Perspective...

[happyheathen]

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...3/MN103008.DTL


Paris -- At 8:45 a.m. on a brilliantly clear Tuesday morning in New York, a fatal combination of history, ignorance and power caught up with America. Thousands have probably died as a result. What remains to be seen is whether the same combination will now prove fatal to thousands more.

Unprecedented power has brought the United States into the daily lives of nearly everyone on Earth -- and into their nations' often tortured histories. Yet as we have grown ever more powerful since the collapse of the Soviet Union,

economically and militarily, we have also grown ever more ignorant of the world beyond our borders.

We are ignorant, especially, of the awful weight of that world's unresolved history, and our inevitable enmeshment in it. That is the starting point for understanding why so much of the Islamic world appears to detest the United States, to the point of cold, inhumanly calculated suicide assaults on countless innocent victims. Nothing can excuse such assaults. But neither can our blindness be excused.

The weight of history is oppressively evident in the tortured relationship between Israelis, the principal recipients of U.S. military aid, and the Palestinians with whom they are now at war. In the small corner of the planet they must share, the unresolved memory of the Jewish Holocaust meets the unresolved crisis of the Palestinian diaspora. The explosions in New York and Washington were ignited in that moral standoff.

Whoever planned and carried them out, the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is at their core. Americans, however, haven't begun to grapple with that history and its larger implications.

There is no shortage of culprits for our collective ignorance. "When I began teaching 20 years ago, our seniors were taken through an entire course of world history up to the year in which they graduated," says Mariann Nogrady,

a faculty member at the prestigious Newton Highlands High School in suburban Boston.

Now, after funding cutbacks and a reordering of priorities, she says, "we're lucky if we get through U.S. history, let alone to the Civil War."

Our president, who professes pride in his lack of worldliness, has determinedly avoided serious engagement in foreign affairs, at the very moment when Washington's hand in the Mideast is critical.

American newspapers and television stations have all but abandoned any commitment to international coverage. The most powerful nation in modern history has become an ostrich with its head in the sand.

In the last days of the Bosnian war, a young couple, both of them U.S. Air Force officers, were traveling by train to Paris. She was a ground analyst with a graduate degree from Duke University. He was an F-16 pilot, educated at the Air Force Academy, participating in the NATO assault on the Bosnian Serb Republic. "Now this place Sarajevo," he asked another American passenger, "is it a country? Or is it just a city?"

America has a fondness for oversimplification. Most Israelis, in dress and lifestyle, resemble us. Most Muslims do not. The Arab-Israeli conflict, in mainstream American perception, pits a civilized, democratic state -- born of the Holocaust, the 20th century's most heinous crime and the moral bulwark of Israel's existence -- against barbaric tribes under the leadership of satanic monsters: Osama bin Laden today, following on the heels of Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Moammar Khadafy of Libya, Hafez Assad of Syria and the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.

Each of these leaders has deserved our informed contempt and level-headed hostility. But the reality of their societies is infinitely more complex. It is partially to be found in the images that galvanize ordinary Arabs and help keep them under the sway of despots: children confronting tanks and missile- equipped Israeli helicopters with stones, Jewish "settlers" consuming hundreds of square miles of Arab land in the Occupied Territories -- with the consent of no authority apart from that of the Israeli government and the acquiescence of Washington.

In 1996, during a spate of suicide bombings in Israel, a Palestinian official living in the West Bank hills between Jerusalem and Ramallah asked, "Do you know what it means that four consecutive generations have lived here?" His squalid refugee camp was within walking distance of Israeli settlers' walled ranch-home subdivisions.

"Two generations held onto the hope that they would once again see the land where they were raised," he said. "The next was raised in the camp and lost hope." He paused, then went on: "As for the fourth generation, even I am afraid of them."

At that time, almost all of the bombers had come from the area around Ramallah. Five years and many "targeted assassinations" later, a far more lethal generation of martyrs has emerged, across the Islamic crescent from Algeria to Afghanistan, with New York City and Washington, as its latest targets.

The enveloping despair, the erosion of human values, are neither a sudden development nor a permanent feature of Arab life. This is a disaster that has been evolving, building, for four generations.

