Democratic Conversation

The irony of Israel’s anti-semitic policies has plagued their government, news agencies, and people for decades with the reasoned world, even as Israel and world Jewry project their “we’re the victims” attitude with such vitriol across the globe. Question: what is the half-life to using WWII’s Nazi Holocaust as defense for acting with impunity (and treachery) to its neighbors? Answer: as long as they can get away with it.

In a two-square-column-inch note on page 3 of the International Herald Tribune today—Saturday, March 17—buried in the “Middle East” section of the paper, was a note divulging the news that,

“The Israeli Army said Friday that it would investigate allegations, supported by television footage from The Associated Press, that soldiers used Palestinian civilians to lead them in house-to-house searches for wanted militants during an operation in the West Bank.”

The Israeli’s have yet to simply line Palestinians up that they don’t like and execute them against a wall, as the Nazi’s did to Polish Jews in Warsaw during their first uprising against systematic disenfranchisement (from citizenship, not just from voting), imprisonment, starvation and finally deportation to extermination camps. But, really, what would be the point of doing that? The Isreali’s already have most of western society blinded—or looking the other way—while they have imprisoned Palestinians inside the West Bank and Gaza, disallowing profitable jobs, meaningful education, or political autonomy for fully two generations of ignorant people. Did they expect anything great to happen when they finally seeded limited political autonomy to Palestinians in 1993, after 26 years of dysfunction and repression?

The Israeli military and government yet have much to answer to for their 1996 invasion of Lebanon, including use of cluster bombs, demolishing sewage, water and oil refinery structures that immediately (and for a generation) blighted the oceanic environment around the southern Mediterranean, and assassination of duly-elected political officials. And now we have this new investigation; the latest investigation.

The use of human shields for military operations was banned in October 2005 by the Israeli Supreme Court. The definition of “human shields” in this instance, if you don’t know or cannot somehow imagine, is the placing of human beings in front of soldiers before entering a building or domicile. In this investigation, there appears to be video evidence, according to the AP report, of Israeli soldiers using human shields in house-to-house searches, some as young as 11 years old, and female.

What are these people thinking?

Firstly, what took the Israeli Supreme Court so long to see the light? It has been just two years since a court (not a legislature!) banned a practice that, in any rational thinking human mind would find sickening, much less criminal. Secondly, this is likely not some isolated incident, but merely one that has seen (barely) the light of media exposure because of evidence beyond Palestinian complaints (and who cares about them?); soldiers don’t act on their own initiative, but follow orders, orders that flow down to the foot soldiers from THE TOP, not from a private peeling potatoes in a kitchen. And finally (but only because of limited space), is all of this evidence—late to ban practices, continued military orders or ignorance of actions, blatant disregard for human rights—not obvious of the disdain Israelis have for their citizens (nearly half of Israel’s population is of Arab descent) and their neighbors?

Most reasonable people could call Israeli practices against their citizens and Palestinians as racist; some would use the term “criminal”; and others still could gather evidence for “genocidal” activity. Yes, the irony is evident if one only knows a little bit of Jewish history.

“To the victor goes the spoils” is a cliché term, particularly in our modern world, where diplomacy has not always reigned, but at least is used by the smartest and more humanistic of the world’s nations. I would not place Israel in this group vis-á-vis basic evidence alone.

Naturally, Israel has a right to defend itself: the Palestinian problem is a tempest; the Arab-Israeli problem is a struggle; the Muslim-Jewish problem is a religious war and always will be. And perhaps one can argue that Israel even has been damn patient and, moreover, soft, considering the continual suicide bombings, border attacks and threats (not to mention outright attacks by foreign powers, though those have been a generation past). In fact, if the situation where reversed, would the Palestinians have been as patient? Likely not.

Yet—yet, there is evidence of Israeli indifference, scorn, condescension, and/or disgust for (and with) Palestinians and Arabs in and around Israel. Their politically right-leaning newspapers treat Palestinian government officials and people with one or all of these labels daily. They’ve kicked the Palestinians around for so long, then call for elections, and when a group like Hamas—promoting societal confederacy or terrorism or both—is elected to reign, where they really surprised? Please! Likewise, news columnists such as Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post routinely hyper-inflate any Palestinian reproach to Israeli pogroms, or outwardly patronize Palestinian attempts to advance their cause for peace in the face of radical groups (and who could blame groups for fighting back against Israel’s generation-long pogroms?).

There is one other lasting problem that guns, suicide bombers, and diplomacy cannot dispel, outwit or outlast: racial and religious hate between Arab-Muslims and Israeli-Jews. The fact that European Jews decided they wanted to use the Bible as a real estate guide following WWI (and WWII) to take back their “ancestral lands” (as if every ethnic group should reach back into history and decide they wanted to return to Africa, Italy, France, or the United States for some kind of land payoff writ by historical land-grabs) should not make the rest of the world, or the people who lived on the land at the time, come to their help when the shit hits the fan. Likewise, that international political decision (paid for with blood and money) has not made the Middle East any better a place to live or die since Israel became a state.

These are the cards that have been dealt to we now who live in the world. And Israel does deserve to be a state. And the Palestinians deserve to have their own state. And the people of both nations, nationalities, and ethnicities deserve to live in peace. So what’s the problem? Perhaps politics and religion. But don’t say I said this. Just look out the window.