A Plea To Mormons: Walk A Mile In Palestinian Shoes

This is one of the most inherently disgusting and non-thought provoking posts I’ve ever read…anywhere. You briefly asked your readers to “suspend their judgement,” when what you’re really asking them to do is suspend their ability to filter fact from fiction. Perhaps Non-Arab Arab is just a pen name for the modern equivalent of Leni Riefenstahl here at Mormon Matters?

Mike — Non-Arab Arab — BIV,

I too was given significant insight into the Palestinian’s plight when I was at BYU. The assigned reading was Elias Chacour’s “Blood Brothers.” I suppose that the BYU professor thought that it would be easier for us to walk in another person’s shoes if it was a Palestinian Christian, rather than a Palestinian Muslim, but it was extremely effective in illustrating exactly the bias, prejudice and ignorance (might I say non-Christian) response seen in some Mormons/Americans/Christians such as Mike in addressing the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

The religious issue on Palestine is what is the proper moral and religious response to the exercise of military force to grab land. Terrorism is apparently bad only if you are essentially powerless and defenseless and have to resort to criminal acts to commit your terror. If you have bombers, Humvees, tanks and fighter planes, it isn’t terror even though the target of those bombs and bullets feels abject terror.

To equate the Palestinians with the Nazis as Mike does, shows a lack of knowledge of history and how and why the Jewish state was created after World War II. American military might was behind the State of Israel from the very beginning. Americans are culpable for the suffering of the Palestinians. As much as the Mormons like to equate themselves with the Jews, we aren’t. If you want to argue for the fullness of God’s words to his people, then the Palestinians belong in their homeland as much as the Jews and deserve the same treatment. That isn’t Nazi-ism as Mike suggests, but Mormonism. And for a Jewish point of view on Palestine that is the more compatible with Mormon theology, I’d suggest Chomsky.

I find it ironic that Mormonism with its ideas from the Book of Mormon that the Native American population was here first, another example of God providing a chosen land to his people, co-opts American values that allowed for the genocide and reservation-ization of Nephi’s descendants. (All those Indian Exchange Students didn’t quite fix the problem.)

To maintain its relevancy, a religion needs to combat violence in all its forms — state and non-state sponsored violence. You need to be able to walk in the other person’s shoes without shooting them first. I’m not much of a praying man, but I pray for the day when a revelation comes down from on-high that we need to stop killing each other. I remember vaguely one about MX missles, but it was so long ago . . .

Funny.

Mormons probably have better relations with the Muslim world than just about any other Christian denomination in America.

Speaking of which, if anyone wants to follow the blogging of one of the younger Palestinians who studied at BYU, check out Hani al-Madhoun. He blogs as “Hanitizer” at Kabobfest (his posts can be found at http://www.kabobfest.com/author/Hanitizer ) and under his own name from time to time at the Huffington Post (his posts at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hani-almadhoun ). He’s from Gaza, in his mid- or late-20s I think. He currently works in the US and does stand up comedy as well. The guy’s a real riot if you meet him in person. He’s not a member of the church by any means, but is well acquainted with LDS and BYU culture from his time there and has many Mormon friends. Last year he went back to visit family in Gaza and got stuck there for several months, but blogged about it right the way through. He’s also set up a YouTube page he calls “The Gaza Experience” where he posts videos showing ordinary life in Gaza, that can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/TheGazaExperience

Thank you for this post and the list for further reading.

Many Christians support Israel unconditionally because they equate the founding of Israel with the biblical promise of the the Jews returninig to their homeland in the last days. In the Book of Mormon, the prediction of the Jews returning to their homeland includes the caveat, “when . . . they shall believe in me[Christ].” Since that hasn’t happened, the creation of the state of Israel was more likely of political rather than divine influence.

I don’t think anyone doubts that there is great and generally undeserved suffering on the Palestinian side. Many of these things are artifacts of history that can be traced to the decisions of people long since dead.

One of the apparent problems is that the majority of the Palestinian populace does not want final status negotiations under any terms other than complete victory, and essentially support a low grade war conducted by not particularly honorable means until that victory is achieved.

Unfortunately, blowing up bombs in buses and supermarkets is not the sort of thing that engenders sympathy with Israelis or with those in most other countries. If the cause is just enough and the damages significant enough to justify a war, then have a war. Invite all your friends and allies to take your side. But killing random civilians is not exactly the most effective way to overthrow a long since sovereign state, let alone persuade them to make some sort of voluntary settlement or compromise in your favor.

I really appreciated this post and thanks for this wonderful offering. I learned about the Palestinian people when my spouse and I lived among them for about 6 months. They were very warm and wonderful. They invited us to dinner with their families and shared their deepest convictions and dreams with us. The inherent unfairness of the new walls all around Jerusalem are incredibly unjust and a denial of basic freedoms. The new settlements on the west bank and and in non-Israeli controlled parts around Jerusalem displace Palestinian families that have lived on the land for centuries. Palestinian families are regularly displaced from their homes by the Israeli government without any compensation.

Mark, in my experience you are just tilting at wind mills. But how would you know when what we see in America is largely propaganda? The Palestinian populace does want final peace and negotiations — they just don’t want to be imprisoned on their own lands without access to airports and basic services. They are not violent. For the record, I felt much safer in the Palestinian areas of Jerusalem and Bethlehem than on the streets of the eastern US.

