Israelis and Palestinians, 21st Century
(Last edited/written around July 10, 2017. Not sure when begun. Perhaps the mid 1980s. Today: 5/16/2018)
World War Two made it harder on the Holy Land, set it in a state of tension and rivalry. It is still part of the landscape today, well into the 21st century. It added a lot more pressure for the diaspora of the Jews, those that had survived that woe-fallen generation, to gather back to the place of their origins and call a place their own, a land of Godly respite and mourning. A physical sackcloth and ashes for these long-since removed peoples of Judah. And the Benjaminites, too, most likely.
The Philistines, or Palestinians (Arabs), meanwhile, did not feel as though the terrible actions of the Germans in Europe needed to affect their standing in the Middle East as they fashioned themselves a newly independent post British colony. But it did. And the new-founded United Nations decided in November 1947 that the Holy Land could be divided evenly and amicably for the good of all.
The Palestinians, not a "historical people" as pointed out to me by a UCLA political science professor, disagreed with the proposition of the new-start United Nations, and the following spring the newly branded Israelis forced their hand. It has been dicey ever since. 69 years later, generations of strife. Killing, hateful propaganda, threats, broken promises and treaties, peer pressure from the international community, caustic rhetoric from all sides, votes of no confidence, suicide bombings, deadly checkpoints and endless accusations and recriminations, and the list goes on ...
There is no peace in the Middle East, and this is most likely the true root of it.
It's ugly. It's sad. And perhaps worst of all, it fans the flames of passions and odium across the world in various ways.
For a while in the early 2000s, under a new president and huge struggles of the second intifada, I had some hopes that we, the United States, the most powerful country in the world, could or would step in an make a difference.
An uncle with power can separate and leverage over his warring nephews. That is the United States to younger Israel and Palestine.
No. No, we do not intervene like we should.
Of course some would always cry foul.
We were involved with the deadly jihadis of Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and later across the globe.
_______________________________________________________________
May 20, 2018. Thinking, mulling, stewing, pondering, analyzing, grieving, and contemplating over the "two state solution" and the "peace process" and the post-nakba and the post- Balfour and the post-Holocaust and the post-modern miasma of the Holy Land, I suppose that I will end my commentary on this note:
As an American, a US citizen who has served in the military, and participated in civic and international groups and missions to make our world safer, i.e. better, I have a serious qualm about US thinking regarding Israel and the Palestinians. We have been wrong for decades.
As much as we justify the existence, protection, and security of the now 70 year -old state of Israel, we are flawed in the way that we conceptualize Palestine.
Have we, the United States, the United Nations (enabling the existence of modern Israel post-World War II in the first place), the greater citizen-shipped world, allow the Palestinians to be non-stateless for seven decades?
We have allowed them, the natively born Arabs Muslims and Christians of the West Bank and Gaza, to be the perpetual, multi-generational, stateless non-citizens.
Sure, fellow Arab neighbors should be as ashamed and blamed: Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and other autocratic powers (Iraq and Saudi Arabia) have done little to help the substantiated pride or cause of their fellow Arabs.
Shame on us all! Shame on every American politician and citizen who has attempted to delve into international affairs. Hypocrites and ignoramuses. We have created our own monsters.
We have spawned, now, generations of irrational actors, many of them converting into terrorists.
Surprise as to what happens when millions are not qualified as part of rational actors, legitimate states!
What would any reasonable person expect?
By allowing the Palestinian people to flounder as non-citizens of a non-state for decades, going on a century (really?) we have by default allowed the principles that our forefathers George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln, or Teddy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have espoused: let these people have a legitimate voice!
Or, like the American slaves of the past, or our tragic native American legacy in the United States and other Western Hemisphere lands, or more recent South African apartheid, we allow these vast populations, whole cities, communities, identities as nations, to wallow and even dangerously foment into a hostile cause.
But for world politics and affairs, this would not stop here in the Holy Land of the three great faiths.
By the 1990s it spread to the eastern Horn of Africa in the shape of three less-than-sovereign actors where there was one: Somalia is actually three. Somalia, perhaps more accurately depicted as the Land of Southern Somalis, Puntland, and Somali Land. Quasi-states, also known as failed states.
Three decades later there is no solution there. But that seems immaterial, because the glaring precedent of Palestine had been firmly established and rooted. If we cannot get this case fixed after 70 years, why the Horn of Africa after 30?
