Once upon a time, I thought that Israel was 'a good thing' without qualification. I look at this in retrospect as a reaction to the amount of holocaust material we were exposed to at school. A little sentimental, but...
then I saw the situation of the Palestinians. Call me old fashioned, but I still have problems with assaulting a refugee camp with bulldozers. So my resultant thinking is the usual liberal wishy-washy leftiness which tries to be fair to both sides.
For most of your questions, I'd say that both sides probably have points for. For every suicide bombing, there's a bulldozer. For every action, there's an overreaction. Your terrorist is my freedom fighter, your defenders are my oppressors - reverse them and apply as you will.
I'd like to be able to say I am unbiased, but I do have a leaning of support for the Palestinian cause. Perhaps that's down to my inbred european anti-semitism, but I - rather sweetly, I think - would rather consider it as sympathy for the underdog. If I were to be placed in a refugee camp in England, I think I'd be entitled to be mightily hacked-off and I hope I'd have the courage to fight whoever was responsible with whatever weapons came to hand.
[Normally, I'm quite fond of Gandhi's peaceful protest tactics, but in this case, I've gone a bit ultimate fighting championship.]
Do I have any personal relation to the question?
My grandparents were pretty anti-semitic, which I think led my mother a reactionary viewpoint which was that, after the holocaust, Jewish people couldn't be in the wrong. I know it looks weird down on paper (as it were) but I think that was the feeling of a lot of people. Personally, I'm very much of the opinion that Jews can be as big a bunch of bastards as christians, muslims and everybody else.
[An interesting feature of my bias, looking back over the last sentence, is that I'll give Judaism the honour of capitalisation, consider it momentarily for Islam and outright reject any such thing for Christianity. I'll be as reactionary as everyone else, then.]
The media is a tricky one - I tend to watch the news on the beeb and read the guardian, so I have a warm, cosy [and no doubt misplaced] expectation of reasonably balanced news. When I read that there is a bias in favour of Palestine, I'm quite surprised. I'm aware of the allegations of anti-semitism, but I also have a reasonably strong feeling that anyone with those sorts of ideas does tend towards not being exactly pro-Islam/Arab either.
In short, [too late] I don't know what either side should do. I'd like Israel to move back to the 67 borders. I'd like the suicide bombings to stop. I have a feeling that neither will occur.
The main problem as I see it now, is one of world politics. The US is under a lot of pressure to cease support for Israel. There are currently two reasons for the US to keep relations going in the middle east - one being oil and the other being the local support needed to continue the 'fight against global terrorism'. One can only speculate on what would happen, should it come to pass that one or both of these becomes more important than support for Israel. [The US is just the most obvious example in this case, apologies to those who feel this is more bashing from the europeans].
The depressing thought is that it is in a lot of people's best interests that the situation should be allowed to continue as it is.
***
One thing that would be helpful is if someone could give a potted history of how Israel came into being. I'm a bit rusty on that, and I have a feeling that a fair amount of the problems stem from the point of conception. As it were.
My longest ever post. If you have been, bless you. |
