ihath

Re media coverage of the war: ironically, some of the columnists in Ha'aretz newspaper provide more critical and balanced commentary than anything I've read in the Canadian or US media! I've been saving a lot of these articles to my del.icio.us account - I'd be happy to share them with you if you like...    

Hello Avril,
Yes please share your stash of articles. You can also always blog about it in your bran spanking blog.    

Now I just have to figure out how to give other people access to my del.icio.us stash. I'm sure there is a simple technique for file sharing, but I haven't figured it out yet! Another thing for us to discuss....    

You said, "I have no idea how to answer any of these questions."

How do you explain the following quotes from Hassan Nasrallah, arguably currently the most popular man in Lebanon?

"If all the Jews gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."

"it is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on Earth."

I would tell my children, "Hate begets Hate." and "You live by the Sword, You die by the Sword."

People with Good Hearts and True Intentions on *both* sides of this conflict need to step up and say "No More!" Only when there are more people saying "Stop" than "Continue" can the ending begin.    

Wise words of wisedom, N. G. Zax. Now if only you would tell us how you put those words into action in your own life, we could all be inspired and follow your lead    

This is a true story. It happened about three weeks ago.

I was getting my coffee at the train station. Because the weatherman had said it was going to rain, I had my favorite Power Team umbrella with me. It's a nice umbrella, big. And with no small amount of sentimental value.

I put the umbrella down to add milk to my coffee. When I had finished stirring and popped the lid back on, being in too much of a hurry, I forgot my umbrella and walked away.

Moments, not even as much as a minute later, I realized that I had forgotten my umbrella.

As I hurried back to the coffee stand I saw what was clearly a homeless man walking away with my umbrella.

At first, my instinct was to go up to him and demand my umbrella. After all, this was MY umbrella. How dare he take it! I had only put it down for a moment. What an outrage! If I rains today, I am going to be soaked.

Instead, I stopped.

I stood there and prayed, "God, thank you. Thank you that I have such abundance that I can easily afford to lose an umbrella. Please watch over this man and let my umbrella keep him dry."

Not much, I know, but there you have it.

It never did rain that day.    

So, why can I see my comment above, but not on the website?    

n.g.zax

"So, why can I see my comment above, but not on the website?
"

I don't understand what you mean, I seem to be able to see your comments fine.

As for your story, I think it is a fine story, very touching. I need to hear some stories of human kindness once in a while    

I don't know what happened either. I initially posted my response a couple days back and it only showed up on the page today.

Please don't despair lack of human kindness. If you stop and look there is so much kindness every single day. Even on the streets of New York City, I see people being kind to each other every day.

It is a problem when evil people spout the filth like I quoted above and the general response, like yours, is silence. Silence is assent. It is astonishing that given the manifest history of the entire 20th century, some people still do not understand that simply ignoring genocidal maniacs does not make them go away.

But back to your original questions.

Q: "But why is Israel bombing Lebanon?"

A: "Because, dear, they attacked Israel. And countries, like people, have a right to self defense. Perhaps if Lebanon didn't want to be attacked, they wouldn't keep firing rockets at Israel. If a militant Native Canadian group claiming that they were the 'rightful' owners of Vancouver started firing rockets at our house wouldn't you want our Government to protect us?"    

N.G.Zax

The natives are the rightful owners of Vancouver. We better start settling those land claims in a fair manner, so that they don't have any other choice but to bomb our houses.

One day when my grandchildren ask me why do the Native Indians hate us, I am not going to tell them no garbage about they hate us because of our democracy and because our superior way of life. I will tell them; they hate us because our government committed atrocities against them in our name and for our benefit.


As for the technical problem, perhaps you need to refresh your cache to allow for new content.    

Ok.

And then what about the Tribe that that Tribe took it away from? And the one before that? Where do you draw the line? At what point in history do you want to freeze it as being "authentic?" Man has been killing man and taking his land and back and forth since Man was on the planet.

Where on (reasonably habitable) earth can you go that someone cannot possibly claim that someone was there before and was "unfairly" removed?

As a matter of fact, I have heard some Jews make exactly that argument ... they were there before the Arabs.. if you go back 2000 years. Ridiculous.    

> "I am not going to tell them no garbage about they hate us because of our democracy and because our superior way of life."

I am 100% with you on this.

> "I will tell them; they hate us because our government committed atrocities against them in our name and for our benefit."

Not so much on this, though I do not deny that it's strictly true. It's just that it happened hundreds of years ago by people who are long since dead so dwelling on it doesn't seem productive to me.

