Those who read this blog will know of my moderate beliefs - including that Religion is Poison - but the subject of Israel really gets my goat.
For the record, I understand it's a complex situation, and I'm not really taking any particular side (unless there's an atheist side I haven't been told about). But a recent article in the New York Times by George Bisharat, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, does not put the Israeli Jewish side (not to be confused with the Jewish people as a whole) in a good light. He begins by saying:
And if that's not enough to get stuck in your craw, here's two more words: Mordechai Vanunu. No, it's not an exotic spicy dish (though it sounds delicious), but the name of an Israeli Traitor/World Peace Hero (depending on which side you take, and I'm clearly taking a side in this case), who exposed Israel's secret nuclear program in 1986. According to an Easter article I just read in The Age ("A Defiant Spirit"), he has spent most of the time since then in jail, and now, even though he has been released, is prohibited from leaving Israel or talking to journalists.
This, to me, seems unfair to say the least and, dare I say it, especially unjust and undemocratic.
Now, before you start getting all Uncle Leo on me, just because I'm against disproportionate aggression by a majority against a minority (or its own people who display moral courage) doesn't mean I'm anti-Semitic (I've always said I'm quite in favour the Semite tribes, such as the Hyksos, the Jews and, of course, the Arabs). And I only like the Jewish Conspiracy not because I think it's true, but because I would love to live in a world run by the likes of Jon Stewart, Andy Samberg, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld (if not Woody Allen).
Also, my great, great, great, great grandfather was Jewish, so, y'know, they're my people.
But a war crime is a war crime.
Plus, the whole justification for kicking the Palestinians out of their homes and then bombing them for 50 or 60 years seems a little spurious to me. The main justification being that the Jews were there first and it's their "promised land" (this justification is not only put forward by Israelis, but also, more obnoxiously I think, some evangelical Christians in the US, who believe in the literal truth of Bible and who think they can hasten Armageddon if the Jews are allowed to return to their land).
With that in mind, here's a quick Rant O'Clock history of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
The original occupants, or at least the ones before the Jews, were actually the Canaanites (maybe we should give it back to them?). Around about 1500 BC, give or take (due to the lack of whadayacallit... evidence!), the Jewish people escaped from Egypt and proceeded attacking and slaughtering the locals, all supposedly with the approval of their genocidal and racist God. King David took over Jerusalem around 1000 BC, and his descendants ruled the surrounding lands for the next 400 or so years, until the Babylonians attacked, wiping out most of the northern part of the kingdom (Israel), and carrying off those in the southern kingdom (Judah) to exile in Babylon (hence the song). Most scholars think this is when most of the Bible (or, at least, the Old Testament) was actually written (or, at least, put down in something approximating its current form), when the Jewish people longed after their lost lands, and they were also able to adopt/steal a lot of Babylonian legends, such as Adam and Eve, and the Flood.
They were eventually allowed to return to their lands (by the Persians, who handed the Babylonians their Babylonian arses), but were then progressively conquered by such Empires as Alexander the Great's Greeks, and, of course, those wacky Romans.
The Jews had a falling out with their Roman overlords, and were eventually banned from entering Jerusalem from around about when the Romans razed the city, along with their precious Temple (this one having been built by King Herod only relatively recently), in 70AD, until it was conquered by the Muslims in the 7th century. During most of the intervening time it was an important Christian city (probably the most important), and the home of many important Byzantine buildings.
Ironically, it was the Muslims who let the Jews back in after they took over, in AD 638, but obviously it was a very important city for them, too - the third holiest city in Islam after Mecca and Medina - and has remained so ever since.
Subject to a few conquerings and re-conquerings by the Crusaders, it then remained a Muslim city until the Ottoman Turks were defeated in World War I, and the British managed it as part of their Palestinian Protectorate.
