What has compelled me to pick up the proverbial pen and start blogging again is the recent conflict escalation between Israel and Palestine. My mother called me the other day regarding recent Facebook posts I had made in support of Palestine. "Didn't Hamas (the Palestinian government) launch the first rocket?" she asked, wondering why I would support the alleged conflict aggressor. Yes, the first attack was, this time, committed by Palestine. If we attain all of our information regarding this event from major news media sources, we would be led to believe that this attack was an isolated and unwarranted event, fueled by illogical hatred. We would see Palestine as a warmongering people hellbent on destruction and chaos. We would see a rogue state provoking our Ally. In this light, it is understandable how many Americans unhesitatingly side with Israel against a seemingly radical, terrorist Palestine. As with most conflicts, without the proper historical context (which is rarely found in the news)we are left with a very narrow view of complex situations. Making judgment calls on right and wrong or good and evil is very dangerous without a comprehensive understanding of events.
If we were to do a little research into the historical context of Israel and Palestine, chances are our understanding of the conflict wouldn't be so starkly black and white. When it comes to this decades-long (or millenia-long) conflict, there is a whole lot of grey.
This isn't to say that I have all the answers, or that I have a complete understanding of what is going on in Israel and Palestine. However, I hope that subjecting my life to 5 years of conflict studies gives me a little cred. If nothing else, it's given me a (perhaps false) sense of confidence to talk about these things. And so here I go...
In the early 1900s, Palestine was inhabited by Arab Muslims. At the time, there was a negligible Jewish population, most of whom had fled Russian pogroms against the Jews in Eastern Europe. For the most part, Arab Palestinians and Jewish settlers got along, although the influx of Jews stirred a Palestinian nationalist movement as well as anti-semetic sentiments. As Jewish persecution mounted in Europe in the 1920s and 30s, an increasing amount of Jews illegally migrated to Palestine, although they were still a small minority. Many Jews escaped the Holocaust by being smuggled into the Palestinian territory. At the time, Palestine was an autonomous region under the British Mandate. Israel did not exist as a geopolitical state, although there was a collective aspiration among many Jews that a Jewish homeland would one day be created. Zionists debated where Israel should be located. Some suggested Argentina, while others thought Ethiopia would be an ideal spot. But the most coveted location for the Jewish homeland was the Arab-inhabited Palestine.
After WWII and the deplorable Jewish Holocaust, the push to find a homeland for displaced Jews was brought to the United Nations. With the dissolution of the British Mandate, in 1947 Palestine was 'up for grabs', as the inanity of post-colonialism goes. The United Nations cut out a little part of Palestine and gave it to the Jews, declaring it the new Israel. But there was a problem. What to do with all the Arabs who had been living there for centuries?
As more displaced European Jews began arriving in Palestine (or Israel, as it was now called), many Palestinians were forced from their land and homes. A Civil War erupted between Arab nationalists and Zionist militant factions. Many lives were lost, and tens of thousands of Arab Palestinian fled their homeland for neighboring Arab nations. An Arab-Israeli war ensued, fought between those defending their homeland and others fighting for their newly-gifted land. Over the years and subsequent wars, the Arab-inhabited Palestine has diminished into a few pockets of land and a couple of permanent refugee camps.
This is a map of the hyperbolic relationship between Palestinian and Israeli land.
The land given to the Jews by the UN for the creation of Israel in 1948 consisted of a very small portion of Palestine. Israel's acquisition of Palestinian territory since 1967 is officially contrary to international law. Palestinians have been quite literally forced from their homes, and made to flee to other Arab countries, or to live in the underdeveloped and overpopulated Gaza strip, which was initially a refugee camp. Meanwhile, Israel continues to acquire more Palestinian land.
While I do not condone aggression or violence, having this historical context of Israel and Palestine makes the recent Palestinian attack on Israel a bit more understandable. With no true infrastructure or natural resources, Palestinians living in the Gaza strip have no means to pursue economic development. Many people in Gaza hold University degrees, but have no professional jobs available to them.
Imagine having been unlawfully evicted from your homeland and forced to live in a refugee camp. Over the years, do you not think you would become desperate, watching others profit off of the land that once belonged to you, your parents and your grandparents? Do you not think you would be persuaded to pick up arms and try to take back what you believe is rightfully yours?
This isn't to say that Palestine isn't partially to blame for the intractable conflict in the region. Launching rockets into a city isn't going to solve anything, but only escalate an already corrosive situation. I have heard people blame Palestine for not wanting to engage in Peace Talks. But tell me, what motivation would Palestine have for talking with Israel? Palestine is obviously in no position of power, with no organized military, weapons or resources. They have no bargaining chips. To talk "peace" would mean, to them, giving up the land which was unlawfully acquired through war and illegal evictions. "Peace" as we see it in the West, which is the cessation of violence, would mean to concede to the fact that Palestine is no more.