Here's what I would say:

Children, every single person at some point in their life will have rotten things happen to them. Some people have lots of bad things, some people have just a little, but everyone has at least some. The world is terribly unfair. The key to life is how you respond to this adversity.

Some people respond by looking for someone to blame. It's all that other guy's fault. If it wasn't for him, what a great life I would have! He took my [fill in the blank] It was "rightfully mine!" etc Oh, how that hatred can make you feel better for a while. But it consumes you and in the end drags *everyone* down a little deeper.

Others look at misfortune and see an opportunity. They say, I am going to be the best possible person I can be and make the best of this situation and then we'll see how it turns out in the end. These are the people who make a difference in other people's lives and a positive contribution to the World.

That's the kind of person I hope to be and would hope that you become.    

n.g.zax,

You need to educate yourself about the injustice that Native Idians continue to suffer till this day. Have you visited a Native Indian Reserve?


So to summerize what you have said so far. When they attack me "I have the right to defend myself". When we attack them they should teach their children about turning the other cheeck.    

I am quite familiar with Indian Reservations, my wife has a cousin who lives on one and we have stayed at their house. Her cousin's wife is a doctor on the reservation.

And please don't go setting up strawmen. I have never said, nor suggested, that we should be attacking anyone. As should be clear from all my writing, I condemn all violence absolutely and without reservation.

To the extent that we do or have done, we should be rightfully ashamed. Part of what is hopefully the "advance" of civilization and humanity is general is realizing that things that were done in the past were wrong and should not be repeated.

However, by attempting to set right the wrongs of the (in many cases, distant) past through violence you will need to cause at least as much new wrong as has already occurred. This, to me, seems like a great shame.

But, as you demonstrate, some people want their revenge and the war and violence that goes with it and so there we are. They love their hate and the demagogues and dictators love this love of hate because it keeps them in business.

So, What do you tell your daughter when she asks you why Sunni Muslims are slaughtering Shia Muslims and vice-versa in Iraq? That it is in only because the evil Americans are there and before they got there it was all peace and love and flowers? I thought only Hollywood actors believed that one. ;)

Perhaps you should consider that there are other paths than violence, paths which have shown that historical injustice can be at least partly offset without resulting to violence. Look out your window at all the new stores in Vancouver, think India and outsourcing, now who is "winning?"    

P.S.

How would you feel if I said,

"So, to summarize what you have said so far: if you suffer a perceived or real injustice done to you, feel free to go out and kill that person or anyone that you think had anything to do with said injustice. It's your right."

Would you like that? Do you think that would advance our mutual respect and understanding?    

N.G.Zax,
Let me start by apologizing. The last comment was disrespectful and I certainly didn't mean that. You showed that you are better than me and didn't follow suit. I hope you can accept my apology.

I assure you I am not one of those people that thinks that American army is responsible for what is happening in Iraq today.

I guess the thing that puzzles me is your statement "Israel has the right to defend itself". Which implies violence.    

ihath-

Apologies accepted, this is a very hard issue to discuss. Emotions are very close to the surface and any misstatement is open to misconstruction. I, in turn, apologize if my statements have offended you, I know that you, like myself, are a honest and forthright individual of great compassion who is deeply hurt by the hurt and despair you see in the world.

Now, to your question.

Here's where I am coming from, it is entirely possible that I am wrong... so please enlighten me, honestly. ;)

It seems to me, from where I sit, that the Israeli's really want peace. In other words, if the Palestinians, Hizbollah, Syria, Iran, et. al. were to stop firing rockets and sending suicide bombers, etc. I really believe that the violence in that region would greatly lessen. It just doesn't seem to me that Israelis have some big grudge they are taking out on the Palenstinians. You can't honestly expect Israel to just one day up and say, "You know what, the Palestinians are right, we're abandoning Israel as of a week from Tuesday." I totally agree that they use disproportionate force towards the Palestinians, but that seems to be mainly because they are so tired of being attacked and they really don't know what else to do. Every time they try to make peace, they are rejected.