Who cares about a few million citizens who do not not have nationally elected leaders, fair or otherwise? Who cares if these millions are able to represent themselves on the modern stages of the United Nations or world trade councils? We have not cared if the people of the West Bank or Gaza have had these rights for our whole lives, we are sickeningly immune to the plight of stateless ones, they among many.
Enter the Arab Spring, and the consequent Arab winter:
The earth is multi-populated with stateless or quasi-stateless peoples: Syria, Yemen, Libya. Failed states, and consequently millions of people who suffer the pangs of instability, war, and devastation.
Will this trend continue? It seems likely. What will this mean to our world?
Mini-factories of irrational actors begetting terrorists and other "illegal" groups of non-citizens?
I am not trying to be an alarmist, but merely stating and summarizing some facts.
The "Palestinian Precedent" of quasi-statehood since 1948, unfulfilled citizen rights, ignorance of equality under human and world law, constant terrorist attempts as defined by many in order to leverage considered unfair power, has festered into a cancerous outgrowth seemingly exported into the 21st century world writ large.
People of planet earth: we have a problem.
We need to be aware of what is, or what IS NOT, happening. People do things that are naturally available to them. If they know they are not officially accounted for as a state actor and citizens of that state, they move on to other options.
This is not what the United States or the United Nations wants.
We want official state actors.
While interviewing for a prestigious US government agency in February of 2004, the rather condescending interviewee questioned me if I knew of the newest recognized "state" in the world, that according to him, had cropped up in the last year. Obviously an important priority to be aware of. By implication an important world development that the United States prioritizes.
I quickly reviewed my "last year" memories, thinking of nothing, I then countered to him: "Do you mean the last two years?" I paid attention to world affairs. I read the Economist and other international periodicals and journals, I had just graduated with a Masters in Latin American Studies from UCLA. I took classes with world class professors of economics, geo-politics, history, and other pertinent subjects. I paid attention to the whole world, perhaps more so after September of 2001.
So the interviewee's response was: "East Timor". Hah! He got me!
His response was short and decisive, even authoritative with hubris.
I was perplexed by missing this "key" and important "last year" (not two year) addition to the geo-political landscape. How could I have forgotten something that I watched unfold on live TV when it happened, while boning up on world affairs in my apartment in Los Angeles, just 21 months prior?
The answer: it occurred in May 2002. That, to me anyway, involves a two year window. Not one, as the interviewee confidently asserted. You could say he purposely or mistakenly misled me.
I gave that guy a chance to be right. No matter. He was the one calling the shots. Might makes right. I did not get the job.
Fourteen years ago for me, some water under the bridge. That interview affected me, to what degree I am not sure. I still think about it, it probably still affects how I think or operate.
Drawing back to the original point of the of Palestinian malaise that the United States has not properly dealt with: people are wrong, people are forgetful, people make each other upset. People mislead one another.
Natural.
However, people do do the right thing, people will remember, people can grow to pardon and co-exist in peace.
The United States has to understand that the Palestinian non-statehood issue is not right or good for us or Israel. It has has not been right since 1948; this precedence has lead to very dangerous problems worldwide.
We need to help fix it. In order to help these peoples cooperate, like Irish Republicans of Sinn Fein and the Protestant Ulster troubles, the politics of Catholic versus Protestant, we need to insert our leverage and power.
We, the most powerful country on the planet, have to understand and then act on what it right:
Ending the monarchy rule of the 13 colonies. Terminating slavery. Allowing native tribes to have their own sovereignty. Combating dictators and over-aggressive military regimes. Defending against and dealing with terrorist organizations. Allowing all people to have a right to proper citizenship, in places where we have direct influences.
I argue that we are in power. Our US and NATO might can make right.
But not if we pompously look down our nose with gross hubris and say:
"No, we know the right answer", when truly we have been mistaken almost from the beginning.
All people, like black South Africans, have a right to be represented as actors of an acknowledged state.
Get it right. Stop the madness of non-citizen nations.
Allow Palestine to define who they are. Same as Afghanistan, same as Iraq.
We do have precedence established, my brilliant patriotic law makers that we have put in office decade after decade.
Why continue down the wrong path? Is there an ulterior motive at hand?
Greed? Corruption? Favoritism? Cultural superiority? Guilt? Ignorance? Ehtnocentric myopia? "Balance of power?".
Poor excuses for fixing a problem that has existed and threatened us for generations.
We are better than that.
I believe we can do the right thing; it takes some horse sense to get it enacted.
Questions? You ought to have a few. The answers are there too, if you care.
