Preemptive caveat: This may be offensive to some.
This is true. Happened today. Seriously. It's a lunchtime conversation at the office between me, Guy From Work and Girl From Work. The others -- Investigator, Secretary, Boss, Girl From Work, and Random Former-PD Who Was Visiting -- looked on, amused.
Me: So Chris and I were having a little debate last night.
Guy From Work: Yeah?
Me: Yeah. I showed him a letter my mom had written to The Nation about the Israeli/Palestinian thing. He was disagreeing with what my mom was saying. Which is fine. But, of course, I totally had to take Mom's side. So I start defending Israel, and Chris starts telling me that what they're doing would be like us -- the U.S. -- going somewhere, taking over, and displacing the people who already live there.
So I think to myself, hey, isn't that what we -- the U.S. already did? Which I mention to him. And then the perfect solution occurred to me.
Guy From Work: You've already told us that the solution would be to let Israel have Florida.
Me: Well, the Jews are there already. Except that we'd have to get rid of the Cubans.
Girl From Work: And the Haitians.
Me: Probably wouldn't work.
Girl From Work: Probably not.
Me: So the new perfect solution. Since it worked for the U.S. last time. Set up Palestinian reservations and grant them gaming rights.
Guy From Work: You know what game they'd play, don'tcha?
Me: Russian roulette.
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There were a hell of a lot of Jewish refugees from various parts of the Arab world (where they were often treated with appalling cruelty) who came to Israel. Moreover, Jews coming to Palestine created a vibrant and healty place which attracted Arab immigration from outside of what is now Israel. The truth is far far more complicated than a simplistic, the Jews moved in and kicked people out.
Jews built a civil society in a place which has seen little. The creation of Israel was simply an amazing feat, and I, for one, am glad that there is an Israel.
Not to get contentious about this, but the majority Jews coming to Israel were not coming from the Arab world; they were (still are) mostly Ashkenazim.
Sephardi Jews were, and are, still treated as 'less than Jewish' by many Israelis, in the same way that the Beta Israel/Falasha Jews have been treated as second-class citizens in Israel and struggle to this day. As far as their treatment in those societies go, I can't speak to it extensively, but the little I do know suggests that it was not especially worse than the treatment of Jewish people in Western societies, and that it may have been better, in fact (excluding, notably, Beta Israel in Ethiopia, and Saudi-controlled Arabia - but then, the Saudi-Wahabbi folks kill the rest of us Muslims just as quickly and easily). Muslims, you'll find, have been and are just arrogant as fuck about the superiority of Islam; the blitheringly stupid anti-semitism you see nowadays is a recent, Western import added on to that. Study the vast corpus of Arabic/Persian/Turkish (read: Islamic) literature and you'll find little anti-semitic material prior to the creation of Israel, after which there is an explosion.
During/After the creation of Israel, sure, they were treated horribly, but also consider the fact that since the beginning of the 20th Century (at least) Arabs had been promised independent, self-determined states, and the imperial powers renegged on the deal again and again. Meanwhile, through their erstwhile 'mandates' and territories, they killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs, Persians, and Muslim Indians. The history of Western mistreatment of Muslims is as long as the history of Western mistreatment of Jews.
Carving out a part of the Arab heartland - which Palestine is and has been for centuries - and declaring it an autonomous Jewish state was a [not-so-]final slap in the face, a last 'fuck you!' as they finally relinquished direct control to impossibly authoritarian, repressive governments which channel the massive dissatisfaction of the population into safe, harmless (to them) anti-semitism.
You'll note, for example, that the recent rise of Iranian anti-semitism follows the collapse of the democratic reform movement in that country and an economic downturn.
Just as the anti-semitism of the Arab countries serves the powers-that-be, one should also ask what anti-Muslim or anti-Palestinian (since there is a signficantly CHRISTIAN Palestinian population) sentiment serves the Israeli government, or for that matter, the U.S. government. The Caterpillar heavy-machinery company supplies all the machinery to Israel used to demolish Palestinian homes and build that offensive wall; U.S. arms manufacturers supply both Israel AND (indirectly) the Palestinians; and AIPAC, as well as the Christian Zionist bloc, supply money and votes to American politicians. Do these fellas have any vested interest in anti-Palestinian and anti-Islamic sentiment? Especially the arms companies following the end of the Cold War and the subsequent - one would think - reduction in US Defense spending?