To be fair, it is "easy" for them because they got the "good side" of the deal. The UN came in and totally screwed over the Palestinian Arabs who were living there at the time. I suppose they thought they were doing a good thing, I don't know. Personally, in hindsight, it was a horrible decision, but that was going on 70 years ago at this point. The Palestinians have been trying to take it back by force ever since then, but it seems to me that they are getting worse off, not better. Have you ever heard of the definition of insanity? It's doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

Here's my dream. What if Arafat had taken the 98% deal and instead of starting a new Intifada, had said, "Fine. Screw all of you. Screw you Israelis who won't give us the last 2% and screw you other Arab countries who haven't really lifted a finger to really help us in all these years. You jerks win. We'll make our new Palestinian state on this crappy piece of land. But you'll see... we Palenstinians are the smartest, hard-workingest, lovingest people on Earth. We are going to make a new country that will be the envy of the world. One day the Israelis will be lining up to get jobs in OUR country not the other way around. You just wait and see..."

Unfortunately, it is quite plain that the majority of Palestinians would rather dream of wiping Israel off the map than living in peace with them in *any* form. And because of this, we have War and we will have War until one or the other get tired of fighting.

I just pray that that happens before the false 12th Imam gets his nuclear bomb or millions are going to perish. But I wouldn't bet against it. My heart weeps.    

N.G.Zax,
I wanted to first ask you a question and afterwards I will give you a well thoughtout answer to your last comment. I hope that is ok with you.


You talked about what Palestinians want and dream about. Where did you get the insight into a nation that is so far away from where you live?    

ihath-

That is a good question. I have hopefully gained my insight through reading very widely. I am an obsessive reader. I try to read from all sides of the issue to get a balanced viewpoint. It's one of the reasons I like your weblog. :)

If you are referring to my specfic comment about Palestinians wanting to wipe Israel off the map, it is my assumption that this is what the election of Hamas signified. After all, it's the first item on their todo list. It is so important to them that they would rather starve their own people than even pretend to give it up. (Which I actually believe is an improvement over the the Arafat/Fatah way of saying one thing in English, the other in Arabic. At least people in the West can't pretend they don't know what they really want.)

I fully acknowledge that the news media is frequently way off base and I am eagerly awaiting your response to help me understand the situation better from your perspective.    

As I nervously await Ihath's comprehensive response to NGZ, I will blow a little steam by making this comment. Your exchange above was interesting and stressful. You both are decent folks with far more than what would be considered a fair allocation of functioning neurons. Good luck. :)    

N.G.Zax

In the 50’s and early 60’s, all across the Middle East there was a sense of optimism. Each country had its own movement to liberate itself from colonialism, namely the British and the French. People were talking about independence, self determination and in some corners people talked about prosperity with the discovery of oil. Two main competing ideologies emerged: Arab Nationalism and Communism.

Arab Nationalism revolved around the idea of a united Arab destiny. Pride in Arabic language and history. I don’t need to explain Communism to you, I will just mention that it revolved around the idea of a universal solidarity of the oppressed. The common people looked up to the educated or the intellectuals for solutions to their daily problems and trusted that people like myself held some magic key to bring about the whole nation into that better future. The intellectuals would sit around and debate for hours the merits and disadvantages of each camp. The common people followed the discussion in awe and sometimes took sides.

Both camps have proven to be miserable failures. Each failed beyond reason to achieve even the most minimum of the promises that they aspired to. If you go the Middle East today and talk about Arab nationalism people will just laugh their head off. They will think you are telling them a joke. As for Communism … well! …. That joke is not even funny.

The British and French occupation was replaced with puppet regimes and later with heads of states installed by the CIA. These governments, were and still are oppressive and corrupt. Without the minimum respect of basic human rights. Several Arab kings and presidents continue to receive a yearly salary from the CIA today.

Today, we are humiliated nations and people.

The Arabs have lost every single war they have waged in the last century, failed to achieve even the least bit to be proud of. Poverty, ignorance and social decay are the norm. Do not look to me as an example of what Arab society is like. People like myself are the exception. Educated, privileged, well traveled. Most people in the Middle East live below poverty line, struggle to feed their families, live with constant fear of their own governments. On top of that, the average person the Arab world does not look up to nor trust the so called intellectuals like myself. While the educated have managed to create better lives for themselves we have failed miserably is addressing any of the problems of the countries we grew up in. In the Middle East the average person thinks that ihath is queer. Too westernized, dress strange, talking about weird ideas and notions and above all irrelevant. In truth, people like myself have failed and even betrayed our countries.

All across the Middle East as I look, I see crushed nations. Humiliated. Lacking in hope. Paralyzed. Afraid to even think or contemplate a solution. I frequently hear people complain bitterly about this and that but rarely or almost never do I hear somebody say and here is what I suggest we do about it. All across the Middle East the situation is bleak, depressing. Everywhere except in one spot, there is a single ray that gives me hope.

