The Thin Veil, part I
7/21/06
Okay, so Israel has been bombing Lebanon for a little over nine days now. Why? I haven’t been keeping up with the news well enough, I guess. I know all about the election among Palestinians that put Hamas in power, and Hamas is trying to run a coalition government in spite of the fact that they are the group that has said Israel should be wiped out! What does that have to do with Lebanon? I don’t know. I thought that was the news, that Hamas is in power.
Now I find out Israel has attacked Lebanon. Obviously, I have missed something. So I ask my Egyptian buddy. He tells me it is because of Hezbollah. I ask him what is going on in Lebanon? He says, “Evil!” He tells me Israel wants more land, not less. He says they want expansion. They seem to be taking part of Lebanon? I suppose they are bombing Lebanon under the pretext that Hezbollah are terrorists, in much the same way we have waged war on Iraq because of “weapons of mass destruction” and “terrorists.” (Just typing the word reminds me of how much I despise hearing George Dubya say it in his lips-curled sort of way.)
Maybe Hezbollah are terrorists. And maybe Saddam Hussein was a bad man and his sons even worse. But in my gut, I know there is something wrong about the way Israel and the United States are running rough shod over the Middle East region. The U.S. is protecting selfish interests, and I don’t mean for the common good of the American people. I mean, for the good of the “skull and crossbones” boys’ club in power in Washington, who want power and money and oil and reconstruction contracts for their friends who keep them in power.
And Israel wants something, too. Power, money, land? How can they, who have suffered persecution for centuries, justify doing that to another culture? But they are, by displacing the Palestinian people, who have as much or more right to the land where their families have lived for centuries. Of course, terrorists are bred in an environment where people have exhausted all other recourse.
I don’t know the history of the area well enough to say it is this simple, but the reality is that there are two main groups wanting to occupy the same area in the Middle East, one which was pushed aside when Israel was created. Of course there are resentments. Of course there is anger. But, of course, settlers have been in place long enough that they have nowhere else to go. At this point, it would be disruptive to many families to reverse history. There is no choice but to share. There is no going back two centuries or even 50 years, or five centuries. There must be compromise on both sides. Israel must recognize Palestine and give back the occupied territories, and Palestine must recognize Israel and concede some ancestral lands.
Yet, to sympathize with Palestinians is to risk being accused of anti-Semitism. That is a gross misnomer. It is a knee-jerk response born of a longstanding sense of being wronged by persecutors. Yes, the Jews’ long history of being persecuted is regrettable and outrageous, but demanding recompense by carving out the nation of Israel and therebyb wronging others in the process, is like kicking the dog because you are mad at your boss. We can’t say Israelis have more rights because they have been so wronged. They are no more important than the Palestinians.
Unless the Israelis benefit the United States more. Ah! There may be the key! Is Israel attacking Lebanon because they know they will be allowed to by the United States, the most powerful nation on earth? And that they will be allowed, because it is to the American establishment’s advantage to allow it, particularly in the current administration’s selfish best interest?
One could easily draw that conclusion. In fact, none of the current war-mongering by the United States and Israel makes sense unless you have as your premise that there is collusion among powerful, greedy men.
If you buy the party line that Israel is simply defending itself against evil terrorists, that the United States is liberating the Iraqis from a nasty dictator who was amassing weapons of mass destruction for his evil plan, that we are a Christian nation trying to establish democracy in the rest of the world because we care about them, and that we are willing to confront evil wherever it exists, then none of this makes sense. Are we really helping Iraqis? Why have so many died? Why aren’t we helping Darfur and why didn’t we stop genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia? Why are we killing people instead of saving them? It flies in the face of reason. If the Holocaust was wrong, isn’t genocide in other parts of the world wrong too? Of course it is! But Israel and the U.S. are hypocritical.
It makes me sad to say so. I am ashamed to be so cynical, but democracy, the Bill of Rights and Christianity, all supposed foundations of our society, say that all men (and women) are created equal and have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Furthermore, the Constitution ensures a balance of power and that dissent, right of assembly and representation are citizens’ rights, too. Yet we fund training for paramilitaries that kidnap, torture and kill dissenters. We sell weapons to countries that wage war on their citizens, we look the other way when genocide happens, we invade Iraq to take out a dictator on false pretenses, we do nothing when one ethnic group tries to wipe out another in Rwanda, we even call our own citizens who protest these things "unpatriotic."
What is more patriotic: giving uncontested government contracts to our friends who got us elected, waging war on another country to protect our and our friends' vested interests, harming our national security by engendering intense hatred of our nation because we are destroying lives for personal greed, and taking away personal freedom and civil rights in the name of national security? Or is it more patriotic to defend the principles on which our country was founded and to defend human rights all over the world?
If we seriously mean to promulgate our "enlightened" way of life, we cannot defend bad men and "lie with lions." We cannot lie to our citizens and the world about the reasons we are waging war. We must not carry the flags of Christianity and democracy and human rights to places where we are killing civilians, training torturers, funding dictators and looking the other way as women are raped, men are murdered and children are enlisted into war.