However, even if Mark’s description were anywhere near accurate (miraculously it isn’t), who would blame them? The Patriots who started the American revolution had less cause than the Palestinians whose lands are stolen and they are imprisoned in their villages and not allowed to leave or travel or even shop. Their homes are regularly simply “occupied” by the Israeli military without warning or warrant or due process. While we were having dinner with a Palestinian family, the Israeli military came and demanded to be allowed to occupy their house in an area of Bethlehem that was not under Israeli control. They began to move in about 25 soldiers and steal food without asking from the kitchen. When they discovered that there were American guests with the family everything changed. When my family demanded that they leave they made a call to whoever was in charge and vacated the house as fast as they could go. No reason to risk losing billions in American military support.

I went to Jerusalem about as pro-Israeli as one could be. I left about as sympathetic with the Palestinians as you see me now.

NAA:

The worth of ALL persons is a much better place to start discussion than your self-described full combat mode in BIV’s post.

Valuing the worth of all persons is seeing the humanity of Palestinians, AND Israelis, AND Arabs and realizing that there are self-destructive or self-constructive paths to dealing with pain.

I said previously that millions of Jews could be an asset to Palestine. Millions of Palestinians could be an asset to Lebanon, to Egypt, and to Jordon. Yet it seems to be a cultural trait of the region that life is seen as a zero sum game.

Lebanon does not want the Palestinians. It denies them any path to citizenship, and it restricts their rights even to practice professions that might help to lift the people out of poverty or leave the camps. Lebanon is already so divided into its zero-sum factions with their “confessional” offices and intrigue with Syrian expansionism that they had no desire to make room for Palestinians and have no concern for Palestinian suffering. The Palestinians have only brought them greater war.

Jordon, largely Palestinian itself, gradually disassociated itself with the West Bank after it had to fight the “Black September” battles against the PLO (now PA) when the PLO began setting up a state-within-a-state in 1970.

And the siege of Gaza is imposed by BOTH Egypt and Israel. Egypt would not even open a humanitarian corridor during Operation Cast Lead to allow civilians to flee the battlefield. Palestinian rockets were targeting Israel, not Egypt, so what did Egypt fear? Perhaps the same as Jordon and Lebanon?

The elites of the Arab states (and Iran/Persia) have been “coveting” ever larger pieces of power within the sick and then dying Ottoman Empire for centuries before the Europeans became players. And that coveting was leaving real human victims for all of those centuries. The shattering of empire always does that, and BIV’s previous post lists exactly how many empires have washed over the Middle East over the millenia.

Can you see that the way forward is to envision the possibility of a game in which it isn’t zero-sum? That the Jews have to have their security concerns acknowledged in any settlement as well as compensation given for the loss of Palestinian territory?

There is no going back to the settlement the UN offered BEFORE the 1948 war, or even the cease-fire line after that war. Although a couple of generations of nationalist Arab, Pan-Arab, and Islamic movements have held out the claim of restoring the lost glory of the past, they have brought only misery to their people. To continue that path in the hope of alleviating that pain will bring only more pain to people who weren’t even born in 1948.

New pain to fester new wars in new generations. That is NOT the way to honor the worth of all persons.

Ok, Firetag, please, not helpful. If you’d like to talk about the sources I listed or other similar ones, if you’d like to talk about personal experience visiting Palestinians, if you’d like to talk about ways to have some empathy, please go right ahead. If you want to have this duke-out, take it back to the other post, it fits there, not here.

Firetag, as I made clear at the beginning, we all know that the natural empathy we all grow up with as Mormons (and as Americans for those of us who are Americans) is with Israelis and Zionists. It surrounds us, it’s everywhere. In Sunday School lessons, in newspapers, in movies, in books, it’s ubiquitous. We all know how easy it is to have that empathy, I would dare say there’s not a person here who either doesn’t have that or at some point has had that empathy for one side. But that’s it, it usually stops there, and there’s usually not only lack of empathy for the Palestinians, there’s usually outright hostility towards them. A seemingly eternal itch that demands that people who’ve never met the Palestinians have an irrepressible need to lecture them. If you want to do that, you have a thousand and one places to do that, feel free to utilize any or all of them. I’ve asked with this post for one little place in the Bloggernacle to suspend that itch for a brief period and focus on the other side as human beings to be listened to instead of lectured at.

As a people, by the way, I am sympathetic for the situation the Palestinians find themselves in. People suffer, and it is not their fault. The chances of return of (or even reparations for) the land, homes, and assets private citizens lost sixty years ago seem to be slim at best. As with many wars, that is nothing other than a tragedy.

BiV: “respectively and cogently” apparently means whatever you want it to mean. When both my intelligence and my background/heritage (dual US/Israel national) is insulted, as a Jewish investigator and future convert to the Church is insulted, I will respond in a manner I consider appropriate. In this case I believe the post in question was dreck, and was treated as such. Perhaps if Non-Arab Arab realizes that there is little chance the readers of his/her dreck will change their minds is because they have a more highly attuned filter for propaganda versus truth than he expects.

I take great umbrage in the comments of Ulysseus and Brian Johnson that I either tried to “equate the Pali’s with Nazi’s, as Mike does,” or that I “come out swinging the Nazi label around like a club.” All that, from a brief reference to Leni Riefenstahl? Are you not aware that Riefenstahl’s glorification of the Nazi regime was similar in nature to what the Marxist-Leninist and avowed terrorist Ghassan Kanafani did in his writings? Furthermore, are you not aware that during the period of WW2, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met regularly with Hitler and the Nazi leadership and was provided safe haven by same, helping provide them with ideas for the “final solution.” That’s not fiction, or historical revisionism akin to what Non-Arab Arab is providing, that’s historical fact. Brian Johnson was correct in at least one point though, one branch of Chassidic Orthodox Judaism rejects the modern state of Israel. They’re known as the Neturei Karta, and are at best a fringe group both in Israel and the United States.