The creation of Israel was an amazing feat, to me, in the way that the creation of Pakistan was an amazing feat: a group of religiously-affiliated people wanted their own homeland and ripped apart countries, cultures, friendships and families to do it. They wanted their homeland to be democracies that were predicated upon exclusion of others (non-Jews, sometimes non-Ashkenazim Jews, in the case of Israel, non-Muslims, sometimes non-Sunni/Salafi Muslims in the case of Pakistan) Both required (and still require to some degree or another) substantial foreign financial supports. Both are centers of international drug trade (ecstasy through Israel, heroin through Pakistan), both are engaged in unending border disputes with their neighbors, both have engaged in state-sponsored terrorism of their enemies, both have nuclear weapons, both allow arms-manufacture companies to continue a sales boon in their products, both are centers of the major geopolitical crises and major religious disputes of modern times.
I'm less glad that there is an Israel, or a Pakistan, than I would be if these countries had instead been pluralist secular democracies of all the peoples, by all the peoples and for all the peoples of their respective territories.
If you go back to the 1940s, you might discover that Palestine then consisted of what is now Jordan and Israel. Jordan was given to the Arabs; Israel to the Jewish state. Unfortunately, Jordan did not want refugees and put them in camps, where they and their descendants still reside.
Yes, in the mid 60s, when the Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel, there was a disconnect between modern and ancient cultures. Part of the way the Israelis solved that problem was to put everyone in the Army for two years. This was the first time many of these African Jews had every seen running water, modern plumbing, etc.
Both sides did some horrible acts.But compare Israel to the Gaza strip today, please.
Here's the problem: Palestine and Transjordan were not Britain's, or the United Nations', to do with as they pleased. There were people living there, and the division of the land into two entities, one Jewish, one Muslim, ignored democratic processes of self-determination. The people there were ignored for a simple reason: Britain was under heavy pressure from the Zionists - who had been conducting terrorism in the mandate, and who had considerable financial and political clout - as well as the United States, to create an autonomous Jewish homeland. In the wake of the Holocaust, creation of a Jewish homeland seemed to solve the European anti-semitism problem - make the Jews somebody else's problem.
Unfortunately, there happened to be some people already there, and they outnumbered the Jewish population of the time, and in a democracy, they would have dominated. So instead you divide the land and move people around. Which, as we have seen from just about every inter-ethnic conflict from the Balkans to the Subcontinent, is not an effective long-term strategy for peace or democracy.
As far as comparing Israel and Gaza, look at the facts: Israel receives substantial financial, military and geopolitical support from the United States and her allies; Palestinians don't. A Jew, in Israel, is free to travel around the country; a Palestinian must wait hours or days at a variety of checkpoints. Employment in Israel is available; employment in Palestine is negligible. Israelis, generally, don't have their houses destroyed; Palestinian homes are bulldozed as a security measure. Israeli children have playgrounds; Palestinian children have rubble-strewn streets. Israel enjoys international recognition; Palestinians do not. When Israelis elect a government, it is recognized by the world community; when Palestinians elect a government, it is not and international aid is cut off (Hamas is a terrorist group, yes, but they were elected because Fatah politicians have to be 'vetted' by Israel and the United States before being accepted as 'legitimate', and Palestinians were sick of it). Most Israelis are free; vast numbers of Palestinians are in prison (all of them will be, after that wall is finished). Israelis enjoy the rule of law; Palestinians cannot trust the law to be enforced (what do you expect, when the Israelis in contravention to international law and the Geneva Conventions and UN resolutions, build settlements in occupied territories?). Israel is routinely given enormous latitude in the international press; Palestinians are categorized as (a) Muslim (which not all of them are), and (b) terrorists, which they overwhelmingly are not.
Tell you what: give Israel the West Bank and Gaza. Hell, give 'em the Golan. But in return, Israel must recognize all Palestinians within their borders as full citizens. Then let the entire reconstituted population vote - democratically - as to the nature of the new nation-state. Let the entire population determine Right to Return, the refugee question, water supplies, the economy whatever.
Israel won't buy it. The Palestinians won't either, not entirely, but the Israelis are much more vehement in opposition to such a proposal, simply because the Palestinians outnumber them. Israel has to be a single ethno-religious state to the exclusion of the vast majority of the people within the territories that Israel controls, directly or indirectly.
THAT I find morally objectionable.
And while I disagree in the strongest terms with what Palestinians do to each other and Israelis, I know why they do it, and I know they will continue to do it as long as the injustice of this situation remains.
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