Okay, so Israel has been bombing Lebanon for a little over nine days now. Why? I haven’t been keeping up with the news well enough, I guess. I know all about the election among Palestinians that put Hamas in power, and Hamas is trying to run a coalition government in spite of the fact that they are the group that has said Israel should be wiped out! What does that have to do with Lebanon? I don’t know. I thought that was the news, that Hamas is in power.
Now I find out Israel has attacked Lebanon. Obviously, I have missed something. So I ask my Egyptian buddy. He tells me it is because of Hezbollah. I ask him what is going on in Lebanon? He says, “Evil!” He tells me Israel wants more land, not less. He says they want expansion. They seem to be taking part of Lebanon? I suppose they are bombing Lebanon under the pretext that Hezbollah are terrorists, in much the same way we have waged war on Iraq because of “weapons of mass destruction” and “terrorists.” (Just typing the word reminds me of how much I despise hearing George Dubya say it in his lips-curled sort of way.)
Maybe Hezbollah are terrorists. And maybe Saddam Hussein was a bad man and his sons even worse. But in my gut, I know there is something wrong about the way Israel and the United States are running rough shod over the Middle East region. The U.S. is protecting selfish interests, and I don’t mean for the common good of the American people. I mean, for the good of the “skull and crossbones” boys’ club in power in Washington, who want power and money and oil and reconstruction contracts for their friends who keep them in power.
And Israel wants something, too. Power, money, land? How can they, who have suffered persecution for centuries, justify doing that to another culture? But they are, by displacing the Palestinian people, who have as much or more right to the land where their families have lived for centuries. Of course, terrorists are bred in an environment where people have exhausted all other recourse.
I don’t know the history of the area well enough to say it is this simple, but the reality is that there are two main groups wanting to occupy the same area in the Middle East, one which was pushed aside when Israel was created. Of course there are resentments. Of course there is anger. But, of course, settlers have been in place long enough that they have nowhere else to go. At this point, it would be disruptive to many families to reverse history. There is no choice but to share. There is no going back two centuries or even 50 years, or five centuries. There must be compromise on both sides. Israel must recognize Palestine and give back the occupied territories, and Palestine must recognize Israel and concede some ancestral lands.
Yet, to sympathize with Palestinians is to risk being accused of anti-Semitism. That is a gross misnomer. It is a knee-jerk response born of a longstanding sense of being wronged by persecutors. Yes, the Jews’ long history of being persecuted is regrettable and outrageous, but demanding recompense by carving out the nation of Israel and therebyb wronging others in the process, is like kicking the dog because you are mad at your boss. We can’t say Israelis have more rights because they have been so wronged. They are no more important than the Palestinians.
Unless the Israelis benefit the United States more. Ah! There may be the key! Is Israel attacking Lebanon because they know they will be allowed to by the United States, the most powerful nation on earth? And that they will be allowed, because it is to the American establishment’s advantage to allow it, particularly in the current administration’s selfish best interest?
One could easily draw that conclusion. In fact, none of the current war-mongering by the United States and Israel makes sense unless you have as your premise that there is collusion among powerful, greedy men.
If you buy the party line that Israel is simply defending itself against evil terrorists, that the United States is liberating the Iraqis from a nasty dictator who was amassing weapons of mass destruction for his evil plan, that we are a Christian nation trying to establish democracy in the rest of the world because we care about them, and that we are willing to confront evil wherever it exists, then none of this makes sense. Are we really helping Iraqis? Why have so many died? Why aren’t we helping Darfur and why didn’t we stop genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia? Why are we killing people instead of saving them? It flies in the face of reason. If the Holocaust was wrong, isn’t genocide in other parts of the world wrong too? Of course it is! But Israel and the U.S. are hypocritical.
It makes me sad to say so. I am ashamed to be so cynical, but democracy, the Bill of Rights and Christianity, all supposed foundations of our society, say that all men (and women) are created equal and have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Furthermore, the Constitution ensures a balance of power and that dissent, right of assembly and representation are citizens’ rights, too. Yet we fund training for paramilitaries that kidnap, torture and kill dissenters. We sell weapons to countries that wage war on their citizens, we look the other way when genocide happens, we invade Iraq to take out a dictator on false pretenses, we do nothing when one ethnic group tries to wipe out another in Rwanda, we even call our own citizens who protest these things "unpatriotic."
What is more patriotic: giving uncontested government contracts to our friends who got us elected, waging war on another country to protect our and our friends' vested interests, harming our national security by engendering intense hatred of our nation because we are destroying lives for personal greed, and taking away personal freedom and civil rights in the name of national security? Or is it more patriotic to defend the principles on which our country was founded and to defend human rights all over the world?
If we seriously mean to promulgate our "enlightened" way of life, we cannot defend bad men and "lie with lions." We cannot lie to our citizens and the world about the reasons we are waging war. We must not carry the flags of Christianity and democracy and human rights to places where we are killing civilians, training torturers, funding dictators and looking the other way as women are raped, men are murdered and children are enlisted into war.
posted by missY at 1:44 PM
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