It’s interesting and telling that throughout most of the responses Non-Arab Arab provides, when someone attempts to highlight or even briefly mention Pali violence and terrorism that the response always seems to be that he/she would “really like to avoid the discussion here about the broader issues.” Excuse me. Terrorism and murder is hardly one of the “broader issues.” To dismiss this most basic right of any people out of hand, or to posit that one people are inherently more deserving of life than the other borders on…the word that dare not speak it’s name…unless handed out at the business end of a club no doubt!

No where in the previous discussion did I read that there simply was no such thing as a “Palestinian” people before those pesky Jews suddenly were interested in the land. Why was it that the so-called Palestinians only discovered their apparent national identity following the 1967 war? Palestine has never existed as an autonomous entity. It was ruled alternately by Rome, by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire and, briefly, by the British after World War I. The British agreed to restore at least part of the land to the Jewish people as their homeland.

There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. No Palestinian historical narrative, money or coin, legislative body or parliament. There has never been a historical Palestinian capitol—Jerusalem as capitol is a modern invention. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc. Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of 1 percent of the landmass.

Mark D writes that the Pali “suffering is not their fault” and that the chances for return or reparations for their land, homes and assets are slim at best….” More dreck, though not even comparable with that of Locke, whose ignorant assertion that Pali terrorists had more reason to resist who they view as the aggressor than did the patriots during the American Revolution! The Jews did not displace anyone, because no one permanently resided there. It was a land inhabited by nomadic, Bedouin tribes. The whole region was nothing but deserts and swamps. Only about 120,000 Arabs resided in an area that covered the territories, the state of Israel and Jordan. When Mark Twain visited the area, he wrote he found nothing but a wasteland. When the Israeli’s vacated the lush area of Gusf Katif and environs in yet another failed effort at American-mandated “peace at any cost” the Pali’s were left with a productive agricultural area and miles and miles and greenhouses. They reduced their newly acquired farmland to fallow and their greenhouses to rubble, but did in fact use their land to launch further attacks against the IDF.

During the 19 years that the territories, including Jerusalem and Gaza, were occupied by the kingdoms of Jordan and Egypt, (refer to http://masada2000.org/historical.html) no one talked about a Palestinian state, not the Arab countries, not the United Nations. Nobody asked Jordan or Egypt to abdicate their ownership and give it to the Palestinians. Not even the Palestinians themselves said anything about a Palestinian state or a Palestinian people, because nobody heard of a Palestinian people. It never existed. Most Arabs living in Palestine today are not indigenous to the region. It was not until after the Jews had changed deserts and swamps into a productive and thriving land that the Arabs started migrating there. Sound familiar, analogous with the migration patterns of people from the Americas to the American southwest or south?

The late Faisal Husseini, Arafat’s Jerusalem representative, a man who was cultured, sophisticated and considered the most moderate of all the Palestinians, shortly before his death on May 31, 2001, expressed his true feelings in an interview with the popular Egyptian newspaper el Arav. Husseini said: “We must distinguish the strategies and long-term goals from the political-phased goals which we are compelled to accept due to international pressures.” But the “ultimate goal is the liberation of all of historical Palestine.” Explicitly he said: “Oslo has to be viewed as a Trojan Horse.”
He even added and clarified that it is the obligation of all the Palestinian forces and factions to see the Oslo Accords as “temporary” steps, as “gradual” goals, because in this way, “We are setting an ambush for the Israelis and cheating them.” He also differentiated between “strategic,” long-term, “higher” goals, and “political” short-term goals dependent on “the current international establishment, balance of power” etc.

Simply put, you cannot negotiate with a people who wish your destruction, and who are willing to use their own children and pawns and martyrs for their sick cause. The Pali’s rejected the best deal for peace they would and should have ever received about a decade ago. They suffer at the hands of their own people who would rather use the vast amount of international aid not to their benefit, but to hasten their own destruction.

In short, BiV, though I recognize that that is an impossible endeavor given the length of this reply, the only thing that will hasten peace between the Israeli and Pali people, IMHO, is for the Pali’s to adopt a culture of life, to recognize that their children are not pawns or propaganda sponges meant to soak up the hatred of prior generations, and to recognize the right of Israel to exist. Unless and until that happens, all we’re left with is the effluvium that promotes people like Ghassan Kanafani, Walid Khalidi, Yassar Arafat and his successors as something they’re not.

So… maybe I missed something, but it sounds like you’re saying you walked a mile in a “palestinians shoes” from somewhere in Provo, Utah?

Sigh…and Zionist trolls completely ignore the point of the post and the requests to stay on topic, and toss in the wild erroneous Nazi and anti-Semite slurs to boot. Predictable, but sad nonetheless. Guys if you really can’t control yourselves, please at least take your anti-Palestinian vitriol elsewhere so that an honest discussion of how Palestinians see the world and how Mormons can make an effort to understand instead of your canned condemning can happen here.

To the person who asked where I had my learning experiences, no not just or mainly Provo. Palestine (living, studying, and working) and numerous locales throughout the Palestinian diaspora including Egypt, the Gulf, other countries in the Levant, and many countries in the west. Over the course of 2 decades. I assure you, I do not lack for past or ongoing personal, academic, or professional experience.

Mike, I just want to point out that there are a lot of Mormons who have Israels back and think that people who think like Non-Arab Arab are nothing more than a propagandist tool for a corrupt society of murderers and Nazi sympathizers. Although I respect the LDS Leadership for its trying to relate to Muslims (and Palestinians), it still doesn’t cover the crimes committed by these terrorists on a daily basis.