So, although I'm prepared to admit that this part of the Middle East, and Jerusalem, were legitimately won by the war-mongering Jews of around 3000 years ago, for the last 2000 years it's been the home of many, many other people. Incidentally, in that time the Romans took over Britain from the local Celts, though they were in turn defeated by the Anglo-Saxons, who were then defeated by the Normans. Also, for most of that same 2000-year period, the land comprising the United States of America was controlled by various Native American people (and, for that matter, the only people living in Australia during most of that time were the Australian Aborigines). The Slavs didn't move into Europe until the 6th or 7th century, the Magyars didn't move into Hungary until the late 9th century, Ghengis Khan had sex with many, many women.
So very many.
And so on and so forth.
In light of this, assuming we want to be consistent, are we going to allow all of the people who can trace descent to those original inhabitants to move back to those countries (and then subjugate the people already living there)? Of course not (mostly because I mentioned Britain, the US and Australia, for one thing, and the indigenous people in those whitebread countries are getting diddly-squat).
That said, after the tragic events of World War II and the Holocaust (not to mention the anti-semtitism that was endemic in most of Europe before then ... apart from the Muslim controlled areas, of course), it made sense to allow Jewish people to have a homeland of their own where they could feel safe. Palestine/Israel probably made as much sense as anywhere else (if not more).
I'm just saying they shouldn't bomb civilians and kick them out of their houses for no compensation.
So, what's the solution?
First - Jerusalem is clearly an international city with international problems, and it should be under international jurisdiction. This was actually the plan after World War II, but when the 1948 "War" broke out, the British made like the French and ran away screamng like ladyboyz, leaving the city solely for the Israelis.
To divert your attention from the many different cultures I just insulted in that last sentence, allow me a digression which is not a digression. I'm currently reading a book called "From the Holy Mountain", by William Dalrymple, a fascinating tale about his journey from Greece and Turkey, through the Middle East and to Egypt, retracing the steps of John Moschos, a Byzantine monk who wrote about his travels and the people and places of those lands in the late 6th century. Mister Dalrymple's interviews with the Christians still living in Jerusalem are quite shocking - despite the fact many of them have an unbroken history in Jerusalem going back over 1500 years, the Jewish authorities are apparently keen to highlight any Jewish connection to the city whilst sweeping any other group's connections with the ancient city under the archaeological carpet:
But I think the rest of the world, not to mention the non-Jewish residents of Jerusalem, deserves a Jerusalem run by a more open-minded administration. I imagine the only people against Christians being treated fairly in Jerusalem would be Christian evangelicals...
Secondly, the people who have been kicked out of their homes - many within living memory - have a right to live somewhere other than a refugee camp. And they should probably receive some kind of compensation. The two-state solution currently being put forward by the US would go some of the way towards allowing this. And the US is in a unique position to ensure it becomes a reality. In fact, I would wager that the US could put a halt to violence in Israel in a heartbeat - at least, from the Israeli side - by simply turning off the military aid taps (currently around $3 billion a year). Maybe some of that money could even be diverted to be given directly as compensation to the Palestinians, since no-one else seems willing to acknowledge the issue.
I'm sure we would see the right-wing, nationalist Israelis come to the negotiating table a lot more quickly should these suggestions be put forward...
Plus, Obama could save some cash. Republicans like that that, don't they? At least, they used to, before that Bush guy...
OK. So now I've solved the Middle East problem, Israelis and Palestinians will be living side-by-side harmoniously, Islamic terrorists both in Israel and abroad will chill the fuck out, and everyone lives happily ever after.
What other problems can I now solve?
For the record, I understand it's a complex situation, and I'm not really taking any particular side (unless there's an atheist side I haven't been told about). But a recent article in the New York Times by George Bisharat, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, does not put the Israeli Jewish side (not to be confused with the Jewish people as a whole) in a good light. He begins by saying:
"CHILLING testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law. The emergence of a predominantly right-wing, nationalist government in Israel suggests that there may be more violations to come. Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions."He then goes on to list the specific offences, including the deliberate targeting of civilians and use of white phosphorous, and concludes that the Israeli political and military personnel who planned, ordered or executed these possible offenses should face criminal prosecution.