Now we appear ready to unleash our vast power on some part of the Muslim world. A world that recalls the past much more vividly, and remembers the fact that radical Muslims like Osama bin Laden and his followers were trained and armed by the United States to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. That such retaliation may set in motion an endless exchange of atrocities haunts many people around the world today.

"My God, I hope that America will not allow this horrible event to drive the world into war," wrote Zhou Qiu-xiang, a Chinese travel agent, in an e- mail to The Chronicle from Southeast Asia.

"What will become of America if it takes revenge on other innocent civilians to make up for these deaths?" Danielle Morand, a French educator, asked in a phone call.

As if in reply, President Bush said: "We will make no distinction between those who carried out the attacks and those who harbor them."

E-mail Frank Viviano at fviviano@sfchronicle.com.

©2001 San Francisco Chronicle Page A - 13

[Maxie Zeus]

To add perspective to a picture which itself lacks perspective:

After World War II there were far more "displaced" populations--Germans, Poles, Czechs, Rumanians, Hungarians, Russians, etc.--than there were Palestinians after 1948 and 1967. And yet only a few years after the end of World War II there were virtually none. This does not mean that those refugees had returned "home". Massive German populations, for instance, were forced to flee lands in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania that had been German since the early Middle Ages. And there are today no giant "refugee centers" in the Sudetenland breeding Teutonic resentment against the Czech government, or in Transylvania launching suicide attacks in Bucharest. This is because West Germany, East Germany and Austria accepted those populations and integrated them into their own. The Germans today may regret that Silesia, Pomerania and Prussia (lands almost synonymous with "German" history and culture) are denuded of Germans, but they have no illusions about returning, and no desire to force a violent return.

So why are there still Palestinian camps in the Middle East? Because the Arab countries refuse to accept them, except as exploited "guest workers." And much of that reason is so that they can use the refugees as hostage population and breeding ground to turn against Israel. Like Hitler stoking the racial hatreds of a powerful but dispossessed minority in states that he loathed and wished to destroy, the Arab states have never accepted the legitimacy of Israel (even within its 1947 Mandate borders) and use the Palestinians as a grievance and source of misery with which to stoke the fire.

This is why the "humanitarian" explanation for Palestinian resentment is radically incomplete. If the Palestinians live in misery and squalor--and they do--it is because they refuse to live under a government who legitimacy they deny (and which therefore is forced to treat them with suspicion) and are not allowed into lands whose governments they would accept.

Indeed, if the Israeli-Palestinian problem were merely a practical, humanitarian problem--where will the refugees live?--it could have been solved long ago through the age-old art of negotiation and compromise: Either through the integration of Jewish and Arab populations within the boundaries of Israel, or through the neighboring countries accepting as immigrants those Palestinians who did not wish to live under the Israeli government.

Instead, we have a profound disagreement over the legitimacy of the Israeli state, and which can end either with the destruction of the state whose right to exist they deny (as Hitler sought to do to Czechoslovakia and Poland); with the integration of the populations into the surrounding nations and the abandonment of the dream of "going home" (as the German populations did after WW2); or with the integration of the Palestinians into the fabric of Israel (as the Hungarian populations did in Rumania after WW2).

[happyheathen]

Actually, the Palestinians and Arab gov'ts dropped thier opposition to the existance of Israel some years back.

And, when Israelis (mostly immigrants from the US) start building fortress homes on land belonging to the Palestinians, it was WAY past time for the US to stop it. We didn't.

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

This is interesting stuff, folks, and I'm learning a lot. Keep them coming.

[Maxie Zeus]

Originally posted by happyheathen
Actually, the Palestinians and Arab gov'ts dropped thier opposition to the existance of Israel some years back.

And, when Israelis (mostly immigrants from the US) start building fortress homes on land belonging to the Palestinians, it was WAY past time for the US to stop it. We didn't.

Hmm. I would think our "resident cynic" would be less credulous, than to assume that what a government SAYS is more important than what it DOES. I think the fact that Holocaust denial is part of the school curriculum in Arabic countries, and that constant repetition of the "blood libel" (that Jews kill infant non-Jews and use their blood in Passover rituals) is a staple in official denunciations of Israelis and Jews, all says a lot more about the attitude of Arabic governments toward Israel than any official statements wrung from them by an American Secretary of State with a large bag of money to dispense.