(Last edited/written around July 10, 2017. Not sure when begun. Perhaps the mid 1980s. Today: 5/16/2018)
World War Two made it harder on the Holy Land, set it in a state of tension and rivalry. It is still part of the landscape today, well into the 21st century. It added a lot more pressure for the diaspora of the Jews, those that had survived that woe-fallen generation, to gather back to the place of their origins and call a place their own, a land of Godly respite and mourning. A physical sackcloth and ashes for these long-since removed peoples of Judah. And the Benjaminites, too, most likely.
The Philistines, or Palestinians (Arabs), meanwhile, did not feel as though the terrible actions of the Germans in Europe needed to affect their standing in the Middle East as they fashioned themselves a newly independent post British colony. But it did. And the new-founded United Nations decided in November 1947 that the Holy Land could be divided evenly and amicably for the good of all.
The Palestinians, not a "historical people" as pointed out to me by a UCLA political science professor, disagreed with the proposition of the new-start United Nations, and the following spring the newly branded Israelis forced their hand. It has been dicey ever since. 69 years later, generations of strife. Killing, hateful propaganda, threats, broken promises and treaties, peer pressure from the international community, caustic rhetoric from all sides, votes of no confidence, suicide bombings, deadly checkpoints and endless accusations and recriminations, and the list goes on ...
There is no peace in the Middle East, and this is most likely the true root of it.
It's ugly. It's sad. And perhaps worst of all, it fans the flames of passions and odium across the world in various ways.
For a while in the early 2000s, under a new president and huge struggles of the second intifada, I had some hopes that we, the United States, the most powerful country in the world, could or would step in an make a difference.
An uncle with power can separate and leverage over his warring nephews. That is the United States to younger Israel and Palestine.
No. No, we do not intervene like we should.
Of course some would always cry foul.
We were involved with the deadly jihadis of Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and later across the globe.
_______________________________________________________________
May 20, 2018. Thinking, mulling, stewing, pondering, analyzing, grieving, and contemplating over the "two state solution" and the "peace process" and the post-nakba and the post- Balfour and the post-Holocaust and the post-modern miasma of the Holy Land, I suppose that I will end my commentary on this note:
As an American, a US citizen who has served in the military, and participated in civic and international groups and missions to make our world safer, i.e. better, I have a serious qualm about US thinking regarding Israel and the Palestinians. We have been wrong for decades.
As much as we justify the existence, protection, and security of the now 70 year -old state of Israel, we are flawed in the way that we conceptualize Palestine.
Have we, the United States, the United Nations (enabling the existence of modern Israel post-World War II in the first place), the greater citizen-shipped world, allow the Palestinians to be non-stateless for seven decades?
We have allowed them, the natively born Arabs Muslims and Christians of the West Bank and Gaza, to be the perpetual, multi-generational, stateless non-citizens.
Sure, fellow Arab neighbors should be as ashamed and blamed: Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and other autocratic powers (Iraq and Saudi Arabia) have done little to help the substantiated pride or cause of their fellow Arabs.
Shame on us all! Shame on every American politician and citizen who has attempted to delve into international affairs. Hypocrites and ignoramuses. We have created our own monsters.
We have spawned, now, generations of irrational actors, many of them converting into terrorists.
Surprise as to what happens when millions are not qualified as part of rational actors, legitimate states!
What would any reasonable person expect?
By allowing the Palestinian people to flounder as non-citizens of a non-state for decades, going on a century (really?) we have by default allowed the principles that our forefathers George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln, or Teddy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have espoused: let these people have a legitimate voice!
Or, like the American slaves of the past, or our tragic native American legacy in the United States and other Western Hemisphere lands, or more recent South African apartheid, we allow these vast populations, whole cities, communities, identities as nations, to wallow and even dangerously foment into a hostile cause.
But for world politics and affairs, this would not stop here in the Holy Land of the three great faiths.
By the 1990s it spread to the eastern Horn of Africa in the shape of three less-than-sovereign actors where there was one: Somalia is actually three. Somalia, perhaps more accurately depicted as the Land of Southern Somalis, Puntland, and Somali Land. Quasi-states, also known as failed states.
Three decades later there is no solution there. But that seems immaterial, because the glaring precedent of Palestine had been firmly established and rooted. If we cannot get this case fixed after 70 years, why the Horn of Africa after 30?