And if that's not enough to get stuck in your craw, here's two more words: Mordechai Vanunu. No, it's not an exotic spicy dish (though it sounds delicious), but the name of an Israeli Traitor/World Peace Hero (depending on which side you take, and I'm clearly taking a side in this case), who exposed Israel's secret nuclear program in 1986. According to an Easter article I just read in The Age ("A Defiant Spirit"), he has spent most of the time since then in jail, and now, even though he has been released, is prohibited from leaving Israel or talking to journalists.
This, to me, seems unfair to say the least and, dare I say it, especially unjust and undemocratic.
Now, before you start getting all Uncle Leo on me, just because I'm against disproportionate aggression by a majority against a minority (or its own people who display moral courage) doesn't mean I'm anti-Semitic (I've always said I'm quite in favour the Semite tribes, such as the Hyksos, the Jews and, of course, the Arabs). And I only like the Jewish Conspiracy not because I think it's true, but because I would love to live in a world run by the likes of Jon Stewart, Andy Samberg, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld (if not Woody Allen).
Also, my great, great, great, great grandfather was Jewish, so, y'know, they're my people.
But a war crime is a war crime.
Plus, the whole justification for kicking the Palestinians out of their homes and then bombing them for 50 or 60 years seems a little spurious to me. The main justification being that the Jews were there first and it's their "promised land" (this justification is not only put forward by Israelis, but also, more obnoxiously I think, some evangelical Christians in the US, who believe in the literal truth of Bible and who think they can hasten Armageddon if the Jews are allowed to return to their land).
With that in mind, here's a quick Rant O'Clock history of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
The original occupants, or at least the ones before the Jews, were actually the Canaanites (maybe we should give it back to them?). Around about 1500 BC, give or take (due to the lack of whadayacallit... evidence!), the Jewish people escaped from Egypt and proceeded attacking and slaughtering the locals, all supposedly with the approval of their genocidal and racist God. King David took over Jerusalem around 1000 BC, and his descendants ruled the surrounding lands for the next 400 or so years, until the Babylonians attacked, wiping out most of the northern part of the kingdom (Israel), and carrying off those in the southern kingdom (Judah) to exile in Babylon (hence the song). Most scholars think this is when most of the Bible (or, at least, the Old Testament) was actually written (or, at least, put down in something approximating its current form), when the Jewish people longed after their lost lands, and they were also able to adopt/steal a lot of Babylonian legends, such as Adam and Eve, and the Flood.
They were eventually allowed to return to their lands (by the Persians, who handed the Babylonians their Babylonian arses), but were then progressively conquered by such Empires as Alexander the Great's Greeks, and, of course, those wacky Romans.
The Jews had a falling out with their Roman overlords, and were eventually banned from entering Jerusalem from around about when the Romans razed the city, along with their precious Temple (this one having been built by King Herod only relatively recently), in 70AD, until it was conquered by the Muslims in the 7th century. During most of the intervening time it was an important Christian city (probably the most important), and the home of many important Byzantine buildings.
Ironically, it was the Muslims who let the Jews back in after they took over, in AD 638, but obviously it was a very important city for them, too - the third holiest city in Islam after Mecca and Medina - and has remained so ever since.
Subject to a few conquerings and re-conquerings by the Crusaders, it then remained a Muslim city until the Ottoman Turks were defeated in World War I, and the British managed it as part of their Palestinian Protectorate.
So, although I'm prepared to admit that this part of the Middle East, and Jerusalem, were legitimately won by the war-mongering Jews of around 3000 years ago, for the last 2000 years it's been the home of many, many other people. Incidentally, in that time the Romans took over Britain from the local Celts, though they were in turn defeated by the Anglo-Saxons, who were then defeated by the Normans. Also, for most of that same 2000-year period, the land comprising the United States of America was controlled by various Native American people (and, for that matter, the only people living in Australia during most of that time were the Australian Aborigines). The Slavs didn't move into Europe until the 6th or 7th century, the Magyars didn't move into Hungary until the late 9th century, Ghengis Khan had sex with many, many women.
So very many.
And so on and so forth.
In light of this, assuming we want to be consistent, are we going to allow all of the people who can trace descent to those original inhabitants to move back to those countries (and then subjugate the people already living there)? Of course not (mostly because I mentioned Britain, the US and Australia, for one thing, and the indigenous people in those whitebread countries are getting diddly-squat).