What is obvious is that both sides of the conflict need the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Arthur H;

I didn’t want your comment to get lost in all the back and forth. The Arab Peace Initiative is not taken seriously by anyone because it is part of a larger political dynamic of competition between the Saudi/Egyptian (Sunni) and Iranian (Shia) and Syrian axes for primary control over political Islam. One need not question the sincerity of the Saudis to know that they can not deliver anything from Iran or ITS clients.

BiV: Your point is cogent in 29. The notion of a “one-state” solution living in peaceful civil utopia being peddled by NAA is not remotely in the cards. Such a state can only come into being for the forseeable future through overwhelming military force, restoring the previous occupation or replacing it with a new one. The identity of “oppressor” and “oppressed” will be argued and may even switch sides, but it doesn’t really matter whether Coriantumr kills Shiz or Shiz kills Coriantumr: the PEOPLE on both sides are threatened by the fighting.

But the belief by people like NAA that Israel is about to be swept away is a delusion that is only helping to hurtle the region toward an exploasion.

Palestine is a useful symbol, as I noted to Arthur above, but the “broader issues” are far more akin to an Islamic replay of the political and military conflicts that marked the European Reformation than to a mere dispute over who owns Palestine. The bombing of the bakery in India yesterday wasn’t about Palestine; it was about preventing negotiations resuming between Pakistan and India because the extremists want Pakistani military forces tied down on the Indian border rather than moving against the Taliban strrongholds. And the anti-missle defenses going into the Gulf states aren’t about Palestine either.

At the moment, it is unclear whether the Palestinians could live in a single state with each other, let alone with Israel. Despite all its bluster, Hamas has actually managed to kill more fighters of the Palestinian Authority since the Palestinian elections than it has killed Israelis. There is no Mandela on the horizon among the Palestinians, so, I suspect NAA’s utopian civil society would devolve rather quickly into the post World War I violent Palestine, if not the 1994 Rwanda. It isn’t even certain that the Israeli’s could order Israeli settlers out of West Bank settlements (as they did in Gaza) and count on all Orthodox soldiers to obey orders — the threat to Army discipline is openly discussed among the Israeli officer corps.

As a final comment on your comment, BIV, I will suggest that there is even something more fundamental than being willing to discuss the issues calmly. One has to believe that BOTH sides SIMULTANEOUSLY have something legitimate to discuss before the discussion can begin.

NAA: I tried to warn you above about zero-sum thinking. You have been remarkably consistent both as a teenager and as an older adult in being sure that YOUR side — whichever side it happened to be at that point in your life — was 100% right and those on the other side were 100% wrong. Extremism, on either side, is the threat to both peace and justice. I suggest you turn your attention to something that may preserve the most fundamental values of BOTH sides, which is to oppose extremism on both sides. It is only a CENTER that can control either extreme that can ever lead to Palestinian and Israeli living in the same society, and the fuse on the explosion IS burning already.

What is missing from NAA’s Anti-Zionist, Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitic diatribe is the discussion of how the Arabs, created, and sustain this issue, when with their boatloads of money and control of most of the region could have solved the problem many years ago and gave these people a homeland more in line with their actual origins and not try to extract a pound of flesh out of Israel.

I’ve said it before, Israel as not always acted appropriately and those so-called Palestinians have suffered a great deal at the hands of the Israelis, the Arabs and the corrupt Palestine Leaders.

No mention of any of that. Just a rip in Israel.

Firetag, I’ve stood back and watched a lot of your comments based on your deep knowledge of somebody else translating stuff and “military journals”. Which probably means MEMRI and Debka, two of the most notoriously unreliable sources on the Middle East there are, both run by ex-Zionist spooks, and rather goofy tabloidish ones at that. Or maybe you read more serious “military journals”, even there the entire genre even on a more academic basis is plagued by the worst, untrained orientalists in generations with only a few exceptions. Exceptions you clearly don’t read. And on translation I doubt you even get the quality of FBIS based on what you are writing here. I work with reams of analysts in many fields, and frankly if I were your boss, you’d be canned as an analyst, you show no ability to do anything more than regurgitate journalists’ platitudes. Let us at least one time take down your silliness on these points.

“The notion of a “one-state” solution living in peaceful civil utopia being peddled by NAA is not remotely in the cards. Such a state can only come into being for the forseeable future through overwhelming military force”