In Hawaii, I worked in a coffee shop for 5 years. Over the years, I came to know Gebron, a Palestinian man who sold decorative sea shells by the side of the street. Gerbon had a degree in architecture from university in Palestine. One day I started to tell him about my studies in Peace and Conflict, and how we had been learning about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Being young and presumptuous, I started to tell him about my ideas for peace in the area. His teary-eyed response to my inexperienced rambling was one of the more humbling experiences of my life.
"My dear friend. What is peace if there is no justice? And what is justice without our land? There can be no peace without justice, and without our land, we have nothing."
I always "takes two to tangle", as my mom always said. Neither side can be totally right if both are hurting innocent people.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that comes to mind immediately is that the Jews were leaving horrendous conditions to immigrate (sometimes illegally) to Palestine. Right or wrong? I don't know. We have many immigrants currently coming to America to flee deplorable conditions in their home countries. Right or wrong? I don't know. But we can't talk about whether the illegal immigration of one people and the displacement of another without looking at current situations. In my sister's state, the "unemployment" rate for residents is near 13%, as jobs they used to have are being given to those who will work for less (with no benefits) i.e. illegal immigrants. They are therefore displaced from their homes as they have to find new ways to support their families, sometimes in new places. Placing the two situations side by side, it is not too difficult to draw some parallels, and wonder just what is right. It makes me think.
In my state, we routinely have demonstrations by Hispanic groups, who take down the American flag, sometimes hanging it upside down or defacing it, and replacing it with Mexican flags. (To me a symbol of declaring ownership over this "territory.") One year when my sister went to register her kids for High School, she was informed the primary language at the school was now Spanish, and if she wanted her children to be taught in English, they would have to go to another school across town, and therefore they have begun to localize by ethnicity. Isn't that kind of the same progression that happened in Israel? (Except for the WWII treaties thing.) What is the right thing to do in this situation? What would have been the right thing to do in Israel, if statesmen had been acting proactively? I have no answers, just wondering stuff... (And sorry if this opens a new can of worms....)
I won't take issue with your characterization of the current aggression by Palestine as not an isolated and unwarranted event. I will however, take issue with your inaccurate portrayal of mainstream media as completely devoid of precise news reporting. The mainstream media's credibility is certainly faltering as its supposed intention is no longer to report news as it is to foster relationships with advertisers that place its factions in the most prodigious position possible. This does not strip the mainstream news corp. of their ability to depict exact sequences of current events, but it does place greater responsibility on the viewer to circumscribe the truths that are blended with overabundant bits of sensationalism. That said, you too are guilty of blending.
ReplyDeleteFor example, in your fifth paragraph, you imply that despondent Jewish immigrants settled in Palestine illegally under Palestinian law. This is not true, which you do not clarify until three sentences later, when you state that Palestine had no recognized government during the time period in question, but was under British rule. Now if I am naive enough to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is simply a contextual oversight, rather than a calculated action of a clever author designed to bias the reader, then I must in fairness do the same for Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Brian Williams. This foible is seemingly innocuous, which is indicative of its subtlety. Yet it is also the very same thing you condemn. I don't throw around the word hypocrite very often, and in fact, I won't now. But oops, the seed is already planted in the reader's mind, and therein lies the dishonesty of this type of writing. I won't pick apart the entire piece as it is not all dishonesty. I never fault people for their differing opinion, I only fault them for how they present them.
As for the content of your piece, a cohesion problem presents many inconsistencies. For example, your tone villainizes Israel for being opportunistic (forgive the oversimplification but space and time is limited) during the dissolution of the British Mandate, and you qualify the Arab-Muslim right of inheritance to this land based on their historical residence there. This is not how the world works. If it was, then I could squat in the vacation home of a billionaire in Marseille and call it mine when I tabulate my residency there greater than the legal resident's. An absurd comparison yes, but so is your treatment of Israel's road to sovereignty. It was not simply a result of illegal immigration and subsequent illegal evictions. You go into great detail to describe the atrocities that Palestinians endure, yet you do not give equal attention to the methods by which the Zionist Organization came to power. As a point of fact, the road to sovereignty began prior to the early 1900's, yet this is not addressed anywhere.
You were accurate about one thing for sure, this topic is definitely gray.
Oh Mitchel... While I appreciate your condescending attempt to rip apart my blog post, I regret to inform you that you failed. Not only did you misinterpret the point of the post, you also made inaccurate claims in the attempt to debunk my allegedly false statements. Sorry about that...