When I visited the West Bank for the first time. I was surprised and even shocked, by how organized the Palestinians are. Grass roots organizations like universities, hospitals, orphanages and others function under occupation. They function imperfectly but function nevertheless because of the determination of the people who run them. I remember reading the story of the Palestinian mother who stormed a press release session given by the Palestinian Authority, screaming and shouting at them demanding that they tell her what they are planning todo about her kidnapped and imprisoned son in Israel. Embarrassing the officials right infront of the eyes and cameras of the journalist. Show me a single woman in Morocco, in Egypt, in Iraq or Saudi Arabia who would dare do such a thing.

To grow up in the Middle East is to learn to eat shit from a very young age. Women before men, poor before rich, but we have one thing in common. We all learnt to eat shit and swallow our pride in order to survive. If we were honest and honorable we wouldn’t be alive. There is just one place, one spot in that region where I saw sparks of pride in eyes and conduct of people and that is when I was among the Palestinians.

I would be happy to give you the specific name of the publication, book or source where I learned any of the facts mentioned in this post. I am not going to give you the vague “I read lots” answer.

Since you are an avid reader I though you might appreciate some homework.
Here is a report published in September 2006 by the UN Human Rights Counsel talking about the human rights conditions today in Gaza.
http://www.ihath.com/docs/Report%20E.pdf

Study it well.

There will be a quiz in one week

:-)

Just kidding.    

ihath-

Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful response.

And to AGA: Thank you for your warm wishes. I strongly believe that the ultimate hope and fate of the human race lies in the ability of rational people to discuss topics upon which they disagree without reaching for a sword.

As Kent Beck said much better than I ever could: "I see this as coming down to mutual respect. I want to respect the others I communicate with enough to tell them my truth without reservation and I want to respect them enough to listen to their truth. I want to respect their good intentions enough to believe that we can work past our disagreements."

Hopefully ihath and I can set one small example. :)

Onward.

What a harrowing story and report. I am well aware of such reports. You have my deepest sympathy. There are few people in the modern world in a more unfortunate situation.

Personally, I find the U.N. utterly lacking in credibility, they are far more concerned with how to put money in their pockets and sex slaves in their beds than help anyone. Here are a couple articles I have read recently from Human Rights Watch:

"Six Attacks on Palestinian Ambulances, Paramedics" - http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/09/13/isrlpa14185.htm

"Occupied Palestinian Territories: Factions Must Stop Endangering Civilians" - http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/10/06/isrlpa14337.htm

"Nowhere to Flee. The Perilous Situation of Palestinians in Iraq " - http://hrw.org/reports/2006/iraq0706/

And while we're talking about people in bad situations, perhaps this article about Haiti can match it:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/768emzab.asp

[See, I can give you specific sources, imagine that! :p]

That said, The UN report is page after page of overwhelming justification for a burning, consuming rage on the part of the Palestinian people. That the Israelis, and through their unwavering support, the West, bear a part of the responsibility for this rage is undeniable. It is entirely understandable *why* they want vengeance and war.

Yet, as you have accurately noticed, "The Arabs have lost every single war they have waged in the last century..." Perhaps it isn't just an old canard that hatred and desire for vengeance only harms the hater? Or perhaps the Arabs just need to get strong enough and *we* will all be sorry. Maybe.

But your inspiring story of the West Bank Palestinians holds hope that perhaps, against all odds, a new approach can be born and true justice can be achieved. You write very movingly of Nelson Mandela in your excellent new book. How many millions of people are living peaceful lives today because he restrained his urge for vengeance, a vengeance he richly deserved and none could have questioned?

Of course we also need people on the other side to say "Stop the assassination. Stop the house demolitions. Give them a Chance!" And there are such voices, believe it or not. It is just very difficult for such voices to be heard when others are saying "Just wait, I will kill every last one of you." and hiding their missiles and bombs in houses and hospitals.

Finally, since we're on a recommended reading kick, here is something I found very enlightening:
http://www.quaker.org/sttp.html

It's interesting in that it seems eminently sensible from a pacifistic intellectual standpoint, yet with the benefit of hindsight it was completely wrong. Communism collapsed through strength on our part, not weakness, and without a nuclear disaster. Were we just lucky? I guess only time will tell.

Kindest Regards,
N.    

I fail to understeand why people like N.G. Zax dont treat injustice and atrocities committed during World War II against jews, and by the Isareal occupation on Palestinians with the same measure:

The world is asked to forget the past, and be civilized and humane when talking about the Israeli atrocities.

But when it comes to WWII, hehe.. no comment..

Welcome to the double standards