Losing a Friend
My friend is upset at me. Why do you criticize Israel? My friend asks. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel has the right to exist. Israel has the right to defend itself. Don’t you know about the holocaust. Why don’t you criticize Arab regimes, Why don’t you criticize Saddam Hussein. Why don’t you criticize Osama Bin Laden. You are defending and excusing terrorism. Arabs are using Israel as an escape goat for their own failings.
My dear friend, you are telling me that Arab society is brutal; you see I don't think that Arab society can be brutal, I know it. I have lived in the Middle East for 22 years and I have seen that brutality first hand. You are telling me that Arab regimes are corrupt, I know that very well my dear friend for I have lived in Saddam Hussein shadow for many years and I still get nightmares about it today. You are telling me that many Arabs blame Israel and the US for their own failings, I haven't read that in some article, I have heard the pathetic " US does this to us and Israel does that to us" a million times. When you read the translated transcript of something that Osama Bin Laden said and it scares you, I understand what he is saying in his own words, I understand the historical references he is drawing on and when he quotes the Quaran I know which sura he is referring to. Believe me his message is much more terrifying in Arabic than the translated English you read. The most terrifying of all is that I can feel some his anger inside me. So what do we do with all this knowledge, what do we do with all these facts? We have two choices, we can use it to demonize all Arabs all around the world and call for complete annihilation, or we can decide to take constructive action and attempt to reach peoples hearts, minds and souls. Ask yourself what is it that I am trying to achieve? Kill, destroy and maim, well congratulations the world situation is so ripe for that. Have a blast. Because if you believe it is justified to deny basic human rights to millions of people despite the fact that they are imperfect, the problem is not your intellect, I can see you are a very intelligent person and you know your history inside out. The problem is not in your emotions; I can see from the passion you display about this issue that part of you is alive and well. The problem is inside your soul. Get spiritual guidance and I can't help you with that.
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"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously
committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to
separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the
heart of every human being. And who is willing to
destroy a piece of his own heart."- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
There is a way between voice and presence where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes. .... Rumi
12:26 AMThere was a time when I wondered, naively, why Palestine and Israel could not co-exist. What is it with these people fighting? There was a time, when I felt all of our sandcastles had been kicked over by some brute on the beach but I felt certain that there must be other people in the world like me who were willing to put aside difference and recreate something better and stronger and, well, something utopian. And then I began listening to the 'Palestinian' advocates of human rights (non-blog ones), and I suddenly became acutely aware why Israel is defending itself. Israelis simply have no other choice, it's a matter of survival. Militant Israelis are defending themselves for exactly the same reasons militant Palestinians say they are defending themselves. It is a case of two right-wing 'grassroots' movements at loggerheads. Two rightwing movements which have grown up out of 'leftwing' marxist ideology. Likud, Fatah, Kadima, Hamas, they are all the same. And worse, socialist movements pander to conservative militant ideologies within certain groups because they perceive these militia to be some sort of a fantastic revolutionary front. Like hell, like hell they are ihath. The great socialist myth is that it's advocates are somehow non-conformist when in actuality they are bound to "follow the people" and if the people want to stone the village scapegoat, well then marxism is behind the people. That type of activism is not about spiritual enlightenment, it's about mob rule.
I really think the biggest problem between Israel and Palestine is lack of communication. Tacky analyst-speak, real problem nonetheless. Zionists, having learnt to keep their 'unpopular' spirituality to themselves, aren't historically great converters. And nor really are radical Islamists - in a sense, the hard-right of both factions operate on a level that brings to mind Bushes "you're either with us or against us" and if you're neither then move over buster, we have business to battle with the boys next door who want us dead. Holocaust survivors are well-accustomed to gritting their teeth and suffering the struggle with grim determination, they have a historical tradition of survival doing just this for over 2000 years. Radical Islam exhibits similar determination, where as Saddam was a capitalist bully, Hamas voters seem to have more pious aspirations in that they may be inspired by Bin Laden who wanders the desert with a belief almost Job-like and writes texts you might find in the Talmud. Both Palestine and Israel claim the moral right to defend themselves, otherwise, both claim, they would die. An age-old war paradox. I don't question the religion either follow, in my view neither are lacking in religious sustenance.
In a sense, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has a lot more hope of being sorted out then the US-Terror one because it's 'sides' are well-defined - Palestine versus Israel. All it takes is for both to make some sort of agreement to co-exist (and this is beginning to happen behind all the spear shaking). Where as the US-Terror war is not clearly defined, it's participants are shadow-figures and the battle ground is continually shifting. In fact, when I look at the Israeli and Palestinian conflict these days, it seems to be one of the most stable political situations in the world! I feel it is drawing to a point of resolution, where as I feel the US-Terror war has only just begun.
The terrible Irony is that while Israel and Palestine fight, neither of them are in a position to combine efforts in surviving the real threat they both face - the destruction of the natural environment by forces greater then them both.
12:06 AM
You all sound so stupid and seem to know nothing about the internal contents of this topic. So just leave your ignorant comments to yourselves or educate yourselves before you post something like that! I am not from the middle east... as a fact, i am from North America, so i am not biased towards any side. I simply gatherd the facts and found out what the truth is, unlike those who make it up!
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