Actually, military force is the one thing which cannot bring it into being. The only state that has such military force is Israel and it has clearly shown that even though it controls the territory militarily, it has no desire to grant even the people it rules their basic rights. Syria is a military joke and even when Israel struck their non-nuclear facility near the Iraqi border (FYI, that’s near the major Syrian oil fields where they take nuclear readings on a regular basis for well monitoring purposes and nothing registered before or after the strikes, it was a bunch of Israeli and WINEP types pushing the Israeli claims, the gutless Syrians likely just lost some relatively meaningless piece of military or civilian architecture but had no interest in highlighting how militarily weak they are so they just shut up and let it slide). The Jordanians and Egyptians are entirely out of the military picture preferring their American bribes of guns and money to keep their respective dictatorships in power. The Lebanese army is only able to make tea and Hummus and as a legacy of the Lebanese civil war among other factors will never do more. Hizbullah has a meaningful guerilla and missile capability as they showed when they handed the Israeli army their butts on a platter in 2006 – yes Israel showed they had the ability to target civilians deliberately en masse (flattening entire densely packed neighborhoods and slaughtering hundreds of civilians), but militarily Hizbullah finally broke the mystique of Israeli invincibility. Nonetheless, that is a guerilla not a conventional capability they have. They can resist, they can be a strategic headache, but they cannot conquer territory. And Hizbullah is keenly aware of what they are and are not. The Iraqis have played a role in resisting Zionists in the past, but now that the Americans have razed Iraqi society from the ground up and instituted an explicit sectarian system that ensures permanent Iraqi civil war for the foreseeable future (yes, the civil war is ongoing there), they don’t have any role in the Palestinian arena. No one in the Arab world expects a military solution and Israel refuses (Olmert’s “nightmare”) to grant civil rights to the Palestinians. That my friend is called a “stuck” situation. And when things get stuck, the ground shifts beneath everyone’s feet. Options that were never considered begin to be considered. The one-state solution has not been considered seriously for some time, but now it is gaining currency in key quarters. It is still small, but the only viable solution and growing in popularity. Your derision of it as some sort of utopia, shows just how disconnected reading your “military journals” you are from social, political, and economic reality. Understanding military matters (which frankly you don’t) is never enough to understand the broader strategic picture. There are I might add, no other options being considered. The two-state non-solution is now a laughingstock. The settlers continue to not only multiply like weeds with US guns and money behind them (including General Dayton’s new torturers and Quislings aiding the Zionists), but the PA knows its a joke and just keeps up the facade so the Fathawis can keep their mansions and paychecks. One trip through the ground of the West Bank and its abundantly clear just how much the likes of Sharon succeeded in transforming the landscape irrevocably. In that sense, the Jabotinskys of the world “won”. What they don’t realize is what a Pyrrhic victory it is going to prove. In fact, ironically the only people who take the two-state non-solution seriously any more are Hamas. They are acting like Arafat in the 80s, licking the boots of any westerner who will give them the time of day to bend over backwards and tell them how they now accept the two-state solution. Their reason is much the same as the Fatah reason for continuing the farce: Hamas has power now in one place and is trying to hold onto it at any cost. As a Palestinian friend I was talking to last night said in regards to them, it’s the old saying “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. But in any case, Hamas is late to the party and not in a terribly good long-term strategic position. They lack the strategic brainpower of a Hasan Nasrallah.

“But the belief by people like NAA that Israel is about to be swept away is a delusion that is only helping to hurtle the region toward an exploasion.”

Once again you show how your reading of “military journals” causes you to misread not just the strategic picture but others’ analysis. Israel is not going to be swept away, and certainly not in the military explosion you suggest is coming (though I don’t doubt there are going to be further 2006 and 2009-type military clashes, but far from any sort of massive regional war that will settle these issues, there is no military “solution” for anyone unless Israel pulls a Hutu Power-genocide or Serb-style/Israel-48-style ethnic cleansing attempt). Israel will however collapse/transform (pick your preferred word, the semantics don’t really bother me) as South Africa did. You may recall that the South African military had complete military dominance as well over the ANC, in fact far greater even than Israel has. And yet practically overnight it was gone.

“Palestine is a useful symbol, as I noted to Arthur above, but the “broader issues” are far more akin to an Islamic replay of the political and military conflicts that marked the European Reformation than to a mere dispute over who owns Palestine. The bombing of the bakery in India yesterday wasn’t about Palestine; it was about preventing negotiations resuming between Pakistan and India because the extremists want Pakistani military forces tied down on the Indian border rather than moving against the Taliban strrongholds. And the anti-missle defenses going into the Gulf states aren’t about Palestine either.”

I would tend to just shout “como?” to this babble where you jump from Palestine to Pakistan to the Gulf at complete random. But knowing something about your “military journals” I know the blather you are thinking about. In fact, you put it right there with your ridiculous chatter about “Islamic replay” of the “European Reformation”. You are incapable of understanding the unique circumstances of each of these places, and even more incapable of understanding the messy local dynamics in each of them, so you like so many neocons like to create a really silly, really over-simplified grand theory that slaps a template from the history you read in high school onto a broad region that you don’t understand but that you easily put under one “Islamic” umbrella. I know, I know, they all look alike, how are you supposed to tell an Ahmet from an Ahmad from an Ahmadinejad anyways right? But here’s some hints: Drop the broad Euro-themes, start looking at local drivers, but don’t neglect trans-national links.

Let’s look at your Gulf (no-direct-connection-to-Palestine-but-you-think-all-Muslims-fall-under-one-analytical-oversimplified-basket-so-you-tossed-them-right-in) example. The missiles are going up in the Gulf because the US has decided its imperial interests lie in blocking Iran from gaining a strategic deterrence vis-a-vis Israel, the US, Russia, and possibly Pakistan and India. Iran like any state of course has no desire to commit suicide and would never use nukes, but the shift in strategic balance should they acquire them would constrain US and Israeli decision-making, so the US has decided it is intolerable whether the Obama or Bush administration is in charge (indeed, most of the same brainless advisors just shift from admin to admin, many housed at clueless but powerful shops like WINEP, Dennis Ross being the quintessential “Teflon a**hole” as an old State Department buddy of mine put it). The US considers the Gulf its exclusive playground and doesn’t like Iranian noise when Iran isn’t a US puppet, so it is ratcheting up the noise against Iran. Inside Iran the regime is increasingly IRGC dominated with the military steadily taking over larger and larger chunks of the economy and tolerating less and less political dissent. This is a powerplay that is playing out entirely within the dominant conservative camp, essentially splitting conservatives against each other. Playing hawkish versus the outside world, especially when US global dominance is (correctly) seen as past its peak, makes sense for this military-conservative wing as most Iranians agree on Iran’s right to obtain nuclear “technology” however that is defined and resent the fact that the US was fine giving that technology to the Shah but then denies them that right now. So Iran is hawkish, the US is hawkish, and then right across the Gulf you have the US-petro-kingdoms. Saudi Arabia chief among them of course, but all the little guys too. These are regimes that depend entirely for their survival on US soldiers as mercenaries and petrodollars to pay for them. As US vassals, these regimes will of course at the end of the day play any game the US orders them too if it is of sufficient strategic weight for the US, but within that broad direction there is a lot of wiggle room and a lot of local interests and power plays. The Saudis in this case see it fully in their interest to play along with the US’ hawkishness. Iraq is of course one reason. The Saudis have maintained their influence there by feeding their militias, mafia-politicians and sectarian torturers in the service of the US (there would have been no “awakenings” without Saudi cash), and especially with US troop drawdowns they have a heavy interest in trying to cage in the various Shi’a sectarian militias and mafia-politicians that the Iranians have spread their bets amongst. Part of this in the fairly recent past was playing up the sectarian angle with US, Jordanian, and Egyptian collusion (i.e., deliberately stoking anti-Shi’a sectarianism throughout the region and trying to equate with anti-Shi’a feelings any resistance force that reflected popular will as opposed to bought-off shills), helping to further keep the various US-supported torturing regimes in power by playing up ethnic hatreds across the region. The Saudis want to keep this going and want to portray any popular movement against unpopular regimes as being an Iranian cats’ paw. So they stoke that up, and part of the game of course is to try and check Iran’s more direct potential for striking back at US strategic targets in the Gulf if the US or Israel were to strike Iran first (Iran won’t strike first), so the Saudis give permission to their neighbors (there are always spats, but generally speaking Saudi cash and dominance is hefty enough that you don’t go against Saudi wishes…except for Qatar whose royals play a fairly shrewd game of their own thanks to their own US army mercenary contingent) to let the missiles get spread around. There’s actually many more layers to this game, but that’s an ok starter.

