Thoughts on Israel, idealism, and atrocities

The picture here is from Tunisia. A man is stepping on an Israeli flag. A young lady in Tunisia posted it on a Facebook page called PMWB “People who Want to Make the World Better.” Somebody recently made me an administrator on the page. I have no idea who it was or why they did.

The young lady said it was in solidarity with the Palestinians after an attack on a Palestinian home by suspected Jewish radicals resulted in a toddler burned to death.

(Note the co-authors MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH and TIA GOLDENBERG, Associated Press. Good for AP!)

I asked the lady, “So are you going to post a pic of stepping on a Palestinian flag the next time one of them blows up an Israeli school bus?”

She replied with a terse, “No,” and I set out to write this article.

Then after a few minutes she posted, “I was kidding, of course I will do it! It’s all about humanity,” and the article took another turn.

Kidding? I don’t think so. I think what happened was anger answered first, then reason gained the upper hand. And I give full credit to the lady for forcing reason to control passion.

What I did was to post two of my articles on the Itamar massacre in 2011 here and here.

We’ll see how folks there react. I have a certain jaundiced cynicism about people who proclaim they are out to “make the world a better place.” Bless them, if we didn’t have some of them around perhaps nothing would ever improve, but experience seems to show they generally see things in black and white with sharp outlines and little appreciation for moral ambiguity.

Heavy sigh. Every culture has certain blind spots that place limits on their thinking that can only be overcome with great courage and heroic effort. I believe a big blind spot in American culture is the notion that all problems have solutions and all situations can be improved. We believe this so implicitly that we never even consider whether it is true or not, we simply assume it is.

One consequence of this is our belief that everybody can share a world in peace with enough good will and sweet reason.

There is not a shred of evidence to support this.

This conflict is not going away anytime soon, and like it or not we’re going to be involved in it.

Some of my questions, observations and opinions are:

*I don’t buy a prior claim of European Jews to the land of their ancestors. As I said in Reflections on Itamar, “By those lights all of us of Goidelic Celtic descent could demand the right to settle in Spain, the jumping off point for the colonization of Ireland and Scotland. Hell, we could make a case for the reconquista of most of Western Europe.”

*Nevertheless Palestinians resident in Israel are freer, richer, and materially better off than those living under the thugocracy of the Palestinian Authority, or citizens of any majority-Muslim country. This appears to matter to them not at all.

*Yes, there are atrocities committed by Israelis against Palestinians. All such cases are illegal and condemned by the majority of Jewish Israelis. The perpetrators are prosecuted when caught.
Atrocities against innocents committed by Palestinians have the covert support of the PA and are celebrated by Palestinians in the street like a carnival. The perpetrators are feted like heroes.

*Yes, when the conflict breaks out in violence Palestinian casualties exceed Israeli casualties.
The Palestinians boast they can take a casualty ratio of 15 to 1 and still win.
An Israeli girl once remarked that their Palestinian neighbors shoot from their neighborhood through the picture windows of their Jewish neighbors. “So excuse us for our superior fire power.”

*Israel is our ally, the only sincere one we have in the region. Our other Middle Eastern allies are fence-sitters who at times support terrorists at war with us. Israel’s motivation may be self-interest, but it’s pure self-interest. They stand or fall with the U.S.

*Israel is our civilizational kin, they share the heritage that binds Western Civilization. Indeed, the twin roots of Western Civilization are in ancient Greece and Israel. What will be the fate of our civilization if we abandon our kin?

*One way to illustrate the stark difference between Western and Islamic civilization: The Israeli High Court released accused war criminal John Demjanjuk because the evidence that he was one particular concentration camp guard did not rise to the bar of proof demanded by law. Compare this with the custom of “honor killings,” the strong social pressure on the family of a woman who is raped, or just gets uppity, to murder her.
Does anyone think in the long run we can share a world in peace with people who hold these values? Can we even ignore them indefinitely?

*Does anyone seriously doubt the contention that if the Arab states and resident Palestinians stopped attacking Israel there would be peace, but if Israel laid down their arms there would be about 6 million fewer Jews in short order? Is you deny this, why do you think so?

*Has anyone noticed the schizophrenic nature of the anti-Israel rantings from places like Iran? They deny the Holocaust, then boast they’ll do it right next time. They decry the plight of the Palestinians under Israeli rule, then boast how they’ll annihilate Israel with nuclear fire in due time. Do they think Palestinians are immune to nukes?

*Does anyone doubt the problems of the Palestinians in Israel are largely self-inflicted? If not, why?

*Where does your self-interest lie in this?
Where is a cure for cancer more likely to come from, six million Jewish Israels or 600 million Arabs? How about a cheap renewable energy source? New agro-tech to feed the world? Great literature?

*If the situation of the Israelis looks long-term untenable, should we invite them all to evacuate the country and move to America?

“I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the Holocaust will be upon us.” – Eric Hoffer, 1968