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Gaza war may just be a taste of what's to come

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The existential vise in which the state of Israel lives is tightening as the civilian body count and property destruction in the Gaza Strip mount. The latest war between Israel and Hamas is further testament to the historical fact that Israel's forefathers had to conquer the land that today's Israelis dwell in and ferociously defend. What hope is left of finding a lasting settlement with the Arabs?

In his "My Promised Land," Haaretz journalist Ari Shavit repeatedly and poignantly poses his country's most pointed questions: How to live as free and moral people on the ruins of a dispossessed people? How to assuage the wounds inflicted on the expelled Arabs? And how to cherish the nation-fortress so dearly bought?

"Israel is the only nation in the West that occupies another people," writes Shavit. "On the other hand, Israel is the only country in the West that is existentially threatened. Both occupation and intimidation make the Israeli state unique. Intimidation and occupation are the twin pillars of our condition."

Shavit loves his country yet does not shy from describing the blood that flowed when his people took possession of it. He's not alone in that uncomfortable place. The historian Benny Morris' account, "1948," is similarly unsparing of the brutalities that accompanied the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians into permanent exile as the new state struggled to be born. Though denied a university post for years because of his apostasy from official Zionist positions on the "liberation struggle," Morris did not change a word in his book but did change his mind about the nature of the Israeli state, seeing not its leaders but the Palestinians and their leaders as unassuageable enemies with whom peace might never be made.

That change was symptomatic. Though distinguished Israelis like David Grossman raise their voices against the attack on Gaza, and though there have been small protest marches in Israel, opposition to the fighting among Israelis remains subdued, with most opinion supportive, or detached. Tamar Herman, a political scientist, former Peace Now activist and author of the fullest study on the movement, says the pro-peace left has "lost contact with the mainstream." Even Grossman, whose son was killed in the 2006 Lebanon war, writes that the logic of the present impasse compels Israel to defend itself, though he's strongly critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to reach out to Hamas and to talk in good faith to the leader of the moderate Palestinian camp, Mahmoud Abbas.

Thus two forces face off, each secure in its rectitude.

"There is no war more just than this," asserts Netanyahu, while Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal tells Charlie Rose that, "I do not want to live with a state of the occupiers."

Meshal well knows that the battle he refuses to call off is violently asymmetric. Hamas' main weapon -rockets - now penetrates deeper into Israel than ever before but has so far failed to inflict much damage, while the Israeli Defense Force has the military advantage in every way over Hamas fighters. If the war continues, defeat, whatever that may mean, is certain for Hamas.

Hamas' most potent weapon is the world's television screens. Images of bombed-out neighborhoods in Gaza and the deaths of so many Palestinian children - the latest occurring at a UN school Wednesday - are horrors that viewers in peaceful, liberal countries naturally blame on Israel. The swelling aversion to the mounting carnage is now buttressed by the U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, who calls the destruction "outrageous demanding accountability and justice." Meanwhile, Israel's most powerful ally, the United States, expresses "extreme concern" that displaced Palestinians are not safe in U.N.-designated shelters. No Western leader can do other than call for a truce, and a truce on its terms - in particular, the lifting of the Egyptian-Israeli blockade of its borders - is what Hamas wants.

Yet scenes of carnage seen on television cannot probe the truth and the extent of Hamas' deliberate siting of weaponry near hospitals, schools and shelters, or the possible refusal of Hamas militants to allow Gazans to leave areas that Israel warns are targets. These charges, frequently made by Israelis and by some observers, could be shown to be true or false if an investigation were allowed, but television hasn't produced any evidence for or against.

Israel's collective mindset doesn't make for competitive television. It is conditioned by fear that the surrounding world is more and more unpredictable and thus more dangerous; that Iran, which had gone cool on Hamas over the past three years, is now calling on all Muslims to help destroy Israel, and that, as ever, its enemies can lose and lose again - and it can lose but once.