Anyway, Arafat is on record as saying that any statements accepting Israel's existence are a temporary move anyway, and pointed to Mohammed's temporary truce with his secular enemies (before launching a surprise war that destroyed them) as a guiding precedent.

[Clayface]

Maxie, I gotta tell ya: you rule. Thanks for bringing in the additional perspective on this somewhat skewed post.

[happyheathen]

Hmmm....

Skewed? recognizing the other side is not skewed - just a view not often aired before 9/11/01, and less likely now.

cut to the chase time:

as a nation, we have the following options:

1. make Israel and the Palestinians 'play nice' - nobody's a 'human second-class'.

2. Withdraw support from Israel (guess how long it would exist).

3. Destroy Islam

4. Accept that the Islamic world will continue to hate us, and will, from time to time, vent that hatred.

realpolitik time, folks...

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Well, from those options, there does not seem to be any good answer. One is a fantasy, one is not a good idea, one is catastrophic, and the other doesn't do anything.

[Clayface]

Originally posted by happyheathen
Skewed? recognizing the other side is not skewed - just a view not often aired before 9/11/01, and less likely now.

Yes, skewed. Skewed because it atempts to present "the other side" while neatly glossing over the many points that Maxie pointed out in his first post.

[Psycho Fox]

Originally posted by Leaping Larry Jojo
Well, from those options, there does not seem to be any good answer. One is a fantasy, one is not a good idea, one is catastrophic, and the other doesn't do anything.

Agreed most likely we will go aginst any country that supports Terrorist in any way. Plus a war on Terroirst them selfs.

[happyheathen]

Originally posted by Clayface


Yes, skewed. Skewed because it atempts to present "the other side" while neatly glossing over the many points that Maxie pointed out in his first post.

blood enmity is a funny thing...

a. I have no independent knowledge of either denial of the holocaust (I have heard white christian racists in this country deny it, don't know about elsewhere) or the 'blood libel' - that, at one time, was a teaching of the roman catholic church, don't know about Islam.

b. public position vs. actual intent is a universal condition in the political world.

c. comparing european migrations to the Israel/Palestine situation is a non-sequitur - different worlds.

d. how's this for something to chew on:
'Israel is always right' is a secular US catecism.

[Maxie Zeus]

Originally posted by happyheathen
a. I have no independent knowledge of either denial of the holocaust (I have heard white christian racists in this country deny it, don't know about elsewhere) or the 'blood libel' - that, at one time, was a teaching of the roman catholic church, don't know about Islam.

I do. You can doubt me or not.

b. public position vs. actual intent is a universal condition in the political world.

Huh?

d. how's this for something to chew on:
'Israel is always right' is a secular US catecism.

And "Israel is always wrong" is another. Do we really want to start playing this game?

c. comparing european migrations to the Israel/Palestine situation is a non-sequitur - different worlds.

Alright. Take out your notebooks for a little history lesson.

First, there has never been a "Palestinian state," because until the independence of Israel there had been no political state at all in the Levant (the east coast of the Mediterranean) for 2000 years. In the first century AD, the Jewish state was ruled by the house of Herod as an independent but subservient client-kingdom of the Roman Empire, until Jewish religious leaders, tiring of the depradations of Herod's successors, petitioned the emperor Tiberius to annex the Jewish state and reorganize it as a Roman province under a Roman governor--the first of whom was the Pontius Pilate of Gospel infamy. Jewish revolts (by the "Zealots") led the Romans to destroy much of the country and disperse its inhabitants. Jews were never absent from the Levant after that; they merely ceased to play a leading role in the internal affairs of the area, which were subjected to direct Roman rule, and went through numerous administrative reorganizations as the empire changed. The situation continued after the eastern Roman provinces gradually metamorphosed into the medieval Byzantine Empire.