“At the moment, it is unclear whether the Palestinians could live in a single state with each other, let alone with Israel.”

Ah that mother of oversimplifications game you love to play. Now let’s see, why would it be that the Palestinians are divided amongst themselves? There are of course plenty of reasons internal and external to Palestinian society, but as with the divisions in any colonized society, the inability to settle them rests almost entirely on the occupiers fun little games. Heck, even Israelis have experience with this, their terrorist gangs often fought each other pre-1948, and only with the pullout of the British and the final ethnic cleansing of most of the Palestinian civilians from the 48 borders did the chief Israeli terrorist (Ben Gurion) manage to bring the rest of the terrorists by force under his wing. But I digress. With the Palestinians, we can look to Israel’s micro or macro games (indeed, they’re intertwined, Israel’s micro machinations are a big help in implementing their macro schemes) for key drivers. Palestinian society is of course riddled with Israeli informers top to bottom. Kidnappings of Palestinians, rampant torture, economic strangulation, threats (often carried out) against family members, sexual blackmail, bribes, healthcare blackmail (it is common Israeli practice to refuse Palestinians needed medical care if they refuse to become informers), threats to ‘expose’ people as collaborators (sometimes when they actually are, sometimes when they’re not), deportation threats and actual actions, murder, and many other dirty immoral techniques have been standard operating procedure in the Zionist bag of tricks for the better part of a century now. This of course gives them an incredibly strong ability to throw wrenches into the works of local Palestinian politics at will. Then there’s the broader control issues (some of which tie directly into the micro techniques listed). For example, after the US and Israel failed to respect the result of Palestinians fair democratic elections, the Israelis simply went and kidnapped the leading Hamas members of parliament. Then to “help” Fatah (and with Fatah’s gleeful traitorous collusion), they and the Americans helped the Dahlanists in Gaza try their coup against the legitimate Hamas government. When that failed, the Israelis decided it was time to (in the chilling words of Israeli government officials themselves) put 1.5 million civilians “on a diet” and put the Gazans under an illegal siege. Then when that failed to dislodge Hamas and re-install the Ramallah Quislings in Gaza, the Israelis decided to provoke an end to the Gaza missile ceasefire and create a pretext (as with every Israeli war) for the 2009 war. Which once again failed to dislodge Hamas. But of course, none of this is a terrible scenario for the Israelis anyways. Yes, having a Vichy Palestinian government in power in Ramallah and Gaza completely doing the occupiers bidding is ideal, but the generals actually rather like the current status quo as well with two Palestinian governments at each others throat and each just trying to stay in power, which is why the Israelis allow enough material to flow to Gaza to keep the Hamas guys in power, especially with the Hamas guys hungry to stay in power at any cost and willing to more or less keep the missiles stopped for now. Palestinians stay divided, and Israelis happy. Of course, that’s just the latest antics, we could also look to the very establishment of Hamas, aided by the Israelis in the late 80s in order to try and weaken the PLO who were starting to sound dangerously reasonable to them, so better to keep doing what they could to divide Palestinians. Anyhow, just a few examples.

“There is no Mandela on the horizon among the Palestinians, so, I suspect NAA’s utopian civil society would devolve rather quickly into the post World War I violent Palestine”

Actually, there are many Palestinian Mandelas. The grassroots movements against the wall in Bilin and Nilin are two prominent examples. Peaceful protest, organized at the local level. Which of course the Israelis are meeting with murders and midnight arrests like any police state. And it’s not just those towns, Palestinian civil society is stepping up once again as it always has in the absence of real leadership (the Ramallah clique are just corrupt guys in Israel’s pocket) and are implementing local Israeli goods boycotts inasmuch as possible in public campaigns such that even Quislings like Fayyad are having to pay it lip service. Internationally the al-Awda coalitions are growing stronger despite the PLO’s attempts to silence them. The real problem of course is a lack of any Israeli Mandelas or even De Gaulles. Israel has nothing but war-mongering generals and openly racist ministers. But that’s a problem that will be overcome.

