Monday 4 August 2014

The Middle East and How To Understand It (or not as the case maybe)


I’ve never imagined that many people are that interested in what I have to say, especially when I look at the number of hits on my blog.  But over the last few weeks some of my musings on Facebook and Twitter have been receiving a bit more attention than usual.  This new interest began when I started to comment on the goings on in Gaza.  The responses I’ve had have been both positive and negative although some of the latter bordered on abusive.  I suppose it is not surprising that the subject evokes strong feelings from both sides given the history both ancient and modern, but the level of response to my utterings was a little unanticipated.  Facebook and particularly Twitter are rather unsuitable forums to fully present views on such a complex subject so I thought I would resort to this blog.

Let me begin by saying I do not have any axe to grind for any of the antagonists in the Gaza conflict.  I wouldn’t want to support any claim for righteousness on either side.  Hopefully my view will come across as pragmatic. 

The situation as ‘I’ see it:

1.         Israel was created as a Jewish state from land formerly occupied by the British (and others) with the sanction of the UN.  It is not clear to me how either the British or the UN felt they had the right to give away land that did not belong to them but it happened. 

2.         It is completely understandable why it was felt that the Jewish people needed a home to call their own given the illogical persecution the race have experienced over hundreds of years.

3.         The creation of Israel as a ‘Jewish’ state was a serious mistake, in doing so it immediately made everybody who wasn’t Jewish (the majority of whom are Arab Muslims although there were and are some Arab Christians) second class citizens.

4.         As Jewish immigration gathered pace more and more of the indigenous population (I call them that because given the time they had lived there unchallenged that’s what they became) were forced into smaller and smaller areas.  A situation exacerbated by the outcome of the six-day war.  The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel as a self defence strategy is no longer credible after nearly 50 years.

5.         Creeping settlement of occupied territories by Israeli citizens is illegal and inflammatory and a response to that from Palestinians should have been seen as inevitable.

6.         The continuing blockade of basic humanitarian supplies to Gaza (notwithstanding any blockade of military supplies) can only be seen as equally inflammatory and prejudicial (if not racist).

7.         Policing of the occupied territories by the Israeli Defence Force appears draconian.

8.         Hamas (even though they are a democratically elected government) appear to be a terrorist organisation.

9.         Firing of Rockets into Israel is stupid, ineffective and inflammatory.  It is never going to achieve anything other than the normal response from the IDF which is “Anything you can do we can do deadlier”. 

10.      At the end of WWII the Jewish people had enormous empathy amongst most of the rest of the world, and that was compounded by the aggression of Egypt, Jordan and Syria that led to the Six-day War.

11.      The continued occupation, immigration and settlement referred to in points 4 & 5 have eroded much of the empathy referred to in point 10 even though these are acts taken by the State of Israel not by the Jewish people.

12.      The current conflict that is taking place is resulting in thousands of deaths (Including hundreds children) on the Palestinian side with comparative few Israelis (mostly soldiers).  The physical damage to Israel is minute compared with the wholesale destruction of the infrastructure of an already impoverished area.  To say that these things are disproportionate is a massive understatement.

13.      As for allegations of anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism I’m afraid the actions of Israel against Palestine on the current scale will only ever make these things worse because some will only ever see them as Jewish actions.  Most of those I see expressing negative opinions about Israeli actions do so against the disproportionate nature of those actions not against the Jewishness of the actions, and many protesting are indeed Jewish themselves.

If your house is invaded by a nasty character who lives quite close by in a deprived neighbourhood and kills your sister, is it okay if you chase after him, follow him to his house and being unable to precisely locate him, then to kill his whole family and destroy his house and the surrounding houses in response?  If the family and neighbours of the nasty individual seek to defend themselves from the sort of action I’ve just described would it be okay if you then subject them to further deprivation by cutting off access to basic supplies and the means to improve their lot?  If this nasty family and their neighbours get fed up with the constant restrictions to their liberty and try to break out using violent means, is it out okay then to show your displeasure by destroying whole neighbourhoods and indiscriminately slaughtering anybody (including women and children) who happens to live nearby?  If your answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’ then I suggest that discussion with you by any right thinking person would be pointless.  Remember that the ‘you’ that I use in my analogies would have redress to the police but in Gaza the police are the very people conducting the extreme violence.

Many responses to my comments on Twitter seemed particularly bizarre as they wanted to know why I was not condemning the slaughter in Syria or by ISIS in Iraq.  The simple answer to that was that it wasn’t an issue that I was addressing, but that didn’t satisfy most of these people (from both sides of the argument) and they took that to mean that I condoned meaningless slaughter unless it was carried out by Israel.  Nothing could be further from the truth and as I tried to explain that there were only so much you could say in only 140 characters; needless to say that failed to satisfy some them too.  I attempted to rationalise by saying that the explanations why various groups of Arabs or Muslims seem hell bent on slaughtering each other are far beyond my meagre powers of reasoning, and if they weren’t I would probably be Secretary General of the United Nations and in line for a Nobel Peace Prize.  The only thing I think I can contribute to that discussion is that the West, be it US, UK or NATO should steer well clear of it as there is absolutely nothing positive we can contribute to the situation.  Every time we get involved in one of these disputes we only make things worse, not least of all because historically we were probably responsible (to some extent anyway) for the dispute in the first place.  When we become involved we only engender more hatred of us (as if we didn’t have enough already).  Try saying that in 140 characters.

Most of the disputes in this region are born out of religious differences which, from a personal point of view, I find particularly irritating because I am firmly and squarely in the school of thought that it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God.  Given that to be my case I fail to understand how sets of rules invented by men hundreds or thousands of years ago, which sink to governing such diverse and bizarre things as: food, haircuts, headwear, genital mutilation, subjugation of half the world’s population, clothes etc, can be taken seriously.  Even more so when in the intervening time various other men (and it is normally men) find the need to amend or supplement these rules with even more ridiculous ones.  (See more of my thoughts on this issue in my earlier blog ‘Another Day Another Deity’.

Furthermore, I cannot subscribe to the ‘Promised Land’ or ‘chosen people’ ideas because they make no sense whatsoever.  Why would a seemingly wise and all powerful being create all the other ‘peoples’ if he was going to have a favourite?  Was he just practicing?  And; if what is now Palestine/Israel is the ‘Promised Land’, why did the Jewish people up-sticks and leave it in the first place?

Those are my opinions on unrest in the Middle East.  I am sure they bewilder some, upset many, amuse others and bore the rest to tears.  But unless anybody can come up with substantive and convincing arguments to change my mind.  I am unlikely to shift any time soon.  I haven’t set out to offend anyone (Arab, Muslim, Christian or Jew) although I expect I have and for that I apologise.