Kill ‘em all!
Sunday, January 4th, 2009You know, in over a decade of being a loudmouth know-it-all on most political topics, it occurs to me that I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve shared my opinions about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
There was a period of 6 months a few years ago when I took a serious interest in understanding the conflict. I read about the creation of Israel, the back-and-forth push for land, the peace process and broken truces. In the end, the only opinion I had was the one that nobody wants to hear.
There is no solution. There are innocents and murderers on both sides of the conflict. There are madmen and zealots and warmongers in both camps, just as there are peaceful and tolerant members of both tribes.
For the foreseeable future, the terrorists and tyrants steer the direction of the region. Western intervention is useless but absolutely necessary to temper all-out slaughter.
There are too many nationalist religious zealots in the region who would rather strap a bomb to their chest than admit that a neighbor who believes in a different set of scripture is a good person. Religious pluralism and melting pot cultural fusion is a pipe dream for at least another generation or two. I think every single person living in that region who thinks that their belief in a magic sky fairy makes them better than a guy down the street who believes in a different sky fairy is a douchebag. I think every person who claims land as their “divine right” due to some magical message from their god is guilty of wrongdoing.
Do I support Israel? Sure, why not. Do I think Palestinians and Gaza’s Hamas have a legitimate complaint about the way they and their homes have been treated? Yeah, I do.
No, I don’t think the solutions is to “kill ‘em all!” as the blog title might suggest, but I think we need to anticipate many more years of conflict and killing. Eventually the people of the region will figure out how to coexist, or they won’t and sooner or later a sufficiently large bomb will go off.
Still, I never talk about this because Americans only talk about this conflict in simplistic, stupid, bilateral bullshit slogans. “I support Israel” and “Free Palestine!” Those who do have a mildly more nuanced view on the subject still don’t want to hear my “they’re all to blame” opinion because they think it sounds dismissive or like I’m simply uneducated on the topic.
So there it is, quite possibly the last time I’ll ever bother to express an opinion on the subject.
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Both sides of the conflict are guilty and victimized. I say give the Jews Alaska and let’s be done with the whole thing.
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David Alder Reply:
January 4th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
ZOMFG!!! That’s fucking hilarious, Chris! ^_^
Jere, I have a tendency to side with the Palestinians, simply because Israel was a consolation prize for the holocaust.
“Sorry we took so long to keep Hitler from killing your people. How about we fulfill Jehovah’s promise for you? Will that make you feel better? Here… here’s your promised Zion.”
The creation of Israel was to the detriment of other nations and peoples and was done out of a position of privilege by the British after WWI and then later the UN in 1947. Essentially, it’s a large-scale form of segregation. Israel might be progressive in some of it’s human and civil rights stances and policies (i.e., queers, women, etc), but there is a cultural loathing of Arabs in Israel that prevents social justice. Arabs legally living in Israel are treated much like Blacks were in 50s America (and still are today, really): refused work and denied many other economic benefits and responsibilities, simply because of their nationality. Economically, Palestine is to Israel, as Mexico is to the US.
I’d say, Palestinian Arabs were given a raw fucking deal… forced out of their own land and being told by a “white” power (the UN), that they aren’t the “chosen people” of Israel.
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