I read with interest Dan Morrison’s article The Crux of Israel and Palestine in the Nov 02 edition of The Arthur. I was hoping to glean some structured insight, some positive thoughts from someone who might hint at possible solutions to a complex problem, but instead the writing was a deleteriously biased anti-Israeli viewpoint which only reinforces a common consensus that little is likely to change in the Middle East conflict now or in the future.
Mr. Morrison missed the mark in terms of conflict resolution for a number of key reasons. One realization that he omitted, and would come to understand if he had first-hand knowledge of the region, is that ultimately Israelis only want to live in peace. If someone were to spend time in a Kibbutz, they would see that most Israelis just want to live well, have a home and community, raise their families and enjoy life.
Every Israeli citizen must undergo mandatory military service when they become 18. It’s something that most Israelis will say it’s something they would rather not do but know that it’s necessary for base survival and they embrace the task.
Each generation, since 1970, knows that it will fight in at least one war during their lifetime. Why is this? The inertia that feeds the need for Israelis to defend themselves, and Palestinians to fight and reassert their territory, is the fact that foreign entities openly refuse to live alongside Israel.
To asses and deal with the situation, the world has to take a truly honest and retrospective view of what lead to the creation of Israel. It was not initiated from a Jewish zeal to dominate and control a region, it was generated from the despicable subjugation and near total extermination of Jewish people from Europe during the Second World War. Our society ultimately created the present Middle East crisis from a flawed anti-Semitic culture. During the period from 1941-1943, when Germany occupied Poland, hundreds of towns and cities had the majority of their Jewish population rounded up and these people experienced atrocities similar to the 4,000 Jews who were gathered in a farmer’s field in the town of Msciwuje, forced into a mass pit, machine gunned and buried.
Millions of Jews were systematically exterminated during the holocaust in concentration camps that still leave us, 70 years later, recoiling in revulsion. So really, who in the 21st Century can look back on our history and say that Jewish people do not have a legitimate claim to a place in the world and the right to defend themselves?
The Middle East problem has even deeper roots: the fact that human beings still cling to an antiquated need to fractionate themselves into tribes, intolerant of the existence of other groups of people outside of ourselves and becoming indoctrinated into a nationhood thinking that we are always right and everyone surrounding us is dangerous. If we are genuinely heading into the concept of globalization and want Israelis and Palestinians to get along, we have to change the way we function as a whole.
-Steven Brak