Violence... The story so far

Editorial
Dispossessed

What is there about the Palestinians that people hate them so? Do the Jews hate them because they refuse to be treated like cattle? The Palestinians were fighting for their country (where they had lived under Islam for 1400 years) before 1948 when the UN took it away.

The early 20th Century underground.

Palestine terrorists fighting the British in the 1920-1930 decades were Jews!

After the end of WW II, Israel came into being via the United Nations. To quell Palestinian resistance to their newly established sovereignty, Israel promptly bulldozed 385 Palestinian settlements in 1948. There could be no turning back for either side. Making the Palestinians homeless and without a country did not turn them into non-persons, Golda Meir's statement notwithstanding. Who would not respond in kind if an invader bulldozed his/her home and village and sent them to a refugee camp?!

From Zionism:

"To be sure, once Israel achieved statehood, the Palestinians went on the warpath. Just as surely, Israel retaliated. By the 1949 armistice, Israel was some three times larger than defined by the United Nations.

"Whatever happened after that and whoever you want to believe, the fact is that hundreds of thousands of civilian Palestinians were displaced and their homes destroyed.

"This is the history. And this just may have been why Einstein feared what Zionists might do to Judaism."

Israel is now erecting a literal iron wall to separate itself physically from the Palestinians. The high irony is that the premier Zionist, Jabotinsky, predicted that the Palestinians would fight back if displaced--two generations before it happened.

In 1923 Jabotinsky wrote:

"To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile. This childish fantasy of our 'Arabo-philes' comes from some kind of contempt for the Arab people, of some kind of unfounded view of this race as a rabble ready to be bribed in order to sell out their homeland for a railroad network."

"Thus we conclude that we cannot promise anything to the Arabs of the Land of Israel or the Arab countries. Their voluntary agreement is out of the question. Hence, those who hold that an agreement with the natives is an essential condition for Zionism can now say "no" and depart from Zionism. Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population - an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy"

And so it is. Jabotinsky surely had studied human nature. He understood the American Indian's resistance as the West was "settled." Conquered is a more descriptive word. To the natural opposition of those dispossessed, Jabotinsky doubtless realized the force that is Islam. See some teachings from the Qur'an:

SURAH VIII

THE SPOILS OF WAR

In the name of Allah the Beneficent, the Merciful.

12. ...I will cast terror into the the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

15. O you who believe! when you meet those who disbelieve marching for war, then turn not your backs to them.

19. If you demanded a judgment, the judgment indeed comes to you; and if you desist, it will be better for you; and if you turn back (to fight), We (too) shall turn back, and your forces shall avail you nothing, though they be many, and (know) that Allah is with the believers.

39. And fight them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah; but if they desist, then surely Allah sees what they do.

65. O Prophet! urge the believers to war; if there are twenty patient ones of you they shall overcome two hundred, and if there are a hundred of you, they shall overcome a thousand of those who disbelieve, because they are a people who do not understand.

72. Surely those who believed and fled (their homes) and struggled hard in Allah's way with their property and their souls, and those who gave shelter and helped--these guardians of each other; and (as for) those who believed and did not fly, not yours is their guardianship until they fly; and if they seek aid from you in the manner of religion, aid is incumbent on you except against a people between whom and you there is a treaty, and Allah sees what you do.

However Jabotinsky arrived at them, his prophesies have come to pass. Recognizing the natural feeling of a people for their homeland combined with a religion that shows no quarter in war, a violent response to dispossession is to be expected.

Jabotinsky's phrase "... unfounded view of this race as a rabble ready to be bribed in order to sell out their homeland for a railroad network" captures the situation on the ground brilliantly. Arab homeland vs Jewish materialism. Jabotinsky understood Islam and humanity in ways that totally escaped his contemporaries who took pieces of what he wrote and canonized him while ignoring his prediction of the actual outcome and historic reasons for it.

There are many who say, if only the Palestinians had accepted the UN Partition plan, there would be peace and prosperity in Palestine today. That is certainly true. The problem is that such logic ignores human nature, especially when reinforced by Surah VIII of the Qur'an.