Oh, and I love how you toss “utopian” around so loosely, almost like you think it means something. I am talking about the only practical solution on the table, but frankly you can’t wrap your head around it despite its successful implementation in the Jim Crow south, in Apartheid South Africa and — drum roll please — post-genocide Rwanda. Now, I know you don’t actually know anything about Rwanda other than the fact that a genocide happened there. Maybe you saw “Hotel Rwanda” at best. But do you actually know anything about the dynamics that not only created but that occurred after the genocide? It actually bears some striking similarities here (differences galore to be sure too, but let’s focus on the useful similarities). You see, as in Palestine, you had a racist ideology (Hutu Power) that steadily dehumanized the other side. With foreign encouragement (French in Rwanda, American in Palestine), that racist ideology grew stronger and stronger. The racists were armed more heavily, and became less and less afraid to act on it because they knew they had local power and assured foreign backing. It got uglier and uglier, until the racists finally went berserk and the genocide occurred. The danger of course is that be it a genocide or another 1948-style ethnic cleansing (as the racist Israeli historian Benny Morris now advocates), the Israelis knowing that like the Hutu Power advocates they have military dominance and assured foreign backing may well “go for it” and see another “opportunity” as Ben Gurion thought of the chance to rape, pillage, and ethnically cleanse (and yes, the Israeli forces in 1948 did all 3 with glee, gusto, and frequency). But here’s the thing, do you know what happened after the genocide? The RPF and Paul Kagame, do you know what their ideology is? The opposite of Hutu Power and the opposite of Zionism: non-sectarian civil rule. People point to the RPF being a mostly Tutsi organization, but from the beginning the RPF’s ruling principle was that they would be non-sectarian. Their ranks included many non-Hutu Power Hutus, they insisted on the repatriation of the Hutu refugees post genocide to heal society, and (mark it well) the return of the non-Hutu Power large Rwandan diaspora that the Hutu Power adovcated had created over decades of pogroms and massacres (quite similar to the Palestinian diaspora created over decades of pogroms and massacres). For all of Paul Kagame’s many faults (and he has many), he and the RPF have helped rebuild Rwandan society on a non-sectarian basis. The old racial wounds and lines (to say nothing of returnee-genocide survivor-genocide perpetrator-post genocide generation divides) don’t disappear overnight, but Rwandan society functions and is considered to have some of the better institutional and rule of law foundations in East Africa (none of which excuses Kagame’s behavior in the Congo, but that’s a different can of worms). Point is, if you want to show that you know nothing more than how to use a cliche, congrats on your Rwanda reference. If you want to show you actually understand the practicalities of solving ethnic conflicts, Rwanda actually disproves your point and proves that rebuilding seemingly hopelessly divided and even utterly shattered societies is fully practical and possible. Not the least bit “utopian”. You should be more careful before using nice words as attempted slurs.

“It isn’t even certain that the Israeli’s could order Israeli settlers out of West Bank settlements (as they did in Gaza) and count on all Orthodox soldiers to obey orders — the threat to Army discipline is openly discussed among the Israeli officer corps.”

Funny, you also seem completely unaware of how this proves my point about Israel. The place is showing itself a house divided as French Algeria was. Remember that the pieds noirs brought down the French government. The Israeli settlers are in a very similar spot should they be ‘disobeyed’. The hotheads are running the place and leading it towards an implosion. As settler demands grow ever more greedy and the rule of law (as if there ever was any for Palestinians, but for the superior race in the Zionist system anyways) breaks down internally in Israeli society, the religious-secular, settler-lesscrazy divides in Israel grow ever wider. Meanwhile, the world watches ever more closely what is happening and questions whether BDS makes sense, and eventually other forms of practical censure will come into play. Ignoring Goldstone is one example, and there will be bigger ones to come (accompanied sadly by ever more Israeli massacres of civilians). The tensions grow, and as the one-state movement simultaneously grabs more attention, you will start to get small numbers of Israelis who will accept it, and a large number of Israelis in the middle who may reject it on the surface but will grow more accustomed to hearing the idea and its practicalities and hence less fearful of it even as they reject it in polls and such.

“I tried to warn you above about zero-sum thinking. You have been remarkably consistent both as a teenager and as an older adult in being sure that YOUR side — whichever side it happened to be at that point in your life — was 100% right and those on the other side were 100% wrong. Extremism, on either side, is the threat to both peace and justice. I suggest you turn your attention to something that may preserve the most fundamental values of BOTH sides, which is to oppose extremism on both sides. It is only a CENTER that can control either extreme that can ever lead to Palestinian and Israeli living in the same society, and the fuse on the explosion IS burning already.”

I find this really rich, laughable really. So you took one statement from me about when I was a teenager, and suddenly you know my life story (here’s a hint, you have no idea the path I’ve walked). Yeah, I’m really ready to take advice from you o expert of “military journals”. Regardless, the ironies of your statement are endless. For starters, you are a Zionist extremist. You live in a society of Zionist extremists, and the fact that you are not the most extreme among the extremists (Mike for example with his denial of the very existence of the Palestinians – the sort of idea by the way which is an ideal prelude to ethnic cleansing and potentially genocide – is even more extreme than you) you take to apparently mean you think you are a moderate. Sorry, but when political discourse in America on this issue on a scale of 1 to 10 runs between 9 and 10, you really aren’t in a good position to claim you are a moderate simply because you measure a 9.5.