The remnants of Graeco-Roman authority were swept away in the 8th century by Muslim invaders from Arabia. The region was not inundated with a new ethnicity (as when the Turks occupied the Anatolian highlands of modern-day Turkey, displacing or assimilating the non-Turk populations); most of the inhabitants were quite eager to embrace Islam because, as adherents of the "monophysite" heresy persecuted by the Byzantine government, they were far more sympathetic to invaders who were as unabashedly monotheistic as they were. The Levant came under the rule of various caliphates, sometimes centered in Damascus, sometimes in Baghdad, sometimes in Cairo. But the inhabitants, insofar as they considered themselves a "people" either considered themselves as part of a universal Muslim empire that stretched from Samarkand to Granada, or as members of an extended family that lived in a particular valley. It never occured to them that they were inhabitants of a special place called "Palestine."

In large measure this is because the eastern Levant had ceased to be an area of any intrinsic merit; Jerusalem was mostly a ruin, abandoned except for shrines; the once fertile hills and valleys had been denuded by agriculture; the land's only importance was as a highway (the New Jersey Turnpike of the Middle Ages) linking the Mediterranean to the Central Asian caravan routes.

The only time a "state" arose in that land, it was the temporary and wholly artificial Crusader kingdoms and duchies, areas carved out by hopped-up pirates and brigands, and which when reconqured by the Muslims were simply reabsorbed into Egyptian or Mesopotamian kingdoms.

The character of the Levant (and the Middle East in general) at the time, is clearest when comparing the progress of Ottoman Turk conquests in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Ottomans, after occupying Anatolia, finally broke the Byzantine power in the 1450s and conquered Constantinople; they went on to fight a long but successful series of wars across the Balkans, successively defeating Bulgar, Serb and Magyar kingdoms whose lineage (as reflected in their royal houses, governing institutions, and well-defined borders) extended back many hundreds of years before the chieftan Osman led his tribe out of Central Asia. By contrast, the Muslim east fell easily to the Ottomans, simply because they were able to defeat the armies of the ruling caliph (whose name escapes me) and assumed control of his territory by merging the religious office of caliph into the secular office of sultan which the Ottoman ruler already had. Legitimate rulership of the Near East passed then to Constantinople, and was held easily despite occasional borders wars with Persia.

"Palestine" as a political unit did not exist until the British and French, afte the First World War, divided the Ottoman's Asian lands between them. Various "mandates" were established, theoretically to be ruled by the British and French governments on behalf of the League of Nations. The borders they devised were wholly arbitrary.

(Two doubtlessly false stories are told about that weird jag in the Jordanian-Saudi border, but which capture well the arbitrary nature of the divisions: According to one, that line is called "Winston's Thumb," because as they were drawing the line, Churchill had his thumb in the way and refused to move it, so the cartographer drew the line around it. The other calls it "Winston's Hiccup," because an inebriated Churchill, while drawing the line, hiccuped and lost control of the pen, and simply decided not to correct the mistake. As I say, these are doubtlessly false, but are probably as good as any explanation for why that jag is there.)

There simply is no reason, of geography or ethnicity, to place those borders where they are; it was like striping a parking lot. Or rather, the only divisions that would make sense--those between the various micro-groups that occupy various hillsides and valleys, would result in nations the size of New York counties or smaller. "Palestine" as one of the divisions was carved out of English piety and regard for the "ancient land of Israel," not because there was a special group of "Palestinians" living in it.

As for the presence of the Jews (my second point). As I observed, there have always been Jews in the Levant, as has implicitly been testified by those who correctly report the despicable behavior of the Crusaders toward all non-Christians (and more than a few quasi-heretical Christians). That population was never small, but never particularly vocal or active. But at the end of the nineteenth century, as various nationalisms began to stir, so too did Jewish nationalism. Immigration to Palestine began in earnest around the turn of the century with British encouragement and the acquiescence of the Ottomans (who, cynically, never minded a little trouble in the provinces so long as it was not directed at them). After the British mandate was established, immigration increased even more.

Note, first, that the vast number of immigrants came from Europe, not, as was suggested earlier in this thread, from America. (That is why the Israeli govt is organized as a European parliamentary system, not an American tripartite system.) Second, immigration was made into the administrative unit set up and governed by a foreign government; Palestinian resentment against Jewish immigration is no different that Oregonian resentment against immigration by Californians. So far as the British were concerned, neither Jews nor Palestinians had a "right" to be there; or, more accurately still, the British regarded Jews and Palestinians simply as residents of the mandate and expected them to live in peace together.

