that is unless you’re an Israeli defense contractor (or US defense contractor
working with Israel).The truth appears
to be that Israel has to decide whether it is going to pull back it’s own
knives, restrain it’s police in a manner similar to the calls for, and actions
taken to, restrain US police forces as the public sees incontrovertible proof
of excessive force and abuse of power.In short, the Israeli people have to decide if they are going to afford
the Palestinians the same respect under the law, the same rights as human
beings, as they demand for themselves from their government.The reason is not that the Palestinians have
earned it, it’s not because they are citizens of Israel (which some would throw
out as a reason to not afford them those protections), but rather because, just
like we feel about people who aren’t US citizens, certain rights are inalienable,
in short are to be afforded to ALL people if we had the power to do so, and
among those are the, “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”If Israel is to have peace it must take the
first step, and that first step must be providing those who feel oppressed a
sense that the rule of law prevails, that when an Israeli soldier or police
officer flouts the law, they will be held to account and that Palestinians can
get a fair day in court to do so.The
rule of law is exactly what the Palestinians are violating with their
vigilantism, it is EXACTLY what the Israeli government is complaining about, and
if they are not to appear the ultimate hypocrites, they must provide the
Palestinians that same protection and remedy.Anything else is complaining about a twig in the eye of another, when
you have a log in your own, not because the violence of the Israelis exceeds
that of the Palestinians, it doesn’t, but because the POWER of the Israelis to
fix things far exceeds that of the Palestinians, and with that power comes the
responsibility as moral people, to do so.