DeleteFirst on the list: News Media. Now I may not know much about a lot of things, but one thing that I do know is news media. I don't think you want to challenge me on this. In your rebuttal, you claimed that my blog post stated that news media is "completely devoid of precise news reporting". Was this a contextual oversight on your part or, how did you say this, a "calculated action designed to bias your reader"?. In reality, I never went so far as to completely write off news media. My point was in stating that news media infamously omit context and history in favor of immediacy, condensation of time and to appeal to their audience.
Next on the agenda: the illegal immigration of Jews into Palestine pre-1948. This is a fact. Go ahead, check it out. I dare you. I'm sure you'll find that under the British Mandate, Jews were not allowed to migrate into the Palestinian territory in order for Britain to maintain favorable relations with their Arab oil suppliers in the Middle East. I never implied this law was in defiance of Palestinian rule. Your mistake. Sorry. No contextual oversight there.
Yes, the road to Israeli sovereignty began prior to the early 1900s, but not wanting to bore my readers with a lengthy history lesson, I chose to start with more modern history. Forgive me for not dating back to Biblical times. My bad.
You were accurate about one thing for sure, which is my omission of historical Israeli suffering. This was, as you say, a calculated action on my part in the attempt to balance the scale, so to speak. In America we receive a bombardment of pro-Israeli narrative and rarely hear of the Palestinian plight. Sorry to inform you that every narrative is biased, and this was the biased version of history I chose to deliver.
I really appreciated your attempt. Really, I did.
"I never went so far as to completely write off news media."
ReplyDeleteReally? Then why after my post did you change "which is never found in the news" to "which is rarely found in the news?"
If the nuance of your diction is irrelevant to the point, then this revision seems highly suspect. "Now I may not know much about a lot of things, but one thing that I do know is news media. I don't think you want to challenge me on this." Likewise, you don't want to challenge me on word choice and tone. Your degree may be in media, mine is in writing. See that you don't patronize me. Also, in case I didn't make myself clear, the above question is not rhetorical.
In all honesty and without trying to be patronizing, I'm flattered that you found my post valuable enough to have read, saved and re-read so scrupulously to exact a single word change.
ReplyDeleteI did indeed change that word after reading your comment. You helped me realize that i had made an restatement, and while 'rarely' more often borders on 'never' news media's inclusion of historical context, I .an see how it may have been misleading.
I apologize if my response to your comment sounded patronizing. As a writer I'm sure you understand the importance of tonal continuity. I think the condescending tone of my response was just an extension of your calling me a hypocrite.
and by restatement i meant over-statement.
ReplyDeleteI also apologize if it seemed as though I hated your piece because I actually welcomed reading about the less-popular side of this topic. I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it. For the record, I called you a hypocrite to illustrate my point though I in no way mean it that way. That would just be rude. As for scrutinizing and re-scrutinizing, chalk that up to intense collegiate training in the revision and editing process. It may also be early signs of OCD. I don't want to know really. Again, thanks for the insight.
ReplyDeleteOk so this whole conflict situation baffles me--I know a pathetic amount about it. But since YOU seem to know a whole LOT, in lieu of trying to research this on my own, I'll just ask and maybe you'll have a more interesting answer than Google: um...ok so WHY is the Palestinian government considered a terrorist organization? Or is that just the militaristic faction of Hamas that gets that distinction? Or...is it because their government isn't recognized by the UN? Are they recognized? Which is the one that keeps trying to get recognition but fails? I thought that was Israel, but I must be very very wrong.
ReplyDeleteJacqui- I encourage you to keep up your personal studies of the situation. Once you decide to simply "take another's word for it," you quickly surrender your ability to foster and develop your own opinions on the matter.
DeleteCase in point- Especially about the Israli-Palestinian conflict, is made when reading the dialogue between Steph (a VERY knowledgeable and passionate individual, who lets be honest- knows her Stuff... :) And Mitchell, who clearly sees and understands things differently than Steph, and has formed a very thoughtful, strong, accurate and informative opinion that differs from hers.)
Steph titled this discussion *perfectly* when she drew attention to the fact that this topic is very "grey." Steph's comparison of this touchy topic to that of the presidental election is very accurate. There seem to again be two sides of the coin, and you find extreme opinions that varry from person to person.
It is difficult and a very long process to seek out "all" of the inforation that is to be had, and just like everything else in this World, there IS truth to be found as well as injustice and wrong doings, on both sides of the coin. I would just caution you to carefully form your own thoughts on the matter and not just settle for one individuals opinions... Steph is SO SO great about 'allowing' us to discuss our differing opinions and thought processes! It is SO much fun and extremley eye opening when you get to try and understand life from the "other" person's point of view! :) And, I guarantee you that Steph will not think poorly of YOU as an individual if your thoughts are different than hers. She is very very neautral in that regard. You should keep studying Jacqui, and THEN bring your questions to the table. Challenge the things that may not make sense. Ask questions for sure. Show great respect and objectivity of course, and then enjoy the debate. :)