It should also be emphasized that Jewish immigration did not displace native persons; the land was mostly empty and if Palestinians chose to remove themselves to other corners it was for the same reasons that underly "white flight"--you don't like the skin color or religion of your new neighbors.

And they didn't. But anti-immigrant feeling is only part of the explanation for the poisonous feelings; much of it has to do with the character of the Muslim leader in Jerusalem (another man whose name escapes me), but who during the 30s and the 40s exercised a profound influence upon the Palestinian mindset. Because this leader was not only anti-Semitic racist, but an admirer and ally of Hitler, and who bought the Nazi's vicious ideology and used it to justify the murder and expulsion of Jews. (Hitler himself, no admirer of Arabs, had high esteem for ol whatsisname, and went so far as to claim that, despite his physiognomy, he must be nearly a pure blood Nordic.) It was during the 30s that the Palestinian-Jewish violence begins, and does so at the instigation of ideologues peddling the same hatred that Hitler did.

(This also explains how Holocaust denial and the blood libel entered into the modern Arab world--not thru Islam, a thoroughly tolerant, even wordly religion, but through a race theory with completely European roots.)

Thoroughly alarmed by the outbreaks, the British authorities (many of whom, in the Thirties, were themselves deeply anti-Semitic) clamped down on Jewish immigration and restricted their movement and activities, which (a) radicalized the Jews, already under assault by their neighbors, and (b) encouraged the Palestinians into thinking that further mayhem would only win them more concessions toward the elimination of the Jews of Palestine.

After World War II, of course, Jewish agitation in Palestine and around the world for a "Jewish state" exploded, and the British, goaded by a Jewish guerilla movement (or terrorist, if you prefer) turned the mandate over to the UN, which, in an attempt to separate the combatants, divided the old mandate into Israeli and Palestinian states. The new Israeli government announced its willingness to live within the new borders (those of "1947"), but the Palestinians insisted upon the whole territory, under a Palestinian government that would be free to treat the Jewish population as it wished--in short, free to murder or expel them. Thus, the Palestinians, in conjunction with the neighboring states, launched an attack on the new Israeli state, but suffered a surprise defeat. The Palestinian state was stillborn when Jordan and Egypt simply occupied the land that had been designated for the Palestinians.

Thus, another important fact to remember: If the Palestinian state envisioned by the UN was never set up, it was not because it was murdered by the Israelis, but was murdered by its nominal allies.

The Egyptians and Jordanians continued to occupy those lands, using them to launch another war in 1956, and again in 1967. By this latter date, the Israelis were sufficiently strong to occupy the Palestinian lands themselves (along with Egypt's Sinai territory) and use them as a buffer.

The moral is that, contra what happyheathen maintains above, European migration IS a legitimate basis of comparison. Neither population has a stronger claim than the other to a state with certain borders, and if there is no peace between them that is largely because one group refuses to live peaceably with the other, and the other responds by treating the first with fear and distaste.

[happyheathen]

Originally posted by Maxie Zeus

...and if there is no peace between them that is largely because one group refuses to live peaceably with the other, and the other responds by treating the first with fear and distaste.

yes, but which is which? it is the Israelis who block roads so that Palestinians cannot go to work, not vice-versa.

[Maxie Zeus]

The above post ends with the claim that one side refuses to accept the legitimate existence of the other. But this still leaves out the reasons for the Palestinians' so regarding Israel. And since the above post focused on Israel, I want to pull this material out into its own post.

The comparison I have often seen made by Palestinian commentators, is that they regard Israel itself as a "Crusader state": the intrusion in the Muslim world of an avowedly Western state. Unlike other British or French mandates, which led to the establishment of contemporary states governed by Muslim elites, Israel ended up as a state governed by elites who look to the West as their model, in much the same way that the Crusader kingdoms intruded alien regimes upon lands that (by the Muslims' lights) belong to the Muslim world.

Of course, this comparison overlooks the fact that the crusaders ruled over alien populations; the Israeli government rules over a population that is Jewish, and which not only supports that government but expresses its wishes and desires through that government. If the Muslims wish to destroy this "crusader state" they cannot follow Saladin's method of defeating the enemy's leaders and armies while sparing the populations (which were mostly loyal to Saladin's side). It must end either in the death or exile of the Israeli Jews, or in their subjugation to an apartheid regime, dedicated to restricting their freedoms and rights.