Only the more thoughtful Israelis acknowledge that a displacement of an indigenous population actually took place and that Jabotinsky accurately foretold the consequences. Few Americans see that reality as a problem even as they read a chain of evidence now over a half-century long. Zionist propaganda makes it hard to recognize this situation; it is easy to gloss over. It is doubly hard given that Christians and Jews share a common root in religion from the time of Abraham. The Muslims do, too, except that the scribes of Mohammed selected and rewrote only those passages that fit their own purposes, which overtly encourages war more so than the earlier religions. This feature alone makes it easy for opponents to paint Islam as a warrior religion and to shift all blame to them.

It may be true that certain heads of Islamic states accepted partition in Palestine. But our take is that Islam itself, in the body of the displaced Palestinians, never did.

Islam can only see the existence of Israel, and now our presence in Iraq, as an invasion, a situation their culture and Islam have only one antidote for--jihad. Surah VIII links religion with war in several places.

Our presence in Iraq is a touchy subject and will continue to be. We did not dispossess a people, we just vowed to install a democracy in the US model; see Bush Doctrine. Islam correctly sees this as an erosion of their influence in what they regard as their own deserved empire that is Islam, not to mention a setback in their drive to convert the world to Islam.

Do we as a society hold that it is lawful and right to displace an indigent people and then blame them for resisting as the Zionists did? By our too-strong support of Israel, we behave as if we do. For an example in the same vein and closer to home: In court a rapist claims his victim asked for it and more often than not goes free. Annapolis, West Point, and now the AF Academy have investigated or are investigating cases of rape of our nation's actual finest by our nation's "finest." We would like to believe it never happened, but it has, and it still does. Like it or not, rape, as a literal term or as a metaphor, is war. On the other side, the Qur'an explicitly justifies collecting concubines via war.

From the passages In Surah VIII, a cannon of the Qur'an could be rephrased "Never forget" In any event, Islam doesn't. Obviously Jabotinsky had read the Qur'an.

This is more than a government issue. It is a society issue in that our socialization processes lead us to want to believe in ourselves and our government, however blindly. We too often teach largely by rote, not by learning to think. While conservative Republicans had much to do with it, Democrats, our slavery heritage in parts of our law, and religious fundamentalists must share the blame. All were/are limited in their views, too narrow-minded to see, much less look for, underlying causes on issues such as war and peace.

Most of us are brainwashed from birth onwards, like "Onward Christian Soldiers" in song. We can hardly blame others for not understanding, misreading, or disregarding these words if not of history itself.

Our minds are too often closed to the historical evidence and/or its meaning. In effect, such people either are or were susceptible to becoming Authoritarians in personality. Many non-authoritarians who read it right find little motive to take action. Jabotinsky was not an authoritarian by the way, which may just be why he is as misinterpreted, glossed over, or forgotten as he is revered.

In the light of the foregoing, it is easy to see why Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist groups act as they do. We can call them names and fight them for all eternity, but until we really understand them, and they understand us, there is going to be an IRON WALL separating all the good stuff on each side from the other.

Of course all this would not have happened if the Palestinians had accepted the UN resolution in 1948. Since they didn't, we need to understand why they didn't or we will be there until the wells run dry. Only with understanding of the other side will peace come across the border.

What the Christian Serbs did to the Muslims was genocide pure and simple. That time we were on the right side; it was also Clinton's time, and not part of current administration memory. Actually it is, they are using well-worn methods to keep us in the dark while stoking our patriotism with photo-ops and belligerence--"You are for us or you are against us." If they can convert enough American voters into Authoritarians they will succeed in expanding war to include Iran before the next election and win it in a land slide. Accusing the Mullahs of having their own Manhattan Project and encouraging the populace of Iran to revolt are among the early salvos.

Along with this, there are signs that the US may be beginning to spin out of control. The combination of Plutocrats, Fundamentalists, the religious right, and Neoconservatives who believe in rule of, by and for the "elite" (meaning themselves of course) are a very poor mix. Each one will keep nibbling until the First Amendment disappears--unless the American voter wakes up in time.

A young Muslim woman college student from Bosnia, described how her "Christian" high school classmates turned on her during the Bosnian War, concluded, "it can happen here" she said. She knows human frailty firsthand. She knows the ignorance and helplessness of the people. She knows how and why politicians and the media collude (innocently or not) to seduce a populace into a lifetime of misguided views.

All this is happening in Islam, too.