Who cares about a few million citizens who do not not have nationally elected leaders, fair or otherwise? Who cares if these millions are able to represent themselves on the modern stages of the United Nations or world trade councils? We have not cared if the people of the West Bank or Gaza have had these rights for our whole lives, we are sickeningly immune to the plight of stateless ones, they among many.
Enter the Arab Spring, and the consequent Arab winter:
The earth is multi-populated with stateless or quasi-stateless peoples: Syria, Yemen, Libya. Failed states, and consequently millions of people who suffer the pangs of instability, war, and devastation.
Will this trend continue? It seems likely. What will this mean to our world?
Mini-factories of irrational actors begetting terrorists and other "illegal" groups of non-citizens?
I am not trying to be an alarmist, but merely stating and summarizing some facts.
The "Palestinian Precedent" of quasi-statehood since 1948, unfulfilled citizen rights, ignorance of equality under human and world law, constant terrorist attempts as defined by many in order to leverage considered unfair power, has festered into a cancerous outgrowth seemingly exported into the 21st century world writ large.
People of planet earth: we have a problem.
We need to be aware of what is, or what IS NOT, happening. People do things that are naturally available to them. If they know they are not officially accounted for as a state actor and citizens of that state, they move on to other options.
This is not what the United States or the United Nations wants.
We want official state actors.
While interviewing for a prestigious US government agency in February of 2004, the rather condescending interviewee questioned me if I knew of the newest recognized "state" in the world, that according to him, had cropped up in the last year. Obviously an important priority to be aware of. By implication an important world development that the United States prioritizes.
I quickly reviewed my "last year" memories, thinking of nothing, I then countered to him: "Do you mean the last two years?" I paid attention to world affairs. I read the Economist and other international periodicals and journals, I had just graduated with a Masters in Latin American Studies from UCLA. I took classes with world class professors of economics, geo-politics, history, and other pertinent subjects. I paid attention to the whole world, perhaps more so after September of 2001.
So the interviewee's response was: "East Timor". Hah! He got me!
His response was short and decisive, even authoritative with hubris.
I was perplexed by missing this "key" and important "last year" (not two year) addition to the geo-political landscape. How could I have forgotten something that I watched unfold on live TV when it happened, while boning up on world affairs in my apartment in Los Angeles, just 21 months prior?
The answer: it occurred in May 2002. That, to me anyway, involves a two year window. Not one, as the interviewee confidently asserted. You could say he purposely or mistakenly misled me.
I gave that guy a chance to be right. No matter. He was the one calling the shots. Might makes right. I did not get the job.
Fourteen years ago for me, some water under the bridge. That interview affected me, to what degree I am not sure. I still think about it, it probably still affects how I think or operate.
Drawing back to the original point of the of Palestinian malaise that the United States has not properly dealt with: people are wrong, people are forgetful, people make each other upset. People mislead one another.
Natural.
However, people do do the right thing, people will remember, people can grow to pardon and co-exist in peace.
The United States has to understand that the Palestinian non-statehood issue is not right or good for us or Israel. It has has not been right since 1948; this precedence has lead to very dangerous problems worldwide.
We need to help fix it. In order to help these peoples cooperate, like Irish Republicans of Sinn Fein and the Protestant Ulster troubles, the politics of Catholic versus Protestant, we need to insert our leverage and power.
We, the most powerful country on the planet, have to understand and then act on what it right:
Ending the monarchy rule of the 13 colonies. Terminating slavery. Allowing native tribes to have their own sovereignty. Combating dictators and over-aggressive military regimes. Defending against and dealing with terrorist organizations. Allowing all people to have a right to proper citizenship, in places where we have direct influences.
I argue that we are in power. Our US and NATO might can make right.
But not if we pompously look down our nose with gross hubris and say:
"No, we know the right answer", when truly we have been mistaken almost from the beginning.
All people, like black South Africans, have a right to be represented as actors of an acknowledged state.
Get it right. Stop the madness of non-citizen nations.
Allow Palestine to define who they are. Same as Afghanistan, same as Iraq.
We do have precedence established, my brilliant patriotic law makers that we have put in office decade after decade.
Why continue down the wrong path? Is there an ulterior motive at hand?
Greed? Corruption? Favoritism? Cultural superiority? Guilt? Ignorance? Ehtnocentric myopia? "Balance of power?".
Poor excuses for fixing a problem that has existed and threatened us for generations.
We are better than that.
I believe we can do the right thing; it takes some horse sense to get it enacted.
Questions? You ought to have a few. The answers are there too, if you care.
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