That said, after the tragic events of World War II and the Holocaust (not to mention the anti-semtitism that was endemic in most of Europe before then ... apart from the Muslim controlled areas, of course), it made sense to allow Jewish people to have a homeland of their own where they could feel safe. Palestine/Israel probably made as much sense as anywhere else (if not more).
I'm just saying they shouldn't bomb civilians and kick them out of their houses for no compensation.
So, what's the solution?
First - Jerusalem is clearly an international city with international problems, and it should be under international jurisdiction. This was actually the plan after World War II, but when the 1948 "War" broke out, the British made like the French and ran away screamng like ladyboyz, leaving the city solely for the Israelis.
To divert your attention from the many different cultures I just insulted in that last sentence, allow me a digression which is not a digression. I'm currently reading a book called "From the Holy Mountain", by William Dalrymple, a fascinating tale about his journey from Greece and Turkey, through the Middle East and to Egypt, retracing the steps of John Moschos, a Byzantine monk who wrote about his travels and the people and places of those lands in the late 6th century. Mister Dalrymple's interviews with the Christians still living in Jerusalem are quite shocking - despite the fact many of them have an unbroken history in Jerusalem going back over 1500 years, the Jewish authorities are apparently keen to highlight any Jewish connection to the city whilst sweeping any other group's connections with the ancient city under the archaeological carpet:
"There have long been accusations that Israeli archaeologists have a tendency to excavate not so much to illuminate the general history of the region as to uncover their own history, in some cases allegedly digging through and discarding as irrelevant the intervening Turkish, Arab and Byzantine layers. Indeed, to Israel's great credit, many of the fiercest criticisms of this political bias have come from Israeli liberals incensed at what they regarded as the right-wing nationalistic bias of the country's archaeological establishment. In 1992 the Jerusalem-based archaeologist Shulamit Giva accused Israeli Biblical archaeology as being 'a tool in the hands of the Zionist movement [attempting] to find a connection between the ancient history of the Land of Israel and the historic occurrence of the [modern] State of Israel'... Other liberal Israelis have attacked the way the history of the region is presented to tourists. The former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvinisti, himself a respected historian of the Crusader period, has attacked the bias in the Tower of David Museum of the History of Jerusalem, the principal museum of the Old City. 'After the Israelite period,' commented Benvinisti, 'the written text informs us that the city was occupied by foreigners. Describing them as foreigners emphasises the exclusivist character of the museum's perspective - only the Israeli-Jewish claim to the city is granted legitimacy. In fact the Israelite period only lasted six hundred years, but all the periods which followed it are represented as a chain of occupations - Persian, Byzantine, Mameluke, Ottoman and British.'"See? The Israelis are ALL RIGHT - people like Shulamit and Meron have got it goin' on! That's what I've been saying all along!!!
But I think the rest of the world, not to mention the non-Jewish residents of Jerusalem, deserves a Jerusalem run by a more open-minded administration. I imagine the only people against Christians being treated fairly in Jerusalem would be Christian evangelicals...
Secondly, the people who have been kicked out of their homes - many within living memory - have a right to live somewhere other than a refugee camp. And they should probably receive some kind of compensation. The two-state solution currently being put forward by the US would go some of the way towards allowing this. And the US is in a unique position to ensure it becomes a reality. In fact, I would wager that the US could put a halt to violence in Israel in a heartbeat - at least, from the Israeli side - by simply turning off the military aid taps (currently around $3 billion a year). Maybe some of that money could even be diverted to be given directly as compensation to the Palestinians, since no-one else seems willing to acknowledge the issue.
I'm sure we would see the right-wing, nationalist Israelis come to the negotiating table a lot more quickly should these suggestions be put forward...
Plus, Obama could save some cash. Republicans like that that, don't they? At least, they used to, before that Bush guy...
OK. So now I've solved the Middle East problem, Israelis and Palestinians will be living side-by-side harmoniously, Islamic terrorists both in Israel and abroad will chill the fuck out, and everyone lives happily ever after.
What other problems can I now solve?
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