But the cycle of violence may not be unbreakable. Guardian executive editor Jonathan Freedland, in a review of "My Promised Land," detects some movement toward a "necessary goal" of acknowledging past oppressions and the need to share territory. And Grossman believes that Israeli opinion is maturing under stress, enough to be able to form a powerful right-left, Israeli-Palestinian movement for negotiation and hard-nosed settlement, bypassing the calcified positions of Israel's political leaders.

Yet the existential question still hangs over every Israeli: "What if the two state solution is impossible?" It is a terrible question, for if it is, all that is realistically left is war stretching into the foreseeable future. Gaza may be a foretaste.

© (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014.

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

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At the same time as the Gaza war, more Moslems than died in Gaza were killed by other Moslems in Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan. Not combined but in each country! Haven't heard about it? The media didn't have cameras there to get pictures to raise their ratings. And of course the basic hatred of Jews is hardly new. Choosing the 1948 date misleads, all the rulers of this little land have been occupiers going back to Moses.

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Overall, this was a well balanced article about the situation. Thank you, JT. Hopefully both sides can sometime soon come together and realize the peaceful two state solution. That is what most Israelis, Palestinians and the world want. Peace.

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Two equal states solution is the best way i agree . Can't imagine it happening tho , so grim at the moment .

In other news, god has promised me an Israeli house. Get out .

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hough denied a university post for years because of his apostasy from official Zionist positions on the “liberation struggle,” Morris did not change a word in his book but did change his mind about the nature of the Israeli state, seeing not its leaders but the Palestinians and their leaders as unassuageable enemies with whom peace might never be made.

Once he made his "change of mind," a university post was opened up for him. In the terrific and intense film, Hannah Arendt, we see the political theorist and philosopher being confronted with the certain truths that Zionists would rather not have us know. The regime sends Mossad agents to her to threaten her, and tells her that her book will never see the light of day in Israel. "So, you're banning books too," she replies.

Israel’s collective mindset doesn’t make for competitive television. It is conditioned by fear...

Fears that have driven it to near-insanity, and have pulled the world in along with it.

Yet the existential question still hangs over every Israeli: “What if the two state solution is impossible?” It is a terrible question, for if it is, all that is realistically left is war stretching into the foreseeable future. Gaza may be a foretaste.

The thing that does not need to exist is Zionism, which has nothing to do with Judaism, and is the actual root of the problems of Palestine.

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Desmond Tutu calls for Israel, Palestine to stop tit-for-tat violence

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu urged citizens of both Palestine and Israel to stand up and say enough is enough.

“Once again, the people of Israel and Palestine are embroiled in a deadly contest of tit-for-tat violence in which there can never be victors, only losers,” Tutu said today.

He said Israel would never achieve true security and safety through oppressing the Palestinians, and Palestine would never achieve peaceful self-determination through violence.

“No conflict is intractable; no disagreement so absolute that it can never be healed.

“The world is looking to Israelis and Palestinians to be bigger than themselves; to act now, before any more children are harmed,” said Tutu.

http://www.citypress.co.za/politics/desmond-tutu-calls-israel-palestine-stop-tit-tat-violence/

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Desmond Tutu calls for Israel, Palestine to stop tit-for-tat violence

Case in point, when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped (tit), it was wrong for Netanyahu to respond by immediately blaming Hamas, expressing great certainty, and rounding up around 350 Palestinians, killing 6 in the process (tat). The initial violence by a small cell of Palestinian criminals was a crime -- requiring a response that any responsible state would undertake.

Here is what another noted peace and non-violence activist (also associated with South Africa) had to say. And prophetic it is:

"My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy for the Jews.

"But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?

"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.

"The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colourable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews."

Mohandas K. Gandhi, November - 1938

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/JewsGandhi.html

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1938

1938, huh?

Sorry, Desmond Tutu says in 2014 that

He said Israel would never achieve true security and safety through oppressing the Palestinians, and Palestine would never achieve peaceful self-determination through violence.

Both sides must make peace and recognize each other. yabits, your way only encourages more violence. Desmond Tutu's way encourages peace. Real peace between the two nations. It is the only way and it will happen.

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