Second, the notion that the center is always right, is wrong. Sometimes, perhaps even most of the time, the center and compromise are key. But sometimes running to the center is moral cowardice and/or a slippery slope to destruction. Not just in politics but in finance, entrepreneurship, engineering, the arts, any number of fields. In politics, your road to the center would have ensured there never was a Martin Luther King, Jr.; that there never was American independence from Britain; that the colonies of Asia, Africa, and Latin America never achieved independence from their colonial rapists; and on and on. Sometimes, one has to draw a line in the sand and chose what is right. More importantly, when the present is unsustainable, it takes wise leadership to mold history to the better outcomes. Those who denigrate the wise choices as “utopian” in those cases, generally end up surprised when change comes, while those who made it happen simply smile knowingly. There is a fuse burning, your path is to just let the bombs go off haphazardly, my choice is to support the people who are finally grasping the big picture and figuring out how to cut the fuse before it reaches the bomb, or if unable to do that, then to build a better edifice out of the ruins instead of letting chaos reign in the aftermath.

Folks, I have to sign off from these debates now and go back to my lurking. My views are clear enough on Palestine, my hopes for others to learn more in what ways as well. But I didn’t want to finish without saying that I think this has been an example of both how the Internet can both cause interesting discussions that would never happen otherwise, and simultaneously dehumanize us. I’ve served in bishoprics where people next to me held views I considered obnoxious and they thought the same of mine (including over this issue), but we never let it overshadow the love we had for each other as people and the service we engaged in together. It just wasn’t possible to hate and accuse in person the way it is online, we saw the good in each other too easily and thank goodness for that. So for all the words that have been tossed about here, let me say it officially, I’m quite certain if wet in person Jeff, Mike, Firetag, Thomas and evryone else, that we’d get along and serve others just fine together in the church. Some things are just more important than others, and doing good and being kind with what’s in front of you rather than what’s theoretical somewhere else is high on that list. Brethren, adieu.

NAA;

Thank you for your kind words (???), but in matters of war, I think I’ll take my interpretation of events from the warriors and the spooks rather than one who asserts that he is a man of peace who understands the strategic situation so much better than the leaders of either side.

I’ve known a couple of men of peace who would be willing to die rather than be willing to use violence — maybe a number more than that who simply haven’t been put to the test yet in order to prove it. Somehow, I’m just not feeling your love for us racist, Zionist extremists, and I don’t think that’s just a function of the internet.

Qualia: If you have learned more of the basic humanity of both Israeli and Palestinian and the deep needs and rights that both have, then sadness can serve a purpose.

BiV,

“Jeff, easy to name-call and fling around the epithet “Anti-Semitic,” harder to show where in the above post the writer has “ripped” anyone.”

I guess it goes both ways, doesn’t it?

The NAA posts and responses are all very one-sided. The Palestines are the victims and it’s Israel’s fault.

Sorry, I do not beleive it and know it isn’t true.

“Suicide Bombers = Bad, Attacking Palestinians with phosphorus = Bad”

It’s not the tactics, it’s the targets. I heard a variant on this over and over from the Liberal Partner at a previous law firm: If only the Palestinians had tanks and F-16s, they could fight like civilized people.

But of course the problem is not what weapons you’re fighting with — it’s who you’re pointing the weapons at. Fair or not, the laws of armed conflict have traditionally distinguished between shooting directly at schoolchildren, vs. aiming at combatants but hitting schoolchildren. It’s bad enough that the latter happens, but the former is supposed to be right out — and the fact that Mormons would excuse or elide over the ugly reality that Palestinians largely invented modern random civilian-killing terrorism (as opposed to good old-fashioned Irish kill-the-cops urban guerillaism) does bother me a bit.

Walk a mile in the Palestinians’ shoes? That would require me to make apologies for Mormon fundamentalists shooting up schools in Missouri. (Or massacring wagon trains to avenge the blood of the prophets…hmm.)

When Russia put down its latest Chechen uprising, it basically razed the city of Grozny to the ground with artillery and aerial bombing — almost certainly killing far more Chechen civilians “incidentally” than civilians have died in all of Israel’s military history. But nobody’s calling for making Russia an international pariah — partly because Russia has oil to sell, partly because of anti-Semitism*, and partly out of the Howard Zinn-reading leftist tendency to hate whatever side in a conflict happens to be more closely aligned with Western civilization.

*”“When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews.” Name the speaker.

This whole “debate,” like the underlying conflict, depresses me. The absurdity of the whole ghastly business can be summed up in the Lod airport massacre: Palestinian terrorists contracted the Japanese Red Army to shoot up Ben Gurion Airport, which they did, killing mostly Puerto Rican Christian pilgrims at the luggage counter. It seems as if every poisonous political and cultural thread has combined to perpetuate *this* one grievance, alone among dozens of functionally-equivalent post-1948 convulsions. At some point, “glorious lost cause” switches over to “blood-soaked absurdity,” and I think we passed that point at least a quarter decade ago.

To this reading list, add:

Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism
http://www.amazon.com/Moses-Hess-Prophet-Communism-Zionism/dp/0814705871/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267773456&sr=8-5

Moses Hess (nicknamed the “Communist Rabbi”) worked with Karl Marx on drafts of the Communist Manifesto. In 1862, his book Rome and Jerusalem proposed Zionism. The typical goal for many early Marxists was the destruction of Christian Europe. For Moses Hess, there was a need for Jewish communists to move outside of Europe. Hess suggested moving to Palestine. After Hess died, he was buried in Israel.

One cannot be both a religious anti-communist and a Zionist. Zionism is communism.

Thank you. 

” at the end there’s an amazingly simple set of guiding principles behind it all. In a Gospel sense, my belief is that the Zionist violation of the basic commandments of “thou shalt not steal” and “thou shalt not covet” are the root cause of the conflict, that the conflict is inherently modern and not ancient, and that the solution is really quite straightforward: civic equality for all”

Perfectly written. 
I’m looking for opinions by church authorities on this issue.  Where do they stand?

Please pass this on to m Romney