This explanation also brings to light the extent to which Palestinian resentment of Israel, however much it is colored and poisoned by imported racist attitudes, is fundamentally directed toward the West. A state with Israel's borders and with a large Jewish population would not be offensive to Arab sensibilities, so long as it was ruled by Arabs and Arab institutions. That is, it would be regarded on a par with Syria, whose ruling clique is drawn from traditionally Christian groups, but whose outlook and institutions are resolutely Arabic.

One excuse we're already hearing is that the Palestinians (and these terrorists) hate the West because of Israel; if the "crusader state" analogy is the true explanation, then it is truer to say that they hate Israel because they hate the West.

[Maxie Zeus]

Originally posted by happyheathen


yes, but which is which? it is the Israelis who block roads so that Palestinians cannot go to work, not vice-versa.

Well, considering that Israeli actions like this were undertaken AFTER and IN REACTION TO the Palestinian acts of violence, this question strikes me as remarkably obtuse. (And that's the charitable reading.) It's like asking who's to blame for World War II: the Germans for attacking their neighbors, or their neighbors for resisting.

[happyheathen]

who hit who first?

I don't think anybody's going to be answering that one...

memories are long (although going back to the roman empire seems a bit of a stretch )

[Maxie Zeus]

Originally posted by happyheathen
who hit who first?

I don't think anybody's going to be answering that one...

memories are long (although going back to the roman empire seems a bit of a stretch )

I think that's exactly the right conclusion to draw: There is no answer to the question "Who hit who first?" and so there is no point in blaming one side for "starting it," as the quoted column at the top of this thread seems to do.

That is, one reason I made such a big deal the tangled political history of the region, and the vexed sources of the Levant's ethnic demography, is that there is no "land" that originally belonged to one ethnic group or another, and of which it was dispossessed. Each side has a moral claim that presupposes the invalidity of the others: the Israelis presume they have established a legitimate state, and the Palestinians deny this.

Because one practical solution or another presupposes one moral claim or the other (e.g., the Palestinians and Israelis should be 'forced' to get along, because the Israelis have as much right to be there as the Palestinians, and vice versa) the moral stalemate produces a practical stalemate. And to choose one practical alternative or another, even as part of 'realpolitik,' will have the effect of choosing one moral claim or the other, and those who advocate 'realpolitik' ought to at least be responsible enough to admit that that is what they are doing.

(Anyway, the greatest practioners of 'realpolitik,' the Romans, would have had little patience with these puzzles. If their behavior during the final Jewish War is any guide, after 40 years of watching Jews and Arabs at each others throats, they would doubtless have acted with great evenhandedness, and laid down a carpet of 'dirty' nuclear weapons from Tripoli to Kabul, with the intention of poisoning anyone not killed in the blasts, and then posted large 'Keep Out' signs at the corners of the region. 'Realpolitik' is the refuge of those too impatient for real politics, the essence of which is negotiation and compromise.)

I don't advocate anything here; my point has been, as I said on my first post, to introduce some 'perspective' into a 'perspective' that did not take full cognizance of how complicated the situation really is.

[happyheathen]

Originally posted by Maxie Zeus


And to choose one practical alternative or another, even as part of 'realpolitik,' will have the effect of choosing one moral claim or the other, and those who advocate 'realpolitik' ought to at least be responsible enough to admit that that is what they are doing.

I thought I was being quite explicit and honest.

...(lay) down a carpet of 'dirty' nuclear weapons from Tripoli to Kabul, with the intention of poisoning anyone not killed in the blasts, and then posted large 'Keep Out' signs at the corners of the region.

actually, I would support this (and have, in fact, advocated it (except fot the 'keep out' signs)). I did not include it in the list because I suspected little support.

I don't advocate anything here...

could've fooled me!

[Maxie Zeus]

Originally posted by happyheathen
actually, I would support this (and have, in fact, advocated it (except fot the 'keep out' signs)). I did not include it in the list because I suspected little support.

Then perhaps we ought to pass over this whole debate in silence.